Who's Bill This Time
NPR
Saturday, October 10, 2015
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Bill Kurtis reads three quotes from the week's news...House Keeper Wanted; Bidin' His Time; Stacked Up On The Runway.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS, HOST:
From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. You be illin' (ph), I be billin' (ph). Bill Kurtis. And here's your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you everybody. So excited - I am so excited for this week's show. This week, our guest is the amazing pioneering comedian Carol Burnett. Now...
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: ...If any of you listening don't know why she is so important, why one of her costumes is in the Smithsonian Institution, just ask your grandmother who is driving you to soccer practice right now. And then ask her if you can borrow her phone and give us a call to play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
DAVID HAWNY: Hello, this is David Hawny calling from Seattle, Wash...
SAGAL: Hey, David.
HAWNY: ...In the beautiful Northwest.
SAGAL: Oh, yes, it is quite beautiful there. How are things?
HAWNY: Things are wonderful. I moved here about two months ago and could not be happier.
SAGAL: Really, what brought you to Seattle? Was it the...
KURTIS: Space Needle.
SAGAL: The Space Needle? The coffee?
HAWNY: Oh, the Space Needle is such a tourist thing. Come on, you got to do the microbrews. Everyone hikes and bikes and...
AMY DICKINSON: Now that you've been there for eight weeks, you now, like - you're, like, a native.
HAWNY: Pretty much. I'm such a hipster. I am absolutely a native.
SAGAL: Yeah. How smug...
HAWNY: Calling NPR - definition of someone who's super cool.
SAGAL: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, David. Let me introduce you to our panelists this week. First, it's the syndicated advice columnist writing the column that's syndicated by The Chicago Tribune, Ask Amy. It's Amy Dickinson.
DICKINSON: Hey. Hi, David.
HAWNY: Hello, Amy.
SAGAL: Next, a writer for The Daily Beast and America's most beloved curmudgeon, P.J. O'Rourke.
(APPLAUSE)
O'ROURKE: So, David, how's the flannel shirt thing going?
HAWNY: I'm actually wearing a flannel shirt as we speak.
O'ROURKE: There you go.
SAGAL: And a comedian performing November 7 at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign Ill., it's Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hey, David.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: So, David, welcome to the show. You're going to inaugurate this week's quiz with Who's Bill This Time. Bill, of course, is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voicemail. Are you ready to do this?
HAWNY: Absolutely, let's go.
SAGAL: Let's go. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom.
SAGAL: That was Rep. Kevin McCarthy. He was commenting on the chaos he set off on Thursday when he announced that he really wasn't interested in what job anymore.
HAWNY: Speaker of the House.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: The speaker of the House.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Very good. Here's what happened. So John Boehner announced he was quitting because he cannot satisfy the hard right part of his caucus. So everybody thinks John Boehner's successor is going to be one of his deputies, Kevin McCarthy. And they all meet to vote for him on Thursday, where he announces he's pulling out. He couldn't do it. He can't satisfy them either. He wasn't feeling it. It's all right. It happens to a lot of guys.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: He gave up so fast. Listen, if I had acted like that, I never would've been homecoming queen, if you know what I mean.
SAGAL: Really? So here's the thing. Who's going to be speaker of the House? No one knows. The only ones who might be elected by their colleagues, like Paul Ryan, don't want the job. It's become one of those jobs that Americans just don't want to do. So it's going to have to be an undocumented immigrant.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They'll drive the speaker's limo down to the Home Depot parking lot, see who's up for it. Guy's like, yeah, I do housework, what do you need?
POUNDSTONE: You know, I knew that Boehner would un-quit.
SAGAL: Would un-quit?
POUNDSTONE: Because he said that - when he made his announcement, right, he was so inspired by the pope, remember, that he - the pope pulled him towards him and said, pray for me. And Boehner was so moved by this and inspired by this and he felt that it was God telling him, yes, do this thing. And I think the following day, maybe, I was watching the pope at the school in New York and he says to the students, the pope has some homework for you. He says pray for me. And the analyst on CNN said, oh, that's the pope's signature line. He says that to everyone.
DICKINSON: Oh, no.
POUNDSTONE: It would be like if Jimmy Walker said to you, dyn-o-mite (ph). And you would go, oh.
DICKINSON: Right.
POUNDSTONE: And then it turns out, well, he says that to everyone.
SAGAL: I love that, like, the pope has a catchphrase.
POUNDSTONE: Yes.
