July 10, 2026 • 31 mins
Ben Maller goes vroom, vroom on the latest edition of the Fifth Hour, serving up a grab bag of fun facts about motorcycles, piña coladas, and kebabs. Buckle up as he takes you on an audio road trip through "The Valley of the Fan" and "Palm Tree Island," complete with thug babushkas, ants the size of the Death Star, and the kind of bizarre detours only Maller can navigate. There's also a Word of the Day shaped by both the Bible and Bugs Bunny, hijacked by Elmer Fudd and kids, with a side order of foodie fun. Shows like this are why Ben Maller has been called the Rumpelstiltskin of radio—spinning straw into broadcast gold, painting word pictures in the theater of the mind, and turning chicken feathers into audio treasure. Listen, laugh, share, like, 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 soul 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):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahlor and you. We are united together on this Friday.
We have made it to the end of the week.
Did the overnight show last night? You know the drill.
Here we leave the radio remote studio, we refresh the battery,
(00:50):
and then right back into the mobile audio dojo. On
this the one hundred and ninety first day of the year,
there are one hundred and seventy four days to go,
or something like that. The twenty eighth week of the year,
we celebrate all kinds of holidays. I'm gonna attempt to
(01:10):
do rapid fire fun facts for the holidays today. Programming note,
though we'd like to alert all the affiliates down the line,
there are none. Because it's a podcast. We will have
the Palm Tree Island, what the f is Palm Tree Island?
And the word of the day, and possibly some other
(01:30):
things down the line, depending on how much time we
have left. As you know, I have studied the ancient
art of the podcast, and I know roughly how long
the podcast needs to be. Now that being said, we
are going to attempt something we've never done on the
fifth hour podcast, rapid Fire fun Facts. I know alf
is excited and Fergdog and Mallard prop guy, and I know.
(01:55):
So here we're gonna go. In fact, I'm gonna set
a timer. Let me get my my thing of a
jig here and see here that's at the timer. I
gotta reset that. I'm gonna set my timer for one minute.
Do I do one minute? Or two minutes? Let me
do two minutes. I get a lot of stuff, all right,
(02:16):
two minutes on your marks, get set, hit the wrong
button on your mark, get set? Two minutes. Fun facts
on the holidays. Today, Here we go. We're on our
way and boom. All right. So it is National Motorcycle
Day today. National Motorcycle Today. How many motorcycles are on
(02:37):
the road in the United States? That would be over
seven million motorcycles. They say that the number seven point
one million to celebrate National Motorcycle Day, seven point one
million motorcycles. It is National Pina Colada Day today. Yeah.
(02:59):
Fun act fun fact on that. According to legend, sometime
in the eighteen hundreds, that's a lot of time, a
lot of real estate. Sometime in the eighteen hundreds, a
pirate named Captain Robert Cofresse I might be butchering that name,
(03:19):
sailed the Caribbean with a pirate crew and morale was
not good. Morale was not good. So he concocted the
pina colada, starting with rum and then the drink of
choice among pirates, he added coconut and pineapple, putting his
own touch on it, serving it in a coconut shell.
(03:42):
Now we don't know for sure whether or not it
approved or improved morale. Perhaps it did. The recipe was
allegedly lost upon his death in eighteen seventy or eighteen
twenty five. And that's that. And so more than a
(04:03):
century later, nineteen fifty four, a hotel in San Juan,
Puerto Rico created the new signature drink. And so there
you go, and we've gone over two minutes but it's
World Kebab Day today, and we have fun facts on that.
The practice of cooking meats on a stick goes back
(04:24):
to ancient times. It originated in Turkey, or as they
said in the World Cup Turkey, the word kebab. There
we go, we've crossed. Now we've crossed two minutes. The
word means to roast kebab. However, we grill the kebab.
And it was first recorded the word kebab in Turkish
(04:47):
manuscripts going back to thirteen seventy seven. Thirteen seventy seven,
that's a long time ago. So there you go. Wow,
we move on to tales of the life of Mallard.
Now my recent departure from the radio. As you know,
(05:09):
somewhat recently, I was away for a few days. My
wife had a birthday. Now that alone, I'm told there's
a yearly situation that, assuming you don't check out, you
get a new birthday every year you do, and people
generally wait for milestone birthdays to celebrate. Can you agree
on that? I think we can agree on that, at
(05:31):
least over the top, right, And I don't even do
that really, I recently crossed. What I'm told is a
rubicon rather large birthday myself and I had a very
subdued event. My idea of a good time is sitting
in a room by myself and staring at the wall
and contemplating the space time continuum. I am an introvert,
(05:55):
and I have neurosis when it comes to social now.
My wife, on the other hand, treats these things much differently,
much differently. As you know from being a loyal minion
to this podcast and the radio show I mettion. I
was away for a few days now. My presence was requested,
(06:16):
which is a polite way, as we like to point
out of saying it is mandated under penalty of the
law by the wife at a desert oasis getaway. Now,
I am busy. I don't have a real job. I
have a radio job and a podcast job, and I'm busy,
and so I do the show, I have the podcast.
(06:39):
I barely have time to figure out what day of
the weakness. I literally sometimes don't even know what day
of the week it is. The assembly line of Hot
Sports Takes does not slow down. The baton has passed.
These people that work in like the NFL. The NFL,
they play the season, the season ends in mid February,
and no they're off season events, but there are no
(07:01):
games from and if you don't make the playoffs, there's
no games from like early January until September. So you
have some time. You have some time. Same thing in basketball.
Basketball season ended not that long ago, and there's plenty
of time now. The baton gets passed. And when you
when you do everything, you're a one stop shop like
(07:22):
we are. It just it just doesn't end. That's it.
