I took a quick break from Evil on Friday in order to fly to Chicago to commemorate/celebrate 10 years of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.”
Ten.
Wow.
Hopefully I will find a moment or two to update this thread with pictures and ruminations. But for now…
Ten.
Whoa.
Fanny Roborat
35 comments
It's Pat!
June 16, 2008 at 2:04 pm
1My favorite show on the radio. It’s a fun, fast hour. I hope it continues (with your involvement, Adam), for a long time to come.
Boomer
June 16, 2008 at 5:20 pm
2Yeah, Adam. Don’t get so busy that with all the other distractions of your current life (with the exception of family, of course) that you have to back burner WWDTM. We like the blog, but it’s good to hear your voice and to hear all your gears grinding out the funny.
Another reason I like the show is getting to know the other panelists. That’s quite the group, bubbie. There is indeed some magic going on when you guys get together.
Zee Man
June 16, 2008 at 5:33 pm
3Adam, congrats on WWDTM’s tenth year.
In other news, this would really stoke the comedy flames, yes? http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/16/mccain-giuliani-08/
SallyMutant
June 16, 2008 at 9:25 pm
4Congratulations to all–the panelists, the Not My Job guests, the guest hosts and guest Karls, the players, and all of us wonderful listeners out there in the dark. Best game ever and best prize ever. I really regret that I have been tuning in for only 8-1/2 years.
Linkmeister
June 16, 2008 at 11:18 pm
5Does anyone here listen to “Says You” too? I get that on Thursday afternoons, and after two hours of usually-depressing ATC news I need it. WWDTM on Saturday mornings (right after “Car Talk”) lets me know the weekend is well and truly here.
Chris Regan
June 17, 2008 at 10:14 am
6“Ten” is the “tin” anniversary, as far as I know. I hope you were given gifts of rolls of WWDTM tin foil. And real “tin foil,” none of that aluminum crap!
SeattleDan
June 17, 2008 at 10:30 am
7Love “Says You”, Link, and we get it at the more reasonable time of 6:00 pm on Saturdays. Seattle Tammy and I were able to catch a taping last year and it was a great deal of fun.
Steve
June 17, 2008 at 1:40 pm
8The real reason is Peter Sagal. Seriously and with all due respect to Mr Felber. Until Mr Sagal took over as host/moderator, as Carl Cassel points out, the show was unlistenable.
While I’m at it, let me put in a plug for a couple of public radio shows which aren’t quite as popular as Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: Harry Shearer’s Le Show, not heard in your area, and another non-political quiz format show, Says You. These two shows are a major reason why I’m a member of KCRW and not my local station, KPBS.
Zeke
June 17, 2008 at 4:46 pm
9Tin foil? How thoughtful. That’ll come in handy when you’re working on comedic conspiracy sketches. Another bonus - the hats you make from tin foil - don’t really muss up the hair that much. Well, at least not yours or mine, Adam.
Jake
June 17, 2008 at 4:56 pm
10I went to the doctor for my much dreaded colonoscopy at the end of last year, and as I was coming out of the sedation, I heard one of the thirtysomething nurses refer to me as just another “Boomer with a Tumor”. (Not to worry, it was benign.) Maybe I’ll get to cut her off in traffic someday soon.
Just Jay
June 17, 2008 at 5:36 pm
11Off Topic: The local paper has been running a series of articles about U.S. treatment of captives in the War on Terror. My response has been this thought experiment, see what you think. It’s June 1945, elements of the German SS and Gestapo, realizing that war crimes trials are in the works, decide they would rather go down fighting. By playing up the mistreatment of German citizens by the Russian Army they gather recruits and start and organized resistence movement against the Allied forces. If the Allies respond with indiscriminate imprisonment of Germans, and torture of those in captivity, would we have emerged from the conflict as the moral force we became? Would we still consider the men who fought the greatest generation? Can you imagine a German filmmaker who makes a movie where the heros are German resistence fighters and the bad guys torturing and killing are wearing Allied uniforms?
