On this week’s episode of 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is Billy Ray who most-recently wrote and directed the two-part Showtime movie, The Comey Rule.  Among his many credits, he also wrote and directed Breach and Shattered Glass, and wrote Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games State of Play, Hart’s War, Volcano and Richard Jewell, among many others.
 
I actually have a funny story about one of his films, the wonderful, though little-known Shattered Glass (based on the true story of journalist Stephen Glass who wrote a wide range of admired articles for The New Republic magazine – only to have it turn out that most were fictitious).  During the Writers Guild strike a few years ago, I arrived for my assigned time and went to sign in.  As I was eating a bagel, I overheard a few people talking about actor Peter Sarsgaard.  Because he’d been Shattered Glass – as the editor, who begins to suspect his reporter – and I loved the film so much, I decided to intrude myself into their conversation.  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I heard you talking about Peter Sarsgaard.  Have you seen the movie Shattered Glass that he’s in?  He’s so good in it, and the movie is really great.”  One of the group turned to me and said, “I wrote and directed that.”  It was, yes, Billy Ray!  I can assure you, as a screenwriter, that is about the best praise a writer can get.  And as you might imagine, he was very pleased…
 

Let's head back to What's My Line? for another Mystery Guest segment.  And today, that mystery guest is Kirk Douglas.  This comes from early in the show's run -- December 20, 1953  He's a very lively guest and occasionally funny.

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the socially-distanced NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Tituss Burgess, best known for his role in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, for which he just received his fifth supporting actor nomination.  But he’s also been extensively on Broadway, among things creating the role of ‘Sebastian the Crab’ in the musical The Little Mermaid.  His interview with host Peter Sagal is brief, but personable – though most fun (and usually I don’t discuss the game part of an appearance) is how truly awful he is at the contest, even to the degree of ignoring host Sagal’s clear hints to help out.
 

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the socially-distanced NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is supermodel Tyra Banks.  Her interview with host Peter Sagal is oddly charmingly enthusiastic, as she appears to throw herself into pretty much everything – including being a lecturer at Stanford. 

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the socially-distanced NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Kellee Edwards – pilot, scuba diver, sailor and explorer – and host of the Travel Channel series, “Mysterious Islands.”  She has a fun, enthusiastic conversation with host Peter Sagal about her adventuring, survival skills – and especially being a pilot and able to fly around to different places during the pandemic.

The Mystery Guest on this segment of What's My Line? is Allan Sherman.  Long before Randy Rainbow (though without the production value), Allan Sherman didn't just have a successful career in the 1960s with his song parodies, but at the early part of that he was a true phenomenon.  When I was a kid, I went with my mother and saw him perform in concert at this height.  In fact, he even references that concert in his autobiography, A Gift of Laughter.  He's goofy and having fun here, interacting with the panel more than most guests.

But his appearance is special for another reason most people aren't aware of.  After the very long success of What's My Line?, another somewhat similar quiz show came along and had a solid, successful run, I've Got a Secret?  And why that's notable is that it was co-created by a young man starting out in the entertainment business on the production end -- Allan Sherman.

You can jump to his segment at around the 16-minute mark.

I realized that we haven't had a Quirkology video in waaaay too long here.  Quirkology is the brand of Richard Wisemen, who has performed as a magician, but his day job is as a psychologist.  In fact, he's a professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, and has written numerous books on the subject, including The Luck Factor and Quirkology. 

Quirkology are ostensibly magic tricks, but general are more optical illusions.  Because of that, he generally shows how they're done.  And he does all this in a charming, whimsical way making his little excursions treats. Many are in his "10 Amazing Bets You Can Always Win" series...which today's comes from

​​On this past Sunday, the Doonesbury strip didn't have a story like usual, but was just a collection of drawings of supposed "tweets" from the cartoon's longtime reporter, Roland B. Hedley Jr.  They were very funny, like the one which read, "Can confirm that POTUS 'barely knew' John Bolton.  Official list of people he knows well is down to three of his five children."

Each tweet said it was sent from "@realRBHJr."  And a thought eventually occurred to me -- I wondered if Garry Trudeau had registered that name as a Twitter handle and was using the Sunday strip as a way to promote it.  So, I decided to check it out and --

Sure enough, there is a very real Twitter page for the very fictitious "Roland B. Hedley, Jr."!!

As you can see above, the account has been active for a while.  But this is a prominent way to bring attention to it.  At first glance, it's certainly a bit but.  But then, since Trudeau only does a new Doonesbury cartoon once a week on Sunday, this clearly is a way that lets him comment on the news of the day immediately, and also in as easy a way as possible.  You can Follow it here.

I've read through a bunch of "Roland B. Hedley Jr.'s" tweets,, and they're very funny, such as one that dealt with professional football players taking a knee during the National Anthem.  In his tweet, Hedley reported that an emergency meeting of NFL officials to address the crisis from Trump's "Idiot Second Son" saying that football was dead to him -- "won't be happening anytime soon."   

And this is Roland's pinned tweet at the top of the page.

The other day, to augment his clueless quote about Winston Churchill, Trump told the story of Churchill going outside to stand on the roof of a building during the Blitz and broadcast a speech to the British people.  I think the fake point he was trying to make was showing how the Prime Minister tried to calm the public by showing there was no reason to panic and just stay calm and carry on.  There's just one problem with his story -- and you're probably way ahead of me here -- it's not true.  Need I say, "of course"?

It was legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow who would periodically go on the rooftop of the building CBS would broadcast from, and he would do his news report back to the United States (his famous "This...is London" broadcasts), as bombs could be heard exploding in the background.  And it wasn't done to calm anyone, but to keep people fully informed and and honest as possible.

Murrow is one of my few "heroes" in broadcasting, and I've read three biographies on him.  So, when I heard Trump telling the story about Winston Churchill, I could only cringe and shake my head.

Which is a long way to explain why I thought it would be a good time to have this clip of Edward R. Murrow as the 'Mystery Guest' segment of What's My Line?

Murrow had one of the most recognizable voices in radio and TV (in large part because of those London broadcasts), and so he works hard to disguise it.  This video comes from December, 1952 – that's notable because while Bennett Cerf is on panel, this is so early in the show's run that he's not yet in his traditional seat on far right. 

If you want to jump right to Murrow's appearance, it starts around the 16:30 mark.  Nice, too, is that after the game, he sticks around to make a nice, moving presentation afterwards

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is Cecily Strong of Saturday Night Live, who returns home to Chicago for the show.  She and host Peter Sagal discuss her work on SNL, particularly from the standpoint what appears to be her growing brand, as she puts it, playing lunatic brunette maniacs.