And so this is not a sob story. It's just
I work on the assembly line. I mean the factory.
You work in the factory. I'm in the factory. And
these sports stakes just don't make themselves. You gotta watch games,
gotta pay attention, look for what's interesting. It's relentless, it
(07:44):
never stops. It's a it's a non stop merry go
round that won't slow down. And so me and my
trusted assistant, Moxie, my beloved English bulldog. She helps put
the show together on a daily basis, keeping me from
totally collapsing on weekends. It doesn't leave a lot of time,
doesn't leave a lot of time to stop and smell
(08:06):
the roses or even realize there are roses around. So
I had put on little phone app, the calendar app
on my phone that we were going to celebrate the
wife's birthday somewhere in Palm Desert, which is near Palm
Springs o Hi to be exact, and I really didn't
think about it until the day came. My wife had
(08:27):
decided to rent a house with a bunch of co
workers from the nine to one to one Dispatch Center
also better known as the police station. Now let me
repeat that the police station. I was going to be
trapped in a home that I didn't know much about
with people who carry handcuffs and other things for a living.
(08:48):
So now I was along for the ride. But the
wife is her birthday, she's the star of the show.
I was just kind of there, and I had really
no information, no information. I didn't ask many questions. I
didn't think about it. I told you, I put it
on my app on the phone. I said, okay. And
that's usually how I've gone with vacations recently. A lot
(09:09):
of people look forward to vacations and they're like, well,
I can't wait counting down the days. I'm the opposite.
I'm like, oh wait a minute, I have to go somewhere.
I better pack. That's wild. So I have a lot
of information, pretty much no information, as I said, other
than we were going to party, spend a lot of
time in the pool, have some good food, and for
(09:31):
most people that sounds like an amazing trip. I'm not
most people. I'm like a vampire, except to have an
exemption when it comes to garlic. I don't spend a
lot of time in the sun. If you've seen me,
if you've met me, you know that's the case. Now
when I do, I normally turn into a lobster, a lobster,
(09:53):
but not a delicious Maine lobster with claws and what
you tell me, I don't eat lobster but nice b
butter sauce. So I turned into a sad, blistered, radioactive
legal sized envelope. And I'm so red like red lobster
wouldn't even want me. Needless to say again, I was
(10:16):
along for the rye. So we packed up the mobile.
And now when I say we, it was mostly my wife.
I helped carry things from the house to the car.
We packed it so full. How full was it? Thanks
for asking? It was so full. When we came off
the driveway, and I backed the malamobile down. We scraped
(10:38):
the road. Scrape da the road, a horrible metallic screech
from the other side of Dante's Inferno, and it shook
me to the bone. Right now, I told my wife
at that point we should have just rented a U
haul for all the crap that we were taking. She
(11:00):
didn't seem to enjoy the joke. Now, mind you, it
wasn't just clothes, it was not My wife had decided
that she wanted to be the hostess with the mostest
because her girlfriends were going to be there. So she
went out to Costco and Walmart. Not a fan of Walmart.
(11:21):
I love Costco, I don't mind Walmart. She didn't like Walmart.
She really liked Costco either the big box stores. And
she went out. She was motivated. She purchased a big
rig load of food and drink and alcohol to bring
to our desert oasis. We had enough supplies to survive
a nuclear winner, which was very exciting. We wouldn't have
(11:42):
the shelter, but we had the supplies. More likely, a
very long weekend with a bunch of law enforcement people
that liked to have a good time. So I was
the driver. As I mentioned, we were cruising, cruising, cruising
for a bruisin and it wasn't that hot in Socau,
at least where we were coming down from the north
(12:03):
Woods until we crossed the Valley of the Fan. Now,
if you're from Arizona, if you've been to Phoenix, you
know the Valley of the Sun. In Palm Desert they
have the Valley of the Fan. Not a sports fan, no, no, no, no,
the other kind. So if you've never been to Palm
Springs or Palm Desert, you drive on Ien from la
(12:25):
That's how we did it, and you turn and suddenly
you are in this dystopian world. You drive into Palm
Springs thinking you're getting palm trees, golf courses, wealthy retirees
and in a lot of Canadians, right, a lot of
our Canadians love it. Instead, it's attack of the two
(12:47):
hundred foot tall kitchen fans. It's like some kind of
horror movie from the nineteen eighties or something like that.
Palm Springs, i am told, used to be known for
the rat pack, for Frank Sinatra, the legends of Hollywood
and music that went out, and that was their home,
their getaway from La. Now it is known for looking
(13:10):
like your grandmother's box fan escaped and had a thousand
giant white spinning babies. They're in the air everywhere, whirling
and looming and all that. Now, people tell me, they say,
you know, Ben, you get used to them. Yeah, get
(13:31):
used to them. Okay, that's not an endorsement. You get
used to traffic, you get used to taxes, You get
used to your right knee hurting and barking, and your
lower backs and where you're going, you get used to.
It is not exactly a five star review on a
travel website. You feel me on that. So we drove
(13:54):
through that eyesore. We kept going and going past the
arena that hosts the Lakers G League team and the
Coachella Valley Firebirds, which I am told as a hockey team,
which is the affiliate of the Seattle Kracking. What's cracking.
So we finally finally got to the off ramp the
(14:17):
house we were staying out up the road a little bit,
a few miles off the highway, and it was a
gated community. Oh, gated community. So we had an access
code that's how you get in. And I was saying,
why is this a gated community, and I was saying, well,
there must be a lot of thug baboushkas roaming the
(14:39):
desert looking to heist some meta mucil in, some vitamins.
So we typed in the code. I typed in the code.
