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Who's Carl This Time

CARL KASELL: 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 Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thank you everybody. Thank you all so much. We got a great show for you today. Our guest today will be Carrie Brownstein, who in her young life has founded two rock bands and created and stars in the great sketch comedy show "Portlandia." We invite listeners who already feel bad about their own lack of accomplishment to tune to another station while we talk to her.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This is not going to help. But before then, 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!

LISA WONG: Hi Peter, this is Lisa Wong from Emeryville, California.

SAGAL: Oh, beautiful Emeryville. Do you live near Pixar?

WONG: I do, just a few blocks away actually. They're really nice neighbors.

SAGAL: They are?

WONG: Yeah.

SAGAL: Do you ever go over to borrow a cup of magic and joy?

WONG: Yes, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

WONG: They have the best magic and joy.

SAGAL: They really do. Well, welcome to the show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week, Lisa. First, say hello to a comedian performing at Stand Up Live in Phoenix, April 20th through the 22nd, Mr. Maz Jobrani is here.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

WONG: Hi, Maz.

MAZ JOBRANI: Hey, how are you? I went to Cal, so I was right there.

WONG: Oh, woo-hoo.

JOBRANI: Woo, go Bears.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Next, a comedian and a host here in Chicago on vocolo.org, Mr. Brian Babylon is here.

BRIAN BABYLON: Hey, how are you?

WONG: Hey Brian.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And the comedienne performing in Napa, California at the Napa Opera House on April 12th, Ms. Paula Poundstone is here.

WONG: Hey Paula.

PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hi, Lisa.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So Lisa, you're going to start us off with Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them you'll win the big prize, Carl's voice on your voicemail. You ready to go?

WONG: I am ready.

SAGAL: All right, here's your first quote.

KASELL: This was a train wreck for the Obama administration.

SAGAL: That was legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, calmly and coolly marveling at the wreckage as the Supreme Court considered what?

WONG: The individual mandate for the health care.

SAGAL: Wow, you're too smart even for us.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: We were just going to go with Obamacare. But that's fine, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The individual mandate, you're right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The whole thing.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: It was Woodstock for jurisprudence nerds.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Three days of argument and precedent. Except for supporters of the health care law, it was more like Altamont.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: At one point, Justice Scalia responded to arguments from the solicitor general in favor of the law by coming down from the bench and stabbing him.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This was the case of a lifetime for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and he chocked. I mean he literally chocked. Listen to him as he begins presenting his case.

DONALD VERRILLI: Insurance has become the predominant means of paying for health care in this country.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLEARING THROAT)

VERRILLI: Insurance has become the predominant means of paying for health care in this country because - because the - and because this is a market in which, in which...

(SOUNDBITE OF CLEARING THROAT)

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That will be the last time that Donald Verrilli takes the cinnamon challenge right before oral argument.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: That's terrible.

BABYLON: That was horrible.

POUNDSTONE: How come they had a guy like that do it?

JOBRANI: Yeah, that was bad. .

SAGAL: Well, this guy's the Solicitor General of the United States. He's supposed to be the best there is at this.

POUNDSTONE: Well, how did he get in there?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: Maybe it's like an internship program.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Did you guys listen to the arguments? Because I did, and it was really interesting because you don't normally get to hear it. And at one point, this guy Verrilli, the solicitor general was doing such a bad job of defending the law that the liberal justices, Kagan and Sotomayor and those guys were interrupting to kind of help him out.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: They were like stage mothers with a junior high school son in the school play. It was like "come on, come on, that's right."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Invoke US v. Lopez. Oh, good, good, yes, good job.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So proud.

BABYLON: You know what, I think the Obama administration needs to do a total PR reboot. They need like all the mad men to come together and do an ad campaign and have like Tim Tebow be the new spokesman for Obamacare.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Change the image.

BABYLON: Yeah, change the image. Where he's like, Obamacare, it's cool, Tim Tebow.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's all you need to do.

BABYLON: That's all you need to do is try it. I mean what do you have to lose? It's over, man.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: It's so hard to pass a law. I mean he wanted it, then Congress, now - I'm from Iran originally and we just say go - I mean like the king goes...

SAGAL: Done.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: Or the dictator, whatever.

SAGAL: Yeah.

JOBRANI: It's hadnijadcare and that's it.

