Bluff The Listener

Transcript

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis filling in for Carl Kasell. We are playing this week with Roxanne Roberts, Brian Babylon, and Charlie Pierce. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

(APPLAUSE)

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill. 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!

JENNIFER DEAN: Hi, this is Jennifer from Windsor, Colorado.

SAGAL: Hey, Jennifer, how are you?

DEAN: Fine.

SAGAL: I've been to Colorado many times, but not to Windsor. Do you do all the Colorado things that everybody there does? You hike, you ski?

DEAN: I have tried and been unsuccessful.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: At hiking?

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: Yes, and at skiing and pretty much anything else that requires you to stay on your feet.

SAGAL: What are you doing in Colorado then?

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: I don't know.

SAGAL: Really?

CHARLIE PIERCE: She can't stand up long enough to get out.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Jennifer. Now, you're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. What's the topic, Bill?

KURTIS: Hello, ladies, I'm Tom Selleck.

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I believe it. We saw a story this week in the Wall Street Journal that used a very handsome stock photo of Tom Selleck. But why did they do that? Well, each of our panelists are going to take turns explaining. They're going to tell you what this story was about. Of course, only one of them is telling the truth. Guess that true version, and you'll win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Ready to go?

DEAN: Sounds good.

SAGAL: First, let's hear from Brian Babylon.

BRIAN BABYLON: If you want a new face, go to Hollywood. If you want a new butt, go to Brazil. But if you want a new mustache, go to Turkey. According to the Wall Street Journal, plastic surgeons in Turkey have mastered the extremely complicated and highly desirable mustache implant. Turkish doctors now perform upwards to 270,000 procedures a year.

The surgery requires a technique called follicle hair extraction. The doctors remove a patch of hair from hairier parts of your body, then implant it right under your nose.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: Five hours and $5,000 later, you emerge as Tom Selleck, Clark Gable or the Mario Brothers.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: Tourism companies have begun offering transplant packages to Istanbul. Just make sure you know the language well enough to request the correct plastic surgery. There's nothing worse than going in for a mustache implant and coming out with a boob on your upper lip.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Tom Selleck illustrating the fine mustache you can get if you go to Turkey for a mustache implant. Your next story of Tom Selleck's face comes from Charlie Pierce.

PIERCE: Small vineyards from Sonoma to France to Australia and back again are seizing upon a new marketing concept developed by the Kailani Bottling Company on Kauai in Hawaii. The company specializes in unique bottle design and is a favorite among smaller vineyards around the world. Recently, Kailani designed a large champagne bottle with a motif drawn from the work of Tom Selleck whose iconic 1970's television show was filmed in the islands.

The bottles were distinctive in that each label was designed in the pattern of one of Selleck's trademark Hawaiian aloha shirts. Now champagnes made around the world are leaping off the shelves because of the orchid and hula girl-laden brightness of their distinctive labels, 12 of them in all. The idea really came out of our love for the old show, said Mike Caldwell, Kailani's vice president for worldwide marketing.

Caldwell's not sitting on his success, though. He's already got his next project underway, a bottle with a label that appears to be made out of gray flannel and is called Hawaii Merle-O.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's not a magnum of champagne. It's a Magnum P.I. of champagne. And your last story involving People magazine's 1980 Sexiest Man Alive comes from Roxanne Roberts.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: In 1988, Rick Thompson was a recently divorced dad with no job, custody of an eight-month-old son, and yet a four-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on the upper West Side. Rent on the apartment which Thompson inherited from his grandmother was laughably small, so the new father invited two college buddies, an actor and an accountant to move in with him in exchange for expenses and child-rearing duties.

The three men and a baby arrangement were such a success that Thompson launched a booming career in New York real estate, setting up divorced dads with roommates eager to take on part-time fatherhood. Quote, "We call it the Tom Selleck lease," Thompson told the Wall Street Journal. Quote, "Three or more men who love kids and great apartments."

As demand has risen, Thompson has matched hundreds of guys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, one non-negotiable fee, quote, "weekly cleaning services," laughed Thompson. We wouldn't have survived a month without it.

SAGAL: All right then. Here are your choices. So the Wall Street Journal runs a story, and there's a big picture of Tom Selleck. Did they run that picture of Tom Selleck because, from Brian Babylon, they were talking about a service in Turkey where you can go and get a mustache implant to make your mustache just as bushy as Mr. Selleck's.

From Charlie Pierce, a new genius idea in the selling of wine, not just magnum's big bottle, but Magnum P.I. champagne bottles. Or from Roxanne Roberts, a new trend in real estate, three or more men raising a child together in the three men and a baby apartment. Which of these is the real story involving an image of Mr. Selleck?

DEAN: Hmm. Well, I think Tom Selleck would probably be horrified at all three, but I...

SAGAL: I think so.

DEAN: ...think he'd be least horrified by Charlie's story.

SAGAL: Charlie's story.

DEAN: The champagne.

SAGAL: The Magnum P.I.'s of champagne.

DEAN: Yes.

SAGAL: OK. So your choice is Charlie's story. To bring you the real story, let's just go to the Wall Street Journal. Here they are.

JOE PARKINSON: I don't have a mustache right now. I haven't had a mustache implant. I'm nowhere near up there with the Tom Sellecks in Turkey.

SAGAL: That was Joe Parkinson, the Wall Street Journal bureau chief in Istanbul and the man who wrote the story and responsible for the Tom Selleck picture illustrating his story about mustache implants in Turkey.

DEAN: Wow.

SAGAL: So I'm afraid you didn't win our game. You did earn a point for Charlie for his brilliant idea of selling large bottles of wine, Magnum P.I.'s. Thank you so much for playing. Great to talk to you.

(APPLAUSE)

DEAN: And same to you, thank you.

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