We entered the neighborhood. We parked in front of the
what appeared to be relatively new, modern house. It was nice,
It was not the greatest home I had ever visited.
(14:59):
It was for spectacle. So parked the malamobile. We opened
the we got out the car, walked over, opened the
front door, and then it happened. Here we go, Geronimo,
witness the wildest view I have seen in sometime. So
the front door opens up and you're like, okay, this
(15:20):
is probably just a regular house. My wife said there
was a nice pool. Fine, So we open it up
and we see these beautiful mosaic tile floors, giant Florida
ceiling glass windows across the living room. The entire back
of the property was a pool. Oh, you must be exaggerating. No, no, no, no,
(15:43):
that's not that's not a lie. Uh, I guess it.
It wasn't just a pool. This would count as the
sixth Great Lake of America. Seriously, I forget Lake Superior,
Lake Michigan. This was it. Like you saw this, I thought,
(16:05):
there's no way, like this must be a mistake. Unicorns
started tap Nansen, rainbows randomly broke out, Confetti started falling
from nowhere. Even some of the pigeons that were in
the backyard there stood up and applauded the view. It
was like having the Mandalay Bay Pool in your backyard,
(16:27):
and you know that things supposed to eleven acres in Vegas,
it's got the wave pool, the Lazy River. This place
we rented had a hot tub in the middle of
the pool, which was like its own sovereign nation. Okay,
it should have had a seat at the un that's
how crazy. This was bigger than Vatican City. Now we're
(16:51):
talking Elon Musk style living. They had a palm tree
island in the middle of the pool. So they not
only had the high in the middle, which is close
to the front, but they had in the middle, very
mintal middle of this giant island thing. You had a
palm tree island right there in the middle. Who does
(17:11):
that an island for a palm tree in the middle
of a pool, Like if you got lost swimming in
this thing. If we couldn't find one of the people
that were there to celebrate, forget the lifeguard or the
coast guard, you would need to call the United States
Navy to help you find this person. Now. Fortunately, to
(17:33):
protect my mental health, my wife did not tell me
how much this rental cost on my overnight radio salary.
She simply said, don't worry. The girlfriends are helping to
chip in as well, so it's not that bad. Not
that bad, Okay, I'm sure it was terrible, Thank goodness,
I didn't find out how much. Because our room was
(17:57):
bigger than all the other rooms, and it was also
bigger than the first three apartments I had in Hollywood
and near the Miracle Mile in La over there on
Wilshire combined. Now we were swimming all day and into
the night at night, though we did cook together. It
was immediate anytime we had ten to twelve people, sometimes more,
(18:18):
sometimes less, but it was always around ten to twelve,
and each person paid for the night. Like people stay
for one night, someone stay for two. A couple of
people stayed for all three night, all three nights. But
I was immediately given chores because God forbid. I just
sit down on my rare and appropriate time away. Although
according to our friend in Duluth, the curmudgeon Wane from Duluth, Yeah,
(18:45):
according to him, I guess I spent too much time away.
So one night I was Benito the chip maker. I
took my job very seriously. I loved my chips and salsa.
I was very proud that my Mexican brought others and
sisters at this event gave me the official Mexico Seal
of Approval for my chip distribution efficiency. Another night, I
(19:08):
was doing some cosplay as Femi, the top uber each
driver in the Twin Cities. I was dispatched to pick
up supper for the party. I went to Costco again
to pick up not one, not two, not three, not four,
not five, six pies, six pizza pies for the hungry crowd.
It looked and smelled like a catering truck in the malomobile.
(19:32):
Now I was not done. I was also Benny the dishwasher,
to make sure that we had clean plates every day.
My hands are still pruney from that experience. I have
no fingerprints left. If I commit a crime, now I'm invisible.
Then came Game night. That's right game night. They dragged
my ass into playing Left Right Center, which actually liked.
(19:55):
That's my favorite party game. Left Right Center a fun,
mindless the ambling game with dice where you watch your
singles disappear. Then we played something I hadn't played before. Same,
same but different, and I enjoyed this game. This game
has one hundred and seventy five safe cards one hundred
and seventy five risky cards. Players have ninety seconds to
(20:18):
write a phrase that fits both scenarios on give them
a little dry erase board, and then whoever's picked as
the judge for that particular event collects the responses, shuffles them,
and selects the funniest answer. The player with the winning
phrase earns a point, and you play multiple rounds, you
rotate judges and all that. Now, my brain doesn't work
(20:39):
on a ninety second clock unless I'm screaming about Jerry
Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. That's just it. So we
played that. We played a drinking game called Tipsy Land.
I wonder where they got that name from. Nothing like Monopoly,
Tipsy Land or Yeah. Anyway, So the girls, they loved it.
(21:00):
The friends of my wife, they my wife was having
a good time. Me not so much. My idea of
tipsy is having a root beer beer and then taking
a snooze on the sofa. All right, the little snooze
on the sofa. So we even went out to a
local casino about thirty minutes away in Palm Springs area.
(21:26):
I forget the name of it. Lady friends wanted to
go to a cigar bar. Now, I am not a
cigar guy. I am not all right, It's never my
thing to me. They smelled like a burning tire yard. However,
I wasn't going to be the party pooper. I did
(21:48):
my best to make it as good as all the rest.
I sat there inhaling secondhand smoke, looking like a man
waiting for a bus that was never going to arrive,
and just in general, because we had way too much food,
way too much booze. This was an extravaganza, is what
(22:08):
it was. Now. The only mild problem was an ant invasion.
