June 13, 2026 • 35 mins
What do a touchdown, a dinger, and a game-winning basket have in common? The clap! On this Saturday edition of the Fifth Hour Podcast, Ben Maller explores the strange origins of clapping and how this universal tradition has evolved over time. Plus, a routine meal-prep session at the Maller Mansion turns into Benny's Burrito Russian Roulette, a culinary cliffhanger packed with suspense, laughs, and questionable decisions. Random knowledge, oddball stories, and weekend fun. Subscribe, follow, and enjoy!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kabooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mallor and you, we are together again. It is a Saturday.
The Audio Sweatshop does not close. We are open every
single day, every single day. On this edition of The
Fifth Hour, the Saturday Special, We've got the Clapper and
(00:52):
Fear Factor. The Clapper and Fear Factor, we begin, Actually,
I don't even want to begin with that. I want
to begin with the NBA, which is tonight. Is this
the last game of the NBA Finals as they will
resume activities on this thirteenth day of June. Here tonight,
San Antonio the home team, after absolutely gagging. There's got
(01:16):
to be something higher than the vomit comet, the Duke
of puke Wemby and the San Antonio Spurs and his
partner in crime, Darren Fox. Now, I looked at the
gambling numbers and the last numbers I saw as of
last night, as of Friday night, the Spurs were favored
on DraftKings. I think it was like five five and
(01:38):
a half points, something like that. And so then what
I did is I looked at the gambling money, like
the percentage of money the public bet versus the wise guys,
the professional gamblers, and the public is all over all over.
The Knicks say this is over. The next are guaranteed
to win, and it certainly looks that way based on
(01:59):
the body language. I mean, what a steaming pile of
you know what the Spurs played like. And at the
end I mentioned this. I did a monologue about that
game back what was it Wednesday? And to Thursday, and
we pointed out that I saw I forget who it was,
and I wish I had jotted down their number. The
surrender cobra. I saw the surrender cobra, which is normally
(02:22):
something you see from fans. When you see it from
a player on the team, it makes you go hmm,
makes you go home. Anyway, the Spurs favored at home
the public and the wise guy's a little slight lean
more toward the public, towards the public over the Knicks.
And how many celebrities do you think Taylor Swift's going
to show up to San Antonio? No, that's not a
(02:43):
big enough location, right, she can't go to San Antonio.
Spike Lee already had a couple of joyous moments the
other night, and I think the Knicks already celebrate. How
are they going to? Are the fans? I don't know
about the players. The fans celebrated so much the other night,
it were still set up for a tres choked up Now.
I don't think that's going to happen. The way the
(03:03):
Spurs have played and performed and made a bunch of
bonehead plays in this NBA Finals, double digit leads in
every game. They definitely blew two two of the games
they've lost. Now, you can say the first game, that opener,
when the Knicks scored the final eleven points, said, okay, fine,
the Knicks were better down the stretch, and you give
(03:24):
them credit. However, Wemby in Game two missing the wide
open shot and that would have won the game for
San Antonio, and then the game obviously the night in
New York where it was twenty nine point lead. Never
before had a team choked as much as the San
Antonio Spurs choked in that game. Now, meanwhile, the clapper.
(03:49):
So my mind is wired in an odd ways. I
was watching the people go crazy, all the one percenters,
all the celebrity fans of the Knicks out there, Ben
Stiller and Jerry Seinfeld and all these Bandwagon fans like
Taylor Swift and all that, just having a fine, fine time, right,
(04:09):
just having a great time. And the Nick fans rhythmically
chanting from Nixon four to yelling at the referees to
Nicks Nixon five, you know that old thing. And just
the whole clapping process, the history of clapping, like the
evolutionary origins of the clap, clap on, clap, off the clapper,
(04:32):
which was a great infomercial back in the day. And
so the Science Commune I fell down a rabbit hole.
And the belief among those that have actually paid attention.
You imagine going to college, becoming a person that studies
life and humanity and you're like, my, specially he's gonna
be on clapping, clapping? What is that?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Anyway, the clapping they say dates back to prehistoric, are
prehistoric brothers and sisters, ancestors, long before language, before people
didn't know how to talk because there was no language.
And early human beings, the belief among the science people
is they clapped loudly to catch attention of your fellow
(05:14):
human being. Also, if you wanted to signal I'm a
little uneasy here, this is not a great situation and
you're a little nervous, you could clap. Also as a
predator to try to intimidate your fellow neanderthal. Back in
the early days, you could your rival or a predator,
(05:35):
you could clap. You could also similar to like waving hands,
you can draw attention from people. So it's kind of
obvious stuff with the clap, and it is one of
those things that's considered universal among all humans, which again
you say, well, it's just kind of a basic thing.
(05:56):
There nearly every culture that has been examined in the
history of time, and every known culture uses some form
of clapping for communication. And the psychologists say there's different types.
There's I believe four different types of clapping. Yeah, four motivational.
(06:21):
That's the one we are dealing with here with sports,
right you're trying to motivate the players on the court
or the field or whatever. So you're clapping. You're trying
to encourage them, which is partly the reason that I
fell into this. Then there's the rhythmic clapping, which I love,
which is not as good as rhythmic chanting. But the
rhythmic clapping is awesome. You feel it in your bones.
(06:43):
You're like, I liked it. This is great, right, And
so if you go to a concert, you do the
rhythmic clapping and all that. And then there's also after
somebody speaks, right the formal event dinner speech. You're at
a word function and the keynote speaker gets up there,
you're supposed to clap. That's the proper protocol. And also
(07:06):
just in general, they say showing gratitude or admiration for
a job well done. So that is the human universal
activity of clapping. And there's more. But wait, there's more.
There are biblical references. It's in the Bible. There's biblical
(07:27):
references here clapping as celebration. It's in the Bible from
around the sixth century BCE. They even say that the
ancient Greeks, way back they often stamped feet for approval, right,
And they'd also clap, so they'd hop up and down,
(07:50):
banging their feet, and they'd clap rowdy, not the mascot rowdy,
but just rowdy. And the Romans, not only the Greeks,
the Romans used applaw. They had variations like finger snapping
for kind of a milder like you were good, you
weren't that good, so we're not going to give you
the full clap, We're gonna snap our fingers. And then well,
(08:14):
also they waved handkerchiefs and togas if they really really
like something, those wild Romans, they just would wave the toga.
Weren't they wearing the toga at the time, So I
don't know anyway, just applause and celebration and all that.
