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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Bluff The Listener

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Kyrie O'Connor, Mo Rocca and Peter Grosz. And here again is your host, at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Right now, it's time for the WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME! Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

MARK WALES: This is Mark from Portland, Oregon.

SAGAL: Hey Mark, how are you in Portland?

WALES: Oh, it's a beautiful sunny day here.

SAGAL: That's great. It's a beautiful town, Portland. What do you do there?

WALES: I work for the Post Office.

SAGAL: That's a beautiful thing to do. Everything's beautiful in Portland. I don't care what it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MO ROCCA: Can I ask you a question? Portland is so laid back, what time does the mail get delivered?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

WALES: When it gets there.

SAGAL: Absolutely.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Mark, it's nice to have you with us. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Mark's topic?

KASELL: Till death or this spinning buzzsaw do us part.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here's the problem with weddings: no matter how inventive you are, everybody knows how they're going to end. Well, not anymore. This week, we heard about a wedding day thrill so exciting it'll make your guests actually happy they came.

Each of our panelists are going to try to spice up your nuptials. Only one of them is offering something, though, you can actually arrange for your wedding. Guess that real wedding feature, you'll win Carl's voice on your home answering machine or voicemail. Ready to play?

WALES: Yes.

SAGAL: Let's hear first from Peter Grosz.

PETER GROSZ: A common complaint from the bride and the groom on their wedding day is that everything goes by so fast. But if you're an adventuress couple for whom things can't move fast enough, you can hire Speed Ceremonies. For ten thousand dollars, the Los Angeles based wedding planners will put you and up to forty guests on a specially refurbished LA city bus that will never drive slower than 50 miles and hour.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: Echoing the plot of the 1994 film, "Speed." Add another thousand dollars if you want a minister who looks exactly like Keanu Reeves, only better at delivering his lines.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: In order to recreate all the dizzying twists and turns taken by the bus in the film, every Speed Ceremonies wedding takes place on the tarmac of an old airport outside Austin, Texas, where the constantly swerving driver will literally rock your party all night long.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: "Someone usually throws up," says company founder Matthew Craig, "but when you think about it, that's not all that unusual for a wedding." What is unusual for a wedding is the real bomb that gets placed under the bus and has to be diffused by an explosives expert by the end of the night.

Says Craig, "Sure, we could fake it and say there's a real bomb onboard, but why ruin someone's special day?"

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Speed wedding, there's a bomb on this wedding.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Your next wedding spectacular comes from Kyrie O'Connor.

KYRIE O'CONNOR: Jessica Silverman is just gaga over Gaga. So when she and Lauren Chan decided to get married, it was a foregone conclusion that the wedding would have a Lady Gaga theme. Lucky for her, Gaga for You, on Stamford, Connecticut, offers a full suite of Gaga knockoff wedding products.

But it was bad enough that Jessica referred to her guests only as "little monsters." Worse, major grumbling, that she insisted the groomsmen wear sparkly golden boxer briefs and carry her in an egg case to the rose garden for the ceremony.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: The bridesmaids would have stormed out, but they could barely walk in their Alexander McQueen lobster claw heels, and they couldn't see at all through the red Dr. Seuss crown things pulled over their faces.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: But when Jessica emerged from the egg in a version of Gaga's signature meat dress, she couldn't have looked more serene. She was halfway down the aisle, to the tune of "Bad Romance," of course, when a dog walker happened to pass by.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: His two charges, both Great Danes, broke loose and headed for the meat dress. Jessica was unfazed. "Gaga is all about performance art, so she'd be proud," she said later. The groom had another take. "I know she hired those dogs."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: A Lady Gaga wedding.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And lastly, let's hear a story of a new wedding gimmick from Mo Rocca.

ROCCA: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blew up. Does anybody actually like wedding cake? British case designers Bompas and Partner don't think so. To make sure your reception is a smash, they'll send a trained explosives technician to implant your wedding cake with an IED.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

ROCCA: When the bride is ready to detonate it, your guests will be thrilled to be wearing the cake they now don't have to eat.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

ROCCA: Of course, some women guests may not want cake all over their clothes. Let's just say, they may experience post-traumatic dress disorder.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So let's say you wanted to get married and you wanted to do something special, you could do one of these things. From Peter Grosz: have your wedding done on a bus to the theme of the movie "Speed." From Kyrie O'Connor: have a Lady Gaga themed wedding, down to and including the meat dress. Or from Mo Rocca: have a wedding that ends with a bang with an exploding wedding cake from a...

WALES: Well they all sound good.

SAGAL: Yes. I was kind of leaning toward B.

Toward B. B would be the Lady Gaga wedding?

WALES: Yeah.

SAGAL: Is there something that appeals to you about a Lady Gaga wedding?

WALES: Okay, if you're going that way about it, how about C?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, wait a minute, are you changing your choice to C, to Mo's story of the exploding wedding cake?

WALES: Yeah.

SAGAL: All right.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's fine. Your choice is Mo's story. Well, we spoke to the person who will provide you this service.

SAM BOMPAS CO-OWNER OF BOMPAS AND PARR: We decided to offer people an exploding cake service.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

PARR: And for some of your guests (inaudible).

SAGAL: That was Sam Bompas. He's the co-owner of the London based culinary firm Bompas and Parr and the purveyors of the exploding wedding cake. Well done, sir.

WALES: Excellent.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: You snaked it out. You got it right. You've won our prize, as well as earning a point for Mo. But Carl will record the greeting on your home answering machine. Well done, sir.

WALES: Yeah.

SAGAL: Thanks so much for playing.

WALES: Thank you.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

WALES: Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.