CARL KASELL, HOST:
From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, Florida, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl. Thank you everybody. Thanks, Carl. Thanks everybody. We got a great show for you today. Comedian Marc Maron will join us later on. Can I say how happy we are to be in Tampa? And not just because of the weather, sure. Because for people who do what we do, make fun of the news, coming to Florida is like a pilgrimage to Mecca.
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SAGAL: You have to do it. You got to come here; you got to bow toward Tallahassee.
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SAGAL: Where the state legislature had to ban truck nuts.
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SAGAL: Then you turn and you bow to the corner convenience store where the robber would put on the paper bag without cutting out the eyeholes first.
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SAGAL: Bless you for what you do.
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SAGAL: We got more examples of what makes this state great coming up later in the show. But first, it's your turn to give us a call. The number is 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
TRACY BARRIONUEVO: Hello.
SAGAL: Hello. Who's this?
BARRIONUEVO: My name is Tracy Barrionuevo from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
SAGAL: Oh, Colorado. What do you do there?
BARRIONUEVO: I actually stay at home with my two spirited boys.
SAGAL: Oh, and you sort of keep them in check?
BARRIONUEVO: Exactly.
SAGAL: Yeah, how's that going?
BARRIONUEVO: Pretty good at the moment, because they're watching a movie.
SAGAL: That's good.
ADAM FELBER: Yeah, that's nice.
SAGAL: Well then quick, while they're quiet, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, it's a writer for "Real Time with Bill Maher," Mr. Adam Felber.
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FELBER: Hello, Tracy.
BARRIONUEVO: Hello.
SAGAL: Next, a panelist on the new BBC America show, "Would You Rather" with Graham Norton. I'm talking about Faith Salie.
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FAITH SALIE: Hi, Tracy.
BARRIONUEVO: Hi.
SAGAL: And finally, a humorist and author most recently of "Alphabetter Juice," Mr. Roy Blount, Jr. is here.
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ROY BLOUNT: Hi, Tracy. How are you doing?
BARRIONUEVO: I'm good, hi.
BLOUNT: Good.
SAGAL: Tracy, as you could probably anticipate, we're going to start with Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell will read you three quotes from the week's news. Your job, correctly identify or explain two of them. Do that, you will win our prize, Carl's voice on your voicemail.
BARRIONUEVO: All right.
SAGAL: Ready to go?
BARRIONUEVO: I'm ready.
SAGAL: Here is your first quote.
KASELL: If I blow up and do something utterly stupid, people will be able to say, "Gee, I wonder who the next candidate it?"
SAGAL: That was the latest Republican frontrunner. He was speaking this week as he prepared to blow up and say something stupid.
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SAGAL: Who is it?
BARRIONUEVO: Oh, they keep changing.
SAGAL: They do. You have to keep on top of this.
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BARRIONUEVO: Newt Gingrich.
SAGAL: Yes, Newt Gingrich, very good.
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SAGAL: As Andy Warhol once said, in America, everybody gets to be the GOP 2012 Frontrunner for 15 minutes.
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SAGAL: So now, it is the rise of Newt, the Newtering of America.
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FELBER: Everything old is Newt again.
SAGAL: Yes. You can't handle the Newt.
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SAGAL: This is an amazing comeback for the Newtinator. Remember when his whole campaign staff quit because he went on a Greek cruise instead of campaigning? This is true. Gingrich now says that that trip gave him insight into the Greek economic crisis.
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SAGAL: How did that work? What is he in such a...
FELBER: He bought other jewelry.
SAGAL: Yeah. I'm sure he's like, hmm, I notice that the jumbo shrimps in the make your own shrimp cocktail buffet seem small.
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SAGAL: This country is in crisis and should go back to the drachma.
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SALIE: I think he is getting - I think this is a seasonal surge for Newt. I think he is the candidate that looks most like a Christmas elf.
SAGAL: Right.
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SAGAL: What's great is that even his campaign finally it's getting going, it might be collapsing. And this is because it turns out that even though he's been fulminating for years now against politicians who took money from the mortgage company Fannie Mae, he himself, it turns out, accepted more than one million dollars from them. Now, he said, when he was asked, that he wasn't lobbying for Fannie Mae for that money. No, he was just consulting with them as a historian.
