News Quiz

No. 35: “No Bad Rats”

“A Question So Good We’re Giving You the Week to Answer It”

By Randy Cohen

As an incentive, reports The Associated Press, “Pleasurable sensations were transmitted to the animals’ brains. Scientists call these sensations ‘virtual chocolate.’ No unpleasurable sensations were planned, no matter how uncooperative the rat.”

An incentive to do what?

by noon ET Wednesday to e-mail your answer (NewsQuiz@slate.com).

Describe The New Yorker’s final Seinfeld cover.

(Question posed by Chris Kelly. His suggestion: an Art Spiegelman knockoff of Hopper’s Nighthawks, only it’s Jerry’s diner, and it’s empty.)

by noon ET Thursday (NewsQuiz@slate.com). Please put “Seinfeld” in the subject line of your e-mail. Answers will be posted Friday.

Responses to Monday’s question (No. 34)–“Infantile Desire”:

Fill in the blank. Kenn Viselman of New York’s Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co. said, “Last Christmas, I had people putting their children on the phone crying, ‘I want _______.’ “

“To live!”–David Rakoff

“A Rolex.”–Marshall Efron

“Weal social secuwity weform.”–Ken Novak

“Air support. (But maybe that’s just my kids.)”–Chris Kelly

“$200,000 in unmarked bills, or Mrs. Viselman is history!”–Steven L. Smith

“Nipsy Russell back in the spotlight, where he belongs!”–Seth Stevenson

“That fat man in the clown mask to stop asking me to get into the crawl space.”–Larry Amaros

“Sex and candy. (I can’t be the only one who knows that song.)”–Beth Sherman

“Santa to stop calling me and asking, ‘Have you been a bad boy? Yes … tell me about it … Yes … now, again … only this time … slower.’ “–Jon Hotchkiss

“Don’t Touch Me There Elmo.”–Nancy Franklin

“To return to my mum’s womb, where it was warm and wet and slippery, and Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa, and Po could never find me.”–Meg Wolitzer

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

Ah, the mirth and whimsy of child molestation, the madcap antics of the pederast, the … excuse me, I’ve got a call on the other line. I think it’s my conscience. And I told it never to call me here. Today’s answers make me yearn for the wholesome humor of yesterday’s dominatrix responses.

Eh-Oh Answer

“I want Tinky Winky,” who along with Dipsy, Laa Laa, and Po, as Meg Wolitzer and others know, make up the Teletubbies, those four lovable lads from Liverpool, who … no, sorry, the stars of a BBC TV show aimed at kids under 3, now airing on PBS. Kenn Viselman’s company has the rights to all Teletubbies products sold in the Americas. The debate: Should PBS be promoting toys for pre-3s? Should there even be TV shows aimed at pre-3s?

Kenn Viselman says, “Forget preschool–there has never been an entertainment property doing what this is doing. It went on the air April 6th. David Letterman mentioned it on the 7th. On the 8th, one big newspaper had it as a political cartoon, with Laa Laa up in the Dallas Book Repository shooting at Barney as he drives by in his Lincoln. Newsweek did a political cartoon, too. We’ve been on Today, and we’re going on Nightline.”

Leftovers

“I know most of the public disagrees with me. I think 10 years from now they’ll say, ‘Mayor Giuliani made the right decision.’ “–Mayor Giuliani

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