Lake Neuron

Peter Sagal and Tom Bodett have both blogged about the taping of this weekend’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, which was supposed to be a triumphant reprise of a well-attended outdoor show from last year. Instead, it turned into a rain-soaked badge of honor for the faithful few who attended during a downpour. (Sagal even invoked my favorite bit of Shakespeare, the Agincourt speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V.)

I listened to the show this morning, and it is, in fact, a good one.

What neither man blogged about is the possibility that “Wait, Wait” may soon have a TV version.

Because I follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter, I saw his recommendation (to Leo Laporte!) of this Washington Post article about the decline of local, iconoclastic radio.

By the way, “Records” truly is his middle name….

The other day, Newscoma posted about “My Beautiful Mommy,” a new book which attempts to explain to children about Mommy’s tummy tuck (or whatever). I didn’t post about it at the time, but I did forward the link to my California sister-in-law, who I thought would be amused and/or horrified. She was.

Anyway, I bring it all up to note that “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” pokes fun at the book this week. If you listen to the show on the online player, and want to jump to that segment, it’s in the “Listener Limerick Challenge.” (But why wouldn’t you want to listen to the whole show? Jane Curtin is this week’s guest for the “Not My Job” segment, and she’s quite funny.)

Well, the focal point of my afternoon was the live radio interview on WLIJ-AM with Kelly Corcoran, who will conduct the Nashville Symphony at this year’s Shelbyville concert. I went to WLIJ’s studios and conducted a live telephone interview with Kelly. The radio folks know me (I had a weekly talk show on the station at one time, years ago) and they just put me on the air and let me do the interview, since I know what the concert is about and what we need to promote. My plan, just as with last year’s interview of Albert-George Schram, was to do the live radio interview and then pull some quotes and turn it into a a brief news story for tomorrow’s T-G.

That was why I had a note pad and pen sitting in front of me during the interview.

But I was so in the moment, so excited and so focused on getting the radio interview right, that I didn’t take any notes. Not one. The interview turned out relatively short — 10 minutes or so. And last year, the announcer who was on duty at the station taped the interview; I didn’t think to ask them to do that this year.

Yes, I know the gist of what Kelly said, but the only purpose of doing a story like that is to incorporate some exact quotes, and I don’t have any and don’t have a way to get any.

Fortunately, we weren’t counting on the story from a news standpoint; we have plenty of other stuff for the front page tomorrow. And I can always come up with a different news peg for another symphony article in a few days. But I feel like such an idiot.

For our southern Middle Tennessee readers:

I taped an episode of “Marilyn & Company” today promoting the Symphony at the Celebration” concert and also talking about my foreign mission trips. It will air Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at 2:30 on Charter Communications Channel 22 in Shelbyville, Tullahoma, Manchester, McMinnville and another market or two I don’t recall off the top of my head. The show may run additional times between now and the concert.

Also, I will be on WLIJ-AM 1580 about 2:30 Wednesday helping to interview conductor Kelly Corcoran. The interview will be live on the radio, then I’ll use it as the basis for a news story the next day in the T-G, and maybe a new press release for media in the surrounding counties.

Here’s a great interview with Peter Sagal, host of the Peabody Award-winning “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”

“Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” about which I often gush in this space, has also impressed someone else:

The Peabody Award judges.

Host Peter Sagal is understandably proud.

Speaking of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” here’s a link to a nice little behind-the-scenes news story about it from the public TV station in its home base of Chicago. It’s fun to see what Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell look like (there are still photos on the show’s web site, but it’s different to see someone on video).

If you’re a “Car Talk” fan, you may want to look for Doug Berman, who is the executive producer of both “Car Talk” and “Wait, Wait.”

Jazz legend Herbie Hancock is a very entertaining, quick-witted “Not My Job” guest on this week’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” You can hear it streaming online, or on NPR.

This week’s guest on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” is James Lipton, the host of “Inside The Actor’s Studio” who was parodied so frequently by Will Ferrell on “Saturday Night Live.”

The interview included two interesting facts about Lipton, who has a new autobiography out:

• His wife was the model for the sultry “Miss Scarlett” in the artwork for one of the most popular releases of the board game “Clue.” (I’d heard this one just recently, somewhere else where Lipton was promoting the book.)
• He is, seriously, one of the world’s leading experts on collective nouns (like “a pride of lions” or “a murder of crows”), and has written a book on the subject, “An Exultation of Larks.”

The weekly guest on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” plays a game called “Not My Job,” answering questions about a topic about which the producers assume the guest isn’t familiar.

They had not reckoned on “Clerks” director Kevin Smith. All of the questions they’d picked for Smith came from a book about mad scientists; turned out Smith had discussed that very book on his podcast recently.

You can hear the show at the web site.