And these were not regular ants like you might get
in the city. My friend, No, no, no, We're talking desert
ants the California desert. It's crazy. These ants were the
size of the death star. I looked one in the
(22:30):
eye and I swear it asked me, can I get
your driver's license, sir? And your insurance? I said, what
are you talking about? However, we survived. The wife had
a grand time. Her birthday was a great success. I
didn't get sunburned to a crisp. I wore a swim
shirt and a big hat, and we packed all this
(22:54):
stuff up. We somehow left with more stuff than we
showed up with, which I didn't know is possible, because
a bunch of the ARLs gave my wife presidents and
things like that. And the malamobile made it all the
way back to the north Woods, despite being three inches
lower to the ground, got back in my beloved dog, Moxie.
(23:14):
She looked at me and kind of gave me the
wink and I never leave the house again. Do not
leave the house again. I said, okay, we will not
leave the house again. Not going to happen. So that
was my adventure in the Palm Springs area. So we
(23:34):
didn't really go to Palm Springs proper because that's way
off the highway. Way. Off the highway, we could have
seen the Sonny Bono, the former mayor who was a
big entertainer back in the day. We could have seen
his statue and gone to the rocket Fizz shop to
get some candy. We didn't do any of that. We
just stayed where we were. That pool, it's going to
(23:55):
be impossible to top that pool, impossible to tell it
was wild. Although we did have the JACUZI was so
big or the hot tub was so big. It was
hard trying to figure out the do hickey to turn
the heater on. And you had to turn it on
way in advance, because if you didn't turn it on
way in advance, it became an issue. It became a
(24:18):
bit of an issue, all right. Meanwhile, time now for
the word of the day. That's right, the word of
the day. What is the word of the day. Well,
the word of the day from your ears, actually from
my mouth to your ears, the word is Nimrod. Now
(24:39):
I do use the word nimrod. I may or may
not have used the word nimrod on the radio show overnight.
So it got me thinking, where did that come from
the word nimrod. And believe it or not, the word
nimrod has origins with the Bible, Biblical and bugs and mugs.
(25:02):
Now we go below the surface on this one. So
the word Nimrod has always always amused me. It's always
one of those fun words. I don't use it all
the time. I use the words I use most are
like Mama Luke. I use that a lot, dingle Berry.
I've used that word quite a bit. Nimrod's in that family,
(25:25):
and I am told it originally was the name of
a great hunter, the hunter Nimrod from the Bible. Now
I'm going to get email from Bible people. You don't
understand you should have focused more on Nimro. Listen, I'm
acknowledging that, according to what I read in a rabbit hole,
(25:49):
Nimrod was a great hunter from the Bible. Good for Nimrod. However,
today it means a dumb dum dum du dum dum dum,
a foolish or a nept person. And what if I
told you, is it true that the reason the word
(26:09):
is known to highlight a dumb person Nimrod is because
of bugs? Bunny Bugs. Bunny took a word from the
Bible and twisted it around in one of the older
Merry melodies. Those are the cartoons with bugs Bunny and
(26:30):
Elmer Fudd is trying to hunt bugs. He's out there
trying to hunt bugs, which he does, and as an insult,
bugs calls him a regular nimrod. Now bugs was trying
to insult his hunting prowess by comparing him to a
great hunter. He said, you're a nimrod. However, the kids
(26:51):
this before Martin, it's not my fault, before my time.
But the kids, many of the children watching, didn't know
it was from the Bible. It's a Saturday Morning cartoon,
so they assumed he was calling Elmer Fudd an idiot.
They took the stretch and said, okay, well he's goofing
(27:11):
on bugs, or bugs is goofing on Elmer Fudd, and
so that must be a derogatory comment. We're gonna go
with that. And that was the beginning of the new
definition of nimrod. And to this day not many people
are watching bugs bunny these days, but even to this day,
(27:34):
that is still the proper meaning of the word in
modern society. All right, no time for some food. He fun.
Hooray for food, he fun. Hey, it's food, he fun.
So we only have a few stories this week. Things
kind of slow because of the holiday. Jack in the box,
what's in the box? That would be Jack in the box,
(27:57):
not everywhere, but they have added a new fry option
to the menu with the launch of Cheesy ranch Sauce
and loaded curly Fries. I'm puking in my mouth. The
new item features the brand seasoned curly fries, top with
shredded cheddar cheese and cheese sauce, then finished with a
(28:19):
drizzle of buttermilk rancho. Yuck. Yuck, yuck yuck. Prices they
say may vary. They're available for four dollars. Supposedly that
is the rate that was quoted there, four dollars. Burger
King is back, the King of Burgers. They have unveiled
(28:39):
the new loaded jalapeno original Chicken Sandwich and also the
club original Chicken sandwich as well. They have the long
forearm sized chicken sandwiches there which became a thing I
guess in nineteen seventy nine Burger King. The original chicken sandwich.
(29:01):
They have the long breaded white meat which may or
may not have actually been meat, the chicken patty there,
the shredded lettuce, the mayo on a toasted sesame seed bun.
And my grandfather loved Burger King. He loved Pizza Hut
and Burger King when I was a kid, and so
we went to Burger King a lot. I was fed
(29:23):
on Burger King quite a bit back in the day,
and I had my share of whoppers. I had my
share of chicken sandwiches, the whole thing, the whole shebang,
the whole shebang. So I've eaten plenty of those over
the years. McDonald's announced recently a new collab with Lying
(29:49):
Friends to launch the new BT twenty one Happy Meal.
I have no idea what this is. I guess it's
like a kid thing, for it appears to be a
kid related show. Ten collectible toys, including characters such as
Tata and Chimmy, each with a ring clip so fans
(30:10):
can attach it to a backpack, keychain, or purse. This
is definitely not my demo. This is not your demo
unless you're a little kid or a furry And I'm
not judging you, do you boo? But yeah, that's a
little out there. That's a little out there, all right.
