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 Luke Burbank, Roxanne Roberts and Tom Bodett. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, host:
Thank you, Carl. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much. It's good to be back with you. It's time now for the WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME! "Bluff the Listener" game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play any of our games on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
Ms. TIONE CHILAMBE: Hello, Peter.
SAGAL: Hello, who's this?
Ms. CHILAMBE: This is Tione, calling you from Massachusetts.
SAGAL: Oh, how are things in Massachusetts?
Ms. CHILAMBE: Cold, very cold; another snowstorm tomorrow.
SAGAL: No, really?
Ms. CHILAMBE: Uh-huh.
SAGAL: Oh my gosh. Have you been enjoying the winter?
(Soundbite of laughter)
SAGAL: That really encompassed a range of emotions.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SAGAL: That was very good. Well, Tione, welcome to the show. You're going to play the game in which you must tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Tione's topic?
KASELL: "Oh, I Didn't Know That Was In There."
SAGAL: SAGAL: You know when you find something you didn't know you had - a dollar bill in your pocket, a 15-year-old boy who appears on your doorstep, looking like you?
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Ms. CHILAMBE: OK.
SAGAL: Our panelists are going to - or is that just me? Did that just happen to me?
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SAGAL: Our panelists are going to tell you three stories of someone discovering they had something that was a secret even to them. Only one of these stories, of course, is true. Tione, pick the real one, you'll win Carl's voice on your home answering machine. Ready to go?
Ms. CHILAMBE: Very much so.
SAGAL: First, let's hear from Luke Burbank.
Mr. LUKE BURBANK (Host, "Too Beautiful to Live"): During the first few days of his honeymoon, Richard Rodriguez couldn't figure out why everyone seemed to be staring at him. The 36-year-old baggage handler at Boston's Logan Airport, who had moved to the U.S. in his 20s, and his new bride were in Cancun looking to relax. But that proved impossible due to the throng of middle-aged women who kept mobbing Rodriguez, screaming...
Mr. BURBANK: (Foreign language spoken).
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Mr. BURBANK: It wasn't until late one night when the couple, now essentially trapped in their hotel room, figured out what was going on. They were watching an old rerun of "Sabado Gigante," featuring an appearance by the '80s Mexican boy-band sensation Menudo. A boy-band sensation that featured, shockingly, a 13-year-old Richard Rodriguez, or as he was known then, "Kiki," performing his hit song, "Soba Mi Panza Con Tu Amor"(ph), which translated means: Rub my belly with your love.
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Mr. BURBANK: Rodriguez swears he has no memory of this part of his life.
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Mr. BURBANK: And doctors tend to believe him. It's called specific dissociative traumatic amnesia.
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Mr. BURBANK: Says Dr. Oliver Sachs, currently at work on a book about Rodriguez, titled "The Forgetful Pop Star." Rodriguez says even though he doesn't remember his time being famous, he'll always treasure the commemorative lunch box bearing his face, which he recently picked up on eBay.
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SAGAL: A man recovers his own history as a member of Menudo. Your next story of a surprising discovery comes from Roxanne Roberts.
Ms. ROXANNE ROBERTS (Columnist, Washington Post): Last summer, an elderly woman living in Queens confessed a secret to her priest. There were dirty pictures in her house. The unidentified woman discovered the photos in her father's study after he died in 1964, threw them in a box, and stashed them in her attic. Now, she was moving into a Catholic-assisted living facility and too embarrassed to even touch them, didn't know what to do. The priest offered to help and discovered the erotica mother lode. Hundreds of explicit photos by the late Gunther Eckhart(ph), a German photographer known as quote, the Ansel Adams of pornography.
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Ms. ROBERTS: The black-and-white works, shot in the '20s and '30s, are highly prized among collectors - and valued at, the priest discovered, between $150,000 and $200,000. A discreet sale was arranged with a New York gallery. The grateful woman donated the money to her parish. Asked by the New York Times how he recognized Eckhart's work, the priest declined to comment.
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SAGAL: A woman's shameful stash of dirty pictures turns out to be a gold mine. And your last story of someone finding something that had been there all along comes from Tom Bodett.
Mr. TOM BODETT (Author; Humorist): Nineteen years ago, prematurely balding Darren Hope invested the equivalent of $10,000 on hair transplants at a London clinic. The procedure was a success, and Mr. Hope enjoyed nearly two decades with a full head of long locks, never suspecting his hair-transplant technician had left a message. After recently shaving his head for a change of pace, Hope discovered a two-inch-high vulgarism neatly plucked across the back of his head, where the follicles had been removed. The word refers to one who enjoys oneself, rhymes with banker and is pronounced wanker, which can't be broadcast without appearing as if you are using it as an excuse to say wanker, which we would never do.
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Mr. BODETT: I was young, and I think the surgeon was having a bad day, said Darren Hope. Pardon the pun, but I want to find whoever did this to me and scalp him.
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SAGAL: All right, then.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. CHILAMBE: OK.
SAGAL: These are your choices: from Luke Burbank, a man discovering his own past as a member of Menudo, which he had repressed; from Roxanne, a woman realizing that those dirty pictures she had been so ashamed of were actually worth hundreds of thousands of dollars; or from Tom Bodett, a man who discovered that when he got his hair transplant 20 years ago, he also got a motto plucked into his scalp. Which of these is the real story of an undiscovered surprise?
Ms. CHILAMBE: All right, the dirty pictures and a priest seem pretty plausible.
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Ms. CHILAMBE: So, I'm going to go with number two.
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SAGAL: So you're choosing, then - if I understand correctly, you're choosing Roxanne's story.
Ms. CHILAMBE: Of course.
SAGAL: Of the stash of pornographic pictures that turned out to be very valuable.
Ms. CHILAMBE: Yeah.
SAGAL: All right. Well, to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to an expert who had an opinion about the real story.
Dr. VLADIMIR PANINE (Chicago Hair Transplant Clinic): As a hair- transplant specialist, I think it's very unethical to spell words on the back of the patient's head.
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Dr. PANINE: And I think the doctor should be disciplined for his actions.
Ms. CHILAMBE: Oh.
SAGAL: That was Dr. Vladimir Panine of the Chicago Hair Transplant Clinic, weighing in on the story of the secret message hidden in the hair transplant.
Ms. CHILAMBE: That's just amazing.
SAGAL: Well, you didn't win, but you did earn a point for Roxanne - which I know makes her very, very happy - for choosing her very plausible story. So, thank you.
(Soundbite of applause)
SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing.
Ms. CHILAMBE: Goodbye.
SAGAL: Bye-bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.