When it comes to Christmas gifts for my wife, I am much better at quantity than quality. That’s not to say that I’ve ever given her socks or mechanical pencils for Christmas, but most of the time I find myself falling back on predictable, entirely safe choices like sweaters – but as if to compensate for my lack of imagination, I will give her five sweaters rather than one. But this year, for the first time in quite a while, I actually came up with a rather ingenious idea – and perhaps even more remarkably, actually got around to getting the special gift purchased. (Most of the time I would think about it with great glee and anticipation, but then forget about actually purchasing it until . . . say, for instance . . . Ash Wednesday. But I got the job done this time around!)
And the gift was a pair of tickets for us to attend the taping of Kathy’s second favorite public radio program (a distant second to her husband’s “Morning Show.) – a show that she really tries to hear every Saturday at 12 noon on WHAD, FM 90.7. It’s called “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. . . “ and it’s a quiz program that follows the biggest news events of the previous week. For those of you who have never heard the program, it’s brilliantly written, hilariously funny, and – this is downright miraculous – it manages to be remarkably even-handed in its skewering. (In other words, the democrats get smacked in the you-know-what’s as much as the republicans do.) The show has a rotating bevy of guest panelists, including the likes of Paula Poundstone, Roy Blount Jr., and Tom Bodett (of “we’ll leave the lights on for ya” fame). . . and the announcer and scorekeeper is Carl Kasell, one of the most familiar voices on NPR since its inception more than 35 years ago. But the m.v.p for this program is its brilliant host, Peter Sagal, who keeps things moving, holds everything together, primes the pump even while maintaining civility, and – maybe most importantly – is one of those rare hilarious people who knows how to make the guest panelists and the ordinary people who call in as hilarious as he is. (Very few people deserve that compliment since the retirement of the great Johnny Carson.) He is also the key ingredient of the show’s bi-partisan flavor, which in this Red/Blue, deeply divided nation is something to cherish.
The show is taped Thursday evenings in downtown Chicago, which made it a very doable gig. We departed about 3:30 Thursday afternoon and – despite some rainy conditions which slowed down traffic as we approached the loop – we managed to get downtown in time for a quick but delicious supper at the Bergoff Restaurant and then arrived at the Chase Auditorium (a block and a half away) in plenty of time for 6:30 check-in and 7:00 seating.
This particular taping was completely sold out (most of them are) and as luck would have it, we were there on the heels of a particularly juicy news week. There was the astonishing republican victory in the Massachusetts senate race. . . the announcement by former presidential candidate John Edwards that he had fathered the child of a former “playmate” . . . the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations are people and money is speech, and thus corporate contributions are subject to very little regulation . . . Obama’s sagging approval rating . . . just to name a few highlights. On top of that, the special guest of the evening (via the telephone) was Mark Helperin, author of the much discussed book “Game Change,” which dishes all kinds of dirt on the principal combatants in the most recent presidential campaign. If all that weren’t enough excite- ment for one night, I could say with pride that I have interviewed two of that night’s three panelists on the morning show . . . advice columnist Amy Dickinson and author P.J. O’Rourke. (Humorist Adam Felber was the third.) So all of the ingredients were there for it to be a great night.
The big unknown for us was whether or not this would be a long, laborious night, thanks to numerous pauses, re-takes, etc. – or if it would unfold basically as it does when one hears it over the air. Fortunately, it turned out to be a fast-paced evening that we never wanted to end. It was basically like hearing an expanded version of the show (because a bit of what transpires ends up on the cutting room floor) – and the re-takes occurred only after the basic taping was completed. And in order to encourage people to stay through those re-takes, they take questions from the audience after that. . . and then take time to greet audience members, pose with pictures, etc.
Perhaps you’ve guessed by now that the night exceeded our every expectation. The show itself was side-splittingly funny – the interview with author Mark Halperin was both entertaining and interesting – and actually the re-takes at the end of the evening were quite intriguing. (Some were re-takes due to plain old mishaps, bungled verbiage, etc.- but in at least one case, a re-take was done to expunge a joke in which the words “Sarah Palin naked” were uttered. Evidently whoever was back in the control booth was not comfortable with that moment because the joke was redone with “Scott Brown naked” in the new wording.) Lots of funny moments stand out in my mind, but most of them would really only be funny if you’re hearing the program itself – although two moments bear re-telling. One was when they got to talking about a new study which reveals that “recycling” is one of the top sources of marital tension. That led Amy Dickinson to mention that one of the Christmas gifts she got from her new husband was a backyard compost box. P.J. O’Rourke said that if he ever gave his wife a compost box for Christmas.. . . and Adam Felber chimed in, “You’d be in it!” That was one of several funny moments when the panelists were working together with impressive seamlessness. The other moment that really made me laugh was when Amy Dickinson was responding to study results showing that teenagers who extensively text develop very strong language skills. She found that laughable, considering how she texts her daughters in complete sentences, with punctuation, (“Dearest daughter, methinks. . .”) and have them reply with “K” – short for O.K.
Been there, Done that. Mostly, though, it was just an invigorating night of intelligent entertainment – the absolute opposite of the dumbed-down baby food that we find all around us. And afterwards, we went up onstage so I could say hi to Amy Dickinson (I’ve interviewed her three times, and although she may have been fibbing, she said she remembered me from my voice) and also so we could pay a compliment to host Peter Sagal for all of his good work.
As we walked out, we bought ourselves a colorful commemorative mug which will sit proudly on our shelf as a reminder of the terrific night we spent in downtown Chicago- as well as a reminder of the Christmas when I actually managed to give Kathy something more exciting than five sweaters.
pictured above: left to right: Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Adam Felber, Amy Dickinson, and P.J. O’Rourke- during the Q & A with the audience afterwards.