(30:31):
On that note, we will put the baby to bed,
or will we put the baby to bed? Have a
great rest of your Friday on this the tenth day
of July, and we'll hit you up with a brand
spanking new podcast, a new podcast coming your way tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,
(30:55):
and we'll cook that up. If we have a great
rest of your Friday again and right with you next time.
Bye bye, as Dick and Dayton would say, 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 soul 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):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahlor and you. We are united together on this Friday.
We have made it to the end of the week.
Did the overnight show last night? You know the drill.
Here we leave the radio remote studio, we refresh the battery,
(00:50):
and then right back into the mobile audio dojo. On
this the one hundred and ninety first day of the year,
there are one hundred and seventy four days to go,
or something like that. The twenty eighth week of the year,
we celebrate all kinds of holidays. I'm gonna attempt to
(01:10):
do rapid fire fun facts for the holidays today. Programming note,
though we'd like to alert all the affiliates down the line,
there are none. Because it's a podcast. We will have
the Palm Tree Island, what the f is Palm Tree Island?
And the word of the day, and possibly some other
(01:30):
things down the line, depending on how much time we
have left. As you know, I have studied the ancient
art of the podcast, and I know roughly how long
the podcast needs to be. Now that being said, we
are going to attempt something we've never done on the
fifth hour podcast, rapid Fire fun Facts. I know alf
is excited and Fergdog and Mallard prop guy, and I know.
(01:55):
So here we're gonna go. In fact, I'm gonna set
a timer. Let me get my my thing of a
jig here and see here that's at the timer. I
gotta reset that. I'm gonna set my timer for one minute.
Do I do one minute? Or two minutes? Let me
do two minutes. I get a lot of stuff, all right,
(02:16):
two minutes on your marks, get set, hit the wrong
button on your mark, get set? Two minutes. Fun facts
on the holidays. Today, Here we go. We're on our
way and boom. All right. So it is National Motorcycle
Day today. National Motorcycle Today. How many motorcycles are on
(02:37):
the road in the United States? That would be over
seven million motorcycles. They say that the number seven point
one million to celebrate National Motorcycle Day, seven point one
million motorcycles. It is National Pina Colada Day today. Yeah.
(02:59):
Fun act fun fact on that. According to legend, sometime
in the eighteen hundreds, that's a lot of time, a
lot of real estate. Sometime in the eighteen hundreds, a
pirate named Captain Robert Cofresse I might be butchering that name,
(03:19):
sailed the Caribbean with a pirate crew and morale was
not good. Morale was not good. So he concocted the
pina colada, starting with rum and then the drink of
choice among pirates, he added coconut and pineapple, putting his
own touch on it, serving it in a coconut shell.
(03:42):
Now we don't know for sure whether or not it
approved or improved morale. Perhaps it did. The recipe was
allegedly lost upon his death in eighteen seventy or eighteen
twenty five. And that's that. And so more than a
(04:03):
century later, nineteen fifty four, a hotel in San Juan,
Puerto Rico created the new signature drink. And so there
you go, and we've gone over two minutes but it's
World Kebab Day today, and we have fun facts on that.
The practice of cooking meats on a stick goes back
(04:24):
to ancient times. It originated in Turkey, or as they
said in the World Cup Turkey, the word kebab. There
we go, we've crossed. Now we've crossed two minutes. The
word means to roast kebab. However, we grill the kebab.
And it was first recorded the word kebab in Turkish
(04:47):
manuscripts going back to thirteen seventy seven. Thirteen seventy seven,
that's a long time ago. So there you go. Wow,
we move on to tales of the life of Mallard.
Now my recent departure from the radio. As you know,
(05:09):
somewhat recently, I was away for a few days. My
wife had a birthday. Now that alone, I'm told there's
a yearly situation that, assuming you don't check out, you
get a new birthday every year you do, and people
generally wait for milestone birthdays to celebrate. Can you agree
on that? I think we can agree on that, at
(05:31):
least over the top, right, And I don't even do
that really, I recently crossed. What I'm told is a
rubicon rather large birthday myself and I had a very
subdued event. My idea of a good time is sitting
in a room by myself and staring at the wall
and contemplating the space time continuum. I am an introvert,
(05:55):
and I have neurosis when it comes to social now.
My wife, on the other hand, treats these things much differently,
much differently. As you know from being a loyal minion
to this podcast and the radio show I mettion. I
was away for a few days now. My presence was requested,
(06:16):
which is a polite way, as we like to point
out of saying it is mandated under penalty of the
law by the wife at a desert oasis getaway. Now,
I am busy. I don't have a real job. I
have a radio job and a podcast job, and I'm busy,
and so I do the show, I have the podcast.
(06:39):
I barely have time to figure out what day of
the weakness. I literally sometimes don't even know what day
of the week it is. The assembly line of Hot
Sports Takes does not slow down. The baton has passed.
These people that work in like the NFL. The NFL,
they play the season, the season ends in mid February,
and no they're off season events, but there are no
(07:01):
games from and if you don't make the playoffs, there's
no games from like early January until September. So you
have some time. You have some time. Same thing in basketball.
Basketball season ended not that long ago, and there's plenty
of time now. The baton gets passed. And when you
when you do everything, you're a one stop shop like
(07:22):
we are. It just it just doesn't end. That's it.
And so this is not a sob story. It's just
I work on the assembly line. I mean the factory.