SAGAL: It seems more official.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: Boom.

SAGAL: It's done.

JOBRANI: Done. No debates.

SAGAL: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: You guys might have something there.

BABYLON: Yeah.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: I'm telling you. Dictatorships aren't that bad.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: I have a really bad cough. Maybe I could argue before the Supreme Court.

SAGAL: Yeah, you're good. That's all you need.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: All right, Lisa, here is your next quote.

KASELL: This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.

SAGAL: That was someone speaking to the president of Russia when he thought nobody else could hear him. Who was promising more flexibility once he got reelected?

WONG: That was President Obama.

SAGAL: It was.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It was President Obama.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And for Mr. Obama's enemies, their worst fears were confirmed this week when he was caught on a live mike making secret promises to the current Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Fortunately for Obama, at the last second, he decided not to speak to Mr. Medvedev in Russian.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: You never know what those guys talk while the mikes are off.

SAGAL: I know.

POUNDSTONE: What do you mean when the mikes are off? We're filmed and microphoned all the time. How can anybody be that stupid, honestly?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: There has been just over and over again guys caught saying dumb stuff when the - and it's always the mike is still on.

JOBRANI: Well the problem is you can't even like, I mean you can't even text anymore because then people will find - you know, then Medvedev would have been like, oh, he's been sexting me or whatever it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: It's hard to get secrets out now. That's what I'm trying to say.

BABYLON: What would an Obama sext text even read?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: Well, it's what he said, I'll be more flexible afterwards.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

BABYLON: That's right, it would be.

SAGAL: You know what this means though it means now that we know what his real feeling are, it means after he gets reelected he's going to go full on Russian. He's going to, like, completely go over to their side. He's going to give Alaska back.

BABYLON: Well, you know what...

SAGAL: It's going to be like, hey Sarah, you can see it now, huh?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: If he goes full Russian that means he's not Muslim, I guess.

SAGAL: That's true.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: You know, so maybe that will balance it out.

JOBRANI: Wouldn't that be great if the reveal were that? Like if you suddenly, like exactly...

BABYLON: I've been Russian the whole time.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The good news was, wasn't born in Kenya. The bad news...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Lisa, here is your last quote.

KASELL: Mating and preying on each other are about the only two things on their mind down there. Pretty much like us.

SAGAL: That was movie director James Cameron, talking about the animals he found where?

WONG: That would be at the bottom of the Marianna Trench.

SAGAL: You are good.

POUNDSTONE: Whoa.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: The very bottom of the Marianna Trench. Movie director James Cameron descended to the deepest part of the ocean. It's called the Challenger Deep, there in the Marianna Trench. He went in a submarine he designed and piloted himself. By strange coincidence, that forbiddingly deep ocean trench is the only place on earth where they don't yet know about the re-release of "Titanic" in 3D.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Cameron went down there to tell the primordial lightless crustaceans that it's the must-see 15-year-old movie event of the year.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Cameron, as you heard, said well there's really not much down there that he could see. It looks like an empty sea floor. So he spent all this money just to see something he's seen many times before. Sort of like how I felt seeing "Avatar."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: Wait until the re-release 15 years from now.

SAGAL: That'll be exciting.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: Yeah, in flat.

JOBRANI: In flat.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

POUNDSTONE: I'd go see it in flat, you know.

BABYLON: Does this guy build and make - he's just tricking out submarines?

SAGAL: Yeah.

BABYLON: Blowing his money on submarines.

SAGAL: He's got enough money to do it.

BABYLON: That's how super villains start, Peter. I'm trying to tell you.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: It starts with a rich guy building a submarine then he wants a city down there.

SAGAL: Exactly.

BABYLON: Then he wants to take over the surface world.

SAGAL: The surface world.

BABYLON: Yep.

SAGAL: Yes, yes, yes.

BABYLON: That's how it starts.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: By the way, this really if you're going to have a movie director do this sort of thing, deep sea exploration, this is the one you want. You don't want like Woody Allen.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He'd be down there like "oh I don't know, the pressure. I don't know, it's too much pressure."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Carl, how did Lisa do on our quiz?

KASELL: Lisa, congratulations, you had three correct answers, so I'll be doing the message on your answering machine or voicemail.

SAGAL: Well done.

WONG: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

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