The Fifth Hour: Glory Days, Guac Stays

Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Vegas Baby, Tooth Fairy, American Injustice, Glory Days, Fighting for the Guac, & more! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cutbooms.

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. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour

(00:23):
with Ben Mahler starts right now.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas.
As you know because you were a regular listener to
the Overnight show, we are in Las Vegas at a
secret location, deep in the heart of Sin City, doing

(00:53):
this podcast. We did the radio show from Vegas. I've
not done the show out of Vegas in a while.
It was cool, it's fun. There's a vibe here, there's
a different energy in Vegas. Had a good time with
that and kind of neat. Now. Today is Friday, the
twenty second day of August. Tomorrow is the Malor Meet

(01:14):
and Greet here in Vegas. Fired up. Hopefully you can
make it. If you're here in Vegas, you live here.
If you're local. You better be here, and if not,
if you're coming into town, well thank you for that.
It's the Stakeout Bar and Grill. We'll be upstairs. There's
a downstairs and upstairs right near NLV forty eight hundred

(01:36):
South Maryland Parkway. All the information is on the social
media channels there. Slug the Hostess with the Mostess is
putting this thing together tomorrow and we're excited about that.
There'll be a special menu, we'll have a few surprises
along the way you get to schmooze. I'll be there,
Loreina will be there, Cooper Loop will be there. Hopefully

(01:59):
you'll be there as well. A good time. We don't
do these things that often, but when we do, there's
always really good stories, always really good stories that pop
up from these Mallard meet and greets. Now today is
National Tooth Fairy Day this Friday, and I'm not gonna
spend too much time on this because we're a sporty podcast,

(02:20):
unless we're not. I did learn something that I'm sure
Alf the Alien, o Pinter and Ferg Dog were well
aware of, but I was not. I assume the position
that the tooth fairy goes back hundreds of years that
this is one of those things that goes way way, way,

(02:42):
way way back. But now, according to my research, the
little creature that would pop up and give you a
little money, I know. The American Dental Association helps out
on that. They're big fans of the tooth so that
little tooth fairy creature, the Toothair a fictional character. Obviously,

(03:06):
they trace it back to the nineteen twenty so it's
a little over one hundred years ago, which seems like
a long time but in the big picture, not that
not that long a time ago. And the person who
is credited with the mother of the tooth Fairy is
a woman named Eser Watkins Arnold, three names, which means

(03:29):
she might have been a serial killer. I'm kidding, unless
I'm not, but anyway, ether Esther Watkins Arnold wrote an
eight page playlet for children in nineteen twenty seven, so
a little less than a hundred years ago. The three
act playlet first introduced the tooth Fairy to parents. And yeah,

(03:51):
there have been fairies around for thousands of years. The
myth the legends of fairies have been around for a
long time. However, this is supposedly the first time that
this connection between the fairy and the tooth took place.
So there you go. On this podcast though the fifth
hour today on this Friday from Vegas, before I get

(04:14):
some more sleep, we've got the Glory Days before the
Glory Days American Injustice as well, but we'll begin with this.
So every so often in my life's work, the business
that I have chosen, the universe taps you on the
show there and says, hey, kid, I know you're not

(04:36):
a kid, but just pretend you're a kid. Hey kid,
remember where you came from. So I got that tap
not long ago. The gods of radio called me back,
and know not literally, not literally, nobody's picking up the
bat phone in twenty twenty five saying hey, get down here, kid.

(04:57):
We've got an opening because the Farm Report and the
oh bits right between that we need somebody to fill
some time. But metaphorically, if I could say the word,
that would help. Metaphorically, So Dave Smith texts me, and
you might not know who that is, which on paper,
the name Dave Smith could mean you know anyone. Right,

(05:19):
there's probably eleven million Dave Smith in the continentally United States.
In fact, you have probably sat next to three people
named Dave Smith and an Applebee's on a Thursday night.
Another couple that a Chick fil a like on a Saturday.
But this Dave Smith was in the radio game. Either

(05:42):
that or he was in the Witness Protection program. I
think radio, but who knows. Now, if you were in
Los Angeles in the late nineties and the early two thousands,
you knew the Bennon Dave Show. The Ben and Dave Show.
We had our own little song was broadcast on the

(06:03):
blowtorch AM eleven fifty, which is now a political talk
radio station, but back then it was kiss AM, which
would later become KXTA that likely means nothing to you.
This is the kind of radio station that ran slogans
like we got big balls, that kind of thing. Now,

