Bluff The Listener
NPR
Saturday, January 30, 2016
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Our panelists tell three stories about a salad in the news, only one of which is true.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT… DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with Tom Bodett, Shelby Fero and Peter Grosz. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, filling in for Peter Sagal, Mike Pesca.
MIKE PESCA, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
PESCA: Thank you, Bill. And right now it is time for WAIT WAIT… DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. You. You can call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT… DON'T TELL ME.
KIMBERLY DUBRUL: Hi. I'm Kimberly Dubrul, and I'm from Shelburne, Vt.
PESCA: Oh, Vermont.
TOM BODETT: Oh.
SHELBY FERO: Oh.
PESCA: You know her, Tom?
BODETT: Hi, Kimberly.
(LAUGHTER)
PETER GROSZ: You're neighbors.
DUBRUL: I know Tom, yeah.
BODETT: We all know each other.
DUBRUL: Yes, we do.
PESCA: Kimberly, what do you do up there in Vermont?
DUBRUL: I am a licensed business coach.
PESCA: So you coach people who are in business to enjoy their lives, how to not get sucked up in the rat race, that sort of thing?
DUBRUL: Yeah, enjoy it along the way.
PESCA: Yeah, but your big advice is you know what? You might want to move to Vermont.
DUBRUL: Move to Vermont.
(LAUGHTER)
PESCA: All right, it is nice to have you with us, Kimberly.
DUBRUL: Thank you.
PESCA: You are going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. What's the topic, Bill?
KURTIS: Salad to the rescue.
PESCA: Salad is the PBS of food - no one wants it, but it's always there.
(LAUGHTER)
PESCA: Well, this week, we read a story about salad doing more than being just a boring meal. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess who's telling the truth and you will win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
DUBRUL: I'm ready.
PESCA: All right, first up Peter Grosz.
GROSZ: When most Americans think of ways to keep their home secure, they think hiring ADT, buying a guard dog, having a house so crappy no one wants to break into it.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: Well, this week, Claire Brinkley of Bakersfield, Calif., accidentally discovered another method. Claire was busy preparing dinner. And when she was surprised by a burglar in her kitchen, she panicked and threw the first thing she could find at her would-be assailant - a large bowl of caprese salad. Now, since this is NPR, I don't need to explain that a caprese salad has tomato, basil, mozzarella, a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, very refreshing. Anyway, unbeknownst to Claire, this burglar suffered from sollenisayitis (ph) a rare and crippling allergy to tomatoes. So this salad knocked the man to his knees, where he went into a full-on tomato tantrum - coughing, sneezing, shortness of breath. It was the equivalent of hurling a bowl of kryptonite at Superman. As Ms. Brinkley told the local newspaper, he kept screaming ah, I'm allergic to tomatoes - ah, please help me. And I thought this guy was trying to rob me. I'm not going to help him, and help she did not. Claire went to her cupboard and found every tomato product she could - ketchup, tomato sauce, tomato paste, even a jar of sun-dried tomatoes she bought from Trader Joes two years ago but forgot she had. They were in the back of the cabinet. She took them all and poured them on the man's head. Officer Brian Stansfield, who was first to arrive on the scene, said to this date, this is the only crime suspect we know of who has been tomato-boarded.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
PESCA: Attack of the killer tomato by Peter Grosz. The next story of greens going above the call of duty comes from Shelby Fero.
FERO: Super greens indeed - at a post-post Comic-Con panel for the coming sensory assault "Batman V. Superman," director Zack Snyder let slip that there was the tiniest, littlest, totally-not-a-big-deal accident on set involving a broken harness, the titular character and a 15-foot drop from the roof of a restaurant. Luckily, Superman, aka. Henry Cavill, aka the younger Brawny paper towel mascot, walked away from his fall unscathed thanks to a dumpster full of compost and vegetable scraps outside the restaurant that broke his fall. I guess that's another reason to go vegan, Snyder joked. Or another reason to check equipment before calling action, Henry Cavill laughed tersely.
(LAUGHTER)
FERO: The one thing we can all agree on is that I'm Oscar-winner Ben Affleck, added "Gigli" star Ben Affleck.
(LAUGHTER)
FERO: But at least the incident provides true cowl-heads (ph) a fun Easter egg. See if you can spot the stray crouton caught in Clark's hair during a particularly-heated newsroom debriefing.
(LAUGHTER)
PESCA: So that was, of course, the stunt salad story from Shelby Fero. Your last story of salad in the news comes from Tom Bodett.
BODETT: When a kindergartner at Riverside Elementary School found a live 3-inch green lizard in her fresh greens, the produce manager at the store who sold the salad could not have been more proud. Mike Atkinson of Whole Earth Center in Princeton, N.J., claimed lizard would not have survived its journey from Florida in conventional nonorganic packaging.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Further demonstrating why he's managing the store's produce and not its public relations, he said it might normally surprise or freak out conventional shoppers. But the majority of organic shoppers realize that produce is grown on a farm, and there's lots of bugs and animals that live on a farm, too. No word on the kindergartner's reactions. Perhaps she's no longer able to communicate at all...
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: ...Sitting speechless while rocking back and forth in the coat closet.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Riverside Elementary School science teacher Mark Eastman (ph) put the lizard in a cage as the class mascot, and the students have named it Green Fruit Loop after a popular breakfast cereal not sold at Whole Earth Center and never containing bugs and animals.
(LAUGHTER)
PESCA: OK, Kimberly...
(APPLAUSE)
PESCA: Let's recap - you've got Peter's story of throwing nightshade. You've got Batman v. Superman v. Salad via Shelby Fero and there you heard Tom talking about - would you like to add a protein? Sure, how about a reptile? Which one is the real salad deal?
DUBRUL: I'm going with number three.
PESCA: Number three, the reptile. Well, let's see...
(APPLAUSE)
PESCA: We spoke to someone intimately familiar with this story.
MARK EASTBURN: They had been cleaning these greens and a little what they thought was a dead lizard had fallen out. It had been refrigerated, but the lizard's perfectly fine.
DUBRUL: Woo...
PESCA: Yeah.
DUBRUL: ...All right. Go Vermont.
(APPLAUSE)
BODETT: Yes.
PESCA: And that was Mark Eastburn, the elementary school science teacher, who now has the lizard as a class pet. Congratulations, Kimberly, you got it right.
DUBRUL: Thank you. Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
PESCA: In the process, you earn a point for Tom and you have won our prize, which means Carl Kasell will be recording the greeting on your voicemail. Thanks for playing with us today.
DUBRUL: That's awesome. Thank you.
PESCA: All right, bye.
BODETT: Way to go, Kimberly.
DUBRUL: Bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "POLK SALAD ANNIE")
TONY JOE WHITE: (Singing) Every day for suppertime, she drove down by the truck patch and take her mess and polk salad and carry it home in a tow sack. Polk salad Annie, Polk Salad Annie... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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