(08:35):
And then over time the behavior changed, they estimated according
to I was reading this long story about this, which
I didn't even know was a thing that there's actually
you can just google it and there's a bunch of
things that come up. But in the eighteenth slash nineteenth centuries,
the Science World says it was common to applaud a
(08:59):
a me performance right mid performance. Mozart noted enthusiastic mid
piece clapping, meaning that right in the middle of the show,
you go crazy, right you're you're all that's great. It
would be the equivalent of randomly in an NFL game,
(09:22):
it's the middle of the third quarter and your team's
driving down the field and you just go gaga. You
just go crazy. You go crazy, and you're like, that's
what of course today, if you do that, that is
that is frowned upon. It's a bad job by you.
What are you doing? You can't do that, Shame on you.
(09:48):
And uh So the story also they go into some detail.
They don't know the exact prehistoric timeline. It's all just spitballing.
It's all just throwing spaghetti against the wall and all that.
Again the point, it's just this instinctive, animalistic thing that's
(10:09):
deeply rooted in who we are. So there you go.
That's pretty much everything I learned about clapping. I know
nothing else. Next week we'll have to study booing and
the history of the boo. I feel like we've done
some of that on this podcast over the years, we've
gone down boo road. However, we haven't done it a
(10:32):
long time. This podcast has been off for like seven
years now. That's a fair amount of time. That's a
good amount. We have a good archive here as my
guy Lucky Tony in the Bay Area has gone through
some of those old episodes of this show. We're on
our third I think we're on our third different podcast
partner we had back for a long time. We had
(10:56):
Danny Well, we had Danny g that was the most
recent and before him, Gagone David Gascon who retired to Florida.
He's doing really well. He's playing some shuffle board and
a lot of loves cards, loves playing cards in the
park and painting. So things are going well there for
gag On as he's retired there in Florida. And now
(11:18):
we have Bri and my woman Brie there, she's the
podcast partner here and very busy. We got to get
her on the mail bag. One of these weeks we're
gonna get Bri on the mail bag. So anyway, moving
on from that, we now go to the Life of Malor.
Does it get any better than the Life of Malor? Yes,
(11:39):
it does a lot better, a lot better. So I
spend I was doing some inventory the other day on
like what do I do with my life? Most of
my life is dedicated to the radio show and putting
the show together. And I produce the show, and I
do the monologues and all that stuff that takes up
(12:00):
most of my time to get everything ready for the
show fine, And then the rest of my time I'm
watching sports, which is related to the radio show. And
I also spend a rather shocking amount of my life
doing food prep. Now I still run into people. I've
done a lot of these meet and greets, and I
(12:23):
love the fact that there's a very small percentage of
the listener not you per se other people that listen
who are convinced that this is some kind of glamorous
life that we are leading. They think that there's still
(12:43):
some magic in the radio business. And like you're hanging
out backstage at concerts with celebrities, you're drinking expensive booze,
you're making power moves. Of course, the reality is something
much different. For example, this past Saturday, it's Saturday today,
but last Saturday, let's go back in the hot tup
(13:05):
time machine. And this is how we spend most of
my Saturday nights. While America is out committing all kinds
of debauchery and regrettable acts, whether it be at clubs, bars,
out on the streets, you name it. I am often
standing in the Malor mansion in the kitchen staring at
(13:28):
a tower of chicken bock bock chicken that needs to
be rotated. Now that is not a metaphorical tower. I
am talking an actual tower of chicken. Every week, I
cook on the weekends for the following week, cook for
me and the wife. And what we have done now
(13:50):
is we alternate. One week will be ground beef, and
I'll make a bunch of ground beef and all that,
and then the next week is chicken. Now we normally
make a version of chicken swarma. Now this is not
approved by anyone. It's our version of chicken sharma. So
when I do the ground beef, just bear with me.
(14:11):
When I cook the ground beef, it's manageable. Ground beef
is what I call a low maintenance food. It's a
good friend who says, listen, don't worry about me. This
is easy. You throw it in a pan, you turn
the you put some oil in there, you turn the
stove on. Mix in a few onions and I like
bell pepper and some garlic, add some seasoning and boom,
(14:35):
you're good. Just let that thing. Cook for a little bit.
You're ready to go. Now, chicken shwarma. Our version of
chicken sharma, meanwhile, is as as about a needy food
dish as it gets. So the process with the sharma,
and this is what I made the past week. The
process with the warma begins with obviously seasoning the chicken.
(14:57):
You have to pound the chicken so it's it's thin.
You season it, You marinate the chicken. You then have
to leave it marinating for a few hours at least,
if not overnight. Then stack the chicken on the special
schwarma type tray thing that we got. Now, since we
don't actually run a Mediterranean restaurant, this is not a
(15:20):
real spit. You know how they have the spit if
you've been to have the chicken schwarm o where they
spin it and they shave it. No, this is this
is a thing that has a metal pole in the
middle of it. You stack the chicken and you have
to manually rotate the chicken. And I've studied this over
the We've had this thing for about a year so months.
(15:43):
I don't think it's been quite twelve months, but close
to it. Who cares. So you know this is what
you do. And so you got to rotate the chicken
every so often, and so I spent a lot of
my time staring at the chicken to see if it
needs to be rotated. The entire production on a Saturday
night take somewhere between three and four hours. This is
(16:05):
the volume of chicken, the quantity of chicken that we
are that we're making, because we got to We had
to get it for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I'm
off on Friday night, so we don't really worry about that,
and the wife sometimes works more than that. So yeah,
we get everything there, all the chicken marinated and all that,
and stack the chicken and then rotate the chicken, and
(16:30):
then we have to do it about every thirty minutes
or so. The entire the entire deal, though is you know,
it's long like if NASA ever needs someone to monitor
a slow moving spacecraft, I am now qualified. I am
now ready to go. So put me in coach. I
(16:52):
am ready to play. And again every thirty minutes, I
rotate the chicken one hundred and eighty degrees. And then
later about ninety minutes into the process, I start shaving
off that crispy, delicious outer exterior, like I'm giving the
(17:13):
bird a haircut, and that's really good, crispy, solid, proper
amount of seasoning. And there's this it's like the goldilock zone.