(06:27):
some of you have followed my radio sojourn. This was
after I worked as an intern and a radio reporter,
started out in San Diego. This was before I would
host Dodger Talk on the Dodger Radio Network, and also
before my twenty plus year run here at Fox Sports Radio,

(06:50):
before podcasting was even a word, there was the Ben
and Dave Show. Now we were not big time, however,
we smelled the scent of big Time like a Bassett hound.
We could smell big Time. We walked past and rubbed
shoulders with big Time. We were down the hall from

(07:15):
Rick Dy's. Now, if you're not in radio, and you're
not of a certain age, you have no idea who
Rick D's is. But for those that are of the
age and those that know the history of radio, Rick
D's was not only a morning DJ. He printed money
every morning on Kiss FM one h two point seven

(07:38):
Kiss f M, the iconic top forty radio station in
Los Angeles. And there was Rick Dy's, the morning man,
right there, booming into those microphones. Now these had the name,
these had the cachet. He also had gold records on
the wall. Mister Discouck someone that I was well aware

(08:02):
of growing up in southern California, and he was a
national figure as well. And on the other side of
the building from Kiss FM, we had a fax machine, which,
for you children of the iPhone era, was a machine that,
believe it or not, would spit out curly pieces of
paper from random strangers. And this, believe it or not,

(08:27):
was how listeners to the radio would Texas. There was
no text messaging back in those days. A facts never
heard of them. Now. Tried telling a gen Zer that
you once begged people to send you jokes via facts
at midnight on a Wednesday. They'll look at you like

(08:51):
you're describing the Pony Express, Like what's wrong with you,
you old head boomer. But somehow it all worked, all
the jigsaw puzzle pieces worked. Now we were daypart nomads
on the Ben and Dave Show. We did middays, we
worked nights, we did mornings occasionally. Essentially we were the

(09:15):
Swiss Army Knife, although we had day parts, as they're
called in radio. If a shift opened up, they would
just toss Ben and Dave in there like duct tape
on a leaky pipe, and what do you know, it stuck.
It stuck. We did game shows that made no sense.

(09:38):
We picked fights with other LA radio stations because local
radio wars are fun. They're fun. Why not. We handed
the microphone to goofball characters who had no business being
within ten miles of an FCC licensed transmitter. It was chaotic,

(10:01):
it was dumb, the dumb, dumb, dumb, and it was
also glorious. And here's the thing about that show. All
these years later, people listened a lot of people listened
kids would call from their bedrooms with landlines, back when
the phone court would stretch across the hall and go

(10:23):
on and on and on. We're talking about junior high
school punks dreaming of being the next Mike Piazza or
Nick van Exel, who were the big stars in LA.
Remember at that time, there was no NFL football in LA.
That was after the Rams had left and the Raiders
had gone back to Oakland. We had teenagers hiding under

(10:44):
the covers with a walkman, college kids diving around the
valley at one am. Right, we had all of those
things had We had all of those things that were
part of it. And truckers were there, just like we
have on the overnight trukkers who thought we were either
funny or insane. Long shortman down at the Port of LA.

(11:07):
And those listeners, they're in their thirties, their forties, their
fifties now or older. And those same young punks that
were listening to the Benendeve Show, they've got mortgages, receding hairlines, cholesterol, meds,
bad knees, a sore back, a wife or an ex wife,

(11:29):
kids of their own. However, they remember, all right, they do,
and so when Dave reached out to me about doing
a reunion podcast. I hadn't spoken to him in over
a decade. Our lives have taken different turns in different directions,
and your work friends you're not real friends, and so

(11:53):
you just go your separate ways. And so we set
a time. He hit record, and then the flag is up.
Suddenly here I am twenty two again. I'm in my
head selling the weight loss wonder drug of the nineteen
nineties body Shaper, which would become Body Solutions. I'm doing

(12:20):
live remotes at a Jiffy Lube in Van Eyes at
seven am on a Saturday, where nobody showed up because shocker,
no one wants to change their oil and watch two
guys talk about random nonsense into microphones at that hour
on a Saturday, and I know getting yelled at. I

