September 5, 2026 • 51 mins
It’s the Saturday Fifth Hour, your audio tailgate before college football goes completely off the rails! Benny celebrates an 11-year-old girl bullying a key figure in American history into a makeover, then unveils Benny’s Big Board: Lane Kiffin Exit Edition. This is NOT a list! Two decades of HR violations, ranked for your listening pleasure. Plus, Vegas leftovers featuring the Mona Lisa of mutilated spuds, gastronomic voyeurism, and a glass-shattering good time with Benny the Bootlegger. Another unauthorized transmission from the Maller Militia underground.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kaboom if you thought four hours a day 1200 minutes
a week was enough think again he's the last remnants
of the old republic a sole bastion of fairness he
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse wow the clearinghouse of
hot takes break free for something special the fifth hour
(00:23):
with ben maller starts right now.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben Maller,
and you. We are together here on this college football Saturday.
You're listening live on tape to the Fifth Hour as
it is the fifth day of September. There are just
117 days to go. That's it. And then we move
(00:54):
on to 2027, the... Express train. Choo-choo. Not wasting any time.
Not wasting any time. You are in safe hands on
this podcast, this Saturday special. We've got the Exit Hall
of Fame, the Mona Lisa of mutilated spuds, and who
knows what else. We begin, though, celebrating the most appropriate
(01:16):
holiday for today as so many, as you are listening
to this, are tailgating out about enjoying collegiate football. It
is National Tailgate Day today. A literal term, which I
think we all know, right? There's no one theory on
(01:40):
the origin story of tailgating. It obviously involves the automobile,
the lowering of the tailgate. In 1869, there's a origin
story where fans supposedly gathered around the First college football game,
Rutgers and Princeton, although that's not modern tailgating. There's another
(02:04):
story involving Yale. Some of the historians saying that the
fans at Yale would travel by train to games in
the late 1800s, and they brought food and drinks. Because
get this, apparently in the 1800s, they had not figured
out how to price gouge the people that went to
college football games because the concessions were not exactly booming
(02:28):
at that time. And then when the modern automobile came
around shortly after that and became a thing in the
early to mid-20th century, well, that's when it really obviously
became the deal that it is today. And the greatest
tailgating I've ever been to is either Buffalo, I've got
(02:50):
to say probably Kansas City. I've not been to a
Packer game. I've heard amazing things about Green Bay and
the tailgating there. I was at an Oklahoma Sooners game.
That was pretty wild. People were boozing and barbecuing at
like 8 in the morning. That was next level. The
Bills Mafia, they've got all the table jumping and all that.
They didn't have that. When I was at a Bills game,
(03:11):
it was before that became a thing. And Kansas City,
my guy Bob Fesco, he took me to a Chiefs tailgate,
and it was one of the great days I had.
They had this symbolic burning of the, they were playing
the Broncos, and they had this symbolic burning of the
stuffed animal horsey. But I love barbecue, so that was great.
I've heard a lot of good things about Ole Miss.
(03:33):
The Grove, which is supposedly, they don't tailgate in your
usual stereotypical asphalt parking lot. They The fans of the Rebels,
the Ole Miss Rebels, they gather beneath trees on campus
there at the Grove. Remember, there was that famous incident
back in the day. It's also World Beard Day today.
(03:54):
World Beard Day, which is something I celebrate when I'm
too lazy to shave. Now, World Beard Day moves every
year because it falls on the first Saturday of September,
which is today, the unofficial holiday, a celebration of beards.
And Alexander the Great, you want some fun facts about beards? Yes,
you do. I know you do, Fergdog and Alf. I know.
(04:17):
And Malapropguy. Alexander the Great reportedly encouraging his soldiers to
shave partly because, this is so great, because an enemy
could grab a beard during hand-to-hand combat. And so he's like, hey, listen,
this is a competitive advantage. It reminds me every once
in a while, somebody will come out in the NFL,
have really long hair. And this has happened a few times.