And if you've cooked, you know what I'm talking about, Like,
there's a point where it's just perfect. It's not too
well done, it's not undercooked, it's perfect and you can
see the sparkle and there you go. So I cut
(17:35):
away that layer and then I apply more marinade, more seasoning,
and I toss that chicken shwarma plate back in the
oven and for another round. And this goes on and
on and on. This chicken receives more attention than most
professional athletes. And by the time it's finished, I will
(17:57):
have enough schwarma meat to feed a medium sized village
somewhere far far away, or one gas bag and his
wife for four or five days. So the payoff is
during the week. The payoff is during the week. All
I have to do is reheat the chicken. Now I
(18:19):
have to add a little onion and bell pepper. I
do that with the beef. When I cook it the chicken,
I make just chicken. And then you can add those
are add on items. Much like our friend in Minnesota
who complains you didn't do the rundown. What is right?
That's an add on item. So the side dish is
(18:39):
an add on item. So I'll cook, chop some onion,
bell pepper, garlic, and mix that in and pretend that
I'm operating some kind of malard Mediterranean restaurant. It's a
ghost kitchen, if you will. So this past week, I
know you're happy to know, was Benny Burrito Week. Yeah,
(19:00):
very exciting. Have you ever heard of Benny Burrito weeks?
So this is my new Michigas. I had purchased these
oversized restaurant style tortillas, and I don't want to embellish this. Okay, However,
the size of this tortilla large enough to use as
(19:21):
a floatation device. If there's a flash flood, I will
not drown. In fact, I could take this tortilla and
float out to Hawaii. If I get into the current
just the right way, I can just sit on the
delicious restaurant style tortilla and make my way all the
way to Kauai. That's it, And every evening I have
(19:45):
about thirty five minutes to eat and I make the
same thing during the week. The ritual is chop the onion,
the bell pepper, the garlic. I like to caramel caramelize that,
and that's a fancy way of saying, adding some sugar.
And then I have the chicken. I mix some cheese
in there, some sauce wrapped that bad boy towrdtilla. And
(20:07):
I've got this down where Henry Ford would be impressed
with my ability to handle the assembly line dining. Like
supposedly Henry Ford invented the assembly line, and I have
mastered the culinary assembly line. In fact, I am ready
now to be a line cook. I am prepared to
be a line cook, and that may be the way
(20:27):
I go. So then came what historians will someday referred
to as the incident as Benny Burrito Week had some sudden,
unexpected drama. Now what was this, you ask? So again,
this is I know I'm going way too into the
(20:49):
weeds here. So I heated up the chicken. I had
had the onions, I already caramelized those and the bell pepper,
and then I added some more black pepper, and I
made it how I wanted it, and I built what
appeared to be a magnificent burrito. I'm talking restaurant quality burrito.
(21:10):
There were layers and layers and layers. This had architectural integrity.
I'm qualified now to make blueprints for a building. If
I can make a burrito like this, imagine how cool
the building is. So anyway, I slid the burrito into
the air fryer. I like to heat the brito up
even more in the air fryer. I set the timer
(21:31):
for a few minutes, and whilet cooked, I began the
domestic routine of cleaning all the stuff that I took
out to make said burrito. So I'm putting away the
sauce that I used. I'm putting away the pots and
the pants and the cheese. And this is where things
took a turn to the wild side, to the dark side,
(21:53):
to the fuzzy side. So I'm grabbing this stuff. And
I grabbed the cheese, and you kind of look at
it with this kind of a side eye. You're not
really looking at it. You're just like, Okay, I got
to put this stuff away. This should go back in
the refrigerator. So I grabbed the cheese. It was not
bree cheese. It was not it was. It was Swiss cheese.
So I grabbed the Swiss cheese, and I'm not really
(22:14):
paying that close attention. It seemed fine whatever, And then
I noticed a thing in the corner of a slice
of the Swiss cheese that looked fuzzy, and in my
head only, well, maybe i'm imagining that. I'm pretty sure
that the Swiss cheese does not come with hair, and
you know, not a little fuzz by the way, This
(22:35):
is kind of fuzz that suggests you might need to
go to the barber shop. The cheese had either gone
through puberty or had begun exploring a new career and
opportunities as a science project. So then I froze for
a moment, because the burritos cooking, everything became very quiet.
(22:56):
I kept examining the fuzzy cheese like a detective arriving
at the crime scene. You tape it off and you're
looking at it. The mold on the Swiss cheese. It
occupied a section. It was near the upper left hand side,
near the edge, and the rest of the body of
(23:17):
the cheese appeared perfectly fine. It was that upper corner.
And despite this, I immediately realized the horrifying truth that
some of this cheese, likely the piece of cheese touching
the furry piece of cheese had already made its way
inside Benny's burrito. Not much, granted it wasn't I just
(23:40):
put one piece in. It was enough enough, mind you,
to create some uncertainty. And that is where the panic
at the burrito came in. Not panic at the disco,
panic at the brito. So I stood there, and the
air fryer's going it, the timer's ticking down. I'm staring
(24:02):
at the airfire. I'm looking at the basket as if
it's containing a live hand grenade, and it's a grenade
for my stomach. And what followed was a game show
scenario where I imagined the booming announcer voice on this
like nineteen nineties early two thousands game show saying welcome
(24:24):
to Benny's Burrito, Russian Roulette style. On The crowd claps,
because that's what we all do as human beings. We clap.
The lights flash, The host comes out wearing a suit,
starts smiling, says Behind door number one, Ben throws away
the burrito and starts over polite applause. Behind door number two,
(24:46):
Ben eats the burrito, potentially spends the evening over the
commode discovering new dimensions of gastro intestinal distress, and the
audience gasps, and the host pauses dramatically, and the drama builds.
(25:06):
Which will he choose? And there's a clock ticking down.
And at this point I conducted a full risk assessment
the internal narrator. We all have that narration in our heads.
So the narrator started working a little extra and I'm
going through the options again. I'm like, okay, So again
(25:27):
A is start over. Now this sounds reasonable when you
first hear let's just start over. There's some possible furry
cheese in there, so it sounds reasonable until you grasp
that I had already used most of the available onion
and bell pepper, which meant starting over would be a
lesser quality burrito and would also mean more chopping and
(25:51):
trying to find other things to put in there, which
was a inconvenience. So that was option A. Option B
was to just man up, and I'll rub some dirt
on it and eat the burrito. The potential reward included
saving time avoiding wasting food, because even if there was
(26:11):
some furry cheese in there. Ninety nine percent of the
brito was fine. It was just one piece of swize. Now,
the consequences of option B include nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea,
a lot of regret, self loathing, and again that intimate
(26:31):
relationship with the porta potty. And then there was briefly
an option see attempt to surgically remove the questionable cheese.
