Bernadette Peters Comes Up Twice In One Day

COLUMBUS, OH—In an incident observers are calling “kinda weird,” mid-level celebrity Bernadette Peters’ name came up twice Monday in separate conversations had by Columbus resident Chris Loew. “At like noon, I forget what brought it up, but me and this guy Rich were talking about that one part in The Jerk where Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sing that song,” Loew, a 22-year-old pizza-delivery driver, told reporters. “Then, like five hours later, me and my buddy Dave were vegging out, watching Animaniacs, and he was like, ’Did you know that Bernadette Peters does the voice for Rita?’ It was so freaky.” Adding significantly to the freakiness, Loew said, was a narrowly averted triple-referencing of Peters at approximately 11:30 p.m.: “Me, Jeff and Josh were gonna watch [the Peters film] Silent Movie, but we wound up playing Sega instead. That would have been insane.” Pop-culture statisticians estimate the odds of a single-day triple-Peters reference to be 4,750,000 to 1.