美国国家公共电台 NPR Franchise Rebranding（在线收听）

Franchise Rebranding

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0007:38repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. JONATHAN COULTON: From NPR and WNYC, coming to you from the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Texas, it's NPR's hour of puzzles, word games and trivia, ASK ME ANOTHER. I'm Jonathan Coulton. Now here's your host, Ophira Eisenberg.

(APPLAUSE)

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST: 

Thank you, Jonathan. We have an amazing show for you. Four brilliant contestants are backstage recommending barbecue places to each other waiting to play our nerdy games. But only one will be our big winner. And we are so excited to be here in Dallas. But we always bring a little bit of Brooklyn with us wherever we go. And in this case, it's our special guest.

Actor Brooklyn Decker will be joining us later in the show.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: I've got to say, I'm especially glad to be here because I'm from Calgary, Alberta, which is kind of like the Dallas of Canada...

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: ...With our beef and our stampede and our oil. But Canadian cowboys are a little bit different than Texas cowboys. For one, instead of 10 gallon hats, they wear 37.85 liter hats. And in Canada when you twirl a lasso over your head, it sounds like this - sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: Let's get things started with our first two contestants. First up, Marcie Verastiqui, you say you have the best job in the world being a grade school librarian.

MARCIE VERASTIQUI: Yes I do.

EISENBERG: All right, why is that the best job in the world?

VERASTIQUI: Well, I still get to be a teacher...

EISENBERG: Yeah.

VERASTIQUI: ...But I don't have to do the grading...

(LAUGHTER)

VERASTIQUI: ...Or the lesson planning. I'm the aunt of the students.

(LAUGHTER)

VERASTIQUI: I keep them for a little bit and then they go away (laughter).

EISENBERG: Your opponent is Etienne Coulonge. You are a technology consultant but pretended to be a spider expert on your friend's talk radio show.

ETIENNE COULONGE: What happened was I went on and we just did theater of the mind and pretended there was spiders crawling all over the studio.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

COULONGE: It ended up going really badly. There were bites. And two weeks later, I came on and pretended to be a snake expert on the same show, and that didn't go well either.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: Marcie and Etienne, the first of you who wins two of our games will move on to our Final Round at the end of the show. So let's go to our first game. Marcie, if you owned a sports team, what would you name it?

VERASTIQUI: Probably the Austin Tacos.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: Etienne, if you owned a sports team, what would you name it?

COULONGE: I would put another basketball franchise in Miami and call it the Humidity. And then they'd say, it's not the Heat, it's the Humidity.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: So your first game is called a Franchise Rebranding. In this game, we're going to pretend that North American pro sports teams were sold to new owners and each new owner wants to change the team's name by adding one letter to it. Let's go to Jonathan Coulton for an example.

COULTON: Sure. For example, if I said, LensCrafters bought this Texas hockey team and now requires its players to make prolonged eye contact, you would answer the Dallas Stares.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: Adding one letter to Dallas' pro hockey team, the Stars.

EISENBERG: So buzz in to answer, and the winner will be one step closer to the Final Round at the end of the show. Here we go. Julian Assange bought a basketball team in Southern California. He hopes to recruit Kobe Bryant to release documents and expose government secrets.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Etienne.

COULONGE: The Los Angeles Leakers.

EISENBERG: That's right, yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: Tom Brady doubles down on Deflategate and renames this Southern Florida basketball team to celebrate rules infractions.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Marcie.

VERASTIQUI: The Miami Cheat?

COULTON: That's right.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Right? It's not the cheat, it's the chumidity (ph).

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: The American Kennel Club bought a Pennsylvania football team and renamed it to honor a small dog breed.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Marcie.

VERASTIQUI: The Philadelphia Beagles.

EISENBERG: Yeah, that's right.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: This football team was bought by the metric system.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: Bear with me - and moved 2,500 kilometers away from St. Louis. Its name now celebrates a unit of mass.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Marcie.

VERASTIQUI: The Los Angeles Grams.

COULTON: That's right.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

COULTON: Well done.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Sounds like the softball team for some LA coke dealers but...

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: This West Florida baseball team was bought by a medical imaging company. Now you'll be able to see the players' bones during instant replays.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Etienne.

COULONGE: X-rays.

EISENBERG: You got it, yes.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: The AFC football team that plays at MetLife Stadium was bought by the American Ballet Theatre. Now players must gracefully leap from one cleat to land on the other. Yeah, take your time. Maybe we should go to our puzzle guru Art Chung for a hint.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

ART CHUNG: Well, the hint for the team is that it plays in East Rutherford, N.J.

COULTON: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Etienne.

COULONGE: The Gliants (ph)?

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: I love The Gliants (ph).

COULTON: That is the most fantastic guess I have ever heard on this show.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: It totally sounds like it could be a ballet move. It may very well be.

EISENBERG: The gliants is a ballet move that was created by Etienne Coulonge.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: He was a public radio contestant.

EISENBERG: And on that very night, he made up a dance.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: I'm sorry to report that's not what we're looking for. Marcie, do you know what the answer is? I know, it's shocking.

VERASTIQUI: I do not.

COULTON: Does anybody know what it is or is it just too hard? Yeah, it's the New York Jetes.

VERASTIQUI: I know more about sports than ballet.

COULTON: Yeah, me too, sister.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: This is your last clue. The Cuban government bought a baseball team in Texas' most populous city and renamed it after Cuba's leader.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Etienne.

COULONGE: The Castros, the Houston Castros.

EISENBERG: Yes, you are correct.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Puzzle guru Art Chung, how did our contestants do?

CHUNG: We have a tie.

EISENBERG: Oh.

(APPLAUSE)

CHUNG: Here we go with a tie breaker. Hands on your buzzers. An association of deli owners buys the local Queens baseball team to advertise their cold cuts.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

CHUNG: Marcie.

VERASTIQUI: The Meats.

CHUNG: That is correct.

(APPLAUSE)

CHUNG: Congratulations, Marcie, you're one step closer to the final round.

(APPLAUSE)