In military terms, they call it meatball surgery. This would
be burrito surgery. Now that was quickly abandoned because the
burrito had already entered a stage of development where any
(26:55):
attempt of extraction would have been fatal to the burrito.
I would have resembled an archaeological dig and it just
would not have worked. So I stood there calculating the
probabilities that use some malor math, and people often say, listen,
in life, you can't just do the mundane. You have
to take risks. Now, I would think those people think
(27:19):
that taking risk involves like real risk, like climbing a
mountain that might have a grizzly bear, or skydiving, jumping
out of the plane, running with the bulls in Pamplona,
swimming with sharks somewhere off the coast, of Africa. My
version involved deciding whether a slightly moltly piece of Swiss
(27:41):
cheese would destroy my digestive system. And I'm thinking about it,
I'm processing everything and all that stuff. And this is
what happens when you get older. Like the steaks remain high,
the subject matter changes. For you young lads out there. When
you're twenty five, your fears revolve around careal failure. For years,
(28:04):
when I got into radio, I was like, oh, I'm
not gonna make it a radio I'm gonna have fake
a real job and I'm not gonna make it. I'm
i gonna make it. And I've been in radio so
long now I'm like, well, I've already made it, so
even if I get whacked, I'll just go get another job.
But I've had the career. I've had a better career
that I couldn't have possibly hoped for when I got
into radio. Not that I'm looking to leave anytime soon.
I'd like to keep doing this, however, again at my age, though,
(28:25):
the age I'm at now, you're wondering if a dairy
product is plotting against you, and that hair was gonna
plot up in your stomach and grow some other fungus
and all that. Anyway, the the timer beep, the burrito
was ready to come out of the air fryer, and
I opened the tray and it looked magnificent, magnificent, just wonderful,
(28:49):
golden brown on the outside, little cheese on top, perfectly crisp.
It was Instagram ready. It was Instagram ready, completely unaware
of the controversy surrounding its existence. And I looked at
that burrito, and that burrito looked back at me, and
(29:12):
at least this is how I remember it, and so
I chose Option B. I said, I'm gonna ride and
die with this delicious burrito. That's gonna be my move.
No retreat, no surrender. I'm not throwing in the sponge.
If this was fear Factor, Joe Rogan was going, whoa,
he did it? He did it because I'd go by
the original fear Factor. I guess they brought the show back.
(29:33):
I didn't watch it, so I think one of the
guys from Jackasses On or something like that. I'm og though,
with fear factor eating bugs, eating bugs. So if this
was a medical emergency waiting to happen, I was willing
to accept the consequences. So I put the burrito down,
I had my drink, I sat down to watch the
Knicks play the Spurs. Now, the first bite of Benny's
(29:55):
burrito was excellent. The second bite was all also marvelous.
The third bite was accompanied by some mild paranoia. Every
stomach gurgle. When you're eating a burrito that may may
contain some fur, you start becoming suspicious. I know that
(30:20):
Alf the Alien opinter agrees with me on this, and
possibly fer Dog. Every hiccup felt somewhat significant, and I
spent most of that NBA Finals game the other night
conducting internal surveillance surveillance if you will, here is everything
working right? Is this the proper is this proper digestion?
(30:41):
Is this indigestion coming? Is there going to be gas?
All of that? Was this going to be the beginning
of the end? I had a radio show to do
that night. Would I not be able to do the show?
And it turned out? Nothing happened at that point. The
fourth quarter arrived and still nothing. The only barf bag
that happened from Mana Zuma's revenge was done by Wemby
(31:03):
dearon Fox and the Spurs, blowing that twenty nine point League.
So then the postgame show arrived with Charles Shack, Kenny Smith,
Ernie Johnson, and some NBA guy. I forget, who's some loser.
The next morning arrived and nothing and no nausea, no vomiting,
(31:26):
no cramps, no emergencies. Sprint down the hallway. Benny Burrito
had been conquered. Or perhaps the burrito had never been
the enemy. Maybe the real danger was my imagination. And
I have noticed this pattern throughout much of my life,
that most disasters exist only in our heads. In fact,
(31:50):
I read that years ago. I read this study from
some university in Cincinnati. They said eighty five percent of
the things that we worry about in life don't come true.
It's the other fifteen percent that are a real bitch,
you know, a real just horrible thing. And you think
about it, it's fifteen percent. It's a one to fifty
(32:11):
batting average. If you were in the ninth inning of
the World Series and a one fifty hitter came up,
you're nursing a one run lead. You wouldn't be too concerned.
Unless that guy is a backup infielder for the Dodgers
and you're the Toronto Blue Jays and then he hit
a home run. Yeah, I know, too soon for our
(32:32):
friends in Canada. Truly, we spent hours worrying about outcomes
that often never arrive, never ever. And granted, sometimes moldy
cheese really does make people sick, and sometimes it's just
a fuzzy patch of a block of Swiss cheese that
transforms just an ordinary night during the week into a
(32:56):
personal episode of let's make a deal. Let's make it
which curtain are you going to pick? And so there's
lessons in that right. First lesson is inspect your cheese
more carefully. Second lesson, never underestimate the dramatic possibilities of
a kitchen cleanup. That's somewhat important. And third, if you're
(33:18):
going to gamble, do it with a burrito while watching
an NBA Finals game at the Malor Mansion with the
toilet right next door, because if things go badly, and
they don't often go badly, and they do go badly,
at least you'll have something to distract you while waiting
for the bodily functions to kick in. So the story
(33:43):
had a happy ending. We didn't break the Internet still
one of the more popular stories that we've told on
the podcast. Is when I had my gallbladder out and
I was out walking around the neighborhood, the old house
out in the San Gabriel Valley where I used to
live in LA and we were walking around, and this
was during the pandemic. I had my gallbladder taken out
(34:04):
right before the pandemic, and I was walking and I'd
eaten some food earlier and I had to go to
the bathroom. I thought I had enough time to make
it back to the home toilet, and at some point
I was about halfway back and I realized I am
not going to make it, like this is going to
end badly, and I was like, do I go in
(34:25):
the woods and just poop right there in the woods?
And then I remember there was a public bathroom that
I thought maybe open. Remember during the pandemic, even the
public bathrooms were closed. So I made it to the
park and sure enough the bathroom was open. And you
can go back and hear the episode. Let's just say
I did not handle the situation well. When I was
(34:47):
in the bathroom, it got a little messy. Well leave
it at that. I don't want to ruin the rest
of your Saturday. Have a wonderful glorious day, and we'll
have the mail bag on Sunday. And I'm not completely
giving up on the Spurs. I feel like they're toast.