Feedback would be welcome.
Regards,
Jay
Dirk's Diary
June 17, 2008 at 6:35 pm
126-17-2008
Dear Diary,
Just a quick note. Today, President Bush said to the flood victims of the Midwest that his administration would be able to assist with any housing needs. Later in the morning, Dick Cheney took a moment to point out that FEMA had finished evicting all the Katrina negros from their trailers last week, just in time to help out the long suffering white farmers, who coincidently tend to vote Republican. “What a great stroke of luck!!!”, he said.
Dirk
gillian
June 17, 2008 at 6:58 pm
13Jimmy and I spent some quality time this past weekend, planting zinnias and witch hazel bushes (he insisted, go figure) in his front yard. I’ll fill you in later.
More pressing is the need to release the “Tuesday Evening Comedy Dump” (registered trademark).
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/06/17/tomo/
siobhan
June 18, 2008 at 8:54 am
14Can I just tell everyone how great it feels to be a Californian, and especially a San Franciscan right now? I am getting totally caught up in the joy of all of the new couples tying the knot over the past few days. On Monday night, I drove past City Hall as the first marriage was being celebrated - Phyllis Martin and Del Lyon, who’ve been together 55 years (!!) - and the scene was fantastic. A few assholes with signs about how “God Hates Fags” (note to Clan Phelps: Bite Me.) but mostly just hundreds of happy people celebrating the fact that our state sees them a normal human beings at last.
Listening to the stories on KQED on the way in, I alternated between grinning like a fool and tearing up with joy. I hope my 20 year heterosexual marriage can survive all of this happiness.
cooper
June 18, 2008 at 11:24 am
15Careful what you wish for, siobhan. As rabid as Fred Phelps is, he most likely would bite you. Bite you damn hard, too!!!
SallyMutant
June 18, 2008 at 11:11 pm
16Siobhan, and romantic monogamists, and all–I remember that one of Adam’s blogs on Gay marriage was so powerful that he posted it here, plus we got to hear him read it, indignant, on “This American Life.” It’s like a tie with “Concession Speech” for a greatest hit. So double congrats– hooray for “Wai…Wai. . . “’s tenth. And Adams’ Gay Marriage piece shall be revived in print and on air! (Lazy fart me will look for it and re-read after this post.)
Note to George Romero: Fred Phelps’ extended-hate-family starts to biting the living: Trouble ensues.
madbard
June 19, 2008 at 3:25 pm
17I think I left San Diego/KPBS at the right time (late 2000). I hate listening to KPBS now when I visit San Diego. Fortunately they have a KCRW repeater in Lemon Grove now. I remember as a kid in junior and senior high they used to have three shows on Sunday nights: “Pacific Ballroom”, “San Diego Space Bridge”, and “Hearts of Space”. M-F evenings they broadcast shows like “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, “Star Wars”, and Joe Frank before going to BBC World during the overnight. They carried “Le Show” for about a year then dropped it–I guess it didn’t go over well with right-wing San Diego.
I found “Says You” and “Wait Wait” about the same time while a grad student at UCSD. Around the same time, KPBS started producing “A Way With Words”, which I loved with the original hosts Charles Harrington Elster and Richard Lederer, and was a frequent caller. Then there was the ugliness with KPBS management. With the change of hosts came a change in tone and I can’t listen to AWWW anymore.
I had the same problem when Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was replaced by Dirk Sutro as host of The Lounge. As I understood the premise of the show, it was trying to attract a younger, more ethnic audience (20-somethings) to KPBS and I thought Adolfo was doing a good job at that. After Adolfo was replaced, I rather thought the show was more bland and safe. I wrote an entry in my blog about it. It just sat there for a couple of years, then I got an angry email from Dirk Sutro calling me a bigot. I didn’t know what to make of it until I did a Google search and found out “The Lounge” was cancelled.