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SAGAL: Right, right. He was, like, I believe it was Thucydides, the Greek historian who first said wire the money to my account.
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SAGAL: All right. Tracy, here's your next quote.
KASELL: They're like a gang of delinquents armed with grenades set to go off, but struggling to build a really big bomb that could do even greater damage.
SAGAL: That was a writer in Salon, talking about a group of 12 delinquents in Washington, facing a deadline next week without having accomplished much towards it. What is this group known as?
BARRIONUEVO: The supercommittee.
SAGAL: The supercommittee ta-da.
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SAGAL: Oh, we were so excited when they came up with this. It was like, not just a committee, it's the supercommittee. The members would wear tight spandex suits with symbols of their power on their chests.
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SAGAL: Dick Durbin could showcase his ability to cause anyone to fall asleep in an instant.
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SAGAL: But as the Thanksgiving deadline approached, it looks like they've completely failed to make a deal and are just going to blame each other instead. Some supercommittee.
BLOUNT: They leap deadlines with a single bound.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Seriously, they're not going to do anything. It's like Batman being woken up by the Batsignal, then hitting the Batsnooze button and going back to sleep.
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SAGAL: It's like Spiderman staying home to lay an egg sack.
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SALIE: Did they name themselves the supercommittee?
FELBER: No.
SAGAL: I don't know.
FELBER: No, that's what they spent their first month doing.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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FELBER: There's a lot of...
SAGAL: I say we should be the supercommittee. No, I say...
FELBER: I say ultracommittee.
SAGAL: I say megacommittee.
FELBER: I say hypercommittee.
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FELBER: They did wire them to a bomb, didn't they though?
SAGAL: Yes, I know. If they don't solve the...
FELBER: If we don't solve this problem, everything blows up.
SAGAL: In fact, that's right. What they've done is they've set in what are called a sequester. And that means that if they don't come up with a deal, they'll be massive budget cuts, including - and this is supposed to hurt the Republicans - huge cuts to the defense budget. So it'll be terrible if that happens. We'll only be able to invade countries we can walk to.
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SAGAL: Canada will be like, "What? Again? Again?"
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SAGAL: Worst though, the Pentagon will be downsized to the rhombus.
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SAGAL: It's not a frightening building.
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SAGAL: All right, Tracy, now here's your last quote. It's an error message that we saw this week at a certain player association's website.
KASELL: 404 error: Basketball not found. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
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SAGAL: That message means that most likely what is going to be canceled this year?
BARRIONUEVO: The NBA season.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed, the NBA season.
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SAGAL: It's a case of the members of the 1 percent not being able to agree amongst themselves how to divvy that 1 percent up. The NBA players rejected the owners, quote, "final offer" of a deal, and they went off in protest to join the Occupy movement by going to their backyards and occupying their jacuzzis.
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SALIE: They're going to date the Kardashians.
SAGAL: Pretty much.
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FELBER: They are.
SALIE: There are a few Kardashians left, I think.
SAGAL: Are there enough Kardashians for the entire roster of the NBA?
SALIE: There may be.
SAGAL: There could be. There are some people - but there are a lot of people who are going to be affected by this. For example, what will the NBA referees bet on now?
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FELBER: Right.
SAGAL: And spare some pity for the owners. They'll be wandering around their empty arenas, watching reruns of "Law and Order" on the jumbotron.
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SAGAL: Like, oh my God, Jerry Orbach is forty feet wide. Look at that.
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FELBER: What is LeBron James going to come up just short of this winter?
SAGAL: Well, you know, what LeBron James did, he did an hour-long special on ESPN to announce that today he's going to take his talents down to Best Buy to play Call of Duty on that Xbox they've got set up there.
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FELBER: I'm heartbroken, because as a sports fan, you know, November rolls around and you're bored for having sat through baseball as an exciting sport.
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FELBER: And I love baseball, but it's like dessert, NBA, all of the sudden people are running. There's like more than one person running at a time, you know.
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SAGAL: Carl, how did Tracy do on our quiz?
KASELL: She had three correct answers, Peter. So, Tracy, I'll be doing the message on your voicemail or answering machine.
SAGAL: Well done.
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BARRIONUEVO: Great.
SAGAL: Thank you, Tracy.
BARRIONUEVO: Thank you.
SAGAL: Thanks for playing. Go join your kids.
BARRIONUEVO: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.