I would love to see them win and put the
(35:09):
pressure on the Knicks to win that game at home
and not have to go back to San Antonio. We'll
see what happens tonight. And as Dick and Dayton would say,
bye bye, bye bye,
Kabooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mallor and you, we are together again. It is a Saturday.
The Audio Sweatshop does not close. We are open every
single day, every single day. On this edition of The
Fifth Hour, the Saturday Special, We've got the Clapper and
(00:52):
Fear Factor. The Clapper and Fear Factor, we begin, Actually,
I don't even want to begin with that. I want
to begin with the NBA, which is tonight. Is this
the last game of the NBA Finals as they will
resume activities on this thirteenth day of June. Here tonight,
San Antonio the home team, after absolutely gagging. There's got
(01:16):
to be something higher than the vomit comet, the Duke
of puke Wemby and the San Antonio Spurs and his
partner in crime, Darren Fox. Now, I looked at the
gambling numbers and the last numbers I saw as of
last night, as of Friday night, the Spurs were favored
on DraftKings. I think it was like five five and
(01:38):
a half points, something like that. And so then what
I did is I looked at the gambling money, like
the percentage of money the public bet versus the wise guys,
the professional gamblers, and the public is all over all over.
The Knicks say this is over. The next are guaranteed
to win, and it certainly looks that way based on
(01:59):
the body language. I mean, what a steaming pile of
you know what the Spurs played like. And at the
end I mentioned this. I did a monologue about that
game back what was it Wednesday? And to Thursday, and
we pointed out that I saw I forget who it was,
and I wish I had jotted down their number. The
surrender cobra. I saw the surrender cobra, which is normally
(02:22):
something you see from fans. When you see it from
a player on the team, it makes you go hmm,
makes you go home. Anyway, the Spurs favored at home
the public and the wise guy's a little slight lean
more toward the public, towards the public over the Knicks.
And how many celebrities do you think Taylor Swift's going
to show up to San Antonio? No, that's not a
(02:43):
big enough location, right, she can't go to San Antonio.
Spike Lee already had a couple of joyous moments the
other night, and I think the Knicks already celebrate. How
are they going to? Are the fans? I don't know
about the players. The fans celebrated so much the other night,
it were still set up for a tres choked up Now.
I don't think that's going to happen. The way the
(03:03):
Spurs have played and performed and made a bunch of
bonehead plays in this NBA Finals, double digit leads in
every game. They definitely blew two two of the games
they've lost. Now, you can say the first game, that opener,
when the Knicks scored the final eleven points, said, okay, fine,
the Knicks were better down the stretch, and you give
(03:24):
them credit. However, Wemby in Game two missing the wide
open shot and that would have won the game for
San Antonio, and then the game obviously the night in
New York where it was twenty nine point lead. Never
before had a team choked as much as the San
Antonio Spurs choked in that game. Now, meanwhile, the clapper.
(03:49):
So my mind is wired in an odd ways. I
was watching the people go crazy, all the one percenters,
all the celebrity fans of the Knicks out there, Ben
Stiller and Jerry Seinfeld and all these Bandwagon fans like
Taylor Swift and all that, just having a fine, fine time, right,
(04:09):
just having a great time. And the Nick fans rhythmically
chanting from Nixon four to yelling at the referees to
Nicks Nixon five, you know that old thing. And just
the whole clapping process, the history of clapping, like the
evolutionary origins of the clap, clap on, clap, off the clapper,
(04:32):
which was a great infomercial back in the day. And
so the Science Commune I fell down a rabbit hole.
And the belief among those that have actually paid attention.
You imagine going to college, becoming a person that studies
life and humanity and you're like, my, specially he's gonna
be on clapping, clapping? What is that?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Anyway, the clapping they say dates back to prehistoric, are
prehistoric brothers and sisters, ancestors, long before language, before people
didn't know how to talk because there was no language.
And early human beings, the belief among the science people
is they clapped loudly to catch attention of your fellow
(05:14):
human being. Also, if you wanted to signal I'm a
little uneasy here, this is not a great situation and
you're a little nervous, you could clap. Also as a
predator to try to intimidate your fellow neanderthal. Back in
the early days, you could your rival or a predator,
(05:35):
you could clap. You could also similar to like waving hands,
you can draw attention from people. So it's kind of
obvious stuff with the clap, and it is one of
those things that's considered universal among all humans, which again
you say, well, it's just kind of a basic thing.
(05:56):
There nearly every culture that has been examined in the
history of time, and every known culture uses some form
of clapping for communication. And the psychologists say there's different types.
There's I believe four different types of clapping. Yeah, four motivational.
(06:21):
That's the one we are dealing with here with sports,
right you're trying to motivate the players on the court
or the field or whatever. So you're clapping. You're trying
to encourage them, which is partly the reason that I
fell into this. Then there's the rhythmic clapping, which I love,
which is not as good as rhythmic chanting. But the
rhythmic clapping is awesome. You feel it in your bones.
(06:43):
You're like, I liked it. This is great, right, And
so if you go to a concert, you do the
rhythmic clapping and all that. And then there's also after
somebody speaks, right the formal event dinner speech. You're at
a word function and the keynote speaker gets up there,
you're supposed to clap. That's the proper protocol. And also
(07:06):
just in general, they say showing gratitude or admiration for
a job well done. So that is the human universal
activity of clapping. And there's more. But wait, there's more.
There are biblical references. It's in the Bible. There's biblical
(07:27):
references here clapping as celebration. It's in the Bible from
around the sixth century BCE. They even say that the
ancient Greeks, way back they often stamped feet for approval, right,
And they'd also clap, so they'd hop up and down,
(07:50):
banging their feet, and they'd clap rowdy, not the mascot rowdy,
but just rowdy. And the Romans, not only the Greeks,
the Romans used applaw. They had variations like finger snapping
for kind of a milder like you were good, you
weren't that good, so we're not going to give you
the full clap, We're gonna snap our fingers. And then well,
(08:14):
also they waved handkerchiefs and togas if they really really
like something, those wild Romans, they just would wave the toga.
Weren't they wearing the toga at the time, So I
don't know anyway, just applause and celebration and all that.
