BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis and we are playing this week with Roxanne Roberts, Paul Poundstone and Maz Jobrani. Here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener Game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
SELENA RODRIGUEZ: Hi, this is Selena Rodriguez from Tracy, California.
SAGAL: Hey, Selena. How are you?
RODRIGUEZ: I'm good. How are you?
SAGAL: I'm well. Thank you. I'm well. Tracy, California's in the Central Valley, right?
RODRIGUEZ: Yes.
SAGAL: And what do you do there?
RODRIGUEZ: I'm a stay-at-home mom.
SAGAL: Oh, that's cool. How do you - so how old are your kids?
RODRIGUEZ: Well, I have a 14-month-old and one on the way.
SAGAL: Oh, wow. So you decided that having a toddler was simply not hard enough?
RODRIGUEZ: Exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Good for you. Welcome to the show Selena. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. What is the topic Bill?
KURTIS: All signs point to no.
SAGAL: Despite what every self-help book and motivational poster has told you, sometimes it is not a good idea to just hang in there, especially if the road ahead is littered with bad omens. This week are panelists are going to tell you three stories about somebody ignoring the warning signs. Guess that true one and you will win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. You ready to play?
RODRIGUEZ: I am.
SAGAL: All right. First let's hear from Maz Jobrani.
MAZ JOBRANI: Yuri Abakumov (ph) should have known that things would not go his way when he woke up on the morning of December 10 to head to the World Weightlifting Champions in Chiang Mai, Thailand. His team had traveled all the way from Moscow with very little incident. However, that morning when Yuri attempted to travel from his bed to the bathroom, things started to unravel.
First the 6'3" 275 pounder dropped a bottle of industrial-size mouthwash on his big toe causing a minor fracture. Then when he went to the kitchen to cook his normal breakfast of 13 eggs, four cans of beans and six pieces of sausage, one of the cans slipped out of his hand and hit his knee. Yuri still made his way to the competition. (Imitating Russian accent) I felt like I could overcome the minor injuries to help my team win. I am a man. I am strong like an ox.
Those were famous last words as Yuri stepped up to the mat to lift 500 pounds over his head. Upon lifting the weights, Yuri's foot slipped because of the injured toe and his fingers failed him, making him lose his grip and fall backwards. The worst part was that three of his teammates were nearby cheering him on and the weights came crumbling down faster than the Russian ruble crashing on all the weightlifters and causing them all minor injuries. (Imitating Russian accent) I should've seen the first injury as a sign. Next time I hurt my toe, I stay in bed.
SAGAL: A weightlifter starts the day by dropping everything and finishes it by dropping everything. Your next story of a bad sign comes from Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: When Phoebe Waylin's in-laws came to town for a surprise preholiday visit in St. Paul, Minnesota, she thought she'd pepper their stay with events and activities. So although she didn't think it possible to get tickets to the annual "Christmas Carol" production on the day of, she gave it a try.
I got four tickets in the front row, she said. Now I realize that might've been a bad sign. At first they couldn't figure out why the theater wasn't full. It's "A Christmas Carol" at holiday time, she puzzled. Then the play began and the empty seats made all the sense in the world. I think it was supposed to be a more modern interpretation of the Dickens' classic. Bob Cratchit said the F-word a lot and was quite aggressive, she explained. The ghost of Christmas present made a speech about how some greed is good and that charity undercuts self-determination. Scrooge himself stared right at my breasts the whole time he was reminiscing about losing his girlfriend Belle. Next year we'll get tickets to "The Glass Menagerie" at the holiday.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A woman slowly figures out she saw the wrong "Christmas Carol." Your last story is something that maybe wasn't meant to be comes from Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: The idiotic trend of public marriage proposals reached a new high or low in the Netherlands last week when a Dutch man thought it would be a great idea for a construction crane to hang him outside his girlfriend's bedroom window where he planned to dramatically pop the question. It was a stupid idea to begin with and then it got stupider when the crane tipped over and crashed through the neighbor's roof. The man was uninjured, but the second crane rented to extract the first dropped it back on the building, destroying the rest of the roof and leaving six apartments unfit to live in, reports CNN. Unbelievably the woman said yes to this literal homewrecker and the couple left for Paris to celebrate their engagement. But it's a bad sign when your future husband tries and fails twice to keep his crane up.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: Hey.
SAGAL: All right. So you've heard three stories of people being oblivious. The first from Maz Jobroni about a weightlifter who kept dropping things but still tried to pick up the heavy weight to disastrous results. From Paula Poundstone, a story about a woman who attended the "Christmas Carol" but discovered it really wasn't to her liking. Or from Roxanne Roberts, a woman who accepted the proposal of a man who managed to destroy two cranes and a building in an attempt to propose to her. Which is the real story?
RODRIGUEZ: Oh dear God. I'm going to go with Roxanne.
SAGAL: You are going to go with Roxanne, often a wise move. Well, to bring you the correct answer we spoke with someone familiar with the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH PEASE: I've used aircraft carriers, marching bands. I've definitely never used a crane - an actual giant crane.
SAGAL: That was Sarah Pease.
(APPLAUSE)
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, yes.
SAGAL: She designs and executes wedding proposals at a company called Brilliant Event Planning, but even she thought that the man's idea of using a construction crane was a bad one. Congratulations Selena, you got it right. Roxanne told the truth for once.
RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.
SAGAL: You've won our prize, Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Congratulations.
RODRIGUEZ: Thank you so much.
SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR LOVE KEEPS LIFTING ME")
JACKIE WILSON: (Signing) You know your love keeps on lifting me higher, higher and higher. I said your love keeps on lifting me higher and higher. Listen. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.