SAGAL: Hey, it's Pope Francis. Pray for me.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: David, here's your next quote from Vice President Joe Biden.
KURTIS: You'd have to talk to my wife about that.
SAGAL: That was Mr. Biden responding to one of the many, many, many people asking him if he's going to do what?
HAWNY: Run for president.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Run for president.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: People close to the vice president say he's still thinking about it and that his decision could come in the next seven to 10 days - that's what they say, seven to 10 days - which sounds less like a guy running for president and more like the Comcast service guy.
O'ROURKE: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Yeah, I should be there between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. some day between Monday through Saturday.
DICKINSON: It also sounds like the amount of time where your rash is supposed to clear up...
SAGAL: Exactly.
DICKINSON: ...After you start taking the medication.
SAGAL: In fact - this is true - CNN, which has the - staging the first Democratic debate next week, says he can join the debate roster up to anytime up until it starts. Their - they'll, like, leave a podium for him on stage.
O'ROURKE: That's pretty cool.
SAGAL: Like Elijah, right?
O'ROURKE: That's pretty cool, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And you know - you know - that even the empty podium, if Joe never shows up, will be more interesting than Lincoln Chafee.
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: Yeah, Lincoln.
SAGAL: Lincoln Chafee will be like, I have a point about the metric system. And the CNN will be like, really? No, more from the empty lectern. What do you...
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: I tried to write about Lincoln.
SAGAL: Did you really?
O'ROURKE: Oh, gosh (laughter) yeah.
SAGAL: He's running on the platform of bringing America, finally, to the metric system. That's exciting.
POUNDSTONE: Really, it's a platform? You know, we did, at one point - remember when - you know how we'd driving on the highway and there's the green signs that say how many miles to where you're going?
SAGAL: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: Do you remember, several years ago, they did put miles and kilometers?
SAGAL: I vaguely remember that was in the '70s.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: It was a brief phase - I don't think it was the '70s. I think it was later than the '70s. But apparently it didn't take and I don't know what happened to those signs. Like, they took them down and so pretended it never happened.
SAGAL: Right.
DICKINSON: I think they tossed it out because we don't like being weighed in grams. It's just too much.
O'ROURKE: Oh.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: Boy, oh, boy, yeah. 'Cause you step on the scale and then, wow.
DICKINSON: It's like 400,000 - yeah, it's just too...
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: The Brits have got that figure out. Stones.
DICKINSON: The stone, love that.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: Oh, I gained a stone.
SAGAL: Doesn't sound too bad.
O'ROURKE: That's not too bad. That's 14 pounds.
SAGAL: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: Never mind.
SAGAL: OK, David, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: Welcome to the world's worst way to get kicked in the head.
SAGAL: That was a writer in Mic Magazine. He's talking about a new plan that came out which, if we put into effect, would make traveling by what even more uncomfortable than it is now?
HAWNY: I am going to take a wild guess and say flying by air - airplane.
SAGAL: Yes, you're right. Airplane.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: You think it's bad now. Here's the thing. Walking in an airplane, have you ever looked up at, like, the top half of the cabin, just the space above your head, and said, why, that's wasted space. You could shove some humans up there.
DICKINSON: Oh, my God (laughter).
SAGAL: Of course not. You're not a psychopath.
DICKINSON: Oh, my God.
SAGAL: The people at Airbus - this is the major European manufacturer - and this week, they filed a patent for a seating arrangement on planes that shows passengers basically lying down, one stack beneath the other.
DICKINSON: Stop, no.
SAGAL: But just so you know, they're sort of, like, at an angle to each other. So it's like a human lasagna.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: God.
POUNDSTONE: When I take a few seconds to put my bag in the overhead, the people behind me in line always get annoyed. And I can't imagine trying to climb up into a thing.
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
POUNDSTONE: I'd be like, hold on, hold on. I'm almost - I'm folding myself in.
SAGAL: I'm sure I'll fit if I go in wheels first. Hang on a second.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: And then if you don't get it right, then some husky flight attendant comes over and they shove you that way and shove somebody else in. They turn you around. They go, yeah, you fit better this way. And then they shove another guy in beside you. I think I like it. I like it.
SAGAL: Yeah, it'll be good. Bill, how did David do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Three and 0. You did well, David.
SAGAL: Congratulations. Thank you, David, and enjoy yourself in Seattle.
HAWNY: Thanks.
SAGAL: We want to remind everybody they can join us most weeks right here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Ill. For tickets and more information, just go over to wbez.org. And you can find a link at our website, waitwait.npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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