You work in the factory. I'm in the factory. And
these sports stakes just don't make themselves. You gotta watch games,
gotta pay attention, look for what's interesting. It's relentless, it
(07:44):
never stops. It's a it's a non stop merry go
round that won't slow down. And so me and my
trusted assistant, Moxie, my beloved English bulldog. She helps put
the show together on a daily basis, keeping me from
totally collapsing on weekends. It doesn't leave a lot of time,
doesn't leave a lot of time to stop and smell
(08:06):
the roses or even realize there are roses around. So
I had put on little phone app, the calendar app
on my phone that we were going to celebrate the
wife's birthday somewhere in Palm Desert, which is near Palm
Springs o Hi to be exact, and I really didn't
think about it until the day came. My wife had
(08:27):
decided to rent a house with a bunch of co
workers from the nine to one to one Dispatch Center
also better known as the police station. Now let me
repeat that the police station. I was going to be
trapped in a home that I didn't know much about
with people who carry handcuffs and other things for a living.
(08:48):
So now I was along for the ride. But the
wife is her birthday, she's the star of the show.
I was just kind of there, and I had really
no information, no information. I didn't ask many questions. I
didn't think about it. I told you, I put it
on my app on the phone. I said, okay. And
that's usually how I've gone with vacations recently. A lot
(09:09):
of people look forward to vacations and they're like, well,
I can't wait counting down the days. I'm the opposite.
I'm like, oh wait a minute, I have to go somewhere.
I better pack. That's wild. So I have a lot
of information, pretty much no information, as I said, other
than we were going to party, spend a lot of
time in the pool, have some good food, and for
(09:31):
most people that sounds like an amazing trip. I'm not
most people. I'm like a vampire, except to have an
exemption when it comes to garlic. I don't spend a
lot of time in the sun. If you've seen me,
if you've met me, you know that's the case. Now
when I do, I normally turn into a lobster, a lobster,
(09:53):
but not a delicious Maine lobster with claws and what
you tell me, I don't eat lobster but nice b
butter sauce. So I turned into a sad, blistered, radioactive
legal sized envelope. And I'm so red like red lobster
wouldn't even want me. Needless to say again, I was
(10:16):
along for the rye. So we packed up the mobile.
And now when I say we, it was mostly my wife.
I helped carry things from the house to the car.
We packed it so full. How full was it? Thanks
for asking? It was so full. When we came off
the driveway, and I backed the malamobile down. We scraped
(10:38):
the road. Scrape da the road, a horrible metallic screech
from the other side of Dante's Inferno, and it shook
me to the bone. Right now, I told my wife
at that point we should have just rented a U
haul for all the crap that we were taking. She
(11:00):
didn't seem to enjoy the joke. Now, mind you, it
wasn't just clothes, it was not My wife had decided
that she wanted to be the hostess with the mostest
because her girlfriends were going to be there. So she
went out to Costco and Walmart. Not a fan of Walmart.
(11:21):
I love Costco, I don't mind Walmart. She didn't like Walmart.
She really liked Costco either the big box stores. And
she went out. She was motivated. She purchased a big
rig load of food and drink and alcohol to bring
to our desert oasis. We had enough supplies to survive
a nuclear winner, which was very exciting. We wouldn't have
(11:42):
the shelter, but we had the supplies. More likely, a
very long weekend with a bunch of law enforcement people
that liked to have a good time. So I was
the driver. As I mentioned, we were cruising, cruising, cruising
for a bruisin and it wasn't that hot in Socau,
at least where we were coming down from the north
(12:03):
Woods until we crossed the Valley of the Fan. Now,
if you're from Arizona, if you've been to Phoenix, you
know the Valley of the Sun. In Palm Desert they
have the Valley of the Fan. Not a sports fan, no, no, no, no,
the other kind. So if you've never been to Palm
Springs or Palm Desert, you drive on Ien from la
(12:25):
That's how we did it, and you turn and suddenly
you are in this dystopian world. You drive into Palm
Springs thinking you're getting palm trees, golf courses, wealthy retirees
and in a lot of Canadians, right, a lot of
our Canadians love it. Instead, it's attack of the two
(12:47):
hundred foot tall kitchen fans. It's like some kind of
horror movie from the nineteen eighties or something like that.
Palm Springs, i am told, used to be known for
the rat pack, for Frank Sinatra, the legends of Hollywood
and music that went out, and that was their home,
their getaway from La. Now it is known for looking
(13:10):
like your grandmother's box fan escaped and had a thousand
giant white spinning babies. They're in the air everywhere, whirling
and looming and all that. Now, people tell me, they say,
you know, Ben, you get used to them. Yeah, get
(13:31):
used to them. Okay, that's not an endorsement. You get
used to traffic, you get used to taxes, You get
used to your right knee hurting and barking, and your
lower backs and where you're going, you get used to.
It is not exactly a five star review on a
travel website. You feel me on that. So we drove
(13:54):
through that eyesore. We kept going and going past the
arena that hosts the Lakers G League team and the
Coachella Valley Firebirds, which I am told as a hockey team,
which is the affiliate of the Seattle Kracking. What's cracking.
So we finally finally got to the off ramp the
(14:17):
house we were staying out up the road a little bit,
a few miles off the highway, and it was a
gated community. Oh, gated community. So we had an access
code that's how you get in. And I was saying,
why is this a gated community, and I was saying, well,
there must be a lot of thug baboushkas roaming the
(14:39):
desert looking to heist some meta mucil in, some vitamins.
So we typed in the code. I typed in the code.
We entered the neighborhood. We parked in front of the
what appeared to be relatively new, modern house. It was nice,
It was not the greatest home I had ever visited.
(14:59):
It was for spectacle. So parked the malamobile. We opened
the we got out the car, walked over, opened the
front door, and then it happened. Here we go, Geronimo,
witness the wildest view I have seen in sometime. So
the front door opens up and you're like, okay, this
(15:20):
is probably just a regular house. My wife said there
was a nice pool. Fine, So we open it up
and we see these beautiful mosaic tile floors, giant Florida
ceiling glass windows across the living room. The entire back
of the property was a pool. Oh, you must be exaggerating. No, no, no, no,
(15:43):
that's not that's not a lie. Uh, I guess it.