….er, what was I babbling on about?… Um, KPCC and KCRW good. KPBS blah.
madbard
June 19, 2008 at 3:28 pm
18And when are you coming back for a west coast taping?!?! I’ve been to both LA tapings at the Beckman where Adam was a no show. It has been 4 years since you last were in LA.
I missed the Monterey and San Diego (well, really it was El Cajon) tapings.
Steve
June 19, 2008 at 5:29 pm
19madbard: I’m with you all the way until you get to “A Way with Words”, which I found to be unlistenable with the original hosts. I recall listening to the first show and having to turn it off — it was so bad as to be embarrassing. I also caught Lederer in a serious misstatement of fact when he slandered a former senator from Florida with a completely made up tale. I pointed this out to Lederer in an email and he admitted that the story he broadcast was false but would not retract it. This is a serious breech of public trust in my opinion.
In addition, I hated the propensity by both hosts to “diagram the joke” — that is, tell a joke or make a pun and then tell the audience why the joke was funny. If you have to go to that extent with humor, well, Tain’t funny, McGee.
They now have two new hosts for A Way with Words and some independent funding. I can usually make it all the way through the show nowadays.
I found The Lounge to be almost completely unlistenable with either Guzman-Lopez (who was trying much too hard to be hip) or Dirk Sutro, who at least knew how to do an interview, which Guzman-Lopez didn’t (he’s now much better at KPCC — I assume that KPBS was his first gig).
Now why they keep Gloria (”I used to be a high school teacher and make every program sound like it”) Penner and Tom (”This interview is all about me”) Fudge (yes, that’s his name), is beyond me. Neither of them can conduct an interview and Fudge especially has an uncanny ability to interrupt a guest with a completely inane question just when the answer is actually becoming interesting.
KPBS — where Public Radio goes to die.
Steve
June 20, 2008 at 7:18 am
20Whoa! I just discovered that Dirk Sutro, whom I was just dissing, is on the staff (note: not faculty) here at my very place of employment, the University of California, San Diego. He works in the Music Department as their publicity person.
Wonders will never cease.
Sorry, Dirk, you’re still not my favorite interviewer.
siobhan
June 20, 2008 at 12:33 pm
21MadBard, they’re taping two WWDTM shows at Zellerbach in Berkeley on Feb 18 and 19 2009. Tickets go on sale thru Cal Performance in August. (If you buy the whole Strictly Speaking series, you can get them now.)
cooper
June 20, 2008 at 4:30 pm
22Doesn’t it make you sick to see how enthusiastically Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and a raft of other feckless Democrats raised their hands, got in line, and bent over to be buggered by the President Bush’s Telecom Immunity law today? WTF??? This law pretty much lets the Bush Administration off the hook for their illegal domestic wiretapping shenanigans. Again, WTF?!
(BTW, I really like the German word for feckless - “nutzlos”. A rough translation - without balls, nutless. Nutzlos is a great word. I hope everyone out there will take up “nutzlos” as your word of the day.)
cooper
June 20, 2008 at 4:49 pm
23Here’s how your member of Congress voted on the FISA bill.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml
David
June 20, 2008 at 7:14 pm
24Steve,
Which senator from Florida, and thumbnail what lie?
Good question, Just Jay.
David
June 20, 2008 at 7:19 pm
25And siobhan, when I saw that couple I nearly came out of the chair. Talk about sheer delight coupled with a very heartfelt “It’s about time society got its collective head out of that notorious orifice and quit punishing people without good cause for loving each other and wanting to spend their lives together. And homophobia ain’t good cause, I don’t care what authority figure or “sacred text” says it is.
Steve
June 20, 2008 at 8:46 pm
26David wants to know “Which senator from Florida, and thumbnail what lie?”
The Senator was named George Smathers and he was alleged to have given a stump speech during the 1950 election campaign in which he is quoted as saying
The notion was the rubes in backwoods Florida were too uncultured and illiterate to understand what the words meant.
Smathers denied ever making the speech and there is significant evidence to indicate that the story was made up out of whole cloth by a bored wire service reporter.
