BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Adam Burke, Roxanne Roberts and Tom Bodette. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now, it's time for the WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.
PAUL MALONEY: Hi, this is Paul Maloney from Bloomington, Ind.
SAGAL: Hey, Paul. How are you?
MALONEY: I'm doing great. How are you?
SAGAL: I'm fine. Now, what do you do there in Bloomington?
MALONEY: I'm presently a master's student at Bloomington IU. I am a student in ceramics, studying fine art.
SAGAL: Oh, really? So you're going to become a potter?
MALONEY: I am a potter. I'm also a sculptor and a painter as well.
SAGAL: Well, that's very cool. And is using a potter's wheel as sexy as it appeared to be in the movie "Ghost?"
(LAUGHTER)
MALONEY: I don't know about all that, but I do enjoy it a lot. It is really enjoyable.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Paul. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Paul's topic?
KURTIS: Ho-ho-ho 2.0.
SAGAL: Christmas is pretty old-fashioned. Santa's sleigh still uses a terribly inefficient reindeer power - most elves still on MySpace. But this week...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: ...We read about something that truly and finally brings Christmas into the 21st century. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess that real story, you will win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail, wishing you the happiest of holidays. You ready to play?
MALONEY: I am.
SAGAL: First, let's hear from Mr. Adam Burke.
ADAM BURKE: What better way to bring a personal touch to your Yuletide festivities than with your very own family manger scent. That's right - Dallas-based 3-D printing service Nativime will customize a manger populated with Christmas figures designed to look like members of your family.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Simply send the company 360-degree image of each of your family members' heads and Nativime will 3-D sculpt clothes and pose figurines that place you in the role of Joseph, Mary or even Balthazar if you're feeling particularly wise the season.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Not everyone is crazy about it. Christian Science Monitor columnist Pastor Ethan Carter said, I'm not really sure that it doesn't cheapen the whole mystery and majesty of the birth of our savior. While it's true we don't know exactly what the biblical Joseph looked like, I think it's safe to say he didn't resemble your uncle Ted.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: There have even been online protests on the company's Facebook page as people fear the technology could be used to create a same-sex couple around that crib in Bethlehem.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Nativime spokesperson Roger Dennison said, we haven't really gotten any requests for that, and we're not really expecting to. We just thought this would be a fun unique thing for people to have in their home. Dennison did confirm, however, that they have completed several scenes in which the traditional sheep and [expletive] have been replaced with domesticated family pets, such as cats, dogs and even a Portuguese pot-bellied pig.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You can be there in Bethlehem with the custom-made manger starring your own family. Your next story of Christmas updated comes from Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: I want to say that personally, I like my Santa's fat, happy and generous. But Yorkdale Shopping Centre, an upscale mall in Toronto, has a new version of St. Nick - Fashion Santa. Paul Mason, a slim handsome model with a white beard has been tapped to bring a modern touch to holiday shopping. There's Fashion Santa in a plaid jacket and scarf, Fashion Santa in a red leather jacket snapping a selfie. And is that Fashion Santa in tight black jeans? You betcha - all the better to slide down that chimney.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Fashion Santa has gone viral, much to the delight of the mall's marketing director. And yes, there's a line for nice and naughty girls to meet Fashion Santa in person. Quote - "I had an elderly woman take a photo with me the other day who couldn't stop giggling," Mason told The Guardian. "She said she hadn't taken a photo with Santa since she was 6 years old. You can check him out yourself at #YorkdaleFashionSanta.
SAGAL: Fashion Santa, bringing the sex to Christmas.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Your last story of a very modern holiday comes from Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: For Todd Mandell and Richard Wyzanski, abducting live healthy trees from some idyllic farm, trucking them to empty lots in the city to be sold to people who drag them into their cramped apartments where they slowly die over a period of weeks had become intolerable, like gluten and peanuts.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: So with indignation as the mother of invention, they put their media chops to work developing a 3-D holographic projector that will place the image of a Christmas tree in the middle of any room you choose. The built-in app comes with dozens of classic Christmas tree images, including a selection from Rockefeller Plaza and the White House lawn. Or scan a photo of a personal favorite from Christmases past. "At first, we had slowly bleed out to imitate an actual tree dying in your living room," said Mandell. But then we realized that was like watching some kind of holiday snuff film, and we cut that from the program.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: The trees will be blink, jiggle and even have entire sections go dark for no apparent reason...
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: ...Then come back on just as mysteriously for that real I-did-it-myself-tree experience. When the image sheds and shatters a glass ornament in the full Dolby sound around, it seems so real, you'll want to throw your shoe at the cat.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, somewhere in this futuristic year 2015, somebody is celebrating the holiday of Christmas in one of these modern ways. Is it from Adam - people making mangers with a 3-D printer that puts them right next to the crash, from Roxanne - a male model known as Fashion Santa, who's giving extra-special thrills to the people who want to sit in his lap, or from Tom Bodett - a holographic Christmas tree that gives you all the pleasures of a real Christmas tree with none of the cleanup. Which of these is the real story of an au courant Christmas?
MALONEY: I'm going to go with Adam's story of that Nativime?
SAGAL: Nativime - that's what it's called.
MALONEY: Is that the one? Yeah.
SAGAL: That's the one where you, of course, you know, send in your pictures that make little crashes where you can be whoever. I imagine your favorite child gets to be baby Jesus. That's your choice.
MALONEY: Yeah, I'll stick with story one. I'll go with Adam's story.
SAGAL: You're going to go with Adam's story. Well, we spoke with someone very deeply involved with the real story.
PAUL MASON: Ho-ho-ho, I guess what it is it's just a combination of being a model and growing this beard and having, you know, the image of Santa, it just took off.
SAGAL: That was Fashion Santa himself, also known as Paul Mason. And I was going to say you should go his site and look at him. But I'm not sure people should do that unless they want their feelings about Santa Claus changed forever.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Nonetheless, as delightful as it was to hear from him, sadly, it means that in fact Roxanne was telling the truth. You did not pick her story, so you didn't win our game. But you did win, Adam, an excellent idea. And I think you guys came up with a wonderful business idea, to tell you the truth.
MALONEY: Oh, it's a collaboration already.
SAGAL: All right, thank you so much for playing.
MALONEY: Thank you very much.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
MALONEY: Bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SANTA BABY")
EARTHA KITT: (Singing) Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree for me, been an awful good girl, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.