Bluff The Listener
NPR
Saturday, August 1, 2015
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Our panelists tell three stories about an Alfred Hitchcock movie come to life, only one of which is true.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Mo Rocca, Faith Salie and Brian Babylon. And here again is your host at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago, Ill., you can hear it, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, everybody. Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
CONNIE LIU: Hi, this is Connie Liu. I'm calling from Boston, Mass.
SAGAL: Boston, Mass.?
LIU: Yeah.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
LIU: I'm an OB/GYN.
SAGAL: Oh, really?
LIU: Yeah.
SAGAL: There's a lot of doctors in Boston.
LIU: There are a lot of doctors here. I'm married to a doctor. I just got married last weekend, actually.
SAGAL: Oh, congratulations.
LIU: Thank you.
SAGAL: Why...
MAURICE ROCCA: What kind of a doctor is he?
LIU: He's a urologist.
ROCCA: Oh.
LIU: Meaning downstairs urologist.
ROCCA: Is that like a counterpart? No.
FAITH SALIE: Yeah, you guys are kind of soul mates.
SAGAL: Yeah.
LIU: Yeah, we come as a pair. Everything from the navel to the knees, depending on the guy, is what we take care of.
SAGAL: Right.
ROCCA: OK.
SAGAL: Welcome to our show, Connie. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Connie's topic?
KURTIS: Oh, I've got vertigo.
SAGAL: Long ago, people turned to the films of Alfred Hitchcock when they needed to be terrified because they didn't yet have killer drones or the GOP presidential race to be afraid of. Well, this week, we came across a story that was a Hitchcock movie come to life. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess the one that isn't lying about this week's news, you'll win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Are you ready to do this?
LIU: Yeah.
SAGAL: Let's, then. First up, let's hear from Faith Salie.
SALIE: If you'd like to have gorgeous gams like Tippi Hedren, there's a workout for you. It's "The Birds" in real life, except more fun and less murdery. It's huge in the UK. They call it gull running, and here's how it works. You go to a boardwalk in a seaside village like Brighton or Blackpool, you buy your chips with salt and vinegar, then you pull up your hoodie hood, extend the arm holding the greasy gulll bait overhead and run your arse off. Inevitably, before you can explain to the seagulls that chips are not really chips, but actually french fries, you are attacked by nasty, horrifying, feathery freaks. Whoever sprints the furthest without having his Cornish pasty nicked and his eyes pecked into bloody wells wins, even if he's covered in globs of white poop. The motto of the gull runners who taunt the bloodthirsty birds? Keep calm and carry on.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: People re-enacting the birds for fun in the beaches of England as they run away from hungry, attacking birds. Your next story of a Hitchcockian situation comes from Brian Babylon.
BRIAN BABYLON: Have you ever had that strange feeling that somebody's watching you? And what if you were right, and on top of that, details of your daily life were being documented and posted online? That is what happened to Brad and Kim Keywell (ph) from Chicago. They were victims of a website called rearwindow.com, part of a creepy, cult craze called rear-windowing. This is where a person/weirdo uses a high-powered telescope to pick unsuspecting victims and observe them on their daily goings-on. Kim Keywell said she found out about rearwindow.com from her daughter, Jessica, whose friends kept asking her if her dad's back is really as hairy as a wild alpaca. When she finally went the site, she found over 120 posts about her family's life. I thought I was going to be horrified, but I went through it, and it was actually kind of sweet. And now that we know someone is watching us, we've closed the blinds, put up a note that said thanks, and now Brad has started waxing his back.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Rear window, nce a Hitchcock thriller, now an online activity. Your last story of Hitchcock come to life comes from Mo Rocca.
ROCCA: With the end of California's drought nowhere in sight, the state's hotels and motels have moved well beyond guilting guests into using the same towels for two days in a row. Long showers are one of our biggest problems, says Shane Howell (ph) the state's hospitality commissioner. And so one motel is introducing a policy that critics called psycho. At the Arbogast Motel in Bakersfield, guests can enjoy a warm, luxurious 5 minute shower. One second beyond 5 minutes, the water turns freezing cold - the very technique Alfred Hitchcock used to elicit screams from Janet Leigh in the shower scene from 1960's "Psycho." At the 6 minute mark, Bernard Herrmann's terrifying score begins playing loudly (screeching noises), and if the shower continues to the 7 minute mark, yes, you guessed it, Rusty the bellhop will put on a wig, walk slowly into your bathroom, tear open the shower curtain and hand you a towel that you'll be expected to use for the next three days. Says Rusty, who was born in 1989, I don't get it. What's so scary about Mrs. Doubtfire?
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right, so we saw a story - a real story in the news that reminded us a lot of Alfred Hitchcock. Was it from Faith, people re-enacting "The Birds" for fun on beaches in England, from Brian, the creepy activity in "Rear Window," now a fun internet activity where people spy on their neighbors through the rear window, or from Mo, the "Psycho" shower technique in a California motel to keep water use down. Which of these do you think is a real story from this week's news?
LIU: I'll go for the third story.
SAGAL: You're going to go for the third story. That was, in fact, Mo's story of the "Psycho" shower. This is the shower in the motel in California where if you wait too long, they'll re-enact "Psycho" on you.
ROCCA: OK, stop repeating it. Let's stop summarizing it and let's award me the point.
SAGAL: No, no, no, I just wanted to make sure that she had chosen - that this is the choice you wanted to make - that she's picking Mo's story of the "Psycho" shower.
LIU: Well, are you saying no?
SAGAL: I'm not saying anything.
LIU: (Laughter) I don't know, Brian's story sounded pretty realistic, too.
SAGAL: It was.
BABYLON: "Rear Window," man.
SAGAL: All right, well you have to make your final choice.
LIU: I'll go with Brian's story.
SAGAL: Oh, you switched over to Brian's story. You picked Mo's, then you switched over to Brian's story of rear-windowing. Well, to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to someone familiar with the real Hitchcockian re-enactment.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ED ZYLKA: The seagull chase run. It does two things...
SALIE: Yep.
SAGAL: That was Ed Zylka, he's the executive director of the Chicago Area Runners Association, known as CARA, and he was opining on the guys in England who were running as fast as they could away from pursuing gulls. Faith's story, as it turns out the one you didn't consider, was the true one. However, you earned a point for Brian Babylon.
BABYLON: Yep, yes, you did.
SAGAL: For inventing a new craze.
LIU: You're welcome.
BABYLON: Thank you, very much.
SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing, we really appreciate it.
LIU: Thanks for having me.
SAGAL: And if I'm ever in Boston and I need to have a baby, you'll be the person I call.
LIU: Thank you.
SAGAL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST: (Singing) Rock-a-bye little birdie way up in the tree tops. Rock-a-bye little birdie. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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