The second phone call from Emily at Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me came Monday evening. She informed me that I would definitely be playing the game this week She would call back Thursday evening to confirm, then I would receive the actual call for competition sometime between 8:30 and 10:30 pm. She then asked me what my favorite game was. I told her it was the Limerick Game, but that I liked the others, too.
Thursday came, and I was on pins and needles. Emily called again at 6:30 to let me know that I would be playing “Who’s Carl This Time?” in the second part of the show. It would really be Korva Coleman instead of Carl Kassell reading the news
To prepare I actually typed out what I might say just so that I wouldn’t stumble over my words. I also made a list of possible topics, then reviewed the week’s news, paying particular attention to Fark.com and the NPR website.
At 8:30 the phone rang and I jumped. Were they calling early? Was I actually going to be on the first part of the show? It turned out to be the local Democratic Party. I explained the situation and hung up. Then the nerves set in.
At 9:45 the phone rang again and it was Emily. She told me that I would hear four questions for the panelists, then Peter Sagle would greet me. It seemed to take forever for the panelists to finish their banter over their questions, but then I heard Peter say, “Hi, you’re on Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me..”
Despite having written out my responses, I still bobbled everything. I hate to thing how I sounded. Part of the problem was that I couldn’t hear them very well, so I wasn’t really sure of my responses during the initial chit-chat.
So, did I get a recording of Carl Kassell’s voice on my home answering machine? I won’t tell you how the actual quiz turned out until it airs. In South Carolina it will be heard at 3:00 pm Sunday afternoon, or it can be downloaded as a podcast.
Just a couple of observations – the show is recorded over a two hour period. Even during the short amount of time I was on the air there seemed to be lots of extraneous conversation. This whole thing is edited down to a 50-minute show, so tons of that is cut out. I’ll just be curious to see exactly what gets cut.
[tags]NPR, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, radio[/tags]
Way to go!!! I’m sure you sounded just fine.
I LOVE that program. I was on vacation and missed your part last week. That’s cool that you got on.