(08:35):
And then over time the behavior changed, they estimated according
to I was reading this long story about this, which
I didn't even know was a thing that there's actually
you can just google it and there's a bunch of
things that come up. But in the eighteenth slash nineteenth centuries,
the Science World says it was common to applaud a
(08:59):
a me performance right mid performance. Mozart noted enthusiastic mid
piece clapping, meaning that right in the middle of the show,
you go crazy, right you're you're all that's great. It
would be the equivalent of randomly in an NFL game,
(09:22):
it's the middle of the third quarter and your team's
driving down the field and you just go gaga. You
just go crazy. You go crazy, and you're like, that's
what of course today, if you do that, that is
that is frowned upon. It's a bad job by you.
What are you doing? You can't do that, Shame on you.
(09:48):
And uh So the story also they go into some detail.
They don't know the exact prehistoric timeline. It's all just spitballing.
It's all just throwing spaghetti against the wall and all that.
Again the point, it's just this instinctive, animalistic thing that's
(10:09):
deeply rooted in who we are. So there you go.
That's pretty much everything I learned about clapping. I know
nothing else. Next week we'll have to study booing and
the history of the boo. I feel like we've done
some of that on this podcast over the years, we've
gone down boo road. However, we haven't done it a
(10:32):
long time. This podcast has been off for like seven
years now. That's a fair amount of time. That's a
good amount. We have a good archive here as my
guy Lucky Tony in the Bay Area has gone through
some of those old episodes of this show. We're on
our third I think we're on our third different podcast
partner we had back for a long time. We had
(10:56):
Danny Well, we had Danny g that was the most
recent and before him, Gagone David Gascon who retired to Florida.
He's doing really well. He's playing some shuffle board and
a lot of loves cards, loves playing cards in the
park and painting. So things are going well there for
gag On as he's retired there in Florida. And now
(11:18):
we have Bri and my woman Brie there, she's the
podcast partner here and very busy. We got to get
her on the mail bag. One of these weeks we're
gonna get Bri on the mail bag. So anyway, moving
on from that, we now go to the Life of Malor.
Does it get any better than the Life of Malor? Yes,
(11:39):
it does a lot better, a lot better. So I
spend I was doing some inventory the other day on
like what do I do with my life? Most of
my life is dedicated to the radio show and putting
the show together. And I produce the show, and I
do the monologues and all that stuff that takes up
(12:00):
most of my time to get everything ready for the
show fine, And then the rest of my time I'm
watching sports, which is related to the radio show. And
I also spend a rather shocking amount of my life
doing food prep. Now I still run into people. I've
done a lot of these meet and greets, and I
(12:23):
love the fact that there's a very small percentage of
the listener not you per se other people that listen
who are convinced that this is some kind of glamorous
life that we are leading. They think that there's still
(12:43):
some magic in the radio business. And like you're hanging
out backstage at concerts with celebrities, you're drinking expensive booze,
you're making power moves. Of course, the reality is something
much different. For example, this past Saturday, it's Saturday today,
but last Saturday, let's go back in the hot tup
(13:05):
time machine. And this is how we spend most of
my Saturday nights. While America is out committing all kinds
of debauchery and regrettable acts, whether it be at clubs, bars,
out on the streets, you name it. I am often
standing in the Malor mansion in the kitchen staring at
(13:28):
a tower of chicken bock bock chicken that needs to
be rotated. Now that is not a metaphorical tower. I
am talking an actual tower of chicken. Every week, I
cook on the weekends for the following week, cook for
me and the wife. And what we have done now
(13:50):
is we alternate. One week will be ground beef, and
I'll make a bunch of ground beef and all that,
and then the next week is chicken. Now we normally
make a version of chicken swarma. Now this is not
approved by anyone. It's our version of chicken sharma. So
when I do the ground beef, just bear with me.
(14:11):
When I cook the ground beef, it's manageable. Ground beef
is what I call a low maintenance food. It's a
good friend who says, listen, don't worry about me. This
is easy. You throw it in a pan, you turn
the you put some oil in there, you turn the
stove on. Mix in a few onions and I like
bell pepper and some garlic, add some seasoning and boom,
(14:35):
you're good. Just let that thing. Cook for a little bit.
You're ready to go. Now, chicken shwarma. Our version of
chicken sharma, meanwhile, is as as about a needy food
dish as it gets. So the process with the sharma,
and this is what I made the past week. The
process with the warma begins with obviously seasoning the chicken.
(14:57):
You have to pound the chicken so it's it's thin.
You season it, You marinate the chicken. You then have
to leave it marinating for a few hours at least,
if not overnight. Then stack the chicken on the special
schwarma type tray thing that we got. Now, since we
don't actually run a Mediterranean restaurant, this is not a
(15:20):
real spit. You know how they have the spit if
you've been to have the chicken schwarm o where they
spin it and they shave it. No, this is this
is a thing that has a metal pole in the
middle of it. You stack the chicken and you have
to manually rotate the chicken. And I've studied this over
the We've had this thing for about a year so months.
(15:43):
I don't think it's been quite twelve months, but close
to it. Who cares. So you know this is what
you do. And so you got to rotate the chicken
every so often, and so I spent a lot of
my time staring at the chicken to see if it
needs to be rotated. The entire production on a Saturday
night take somewhere between three and four hours. This is
(16:05):
the volume of chicken, the quantity of chicken that we
are that we're making, because we got to We had
to get it for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I'm
off on Friday night, so we don't really worry about that,
and the wife sometimes works more than that. So yeah,
we get everything there, all the chicken marinated and all that,
and stack the chicken and then rotate the chicken, and
(16:30):
then we have to do it about every thirty minutes
or so. The entire the entire deal, though is you know,
it's long like if NASA ever needs someone to monitor
a slow moving spacecraft, I am now qualified. I am
now ready to go. So put me in coach. I
(16:52):
am ready to play. And again every thirty minutes, I
rotate the chicken one hundred and eighty degrees. And then
later about ninety minutes into the process, I start shaving
off that crispy, delicious outer exterior, like I'm giving the
(17:13):
bird a haircut, and that's really good, crispy, solid, proper
amount of seasoning. And there's this it's like the goldilock zone.
And if you've cooked, you know what I'm talking about, Like,
there's a point where it's just perfect. It's not too
well done, it's not undercooked, it's perfect and you can
see the sparkle and there you go. So I cut
(17:35):
away that layer and then I apply more marinade, more seasoning,
and I toss that chicken shwarma plate back in the
oven and for another round. And this goes on and
on and on. This chicken receives more attention than most
professional athletes. And by the time it's finished, I will
(17:57):
have enough schwarma meat to feed a medium sized village
somewhere far far away, or one gas bag and his
wife for four or five days. So the payoff is
during the week. The payoff is during the week. All
I have to do is reheat the chicken. Now I
(18:19):
have to add a little onion and bell pepper. I
do that with the beef. When I cook it the chicken,
I make just chicken. And then you can add those
are add on items. Much like our friend in Minnesota
who complains you didn't do the rundown. What is right?
