Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

Went to see a record­ing of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! at the Acad­e­my of Music last night here in Philadel­phia. If peo­ple think that this week­end’s Ral­ly to Restore San­i­ty is like the Gath­er­ing of the Smug­ga­loes, then they would­n’t know what to make of this.

Let’s just say that Helen and I real­ly love the show, but see­ing the sausage get made was­n’t quite as appeal­ing. Can some­one start a “More Carl!” cam­paign? I think you could make it catch­phrasey, like “more cow­bell.” Who’s with me?

Over­all the show was­n’t that bad, it’s just that, I dun­no, it just did­n’t come off quite the same live. When the jokes are flat, they’re real­ly flat and the pan­elists’ hem­ming and haw­ing was­n’t all that clever, although Tom Bodett was a treat! P.J. O’Rourke got booed once when he joked that ’60s pro­test­ers deserved to be beat­en and tear­gassed. Amy Dick­in­son did had to stand in for women every­where. Weird.

We heard the show air yes­ter­day as we drove back from D.C. Sound­ed much bet­ter. Prob­a­bly best to not see how the sausage gets made, huh?