BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR in WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis and we're playing this week with Kyrie O'Connor, Alonzo Bodden and Luke Burbank. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill. 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.
JEFF MCMILLAN: Hello, I'm Jeff from Long Beach, California.
SAGAL: Long Beach, a beautiful place I want to live. What do you do there?
MCMILLAN: I'm an artist.
SAGAL: What kind of artist are you?
MCMILLAN: A painter.
SAGAL: Really? Do people commission portraits anymore?
MCMILLAN: They do. I'll paint you a portrait.
SAGAL: Will you really?
MCMILLAN: I will.
SAGAL: Can I ask to be posed doing anything I want or being any - can I like be as Alex Rodriguez once allegedly did? Be the front half of a centaur?
MCMILLAN: Peter, for you I'll do anything.
SAGAL: That would be awesome. I will be the world's first bald centaur.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Welcome to the show, Jeff. It is nice to have you with us. You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill what is Jeff's topic?
KURTIS: You're the best around. Nothing's ever going to keep you down.
SAGAL: The only reason we are not all champions and gold-medal winners is they don't give out prizes for the things that we're good at - not at least until now. This week we heard about a chance to finally get recognized for something that any of us might be able to do and do well. Guess the real story and you'll win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. You ready to play?
MCMILLAN: I'm ready.
SAGAL: First, let's hear from Luke Burbank.
LUKE BURBANK: For years, the town of Funk Springs, Arkansas tried to distance itself from its evocative name without much success. So finally in 2008, it decided to embrace the name and make some money off of it, and thus was born the first ever Funk Springs funktacular. A celebration of all things pungent.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: There's the livestock tent, which is honestly just mostly skunks. There's also the dunk tank filled with spoiled buttermilk. But the real highlight of the weekend has become the competitive body odor contest, which pits four men against each other in a contest to see who's B.O. is the most intense.
Last year's winner, Rudy Thompson, as CrossFit instructor by day, estimates he worked out 90 times without showering in preparation. But that wasn't all, I was taking a performing enhancer, he admitted to the Funk Springs leader - raw onions. Six or eight of them a day. Thompson who lives alone...
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BURBANK: ...Says it was all worth it to win first prize - a $400 gift certificate to Don's Unfinished Furniture Emporium. The stakes were even higher, it could be argued, for last year's loser Chuck Abernathy, who according to the rules, will be forced to judge next summer's competition.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The body odor competition in Funk Springs, Arkansas.
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SAGAL: Your next story of someone fighting to be the most banal comes from Alonzo Bodden.
ALONZO BODDEN: Like most schools, William Heart Elementary in Dubuque, Iowa has a problem with kids using cell phones in class. One of the teachers noticed the epidemic when she momentarily looked up from her own phone several months ago. So in the spirit of, if you can't beat them, join them, the school came up with a way to make cell phone use an interactive school-wide activity. This month they hosted the first annual iLympics, which had kids compete for medals in a variety of phone-related challenges. In one contest, kids try to remember their home phone numbers, addresses and parent's names without looking at their phones.
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BODDEN: The student who remembered the most using his human powers of memory won the gold. Another competition timed students to see who could go the longest without touching their phone. Caitlin Goldstein took first place with an astounding 17 seconds.
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BODDEN: Then there was the battery life challenge, where contestants are given a 10% charge on their phone and have to multitask. The first one to run down the battery wins. This year's gold medal was won by simultaneously streaming a Justin Bieber video while listening to Keisha and facetiming with her friends. She was also live tweeting. It was easy, she said. That's pretty much what my friends do every day anyways.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The iLympics - kids demonstrate their phone skills in Dubuque. Your last story of a drudge match comes from Kyrie O'Connor.
O'CONNOR: Just when you thought every possible contest had been contested, South Korea proved you dead wrong. The first spaced out competition pitted contestants against - well, themselves - to see who could be the very most zoned out the very longest. Kind of like a staring contest between yourself and space. Contestants were checked for steady heartbeat and absence of giggling for at least three hours. Who won? A 9-year-old girl whose teacher had complained about her daydreaming class.
SAGAL: All right, here are your choices. One of these competitions actually happened recently and crowned a winner. Was it from Luke Burbank, a body odor competition in Funk Springs, Arkansas? From Alonzo Bodden, the iLympics - students showing their skills in using or not using their phone? Or from Kyrie O'Connor, a space-out competition to see who could be the most zoned out in South Korea? Which of these was the story of a real competition?
MCMILLAN: Oh, man.
SAGAL: It is tricky.
MCMILLAN: I like all three of them, but I think I've got to go - I'll go with Kyrie's.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, you're going to go with Kyrie's story, which is the spaced-out competition in South Korea. Well, we spoke to someone familiar with this real competition.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ANDY CAMPBELL: This was the world's first space-out competition, where the nation's finest space cadets stared off into the ether for long as possible.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: As Andy Campbell, an editor at The Huffington Post talking about South Korea's space-out competition. Yes Jeff, you pulled it out.
MCMILLAN: Right.
SAGAL: Kyrie did tell the true story so you've earned a point for Kyrie just for being truthful, but you've also won our prize - the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voicemail. Congratulations and well done.
MCMILLAN: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY")
QUEEN: (Singing) We are the champions my friends. And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end. We are the champions. We are the champions. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.