CARL KASELL: 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 Roxanne Roberts, Mo Rocca, and Peter Grosz. 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: Now, it is time - I know you've been waiting for it, the WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME! Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our games on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
DARREN SCOTT: Hi, this is Darren Scott from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Baton Rouge?
SCOTT: Cold.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
SCOTT: I'm a student at LSU.
SAGAL: Oh, right, of course. And what are you studying?
SCOTT: Construction management.
SAGAL: Construction management.
SCOTT: Yeah.
SAGAL: That's so wise.
MO ROCCA: Perhaps you've heard of Lumber Liquidators.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Darren, it's nice to have you with us. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is the topic?
KASELL: Meet Wayne Dobson.
SAGAL: Wayne Dobson is a 59-year-old retiree from Las Vegas, Nevada. This week, he found himself all over the news. Our panelists are each going to tell you why, but only one of them is telling you the truth. Guess that true reason, and you'll win Carl's voice on your home voicemail. Ready to go?
SCOTT: Sure.
SAGAL: Let's hear your first story about Wayne Dobson from Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Wayne Dobson knew two things: he was hungry and he had some time on his hands. So he went to the 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet at Cesar's Palace at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, sat down and did not leave until 11 p.m. Saturday night, four whole days of eating.
Dobson's modis eatperandi was this: he ate a meal, then read, watched movies on his iPad and took bathroom breaks until he got hungry, at which point he'd get up and eat again. "I guess no on noticed I was here," a surprised Dobson said. He didn't quite realize that bleary-eyed casino workers on 14-hour shifts aren't a particularly observant bunch.
Anyway, Wayne's exploits went viral and as word spread through social media, people began flying in from all over the world to try Dobsoning at a local Vegas buffet.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: Teenagers from Germany, retirees from Argentina, an Overeater's Anonymous club from Norway.
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GROSZ: Wayne Dobson has been officially banned from every buffet in town and his sister Marsha isn't surprised. "Whenever Wayne comes to visit for the weekend, he ends up leaving on Tuesday," Marsha said. "I think overstaying his welcome is something he's really good at."
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SAGAL: Wayne Dobson, hero to the buffet customers in Vegas. Your next story of a day in the life of Mr. Wayne Dobson comes from Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: So there's a glitch in the tracking software for lost or stolen cell phones that direct owners to one address, the home of Wayne Dobson in Las Vegas. Furious people have been showing up at his door, day and night, using their Find a Phone apps, to demand he return their stolen property. The problem is the software is malfunctioning.
Things got so bad that Dobson confronted two trespassers on his lawn at 4 a.m., screaming, "Who are you?" It was the police, mistakenly sent to his house after a woman used her cell to call 911 during a fight with her boyfriend. Quote, "it's very difficult to say I don't have your phone in any other way than I don't have your phone."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Hundreds of cell phones telling their users that they're at Wayne Dobson's house when they weren't. And finally, your last chapter in the story of Wayne Dobson comes from Mo Rocca.
ROCCA: For years, Wayne Dobson had been obsessed with actress Melina Kanakaredes, the ravishing ringlet-haired star of "CSI New York," with the unmistakably Greek name. Alas, his cards and letters went unanswered. Dobson even drove from his Vegas home to Kanakaredes' L.A. home with a tray of homemade baklava, but got the polite brush-off from her assistant.
And so he boarded a plane for London. Why? The British Museum has long held one of Greece's greatest ancient treasures, the Elgin Marbles, a priceless sack of multicolored glass marbles that according to mythology Zeus played with as a boy at recess.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: To impress Kanakaredes, Dobson would return them to Greece. While a guard was not looking, Dobson grabbed the Elgin Marbles and put them down the front of his pants.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: And began to move toward the museum's exit. Once it was discovered the marbles were missing, chaos ensued, all according to plan, except that Dobson forgot to wear briefs.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: He was wearing boxers, and so he had to use his hand, cupped over his front, to prevent the marbles from dropping down his pant leg.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: He was detained for lewd behavior.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: And the marbles were recovered and steam cleaned.
(LAUGHTER)
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SAGAL: Let me review your choices. So there is a guy named Wayne Dobson. He really does exist. He lives in Las Vegas. This week, he got in the news because of one of three things.
Was it, from Peter Grosz, he became famous for living perhaps an entire weekend in a buffet in Vegas, and inspiring a movement to do the same? From Roxanne Roberts, for some reason all the cell phones in the area, all the lost cell phones started telling their owners that that's where they were, at his house, when they really weren't?
Or from Mo Rocca, because of his crush on a Greek actress, he flew to Britain and tried to steal the Elgin Marbles, by stuffing them down his pants?
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Well, as much as I'd like to say it's somebody grabbing their marbles in their crotch, I'm going to have to go with the cell phone story.
SAGAL: Really?
SCOTT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Your choice then is Roxanne's story about the cell phone malfunction that made him the worst cell phone thief in Las Vegas. Well, we spoke to someone familiar with the true story about Mr. Wayne Dobson.
LAWRENCE DOWER: He's had to post a sign outside of his door saying that he doesn't have any lost cell phones.
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SAGAL: That was Lawrence Mower. He's a reporter for the Las Vegas Review Journal who broke the story of Wayne Dobson and his strange cell phone curse. We don't know why the cell phones think they're at his house. Congratulations, Darren, you got it right. Well done.
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SAGAL: You earned a point for Roxanne. You've won our prize. Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your home voicemail. Well done, sir.
SCOTT: Thanks.
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