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Panel Round Two

CARL KASELL, HOST:

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 Tom Bodett, Kyrie O'Connor and Peter Grosz. And here again is your host, at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, Florida, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thank you everybody. In just a minute, Carl diagnoses you with a severe case of rhyme-itis in our Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you. They are, of course, all about health, fitness, sports, that sort of thing.

Peter, we all have our own ways of relaxing and burning off stress. Some people like bubble baths and massage. One politician claims to have a unique and manly way of unwinding. It's former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. What does he do for stress relief?

PETER GROSZ: And it's manly?

SAGAL: Yeah, it's manly. It sort of involves violence, which is manly, and sports, which are manly.

GROSZ: Does he attend ultimate fighting championships?

SAGAL: He does not attend.

GROSZ: Does he participate in wrestling?

SAGAL: No, it's something he likes to watch.

GROSZ: Hockey?

SAGAL: Not hockey, but he likes hockey only when?

GROSZ: When? Oh, he likes watching the fights in hockey?

SAGAL: He like watching hockey fights. That how he relaxes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He doesn't watch the whole game, he just wants to watch the fights. Pawlenty suffers from a bit of an image problem. He's mild mannered and tame. He's trying to beef up his macho quotient. That's fine, but his solution in his biography was to reveal this. He says he enjoys logging onto a website and, quote, "watching two guys, gloves down, helmets off, pounding each other, while the ref stands back and lets it happen."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KYRIE O'CONNOR: This is not going to do what he wants for his image.

SAGAL: Yeah. We tried going to the website he mentions, but you had to be a member to see the good stuff.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Tom, a woman in Canada was charged with refusing to take a breathalyzer test when she was pulled over. But she successfully fought the charges when she explained that it wasn't that she refused to blow into the breathalyzer, it was what?

TOM BODETT: She didn't refuse. She elected not to.

SAGAL: No. I could, but I won't. No, it's not it. It was a physical problem.

BODETT: Was she too drunk?

SAGAL: No.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I can't take your breathalyzer test, I'm hammered.

BODETT: I'm too drunk for that.

SAGAL: Blow into that thing? There's four of them, what am I supposed to do? Should I do the middle one, what? No, she did look - I mean she couldn't blow into the breathalyzer, but she did look ten years younger.

BODETT: She had plastic surgery.

SAGAL: Close enough. She was botoxed.

BODETT: Oh.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: And because she was botoxed, she said she couldn't pucker enough to blow into the straw.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Kind of defeats the point of botox.

O'CONNOR: Wow.

SAGAL: Yeah, anyone who's ever been Novocain and tried to like drink through a straw understands what this is like. Her name is Patty Ann Moore and she says she was drinking, fine. But as her doctor's note explained when she had to go to court, people with botox are unable, quote, "to wrap their lips around a straw or wide circumference such as a breathalyzer blow apparatus."

The sympathetic judge threw the case out. And Moore said she was thrilled with her victory which she plans to indicate with a smile in six to eight months.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Tom, doctors say you should be careful giving Tylenol to kids for a lot of reasons. But it turns out, one of the very rare but real side effects of Tylenol in children might be what?

BODETT: It makes the sinks really sticky. It is. It's just a noticed side effect.

SAGAL: Oh you're talking about the child's syrup.

BODETT: Right. Yeah.

SAGAL: I'll give you a hint. It's sort of like a tickle in pill form.

BODETT: Oh, it makes them giggly.

SAGAL: Yes, it makes them laugh excessively.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

BODETT: How could you tell?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: No, don't laugh unless you can't help it. Excessive laughter...

BODETT: Is that a real laugh or drug induced?

SAGAL: Yeah, exactly. Well excessive laughing syndrome is no joke. Hundreds of Americans suffer from it every year.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: In fact, we have a sufferer with us. In fact, it's a voice you may recognize if you're an NPR weekend listener. Ray, are you there?

RAY MAGLIOZZI, BYLINE: Yes, I am.

SAGAL: That's great. And so we understand that you have a problem in your life from excessive laughter syndrome. Is this true?

MAGLIOZZI: Well, I don't suffer from the affliction myself but I have a loved one. I wouldn't call him a loved one necessarily, a sibling who suffers.

SAGAL: You have a sibling.

MAGLIOZZI: Yes, yes, my brother, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You're telling me that this excessive laughing doesn't run in the family?

MAGLIOZZI: No, no, as a matter of fact, I'm very serious and I hardly laugh at all.

SAGAL: You hardly laugh at all.

MAGLIOZZI: I hardly laugh at all.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, thank you. And we're sorry for your troubles.

MAGLIOZZI: Well thank you for your sympathy and I'm glad I was able to shed a little bit of light on this topic.

SAGAL: I appreciate that.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MAGLIOZZI: So long.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

MAGLIOZZI: Keep laughing. Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: That was Ray Magliozzi, ladies and gentlemen, also known as "Click" or "Clack," I can never be sure.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.