That's an add on item. So the side dish is
(18:39):
an add on item. So I'll cook, chop some onion,
bell pepper, garlic, and mix that in and pretend that
I'm operating some kind of malard Mediterranean restaurant. It's a
ghost kitchen, if you will. So this past week, I
know you're happy to know, was Benny Burrito Week. Yeah,
(19:00):
very exciting. Have you ever heard of Benny Burrito weeks?
So this is my new Michigas. I had purchased these
oversized restaurant style tortillas, and I don't want to embellish this. Okay, However,
the size of this tortilla large enough to use as
(19:21):
a floatation device. If there's a flash flood, I will
not drown. In fact, I could take this tortilla and
float out to Hawaii. If I get into the current
just the right way, I can just sit on the
delicious restaurant style tortilla and make my way all the
way to Kauai. That's it, And every evening I have
(19:45):
about thirty five minutes to eat and I make the
same thing during the week. The ritual is chop the onion,
the bell pepper, the garlic. I like to caramel caramelize that,
and that's a fancy way of saying, adding some sugar.
And then I have the chicken. I mix some cheese
in there, some sauce wrapped that bad boy towrdtilla. And
(20:07):
I've got this down where Henry Ford would be impressed
with my ability to handle the assembly line dining. Like
supposedly Henry Ford invented the assembly line, and I have
mastered the culinary assembly line. In fact, I am ready
now to be a line cook. I am prepared to
be a line cook, and that may be the way
(20:27):
I go. So then came what historians will someday referred
to as the incident as Benny Burrito Week had some sudden,
unexpected drama. Now what was this, you ask? So again,
this is I know I'm going way too into the
(20:49):
weeds here. So I heated up the chicken. I had
had the onions, I already caramelized those and the bell pepper,
and then I added some more black pepper, and I
made it how I wanted it, and I built what
appeared to be a magnificent burrito. I'm talking restaurant quality burrito.
(21:10):
There were layers and layers and layers. This had architectural integrity.
I'm qualified now to make blueprints for a building. If
I can make a burrito like this, imagine how cool
the building is. So anyway, I slid the burrito into
the air fryer. I like to heat the brito up
even more in the air fryer. I set the timer
(21:31):
for a few minutes, and whilet cooked, I began the
domestic routine of cleaning all the stuff that I took
out to make said burrito. So I'm putting away the
sauce that I used. I'm putting away the pots and
the pants and the cheese. And this is where things
took a turn to the wild side, to the dark side,
(21:53):
to the fuzzy side. So I'm grabbing this stuff. And
I grabbed the cheese, and you kind of look at
it with this kind of a side eye. You're not
really looking at it. You're just like, Okay, I got
to put this stuff away. This should go back in
the refrigerator. So I grabbed the cheese. It was not
bree cheese. It was not it was. It was Swiss cheese.
So I grabbed the Swiss cheese, and I'm not really
(22:14):
paying that close attention. It seemed fine whatever, And then
I noticed a thing in the corner of a slice
of the Swiss cheese that looked fuzzy, and in my
head only, well, maybe i'm imagining that. I'm pretty sure
that the Swiss cheese does not come with hair, and
you know, not a little fuzz by the way, This
(22:35):
is kind of fuzz that suggests you might need to
go to the barber shop. The cheese had either gone
through puberty or had begun exploring a new career and
opportunities as a science project. So then I froze for
a moment, because the burritos cooking, everything became very quiet.
(22:56):
I kept examining the fuzzy cheese like a detective arriving
at the crime scene. You tape it off and you're
looking at it. The mold on the Swiss cheese. It
occupied a section. It was near the upper left hand side,
near the edge, and the rest of the body of
(23:17):
the cheese appeared perfectly fine. It was that upper corner.
And despite this, I immediately realized the horrifying truth that
some of this cheese, likely the piece of cheese touching
the furry piece of cheese had already made its way
inside Benny's burrito. Not much, granted it wasn't I just
(23:40):
put one piece in. It was enough enough, mind you,
to create some uncertainty. And that is where the panic
at the burrito came in. Not panic at the disco,
panic at the brito. So I stood there, and the
air fryer's going it, the timer's ticking down. I'm staring
(24:02):
at the airfire. I'm looking at the basket as if
it's containing a live hand grenade, and it's a grenade
for my stomach. And what followed was a game show
scenario where I imagined the booming announcer voice on this
like nineteen nineties early two thousands game show saying welcome
(24:24):
to Benny's Burrito, Russian Roulette style. On The crowd claps,
because that's what we all do as human beings. We clap.
The lights flash, The host comes out wearing a suit,
starts smiling, says Behind door number one, Ben throws away
the burrito and starts over polite applause. Behind door number two,
(24:46):
Ben eats the burrito, potentially spends the evening over the
commode discovering new dimensions of gastro intestinal distress, and the
audience gasps, and the host pauses dramatically, and the drama builds.
(25:06):
Which will he choose? And there's a clock ticking down.
And at this point I conducted a full risk assessment
the internal narrator. We all have that narration in our heads.
So the narrator started working a little extra and I'm
going through the options again. I'm like, okay, So again
(25:27):
A is start over. Now this sounds reasonable when you
first hear let's just start over. There's some possible furry
cheese in there, so it sounds reasonable until you grasp
that I had already used most of the available onion
and bell pepper, which meant starting over would be a
lesser quality burrito and would also mean more chopping and
(25:51):
trying to find other things to put in there, which
was a inconvenience. So that was option A. Option B
was to just man up, and I'll rub some dirt
on it and eat the burrito. The potential reward included
saving time avoiding wasting food, because even if there was
(26:11):
some furry cheese in there. Ninety nine percent of the
brito was fine. It was just one piece of swize. Now,
the consequences of option B include nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea,
a lot of regret, self loathing, and again that intimate
(26:31):
relationship with the porta potty. And then there was briefly
an option see attempt to surgically remove the questionable cheese.
In military terms, they call it meatball surgery. This would
be burrito surgery. Now that was quickly abandoned because the
burrito had already entered a stage of development where any
(26:55):
attempt of extraction would have been fatal to the burrito.
