PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Coming up, it's Lightning Fill In The Blank. But first, it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. You can click the contact us link on our website, waitwait.npr.org.
Hi. You are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
ANGELE: Hi.
SAGAL: Hi. Who's this?
ANGELE: My name is Angele (ph), and I'm calling from Boston, Mass.
SAGAL: Hey, Boston - my old home. What do you do there?
ANGELE: I work for an education nonprofit. I'm a team manager there.
SAGAL: Well, that's cool. Education is a big thing in Boston.
ANGELE: Yes, for sure.
SAGAL: If you watch - basically, if you watch movies, the big industries in Boston are colleges and bank robbing.
ANGELE: Right, and just Ben Affleck on his own.
SAGAL: Yes. Sometimes. Ben Affleck is at college. Sometimes, he's robbing a bank.
ANGELE: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three news-related limericks with the last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly in two of the limericks, you'll be a winner. Ready to play?
ANGELE: Yes, I'm ready.
SAGAL: All right. Here's your first limerick.
BILL KURTIS: You go run. I'll stay fully reclined 'cause my weight loss routine is refined. You use muscles to train - well, I'm using my brain. I prefer to work out in my...
ANGELE: Mind.
SAGAL: Yes, mind.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Forget dumbbells...
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE SOUND EFFECT)
SAGAL: Use your smartbell (ph), your brain, to lose weight. According to a neuroscientist, just thinking about exercise will help you be healthier. But let's be honest...
LUKE BURBANK: God, I must be so healthy.
SAGAL: It really is. Yeah. But you have to be honest - all those people who made a new year resolution to think about exercise every day are still going to give up by mid-January and go back to thinking about sex. The experiment recorded the change in muscle mass in people who just visualized working out without actually doing it. And then the control group who did not think about working out lost muscle mass, while the people who did visualize exercising would not stop talking about their imaginary workouts. My God.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The researchers believe it's all about the famous placebo effect. If you think you're healthier, you actually will be healthier. So the hot, new fitness trend is lying to yourself.
(LAUGHTER)
NEGIN FARSAD: Do they also talk about their imaginary keto diet that they're on?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right. Here is your next limerick.
KURTIS: NBC's not this sport's big custodian. Let the kids' channel help fix your odium. They'll adjust chalky lines to get covered in slime because football is on...
ANGELE: Nickelodeon.
SAGAL: Nickelodeon. very...
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: ...Well done. Last Sunday's Bears-Saints game made NFL history - not, of course, due to how badly the Bears played - that's not historic - but because it was aired on Nickelodeon, the kids' TV channel. It was an unlikely decision for a kid's network. They bucked Nickelodeon's reputation of never allowing programs with offensive lines.
The telecast had all of the standard flair that Nickelodeon fans have come to expect. There were CGI slime cannons in the end zone after every touchdown. SpongeBob's face appeared between the goal posts on field goal attempts. And at halftime, Dora the Explorer ran out onto the field and tore her ACL.
BURBANK: (Laughter).
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Did they have virtual slime in the end zone, too?
SAGAL: Yeah. yeah.
BURBANK: Yeah.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BURBANK: Cannons - cannons of slime were shooting off...
SAGAL: Did you watch this?
BURBANK: ...From the four corners of the - I watched clips of it. And I thought, you know, this is good. Let's get the children of America into an objectively violent sport as early as possible.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: There was, like, a moment when they did get some criticism for how they were trying to sell football to kids. Like, the Saints' Taysom Hill - he was slow to get up, they say, after hitting his head. And one commentator said, quote, "He's getting up a little slowly. It's like scraping your knee at recess."
BURBANK: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Right, kids? Just like at recess - we call that here a fun-cussion (ph).
BURBANK: He's seeing cartoon birds.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Isn't that charming? Here is your last limerick.
KURTIS: Alone on an island, some might grouse. They have friends, perhaps even the right spouse. But locked down in a tower, I'll savor each hour. I'll watch movies alone in a...
ANGELE: Lighthouse?
SAGAL: Yes.
KURTIS: You did that.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: You did. You just couldn't believe it.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE SOUND EFFECT)
SAGAL: But the answer is lighthouse. Instead of a weeklong event in crowded movie theaters, this year's Gothenburg Film Festival in Sweden is inviting just one single person to watch all the movies alone in an old lighthouse. So instead of hundreds of moviegoers getting together and possibly dying of COVID, one person will definitely die from ghost murder. The film festival announced its lighthouse cinema contest earlier this week. One lucky person will get locked inside this Swedish lighthouse to watch a selection of over 60 new films because nothing says festival like getting locked inside alone. So it turns out every day of each of our lives for the past 10 months has been a festival.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: Is this person operating the lighthouse, too? Because that's a lot to ask of one...
FARSAD: One person, yeah.
SAGAL: The movie was just getting good, and I had to go and, like, turn on the light to ward off the ship. I hate when that happens. Bill, how did Angele do?
KURTIS: How about Angele? She got them all right.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE SOUND EFFECT)
KURTIS: Way to go.
ANGELE: Yay.
SAGAL: Congratulations.
BURBANK: Yay. Good for you.
FARSAD: Yeah.
SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing.
ANGELE: Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF AL GREEN SONG, "TIRED OF BEING ALONE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
