CARL KASELL, HOST:
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 Luke Burbank, Roxanne Roberts and Mo Rocca. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
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SAGAL: Thank you. In just a minute, Carl announces amazing deals on limericks. It's Black Rhyme Day.
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SAGAL: Yeah, I know. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, Panel, some more questions for you from the week's news.
Roxanne, tired of all the publicity that goes along with being a giant oil company, Canada's Paramount Resources decided to change their name to what?
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Paramount Resources to Acme Resources.
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SAGAL: No.
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MO ROCCA: This is an oil company.
SAGAL: It's an oil company.
ROBERTS: To the - oil in the name of the company anymore?
SAGAL: Not at all.
ROBERTS: No. They are the - they who should not be named company.
SAGAL: No.
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SAGAL: Well, I'll give you a hint. It's a name people like already and it does have something to do with "Cars" and "Cars 2."
ROBERTS: Pixar?
SAGAL: Yes, Pixar. They changed their name to Pixar.
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SAGAL: "Toy Story," "Up," "Fracking," these are now all beloved Pixar productions.
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SAGAL: Paramount Resources has now called itself Pixar. That might improve its image. It might improve its image. It will definitely make its headquarters the future site of Canadian schoolchildren's most disappointing field trips.
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PERSONALITY: But this is - I thought it would have to be something like Pixar Juice or something - keep it different from Pixar, right?
SAGAL: Well I'm not quite sure how they can get away with this. They might be able to get away with this due to vagaries in international law.
PERSONALITY: Or they could spell it differently.
SAGAL: They could.
PERSONALITY: They're going to spell it Pick and then Tsar as in like T-S-A-R.
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SAGAL: Pictsar.
LUKE BURBANK: This Canadian company thinks they're in the clear but wait until a small cowboy, a spaceman and a Mr. Potato Head show up to enforce the trademark.
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SAGAL: I know.
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ROBERTS: I think they would have been better off if they would have named it after a cute car.
SAGAL: Why not go all the way? I mean why not call it Victoria's Secret? You know?
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SAGAL: There are other companies that might have...
PERSONALITY: It's oil, right?
SAGAL: Yeah, it's an oil company.
PERSONALITY: Why don't they name it after somebody that people like? Like, call it like, Tom Hanks' Juice.
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SAGAL: There's a huge spill of Tom Hanks' Juice in the Gulf of Mexico.
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BURBANK: Again?
SAGAL: You're right. It doesn't sound so bad. It sounds very pleasant and friendly.
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SAGAL: Roxanne, Pakistan's telecommunications authority has decided to crackdown on indecent texting. They've now put out a list of words you can no longer text to anyone in that country, including intercourse, breasts, flatulence and what other apparently commonly used phrase?
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ROBERTS: Is it a bodily function?
SAGAL: Technically, no.
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PERSONALITY: I know what it is.
ROBERTS: You know what it is. It's not a bodily function. I need a hint.
SAGAL: Well this is where you'd throw a ball at Curious George for maximum comic effect.
ROBERTS: Groin.
SAGAL: Well, yes. Well, close enough.
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SAGAL: I'm going to give it to you. Monkey crotch.
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SAGAL: You can no longer...
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SAGAL: Text the phrase...
ROBERTS: Wait.
SAGAL: ...monkey crotch to your friends in Pakistan. It's against the law.
ROBERTS: Do monkeys have some sort of special kind of crotch?
SAGAL: We don't know.
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ROBERTS: That I'm unaware of?
SAGAL: Monkey crotch is one of about 1,700 words and phrases that have been banned in the latest move by the government in Karachi, which by the way has also banned, because it sounds like crotchy.
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PERSONALITY: Right.
SAGAL: We also, in answer to this question, Roxanne, we would have accepted the banned phrases athlete's foot, glazed donut and Neon Deon.
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PERSONALITY: What if you're a Pakistani with a relative living in Intercourse, Pennsylvania?
SAGAL: That's a problem.
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ROBERTS: What if you're an actual monkey?
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PERSONALITY: How is Pakistan dealing with the word Lahore?
SAGAL: You see?
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PERSONALITY: One of their biggest cities.
SAGAL: Luke, it's award season and Publisher's Weekly has named what is says is the very worst book ever published ever. What is it?
BURBANK: Is it fiction?
SAGAL: It's nonfiction. It is a cookbook.
BURBANK: It's a cookbook. It was the worst book ever written and it is a cookbook.
SAGAL: Yes.
BURBANK: My mom used to have this cookbook when I was a kid called the "I Hate to Cook Book."
SAGAL: Yeah.
BURBANK: Which I don't know when that was written, but that seemed like a terrible - it explained a lot about the cuisine in the Burbank household growing up.
SAGAL: Sure.
BURBANK: The cookbook, it was a cookbook that was maintained and written - the 1980s, by the TV character Alf.
SAGAL: No. The Alf Cookbook, not really.
BURBANK: Mo, do you know what it is?
PERSONALITY: No, I thought it was "Art of the Deal" by Donald Trump.
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BURBANK: That's actually a really good guess.
SAGAL: That's a good guess. Roxanne, do you have any idea what it might be?
ROBERTS: 1987.
PERSONALITY: Oh, the "Aha Cookbook."
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ROBERTS: No, that just came out.
SAGAL: I'll tell you. It's called "Microwave for One."
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BURBANK: Wait a second, you said worst? Because that's the saddest.
SAGAL: Yeah, well it may be. Every recipe makes enough - it's called "Microwave for One" but every recipe makes enough for your cats to have the leftovers.
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SAGAL: It was published in 1987 and the cover of this book features a middle aged woman, presumably the author, Sonia Allison, leaning on an enormous 80s-era microwave with delicious, warm, indescribably sad individual meals laid out on the table in front of her.
BURBANK: How did the publisher read the manuscript with all the tear stains that were one it from when the lady was typing it?
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SAGAL: Now, to be fair, Publisher's Weekly didn't actually read the book. They don't have a copy. But they were just going by the Amazon reviews. Here is one quote from Amazon. "It used to be that I got home from work and the only thing I'd want to put in my mouth was the cold barrel of my grandfather's shotgun."
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SAGAL: "Then I discovered Sonia Allison's chicken tetrazzini and now there are two things.
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SAGAL: Also, according to Amazon, customers who bought "Microwave for One" also bought "Nooses for Dummies."
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SAGAL: "A Beginner's Guide to Hoarding."
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SAGAL: "What to Expect when you've got Nothing to Expect."
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SAGAL: And "Eat, Pray, Love."
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