(12:40):
remember getting yelled at by the program director who was
basically pig vomit from the Howard Stern movie Private Parts
minus the Charm, Minus the Charm. And this reunion hoot
and Nanny. We'd agreed was going to be one show.
It's gonna be one episode. We'll do it, we'll get
it done with. That's it, And it became two shows

(13:02):
and then three shows, and before you knew it, it
was a bloody mini series that we had in our hands.
And because once the nostalgia faucet you turn that bad
boy on, it does not stop drinping. Right, whatever, it's
nostalgic for you, I'm sure you're the same way for me.
This was a very nostalgic conversation. I hadn't thought about

(13:25):
the Ben and Dave show in a long time. I've
met a lot of listeners and my travels around to
the different meet and greets, I'm sure tomorrow I'll probably
run into somebody who's a Ben and Dave listener. And
you go through this stuff and you just start remembering
things that you hadn't thought about, and Dave brought up
stuff that I hadn't thought about in a long time. Now,

(13:45):
if you want to hear any of this, you can
go over to YouTube. This is not my product, this
is his show. It's not my show. You just search
on YouTube Dave Smith's Unleashed podcast. And if you weren't
in LA and we have a national following now, which
we're very lucky to have that stage, if you weren't
in LA back in the nineties or the early two thousands.

(14:09):
This is either going to feel like a fun time
capsule or like listening to middle aged guys tell inside
jokes at some dive bar that you were not at.
And that's fine, that's fine, that's radio. That's audio content.
I know this is a podcast, but it's audio radio.
Same thing. Ninety percent of you, and I'm going low.

(14:32):
I think that's actually higher than that. Ninety five ninety
nine percent will not get it. But for those that do,
whatever percent that is, whether it's one percent, five percent,
ten percent, whatever percentage of people listening to me right now,
you know who you are who get it. You're nodding
right now. I was a kid when I started in radio.
We talked about this with Danny g. Danny was younger

(14:53):
than I was. I was nineteen at the mighty six
ninety in San Diego. I was twenty two by the
time I got my first talk show opportunity, and I
had my own show for a little bit. Then I
did the Ben and Dave Show, and I had no
clue at that time. You start out young, you have
an idea, you have everything mapped out, and then it's

(15:14):
the old line that God you make your plans, and
God laughs at you. Right, you have other ideas for
your life. And so I had no concept whether or
not I was going to be chewed up and spit
out by broadcasting, and I got in the final fumes
of the glory days of radio. Now, radio to me

(15:38):
is very important, and to you it's very important. It's
changed a lot, it's changed a lot. Three decades later,
almost well, it turned out that things have worked out
much better than I could have ever dreamed of. And
here's the secret that nobody really tells you when you're young.
And I'm not like, I don't think of myself as

(15:59):
super Bowl, but it's a good life lesson if you're
younger and you're listening to this, it's a secret that
nobody really gives you. The glory days weren't the big days.
You know, had some really cool things, big moments where
I've been around, certain things that have been legendary and

(16:19):
things that will be remembered for long long after I'm gone.
But the glory days, they were the early days, the dumb,
the messed up, fly by the seat of your pants,
make it up as you go, glory days before the
glory days and I want you to know if you're
still listening, God bless you. But if you ever listen

(16:41):
to the Men and Dave show back in those days
and you called it, or you sent us a fax,
or in your head, you played a game show and
you listen along, and you maybe you showed up to
a remote that we did at a sports bar, thank
you and also congratulations because you were part of this.

(17:03):
You were part of that whole experience which still means something,
it still matters, and so for that, I thank you.
I do seriously, I'm not just blowing smoke. Turning the page.
We go to what I'm calling an American injustice. So

(17:24):
the other day before I got here to Vegas for
the Malor Meet and greet, which is going to be
tomorrow at three o'clock Vegas time. Three to five. Before that,
in the cavernous hallways of the iHeart Radio Building, home
of the premier networks, were legends of broadcasting over the

(17:46):
years of work like Casey Cason and Rush Limbaugh right
there in Sherman Oaks, the kind of corporate broadcast palace
where they serve radio with a side of corporate bureaucracy.
But we don't see that side at night, because we're
there when those corporate weasels are fastest leep. And so

(18:09):
I was doing my daily steps. Now, if you don't
know this, my mischi goosis, my grandfather would say, my
mom would say, during the commercials, and we don't have
a lot of commercials because it's a very popular show
and we do few commercials. So during the commercials, I
attempt to push back the plague that I have been