I would have resembled an archaeological dig and it just
would not have worked. So I stood there calculating the
probabilities that use some malor math, and people often say, listen,
in life, you can't just do the mundane. You have
to take risks. Now, I would think those people think
(27:19):
that taking risk involves like real risk, like climbing a
mountain that might have a grizzly bear, or skydiving, jumping
out of the plane, running with the bulls in Pamplona,
swimming with sharks somewhere off the coast, of Africa. My
version involved deciding whether a slightly moltly piece of Swiss
(27:41):
cheese would destroy my digestive system. And I'm thinking about it,
I'm processing everything and all that stuff. And this is
what happens when you get older. Like the steaks remain high,
the subject matter changes. For you young lads out there. When
you're twenty five, your fears revolve around careal failure. For years,
(28:04):
when I got into radio, I was like, oh, I'm
not gonna make it a radio I'm gonna have fake
a real job and I'm not gonna make it. I'm
i gonna make it. And I've been in radio so
long now I'm like, well, I've already made it, so
even if I get whacked, I'll just go get another job.
But I've had the career. I've had a better career
that I couldn't have possibly hoped for when I got
into radio. Not that I'm looking to leave anytime soon.
I'd like to keep doing this, however, again at my age, though,
(28:25):
the age I'm at now, you're wondering if a dairy
product is plotting against you, and that hair was gonna
plot up in your stomach and grow some other fungus
and all that. Anyway, the the timer beep, the burrito
was ready to come out of the air fryer, and
I opened the tray and it looked magnificent, magnificent, just wonderful,
(28:49):
golden brown on the outside, little cheese on top, perfectly crisp.
It was Instagram ready. It was Instagram ready, completely unaware
of the controversy surrounding its existence. And I looked at
that burrito, and that burrito looked back at me, and
(29:12):
at least this is how I remember it, and so
I chose Option B. I said, I'm gonna ride and
die with this delicious burrito. That's gonna be my move.
No retreat, no surrender. I'm not throwing in the sponge.
If this was fear Factor, Joe Rogan was going, whoa,
he did it? He did it because I'd go by
the original fear Factor. I guess they brought the show back.
(29:33):
I didn't watch it, so I think one of the
guys from Jackasses On or something like that. I'm og though,
with fear factor eating bugs, eating bugs. So if this
was a medical emergency waiting to happen, I was willing
to accept the consequences. So I put the burrito down,
I had my drink, I sat down to watch the
Knicks play the Spurs. Now, the first bite of Benny's
(29:55):
burrito was excellent. The second bite was all also marvelous.
The third bite was accompanied by some mild paranoia. Every
stomach gurgle. When you're eating a burrito that may may
contain some fur, you start becoming suspicious. I know that
(30:20):
Alf the Alien opinter agrees with me on this, and
possibly fer Dog. Every hiccup felt somewhat significant, and I
spent most of that NBA Finals game the other night
conducting internal surveillance surveillance if you will, here is everything
working right? Is this the proper is this proper digestion?
(30:41):
Is this indigestion coming? Is there going to be gas?
All of that? Was this going to be the beginning
of the end? I had a radio show to do
that night. Would I not be able to do the show?
And it turned out? Nothing happened at that point. The
fourth quarter arrived and still nothing. The only barf bag
that happened from Mana Zuma's revenge was done by Wemby
(31:03):
dearon Fox and the Spurs, blowing that twenty nine point League.
So then the postgame show arrived with Charles Shack, Kenny Smith,
Ernie Johnson, and some NBA guy. I forget, who's some loser.
The next morning arrived and nothing and no nausea, no vomiting,
(31:26):
no cramps, no emergencies. Sprint down the hallway. Benny Burrito
had been conquered. Or perhaps the burrito had never been
the enemy. Maybe the real danger was my imagination. And
I have noticed this pattern throughout much of my life,
that most disasters exist only in our heads. In fact,
(31:50):
I read that years ago. I read this study from
some university in Cincinnati. They said eighty five percent of
the things that we worry about in life don't come true.
It's the other fifteen percent that are a real bitch,
you know, a real just horrible thing. And you think
about it, it's fifteen percent. It's a one to fifty
(32:11):
batting average. If you were in the ninth inning of
the World Series and a one fifty hitter came up,
you're nursing a one run lead. You wouldn't be too concerned.
Unless that guy is a backup infielder for the Dodgers
and you're the Toronto Blue Jays and then he hit
a home run. Yeah, I know, too soon for our
(32:32):
friends in Canada. Truly, we spent hours worrying about outcomes
that often never arrive, never ever. And granted, sometimes moldy
cheese really does make people sick, and sometimes it's just
a fuzzy patch of a block of Swiss cheese that
transforms just an ordinary night during the week into a
(32:56):
personal episode of let's make a deal. Let's make it
which curtain are you going to pick? And so there's
lessons in that right. First lesson is inspect your cheese
more carefully. Second lesson, never underestimate the dramatic possibilities of
a kitchen cleanup. That's somewhat important. And third, if you're
(33:18):
going to gamble, do it with a burrito while watching
an NBA Finals game at the Malor Mansion with the
toilet right next door, because if things go badly, and
they don't often go badly, and they do go badly,
at least you'll have something to distract you while waiting
for the bodily functions to kick in. So the story
(33:43):
had a happy ending. We didn't break the Internet still
one of the more popular stories that we've told on
the podcast. Is when I had my gallbladder out and
I was out walking around the neighborhood, the old house
out in the San Gabriel Valley where I used to
live in LA and we were walking around, and this
was during the pandemic. I had my gallbladder taken out
(34:04):
right before the pandemic, and I was walking and I'd
eaten some food earlier and I had to go to
the bathroom. I thought I had enough time to make
it back to the home toilet, and at some point
I was about halfway back and I realized I am
not going to make it, like this is going to
end badly, and I was like, do I go in
(34:25):
the woods and just poop right there in the woods?
And then I remember there was a public bathroom that
I thought maybe open. Remember during the pandemic, even the
public bathrooms were closed. So I made it to the
park and sure enough the bathroom was open. And you
can go back and hear the episode. Let's just say
I did not handle the situation well. When I was
(34:47):
in the bathroom, it got a little messy. Well leave
it at that. I don't want to ruin the rest
of your Saturday. Have a wonderful glorious day, and we'll
have the mail bag on Sunday. And I'm not completely
giving up on the Spurs. I feel like they're toast.
I would love to see them win and put the
(35:09):
pressure on the Knicks to win that game at home
and not have to go back to San Antonio. We'll
see what happens tonight. And as Dick and Dayton would say,
bye bye, bye bye,
Host
Ben Maller
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