I can’t put my fingers on the debunking of the story at the moment though if you Google some of the key words along with Smathers’s name, you should be able to find them.
As I mentioned above Lederer knew that the story was dubious at the very best (and admitted so in an email to me) but refused to retract or apologize for using the story. While A Way with Words isn’t precisely a news program I think you can still hold it to a standard of accuracy.
Boomer
June 21, 2008 at 1:18 am
27Steve, that attack on Claude Pepper reminds me of the phrase, introduced into the political process by Senator Joe McCarthy, that his opponent was a “practicing homosapien”.
David
June 21, 2008 at 11:00 am
28Thanks, Steve. Smathers was an ok Southern Democrat for the period, and was a friend of JFK’s, if I remember correctly. I don’t remember his stand on segregation, but I don’t think he was a reactionary racist. Claude Pepper was one of the greats, a Democratic liberal member of the House who could, and did, go toe-to-toe with the best of them.
Humor gives no license to lie. It’s a pathetic sort of person who would refuse to make it clear that the story, while humorous, was also bogus, and thus defamatory for Smathers. I do remember that story meandering about back in the day. Political humor is at best useless if it does not also enlighten. Truth is its raison d’etre.
C.
June 21, 2008 at 3:27 pm
29Senator Dick Durbin has introduced a resolution proclaiming this month as
SallyMutant
June 21, 2008 at 9:21 pm
30Cooper–nutzlos could be the word of the YEAR!
Harold
June 22, 2008 at 6:25 am
31Aaaaagh! I turned on CBS’s Sunday Morning just in time to catch the last 30 seconds of their report on WWDTM! Now I have to see if they archive their shows online!
Congratulations to all involved!
Harold
June 22, 2008 at 6:30 am
32Ta-da!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/22/sunday/main4200708.shtml
Well, it’s just text. I’ll look around for video…
Harold
June 22, 2008 at 5:54 pm
33Aaaaand here it is!
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4200931n
madbard
June 22, 2008 at 10:48 pm
34@siobhan: feb 2009 is a little too far out timewise for me to commit to right now.
@steve: I enjoyed the fun Lederer and Elster seemed to be having with language. I would listen with one housemate who liked it but another housemate hated them fervently (he found wordplay the crudest form of humor). Of course it is now 8 years later and I don’t really know how the show has evolved. It is ingracious not giving a fair listening to the new hosts but I missed the old hosts.
I don’t remember hearing the particular segment, but I am surprised that Lederer never acknowledged the apocryphal nature of that story, or rather while he did so in email but not on the air. This deserves a quick Snopes http://www.snopes.com lookup…. In contrast, Says You often cocks it up especially at Definitions and Derivations, but at least there is the Daily Dispatches on the
SaysYou.orgSaysYou.NET website.You are right that Guzman-Lopez was an on-air newbie having only been a segment producer up to that point. At the time, I wasn’t sure The Lounge’s intention of hitting a 20-something audience was going to work. However, being in that demographic, I appreciated KPBS for at least trying. When Guzman-Lopez was replaced, I was disappointed that they abandoned the project.
In the couple of years that I listened to The Lounge and AWWW, I must admit they definitely were going through growing pains and were missing much spit-and-polish. I remember when there were rumors of syndicating AWWW, I didn’t think it would do well because of the show’s structure and the local flavor of the hosts that I didn’t think would translate well. I guess they solved that problem with the new hosts.
Steve
June 23, 2008 at 3:40 pm
35madbard: Last post on this well beaten deceased equine.
I have nothing against word play. I do have something against painfully amateurish wordplay of the ha ha, did you hear it — I just told a joke kind. To each their own, obviously.
Regarding The Lounge — it could have been a good show if they just didn’t try so hard to be hip. There’s just something craven and somehow terribly sad about desparately trying to pander to a demographic. They tried to “young it up” and failed. Badly. It was the audio equivalent of a balding fifty year old getting a bunch of tatoos and piercings and trying to hang out with the 20 year olds.