(18:30):
given of a sedentary job, and I attempt to keep
my blood flowing. That's right, steps, because that's what you do. Now.
I've done this for a long time. This has been
my one of my things that I've done for a while.
So you count them. You try to get to ten thousand,

(18:53):
or twelve thousand or fifteen thousand. We're all essentially gerbils
on the wheel of health app, whatever app you use,
and we're competing against time, We're competing against our fellow
homo sapiens. Now, I got the Apple Watch on one wrist.
I've got I guess you could say shame on the other, like,

(19:16):
you gotta do this, you gotta get your steps in anyway,
So somewhere around the corridors in a very short, very
short commercial break on the Ben Mallor Overnight radio show.
I hear off in the distance a faint clank. Now

(19:39):
this was a metallic banging sound that I heard off
in the distance in the blue yonder. At first, I
was thinking, well, what is that. It's like, maybe there's
doing some construction, or maybe there's a janitorial maintenance guy
that's tightening some bolts somewhere down the hall. And then

(20:01):
I realized, hey, stupid, it's the middle of the night.
They don't repair things in the middle of the night,
and other than working on the roads, they don't do construction,
real construction in the middle of the night. And there's
nobody else in the building other than the crew that
was there for the radio show. Okay, So then I'm like,

(20:25):
what is this? I keep hearing this in and I
was like, did a raccoon get in the ceiling duct?
Was there a super duper cockroach that was hit with
nukes and was bouncing around the ceiling or worse, a
fentanyl freak or meth head showed up. So I kept

(20:47):
walking and no, that was not the case. So as
I get closer, as you might imagine the way these
things work, the noise got louder, got a little sharper,
and then the big reveal. It was not a raccoon,
It was not a cockroach that had been hit with nukes.

(21:11):
Wasn't a fentanyl freak or a meth head. There I
saw in front of me the kid from Liar Liar,
Justin Cooper, the producer of the Ben Maler Show. And
there's Coop standing in front of this much taller, broader monster,

(21:34):
this vending machine. And he's standing there like he had
just discovered the Rosetta Stone, not the malar of Rosetta Stone,
the actual Rosetta Stone. However, this was not the Rosetta
Stone as you might imagine it. This was the stone
that was made out of glass. And behind it, taunting

(21:58):
Cooper Loop, was a bag, not just any bag, a
bag of guacamole chips. Now you're likely wondering who would
buy quak chips at a vending machine at two in
the morning, Robert Nick Mnison, Well, I will not say

(22:19):
who that person is, but their name rhymes with koop alop.
It could happen at any moment, Ben that right there.
So the chips, though they refuse to budge. So here
I am standing next to Koop and the machines in
front of us, and the quak chips are really wedged

(22:39):
in there, dangling though, just enough where you're like, well,
I know they're wedged, but maybe maybe that thing's gonna
fall down. And a crime had been committed. A crime
had been committed, and the victim here was Coop. The
culprit was an early nineteen nineties. This is our person

(23:03):
of interest in early nineteen nineties. Vending machine. A monstrosity,
if you will, that's the proper way to describe it.
The great equalizer of office life. Now we were at
a radio station, but there's an office there as well,
like the vending machine. Let me tell you what the
vending machines like. I got the perfect analogy. The vending

(23:24):
machine is like going to the ballet. A beautiful, amazing
stripper who is programmed to tease, to tantalize, but ultimately
to deny what you want unless maybe you pay extra.

(23:46):
I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So now I should
tell you that I leapt into actually be very proud
of me, that I'm not just a gas bag. No, no, no,
I did the thing that any red blood American or
Canadian or Mexican would do now here. I am some

(24:07):
just middle aged, red blooded American. I got a couple
of decades there, sports talk, radio, service time, got a
bad knee back that's aching.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
And here I am trying to tip the machine. I'm
using my superman like strength. I told myself, you must
have been herculean resolve. My internal voice was saying Herculean resolved.
You know, the drill push from the side, rocket like

(24:36):
a baby rocket, A little bit.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Not too much, you don't want to tip it over.
Got a rocket like you're moving a stubborn sofa through
a narrow doorway at your apartment. And Coop and I
we start doing this side by side. So I'm on
one side, Coops on the other. It's like synchronized swimming

(25:00):
versus Goliath, except Goliath is filled with do Rito's, snickers
and PEPSI and sadly, I must report to you, my
fellow member of the mal or militia, but this story
does not, I repeat, does not have a happy ending.