It wasn't just a pool. This would count as the
sixth Great Lake of America. Seriously, I forget Lake Superior,
Lake Michigan. This was it. Like you saw this, I thought,
(16:05):
there's no way, like this must be a mistake. Unicorns
started tap Nansen, rainbows randomly broke out, Confetti started falling
from nowhere. Even some of the pigeons that were in
the backyard there stood up and applauded the view. It
was like having the Mandalay Bay Pool in your backyard,
(16:27):
and you know that things supposed to eleven acres in Vegas,
it's got the wave pool, the Lazy River. This place
we rented had a hot tub in the middle of
the pool, which was like its own sovereign nation. Okay,
it should have had a seat at the un that's
how crazy. This was bigger than Vatican City. Now we're
(16:51):
talking Elon Musk style living. They had a palm tree
island in the middle of the pool. So they not
only had the high in the middle, which is close
to the front, but they had in the middle, very
mintal middle of this giant island thing. You had a
palm tree island right there in the middle. Who does
(17:11):
that an island for a palm tree in the middle
of a pool, Like if you got lost swimming in
this thing. If we couldn't find one of the people
that were there to celebrate, forget the lifeguard or the
coast guard, you would need to call the United States
Navy to help you find this person. Now. Fortunately, to
(17:33):
protect my mental health, my wife did not tell me
how much this rental cost on my overnight radio salary.
She simply said, don't worry. The girlfriends are helping to
chip in as well, so it's not that bad. Not
that bad, Okay, I'm sure it was terrible, Thank goodness,
I didn't find out how much. Because our room was
(17:57):
bigger than all the other rooms, and it was also
bigger than the first three apartments I had in Hollywood
and near the Miracle Mile in La over there on
Wilshire combined. Now we were swimming all day and into
the night at night, though we did cook together. It
was immediate anytime we had ten to twelve people, sometimes more,
(18:18):
sometimes less, but it was always around ten to twelve,
and each person paid for the night. Like people stay
for one night, someone stay for two. A couple of
people stayed for all three night, all three nights. But
I was immediately given chores because God forbid. I just
sit down on my rare and appropriate time away. Although
according to our friend in Duluth, the curmudgeon Wane from Duluth, Yeah,
(18:45):
according to him, I guess I spent too much time away.
So one night I was Benito the chip maker. I
took my job very seriously. I loved my chips and salsa.
I was very proud that my Mexican brought others and
sisters at this event gave me the official Mexico Seal
of Approval for my chip distribution efficiency. Another night, I
(19:08):
was doing some cosplay as Femi, the top uber each
driver in the Twin Cities. I was dispatched to pick
up supper for the party. I went to Costco again
to pick up not one, not two, not three, not four,
not five, six pies, six pizza pies for the hungry crowd.
It looked and smelled like a catering truck in the malomobile.
(19:32):
Now I was not done. I was also Benny the dishwasher,
to make sure that we had clean plates every day.
My hands are still pruney from that experience. I have
no fingerprints left. If I commit a crime, now I'm invisible.
Then came Game night. That's right game night. They dragged
my ass into playing Left Right Center, which actually liked.
(19:55):
That's my favorite party game. Left Right Center a fun,
mindless the ambling game with dice where you watch your
singles disappear. Then we played something I hadn't played before. Same,
same but different, and I enjoyed this game. This game
has one hundred and seventy five safe cards one hundred
and seventy five risky cards. Players have ninety seconds to
(20:18):
write a phrase that fits both scenarios on give them
a little dry erase board, and then whoever's picked as
the judge for that particular event collects the responses, shuffles them,
and selects the funniest answer. The player with the winning
phrase earns a point, and you play multiple rounds, you
rotate judges and all that. Now, my brain doesn't work
(20:39):
on a ninety second clock unless I'm screaming about Jerry
Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. That's just it. So we
played that. We played a drinking game called Tipsy Land.
I wonder where they got that name from. Nothing like Monopoly,
Tipsy Land or Yeah. Anyway, So the girls, they loved it.
(21:00):
The friends of my wife, they my wife was having
a good time. Me not so much. My idea of
tipsy is having a root beer beer and then taking
a snooze on the sofa. All right, the little snooze
on the sofa. So we even went out to a
local casino about thirty minutes away in Palm Springs area.
(21:26):
I forget the name of it. Lady friends wanted to
go to a cigar bar. Now, I am not a
cigar guy. I am not all right, It's never my
thing to me. They smelled like a burning tire yard. However,
I wasn't going to be the party pooper. I did
(21:48):
my best to make it as good as all the rest.
I sat there inhaling secondhand smoke, looking like a man
waiting for a bus that was never going to arrive,
and just in general, because we had way too much food,
way too much booze. This was an extravaganza, is what
(22:08):
it was. Now. The only mild problem was an ant invasion.
And these were not regular ants like you might get
in the city. My friend, No, no, no, We're talking desert
ants the California desert. It's crazy. These ants were the
size of the death star. I looked one in the
(22:30):
eye and I swear it asked me, can I get
your driver's license, sir? And your insurance? I said, what
are you talking about? However, we survived. The wife had
a grand time. Her birthday was a great success. I
didn't get sunburned to a crisp. I wore a swim
shirt and a big hat, and we packed all this
(22:54):
stuff up. We somehow left with more stuff than we
showed up with, which I didn't know is possible, because
a bunch of the ARLs gave my wife presidents and
things like that. And the malamobile made it all the
way back to the north Woods, despite being three inches
lower to the ground, got back in my beloved dog, Moxie.
