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 his week with Maz Jobrani, Roxanne Roberts, and Charlie Pierce. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
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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 air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
TIM HALL: Hi, this is Tim from Janesville, Wisconsin.
SAGAL: Hey, beautiful Janesville.
HALL: Beautiful is a word you could use for it, yeah.
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SAGAL: Yes. Well, what do you do there?
HALL: Like for fun?
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SAGAL: Well for - if you have fun, sure.
HALL: Well, for fun we mostly go to Madison.
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SAGAL: Oh, really? Well, welcome to the show, Tim. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Tim's topic?
KASELL: Peter, it's time we embraced our inner sluts.
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SAGAL: It's been 10 years since "Sex and the City" inspired women everywhere to move to New York, sleep around and spend all their money on shoes. This week, we read about how Carrie Bradshaw and her three neurotic friends are continuing to curse our culture. Guess the true "Sex and the City" related story and you will win Mr. Carl's voice on your voicemail. Ready to play?
HALL: I guess so.
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HALL: I know nothing about "Sex and the City," so...
SAGAL: You weren't a fan of the show then?
HALL: No.
SAGAL: All right.
MAZ JOBRANI: You've still got time to go to Madison. Just go, baby.
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SAGAL: Might be a better option than playing this game, but we'll try it. Here we go. Your first story comes from Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: The nicest guy on "Sex and the City" may have been Stanford Blatch, Carrie's gay best friend. He was loyal, funny, quirky, sweet, almost perfect. So British supermarket chain Tesco thought everyone should have one, too. Hence the inflatable gay best friend, a novelty blow-up doll, quote, ready to give you fashion advice, tell you if your bum looks big and bitch about everyone who doesn't wear Jimmy Choos.
IGBF, as I like to call it, sports a pink top and blue shorts, which caused an outcry as an offensive stereotype, not to mention the shade of pink was all wrong.
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ROBERTS: But gay activists were more dismissive than upset. Quote, "This is like trying to sell ice to Eskimos," Ben Summerskill(ph) told The Guardian. We can't imagine why any women would chose to buy an inflatable gay best friend when there are two million of the real thing already available in modern Britain.
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ROBERTS: And most of them are much better looking than Tesco's pale imitation. The chain has since apologized and withdrawn IGBF from sale.
SAGAL: All right, an inflatable gay best friend, just like Carrie had, if somewhat quieter. Your next story of a "Sex and the City" sequel no one asked for comes from Charlie Pierce.
CHARLIE PIERCE: Trainees at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, are being drilled in a new interrogation technique aimed at prying information and confessions out of suspects who are in custody. The suspect is left in a room with two agents and is shown an endless loop of videos from the television show "Sex and the City."
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PIERCE: Originally, it was thought that it would take eight or nine hours of watching the episodes to elicit the desired result. But instructors at the FBI academy say in field experiments with the technique, even some of the most hardened suspects, break after only half of their first episode.
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PIERCE: The technique is so promising that the FBI is already refining its details. Agents are being educated in the differences between Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks, the proper way to make a cosmo and the many different kinds of cupcakes you can find in New York City. And special investigative units are being put together made up exclusively of field agents named Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha.
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SAGAL: "Sex and the City" used as an interrogation technique. Your last story about the lasting legacy of Carrie Bradshaw comes from Maz Jobrani.
JOBRANI: Any woman who's worn Manolo Blahnik shoes knows that they are sexy. But did you know that those high-heeled, expensive beauties featured so lovingly on "Sex and the City" can also be used as lethal weapons? Inspired by the episode where Carrie gets mugged in Soho, and the guy takes her Blahniks, Tone Rodriguez(ph) opened up his own self-defense class for ladies in South Beach, Miami, called Blahniks Kicks.
Using martial arts techniques he learned as a black belt in (unintelligible), Rodriguez teaches women how to take off the Blahniks at one fell swoop and be armed within seconds. Tone was quoted as saying, "The next time someone tells you give me your Blahniks, all you have to do is say my pleasure then take them off and proceed to beat the crap out of them."
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JOBRANI: Student Malorie Hampton(ph) explains how at Blahnik Kicks, they're taught to only use their moves as a last resort, never start a fight but always finish it. Rodriguez says that "Sex and the City" wasn't his only inspiration. When I was a child, my mother used to beat me with her shoes.
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JOBRANI: Sometimes even twice a day. I mean, I was a bad kid, so I kind of deserved it. Later when I was teaching self-defense, I realized the shoes and particularly Blahniks could serve as a great weapon, sexy going into the clubs, bad-ass coming out.
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SAGAL: All right, here are your choices. From Roxanne Roberts, the Tesco supermarket chain in Britain offers the inflatable gay best friend for those who want to be Carrie and want that ultimate accessory; from Charlie Pierce, "Sex and the City" used as an interrogation technique in Quantico at the FBI Academy; or from Maz Jobrani, Blahniks Kicks, a self-defense technique which uses very expensive high-heeled shoes. Which of these is the real story of a "Sex and the City" revival, kind of, in the week's news?
HALL: I'm going to go with the gay best friend.
SAGAL: The inflatable gay bestie?
HALL: Yes.
SAGAL: Ooh, the audience may not approve, but you seem very confident.
HALL: I swear I heard something about this.
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SAGAL: All right. You have chosen Roxanne's story of the inflatable gay best friend. Well, to bring you the correct answer, listen to this:
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Tesco has withdrawn an inflatable figure that it was selling, labeled gay best friend.
SAGAL: That's right, you were correct.
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SAGAL: It's an inflatable figure of a gay best friend that was offered by Tesco. They're not offering it anymore, so don't get excited. Congratulations, Tim, you got it right. Roxanne was telling the truth. You somehow knew that. Therefore you won a point for Roxanne and of course our prize, Carl's voice on your voicemail. Well done, sir.
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HALL: Awesome, thank you very much.
SAGAL: Thank you for playing. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.