(25:23):
You see, we failed the machine. Despite a minutes long battle.
The machine did not yield, the chips did not drop.
Coop walked away, hungry, quacamoleleus no chips, and both of
us were a little defeated. But here's the thing. I

(25:48):
want you to know that we were not failures because
we tried. And that is the mantra for those that
have been on the vending machine battlefield. If you rattle
the cave and the snack does not fall, it's not
you must have quit. It's you're still the man because

(26:08):
at least you had the intentional fortitude to try. You
gave it the old effort. That's what matters. And that's
a pretty good jumping off point. So let's pause right there.
So vending machines. Vending machines are one of the last
bastions of American injustice if you think about it. And no,

(26:34):
I am not drinking ayahuasca tea in the Amazon with
Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers. Just think about this though.
Let me workshop this, Let me workshop this, So think
about American injustice. You feed the vending machine dollars, Chris
Green dollars or some cases quarters heavy honest, You make

(27:01):
your selection, You punch in a thirteen a thirteen, You
make your selection, and sometimes the machine decides it's stubborn.
It just says no, It says this is not your day,
and it takes your money. It then mocks you. The
way it mocks you is it dangles your your booty,

(27:24):
your bounty, your prize bounty in plain sight. It offers
no refunds. There's no appeals court, there's no complaint line,
there's no arbitration panel in New York City. There's no
billboard lawyers saying which vending machine hurts you? You see,

(27:45):
there's just the cool indifference of a little spiral piece
of metal that refuses to just turn one more time. Now,
Professor Rashid Wallace taught me years ago, Tommy ben Ball
don't lie. However, vending machines absolutely do. They absolutely do.

(28:13):
And here's the kicker. There is a high resolution video
I am talking professional video that's right of this whole thing,
the vending machine brew Haha, this massive hunk of glass

(28:35):
and aluminum that should be sold at a nineteen nineties
vintage store in you know, it's just mocking its victims.
The beast is under twenty four seven surveillance. I'm talking
about video security cameras. It's like the Pentagon or Fort

(28:58):
Knox and if Coop and I had been successful and
tear that statue down, or in this case, topple the
vending machine. Someone in management, likely in San Antonio, possibly
in Cincinnati, maybe in Nashville. Someone in management would have

(29:18):
watched the replay in super duper slow motion, probably set
to yakty sacks, little yakty sacks, and then send it
around the entire iHeart Corporate universe. So theak chips remain
lodged last I I'm in Vegas now, but last I

(29:40):
saw they were lodged there. The surveillance tape rolls on,
and we, meaning Coop and I, we quickly returned and
we hustled to the studio for more talk radio, and
sometimes sometimes the machine went. Sometimes the man at least

(30:02):
though you gave it the old overnight radio try, as
we like to say now, I would also want to
point out that over the years we've had a few
listeners that worked the vending machine game. They would steamroll
through those vending machines. And if you ever get a
radio show and you do a midday show, you want

(30:23):
to have vending machine refill guy as a listener. Because
though at least back in the nineties when we were
doing the Ben and Dave Show we talked about at
the beginning of this podcast, and I will get Dave
Smith on this podcast at some point. I'll get him on.
But anyway, to continue on here. So, we had a
guy that was doing vending machines and he loved our show,

(30:47):
the Ben and Dave Show back in those days, and
every once in a while he would show up. He
never announced he was going to show up, we never
invited him, but he would show up and he would
have boxes of Lays, Ruffles, potato chips, he'd have candy

(31:08):
bars and Skittles, all that stuff, and he just handed
to us because there were always a few extras oozing
out of the machine, always a few extras. All right, well,
that's enough, we'll get out on that. We'll have a
new podcast on Saturday and Sunday. Here. The Mallor Meet
and Greet is tomorrow, and we'll have some pregame coverage

(31:32):
for the Malor Meet and Greet tomorrow. I know Terry
loves when we do a pregame show. And also a
story that I want to share with you, and I'm
not gonna I don't want to give it anythingway because
I don't know exactly what I can say and can't say.
It's been hanging over my head. We'll get to that.
Have a wonderful rest of your Friday, and I'm going

(31:54):
to go lose some money in a sports book after
I take a nap, and we'll talk to you next time.
Asta pasta later, skater, Yes, gotta murder. I gotta go