(23:14):
She looked at me and kind of gave me the
wink and I never leave the house again. Do not
leave the house again. I said, okay, we will not
leave the house again. Not going to happen. So that
was my adventure in the Palm Springs area. So we
(23:34):
didn't really go to Palm Springs proper because that's way
off the highway. Way. Off the highway, we could have
seen the Sonny Bono, the former mayor who was a
big entertainer back in the day. We could have seen
his statue and gone to the rocket Fizz shop to
get some candy. We didn't do any of that. We
just stayed where we were. That pool, it's going to
(23:55):
be impossible to top that pool, impossible to tell it
was wild. Although we did have the JACUZI was so
big or the hot tub was so big. It was
hard trying to figure out the do hickey to turn
the heater on. And you had to turn it on
way in advance, because if you didn't turn it on
way in advance, it became an issue. It became a
(24:18):
bit of an issue, all right. Meanwhile, time now for
the word of the day. That's right, the word of
the day. What is the word of the day. Well,
the word of the day from your ears, actually from
my mouth to your ears, the word is Nimrod. Now
(24:39):
I do use the word nimrod. I may or may
not have used the word nimrod on the radio show overnight.
So it got me thinking, where did that come from
the word nimrod. And believe it or not, the word
nimrod has origins with the Bible, Biblical and bugs and mugs.
(25:02):
Now we go below the surface on this one. So
the word Nimrod has always always amused me. It's always
one of those fun words. I don't use it all
the time. I use the words I use most are
like Mama Luke. I use that a lot, dingle Berry.
I've used that word quite a bit. Nimrod's in that family,
(25:25):
and I am told it originally was the name of
a great hunter, the hunter Nimrod from the Bible. Now
I'm going to get email from Bible people. You don't
understand you should have focused more on Nimro. Listen, I'm
acknowledging that, according to what I read in a rabbit hole,
(25:49):
Nimrod was a great hunter from the Bible. Good for Nimrod. However,
today it means a dumb dum dum du dum dum dum,
a foolish or a nept person. And what if I
told you, is it true that the reason the word
(26:09):
is known to highlight a dumb person Nimrod is because
of bugs? Bunny Bugs. Bunny took a word from the
Bible and twisted it around in one of the older
Merry melodies. Those are the cartoons with bugs Bunny and
(26:30):
Elmer Fudd is trying to hunt bugs. He's out there
trying to hunt bugs, which he does, and as an insult,
bugs calls him a regular nimrod. Now bugs was trying
to insult his hunting prowess by comparing him to a
great hunter. He said, you're a nimrod. However, the kids
(26:51):
this before Martin, it's not my fault, before my time.
But the kids, many of the children watching, didn't know
it was from the Bible. It's a Saturday Morning cartoon,
so they assumed he was calling Elmer Fudd an idiot.
They took the stretch and said, okay, well he's goofing
(27:11):
on bugs, or bugs is goofing on Elmer Fudd, and
so that must be a derogatory comment. We're gonna go
with that. And that was the beginning of the new
definition of nimrod. And to this day not many people
are watching bugs bunny these days, but even to this day,
(27:34):
that is still the proper meaning of the word in
modern society. All right, no time for some food. He fun.
Hooray for food, he fun. Hey, it's food, he fun.
So we only have a few stories this week. Things
kind of slow because of the holiday. Jack in the box,
what's in the box? That would be Jack in the box,
(27:57):
not everywhere, but they have added a new fry option
to the menu with the launch of Cheesy ranch Sauce
and loaded curly Fries. I'm puking in my mouth. The
new item features the brand seasoned curly fries, top with
shredded cheddar cheese and cheese sauce, then finished with a
(28:19):
drizzle of buttermilk rancho. Yuck. Yuck, yuck yuck. Prices they
say may vary. They're available for four dollars. Supposedly that
is the rate that was quoted there, four dollars. Burger
King is back, the King of Burgers. They have unveiled
(28:39):
the new loaded jalapeno original Chicken Sandwich and also the
club original Chicken sandwich as well. They have the long
forearm sized chicken sandwiches there which became a thing I
guess in nineteen seventy nine Burger King. The original chicken sandwich.
(29:01):
They have the long breaded white meat which may or
may not have actually been meat, the chicken patty there,
the shredded lettuce, the mayo on a toasted sesame seed bun.
And my grandfather loved Burger King. He loved Pizza Hut
and Burger King when I was a kid, and so
we went to Burger King a lot. I was fed
(29:23):
on Burger King quite a bit back in the day,
and I had my share of whoppers. I had my
share of chicken sandwiches, the whole thing, the whole shebang,
the whole shebang. So I've eaten plenty of those over
the years. McDonald's announced recently a new collab with Lying
(29:49):
Friends to launch the new BT twenty one Happy Meal.
I have no idea what this is. I guess it's
like a kid thing, for it appears to be a
kid related show. Ten collectible toys, including characters such as
Tata and Chimmy, each with a ring clip so fans
(30:10):
can attach it to a backpack, keychain, or purse. This
is definitely not my demo. This is not your demo
unless you're a little kid or a furry And I'm
not judging you, do you boo? But yeah, that's a
little out there. That's a little out there, all right.
(30:31):
On that note, we will put the baby to bed,
or will we put the baby to bed? Have a
great rest of your Friday on this the tenth day
of July, and we'll hit you up with a brand
spanking new podcast, a new podcast coming your way tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,
(30:55):
and we'll cook that up. If we have a great
rest of your Friday again and right with you next time.
Bye bye, as Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye,
Host
Ben Maller
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