Alex Trebek Suffers Heart Attack
News worth an honorable mention.
ALISON STEWART, host:
Congratulations, you've made it to Wednesday, December 12th, 2007, and you're listening to THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT from NPR News. It's going to be a good day. I'm Alison Stewart.
LUKE BURBANK, host:
That is a twofer. That is a real twofer. I'm Luke Burbank.
You know, here at the BPP, we have to think of ourselves just a sort of a milk carton, you know, filled with organic goodness on the inside that can only be enjoyed by northern Europeans as we learned in the last segment.
On the outside, though, of the carton, the missing, the lost, the forgotten. No, not Amber alerts. We're talking about the news, the news where the tidbits that we like to call The Ramble.
(Soundbite of music)
STEWART: Okay, here's a new pick-up line for all you millionaires out there and maybe you want to break the sound barrier. Apparently, it's what businessmen might be able to say very soon. A company called Aereon is taking its first orders from people who want to own their very own $80 million jet. It is a version of the Concorde.
BURBANK: Mm-hmm.
STEWART: Hence the sound barrier. It's a little bit smaller. Apparently, a little bit slower but it will be the fastest available passenger aircraft knocking off three hours of normal flight time between London and New York. The test flights - you have to be a patient billionaire businessman - 2012.
BURBANK: Oh, right.
STEWART: Yeah.
BURBANK: I'd still use do you want to ride the N train? That's from my - that's the pickup line for those in public radio. That's what we came up.
STEWART: By the way, the deposit from one of those is $250,000.
BURBANK: Oh.
STEWART: They're serious.
BURBANK: Nice. Well, the Bobby Petrino era comes to an end almost before it started. He was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. He resigned after just 13 games, leaving the team almost in mid-season. This is a pretty rare thing, actually, in the NFL. Usually, they, you know, no matter how bad it's going, like, they just let them ride it out…
STEWART: Mm-hmm.
BURBANK: …until the end or they choose to ride it out until the end. But this has not been your typical season for this poor guy, Bobby Petrino. Well, poor guy, I mean, come on, he's rich. But still, when he signed up to coach the Falcons, he thought he was going to have this awesome quarterback named Michael Vick. Maybe you've heard of him. But he's Vickless Falcons are really, really bad. And just last January, he'd left Louisville, where he was head coach, to take over Atlanta. He signed a $24 million contract but don't cry for him, Argentina. Petrino was hired yesterday, near hours after quitting Atlanta. He was hired to coach the Arkansas Razorbacks.
STEWART: Mr. Music, please.
(Soundbite of "Jeopardy!" Game Show Theme)
BURBANK: This stresses me out.
STEWART: Who has suffered a minor heart attack this week?
(Soundbite of "Jeopardy!" Game Show Theme)
BURBANK: Mm-hmm.
STEWART: Minor heart attack this week - game show host - backward, dang it.
(Soundbite of "Jeopardy!" Game Show Theme)
STEWART: The answer is who is Alex Trebek.
(Soundbite of "Jeopardy!" Game Show Theme)
BURBANK: This is why unlike editor Trish McKinney, three-time "Jeopardy!" champion.
STEWART: That's true. Well, anyway, the moral of this story is I can't do a joke. And 67-year-old Alex Trebek is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital, but it's not clear when he'll be released. Are you concerned about this, Trish?
BURBANK: Probably.
STEWART: I mean, he's your buddy and you've got a great picture.
BURBANK: Yes.
TRISH McKINNEY: Yeah. You know, he's - I have to say super, super nice guy. You know, when I was on the show, I was a little, like, what Alex Trebek be like. I was a little worried. He's super nice and lovely and so I wish him all the best.
BURBANK: And what…
McKINNEY: And I can't even be on the show again.
BURBANK: Did he…
McKINNEY: So I'm like angling to get back on.
BURBANK: Did he - look, did you have an awesome story when he did that little chat. Probably you have that bad one.
McKINNEY: No. I had the worse story.
BURBANK: What was your best memory (unintelligible)?
McKINNEY: It's like things work at me and work at me and I just could not come up with anything good.
BURBANK: What do you suggest?
McKINNEY: I ended up, like, doing one where we made fun of the name of my hometown, Callicoon, New York. I can't even remember what the other ones where. It was painful.
BURBANK: Did he do his famous Trebekian thing, which whenever he doesn't quite know what to react, he goes, I'm not going to go there?
McKINNEY: You know…
BURBANK: That's my new catch phrase for myself.
McKINNEY: …I might have gotten a little of that. Yeah.
BURBANK: Okay.
McKINNEY: You know.
BURBANK: We're going to leave that alone.
McKINNEY: I thought that, it's, like, you know, as a television professional at the time, I felt that I wasn't given him what I needed. But there you go.
BURBANK: Well, thank you very much, Trish, and we were all honored by your great success on that show.
Now, to a story that I was reading in the car today driving into work and it was a total jaw-dropper. So the Bronx Family Court…
STEWART: Someone else is driving.
BURBANK: Yes. Yes. Yes.
STEWART: I just want to make that clear.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BURBANK: Yes. My good friend Felipe. For like the last year at the Bronx Family Court, the elevators have been under construction. It's an old building anyway. They have four elevators and two of them, they've been sort of intermittently working on two of them at a time. And, apparently, according to the New York Times - this is a great, great piece of reporting by them - the line just to get in the elevator and go up to the seventh or eight floor where the actual family court hearing area is…
STEWART: Mm-hmm.
BURBANK: …the line could be one, two hours. And here's the thing, I'm like, well, I'll just take the stairs. You're not allowed to take the stairs because they are not secure. They don't have video cameras in there and there are some problems with taking strollers up. So your choice is basically get there two hours in advance and wait to take an elevator up. And they mentioned this one woman who's there to try to get custody of her daughter back and she shows up and she's in line and she's - it's a two-hour line and she's calling the court and the court is saying we can't wait any longer. We're really sorry. We'll put you on - you know, the next time we can get you in which is in January, like, months later.
STEWART: Oh, my.
BURBANK: You can't see your daughter because the elevators don't work at the court?
STEWART: Broken system, not just broken elevators on that front.
BURBANK: Anyway. So hopefully, this story - I'm predicting this is going to be like the most e-mailed story on the Times.
STEWART: All right.
BURBANK: I bet you're going to be hearing about it and maybe they'll be able to get something else work out there.
That on a slightly ranty note is The Ramble.
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