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Bluff The Listener

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis filling in for Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Bobcat Goldthwait, Kyrie O'Connor, and Tom Bodett. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thank you so much. Right now, it is 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!

MATTHEW BEESAR: Hi, this is Matthew Beesar from the foothills above Boulder, Colorado.

SAGAL: Oh, I love Boulder. What do you do there?

BEESAR: I write iPhone apps and teach people how to write iPhone apps and make artwork out of glass.

SAGAL: You teach people...

TOM BODETT: Wow.

SAGAL: ...how to make iPhone apps and make art with glass.

BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: So how much are your bongs?

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

GOLDTHWAIT: It's Boulder, and...

SAGAL: It's Boulder (unintelligible)...

GOLDTHWAIT: ...you keep making stuff out of glass.

SAGAL: Yeah.

GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah, we get it.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Matt, 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. Bill, what is Matt's topic?

KURTIS: Introducing the WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME! Worst Person of the Year.

SAGAL: Of all the terrible people we encounter at work or at home, with our families, once in a while, someone goes above and beyond.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The panelists are going to tell you about some champions of behaving badly. Guess the real one, and you'll win Carl's voice on your home answering machine or voicemail. First up, let's hear from Bobcat Goldthwait.

BOB GOLDTHWAIT: What do you get the family that has everything - their own disabled person, so they can cut lines at Disney World.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: Satan himself has been working around the clock building a new wing in hell to accommodate the wealthy Manhattanite moms who have figured out the way to get in front of the line in the Magic Kingdom is by hiring a disabled person to pose as a family member, so they can get their disgusting children to the front of the line.

"My daughter waited one minute to get on It's a Small World, the other kids had to wait two and a half hours," crowed one mom who had hired a disabled guy through Dream Tours Florida. "You can't go to Disney without a tour concierge," she sniffed. "This is how the one percent does it."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: People renting disabled family members or fake family members so that they can cut to the front of the line at Disney World. Your next story of somebody scraping the bottom comes from Kyrie O'Connor.

KYRIE O'CONNOR: Lauren Stanley didn't think of herself as a bad person. She was a nurse and a mother of two and founding member of Cabot, Vermont Heirloom Seed Exchange. She just didn't want to blow a precious day off chaperoning 22 kindergarteners on a field trip to watch maple syrup being made. The thought of riding on that school bus, the screams, the singing of Miss Mary Mack gave her a preemptive migraine.

But the rules of chaperoning were pretty strict, and her number was up. Then about a week before the trip, she had an idea. She could get the trip canceled. On her shift at the walk-in clinic, she began collecting used Kleenexes, nothing bad, really, just from patients with the common cold. The next day, she sneaked into the schoolroom early and gave the room, the guinea pig cage, the cubbies, the crayons a good rubdown with the infected tissues.

(LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: Sure enough, within a couple of days, five-year-olds were dropping like flies.

(LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: The parents were pretty flummoxed. Then little Caleb Stanley told his teacher a long rambling story about mommy's special bag of germs, and the whole plot came unraveled.

SAGAL: A woman gets an entire kindergarten class sick so as to avoid having to take them on a field trip. Your last story is someone who's the best at being the worst comes from Tom Bodett.

BODETT: Liam Crow had it all - loving wife, two beautiful kids, house and a camper in the driveway. But after being caught cheating with another woman, Crow is now living in that camper in a Sam's Club parking lot where he operates Extra Fair Management, a discreet service for people engaged in extramarital affairs who, as his brochure states, "really care about their wives and kids."

I wanted to spare other families the pain my loved ones had to experience. I learned from my mistakes, and I want to share what I know with the world. Helping other people not get caught is my way of giving back. Crow will act as a scheduling liaison to keep incriminating numbers off of cell phones, he'll arrange locations to meet, provide wakeup calls. He'll even call at dinnertime and act like a weepy drunk friend who needs a man hug or a pesky co-worker with a sofa to move.

"Wives today are too darn smart," said Crow. "The old I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail story isn't going to cut it with these gals."

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: "So if you truly loved your family, you'd call Extra Fair."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: OK. Here are your choices. Now, one of these people or groups of people really exist. From Bob Goldthwait, Manhattan moms wealthy enough to hire disabled people, so their kids don't have to wait in line at Disney World; from Kyrie O'Connor, a school mother who decided she really didn't want to take that field trip so infected the entire class; or from Tom Bodett, a guy who has set up a business to do everything he can to make sure that you won't get caught cheating on your wife like he was caught cheating on his. Which of these are the real story of somebody in the week's news?

BEESAR: I think I'm going to go with the last one.

SAGAL: You're going to go with Tom's story of the guy who's out there trying to make sure that you, unlike him, don't get caught in having your affair.

BEESAR: Yes.

SAGAL: Well, to find out the correct answer, we spoke to the woman who uncovered that real story.

WEDNESDAY MARTIN: Hiring a black market handicapped Disney guy to allow you more or less immediate access to every ride and attraction.

SAGAL: That was anthropologist, Wednesday Martin. That is her name. She learned about the black market tours while researching her book, "The Primates of Park Avenue." Congratulations...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I should say...

BODETT: Didn't you just feel the entire nation cringe?

SAGAL: I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I'm sorry about two things. I'm sorry that you didn't win, and I'm sorry that those people actually exist...

(LAUGHTER)

BEESAR: Me, too.

SAGAL: ...which is terrifying. Unfortunately, as you now know, Bobcat had the real story. Tom's, though, I think is a business idea that somebody out there is going to take up soon, so...

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: But take heart, I made that up.

SAGAL: That's true. The world isn't that bad.

BODETT: This one doesn't exist yet.

SAGAL: Yet. Thank you so much for playing, Matt.

BEESAR: You're welcome. Bye.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

(APPLAUSE)

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I DID A BAD, BAD THING")

TARZAN BAPPA: (Singing) Baby did a bad, bad thing, baby did a bad, bad thing, baby did a bad, bad thing, I feel like crying. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.