PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Coming up, it's Lightning Fill in the Blank. But first, it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. You can click the Contact Us link on our website. That's waitwait.npr.org.
There, you can find out about attending our weekly live shows back at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago, our upcoming show in Philadelphia at the Mann Center on June 29 - the weather is predicted to be fine - and our shows in San Francisco at Davies Hall on August 10 and 11. Hi. You're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
SARA SLIMP: Hi. This is Sara Slimp calling from Little Rock, Ark.
SAGAL: Hey, I know Little Rock, a nice little city. What do you do there?
SLIMP: I'm a pastry chef here.
SAGAL: Are you really?
SLIMP: Yes, sir.
SAGAL: And, oh, you're a polite pastry chef.
SLIMP: (Laughter) I try my best.
SAGAL: So what kind of baking do you do?
SLIMP: I do all kinds of baking. But I will say that, since it's Father's Day this weekend, and I think I can get out of buying my dad a gift if I mention him on his favorite show...
SAGAL: Yeah.
SLIMP: ... I'll say that I like to bake cherry pie for him.
SAGAL: There you go.
SLIMP: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Sara, welcome to the show. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three news-related limericks with the last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly on two of the limericks, you'll be a winner. You ready to play?
SLIMP: I think so.
SAGAL: All right. Here's your first limerick.
BILL KURTIS: Our speech can't just add a quick note as we work out the most recent vote. Seven days must go by for the ink to be dry, for we read off the skin of a...
SLIMP: A goat?
SAGAL: Yes, a goat.
KURTIS: Goat.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The queen of England's big, traditional, post-election speech is being delayed by a soggy goatskin. Thanks to an ancient law, England has to be ruled by a person in a funny hat who reads speeches that can only be written on goatskin. That is true. It also explains why Her Majesty got hoof and mouth disease from a paper cut.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This year, the queen's speech needed to be revised at the last minute, and it takes a week for the new ink to dry on the goat skin, even with the queen's personal blower working round the clock.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Here is your next limerick.
KURTIS: And we all love the tropical tie-in. In the pizza world, he was a lion. So we mourn the man of pineapple and ham. He made pizza we know as...
SLIMP: Hawaiian?
SAGAL: Hawaiian pizza, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, the world lost Sam Panopoulos, a Canadian who immigrated from Greece and, naturally, invented Hawaiian pizza.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And if there is a better argument against immigration than the fact it results in fruit on pizza, I want to hear it.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: By the way, did you know this? - that it's not called Hawaiian pizza because it comes from Hawaii. It's called Hawaiian pizza because he used Hawaiian-brand pineapple. It said so on the label.
ALONZO BODDEN: Hawaiian pineapple - where else would it be from? I mean...
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: Like, if I had a pizza, and it said Iowa pineapple...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODDEN: ...I don't think I'm going that way.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Here is your last limerick.
KURTIS: Most lunchrooms have health-conscious aims of upping their vegetable games. Don't call carrots stewed. Call them spicy and nude. Just give the food sexier...
SLIMP: Names.
SAGAL: Names.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: If you want people to start eating vegetables, you need to give them cooler names - not the people, the vegetables. A study out of Stanford shows 40 percent of students will choose, say, sweet, sizzling green beans over plain, old green beans. It makes sense. Roasted zucchini is fine. Slow-roasted, caramelized zucchini bites is almost dangerous. It's like the zucchini is flirting with you.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Apparently, the idea is to help students improve their diets. They're more likely to get, for example, their recommended amount of calcium when, instead of low-fat chocolate milk, they're offered 100-percent-chocolate MILF.
(LAUGHTER)
AMY DICKINSON: Oh. Oh.
ROY BLOUNT JR: Come on.
DICKINSON: No. No. I don't like that. I don't like that joke at all.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Sara do on our quiz?
KURTIS: She did 3-0. Audience did one, too.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Sara, congratulations.
SLIMP: Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.