(04:40):
I've done monologues on it. And then inevitably, it'll be
like a running back or something. And the defensive player
will just grab the hair and twist it. And they're like,
what are we doing? Yeah, how about that? Now, in
ancient Egypt, facial hair would signify status. However, some pharaohs
(05:03):
famously wore false beards. Even back then, they were con artists. Now,
my favorite beard story, which is the most American beard
story you could have, goes back to the 1860s. Abraham Lincoln,
who kind of became a big deal, he grew out
his legendary beard. Every time you see an image of
(05:24):
Abraham Lincoln with almost... I can't think of anyone I've
seen in years that didn't have the beard. He always
has the beard. The legend, and who knows, this could
be like George Washington and the cherry tree.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Who knows?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Who knows? I wasn't alive. You weren't alive then. Abraham
Lincoln supposedly grew his famous beard because an 11-year-old girl
named Grace Bedell wrote him in the 1860s, essentially saying, hey, dude,
you're ugly. And if you grow some whiskers, that would
actually improve your appearance. And he did. Now, I wonder,
(05:59):
Lincoln kept losing elections. I think it was like eight
times before he finally got elected. If he had had
the beard earlier, would that have helped him politically? And
he was the first U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, to wear
a full beard while in office. Of course, to be fair,
there hadn't been that many presidents prior to Lincoln. The
(06:20):
ZZ Top, which was big when I was a kid.
Billy Gibbons. I mean, that's next level. Dusty Hill, the
enormous beards. And my favorite part of that is, and
I remember some of my boys pointing out that we
thought it was hilarious that the drummer named Frank beard,
ironically was the only member without a giant beard in
(06:44):
ZZ top. And his name was literally a beard. What
are we doing? Uh, they've been crazy. So I, Peter,
the great of Russia had a beard tax. Cause why not? Uh,
just tax everything, just tax everything. And, Knock yourself out.
There's a bunch of other stuff, but that's enough. Now
we get to a special feature add-on item. This is
(07:08):
not on the main menu. It is an add-on item.
It is the Exit Hall of Fame Lane Kiffin Edition
Benny's Big Board. So I'd mentioned this during the week,
and I really want to dig into it. So I
don't do lists. As you know, Terry in England, who's
been on the mailbag with me and now does not.
(07:29):
listen live, unfortunately, but my man Terry in England. Not
a list. Benny's big board, Lane Kiffin's exit Hall of
Fame will go from four to one, four to one,
grading these on things like humiliation, absolute chaos. That's the
key thing here. Absolute chaos, bitterness, and the overall absurdity,
(07:53):
which is just a regular day in the world of
Lane Kiffin. who is the modern-day carnival barker of our
times in football. And I was worried. I remember when
some of the bigger names in college football exited. I
was like, oh, man, these guys are all kind of boring.
And I guess every generation has to have these groups
of clowns. And I'm all for it. I'm all for it.
(08:15):
And Lane's my age. I think we're about the same age.
So I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
All right, number four on Benny's big board. Not a list,
not a list. Number four, Benny's big board, Lane Kiffin's
exit Hall of Fame. Well, we got to go with Tennessee.
The great Knoxville escape. We were on the radio at
Fox in 2010 documenting, which was after just one season,
(08:40):
a 7-6 record for Lane Kiffin. 14 months after he
arrived in Tennessee, Lane Kiffin got a phone call from
his besties out in California saying, hey, why don't you
come back to USC? And he decided, hey, that's my
dream job. That's my dream job. So he announced Lane
(09:01):
Kiffin that he was leaving Tennessee for USC. The players
were up in arms because it was no NIL at
that time, and people had gone there and dedicated themselves
to Lane Kiffin. So the players were upset. The student
body descended at the football complex. There was mass chaos.
(09:22):
There were mattresses and sofas being burned on the street.
Police became involved. Tennessee officials accused Lane Kiffin's staff of
dirty pool, contacting recruits on the way out. And so
Lane essentially escaped Knoxville while there was a mob of
(09:45):
volunteer nation, and they were holding pitchforks and torches. And
the main reason this is only number four is he
wasn't fired. right he left like he left and that
was mild compared to some of the other things that
happened now number three on the big board benny's big
(10:06):
board lane kiffin's exit hall of fame number three usc
2013 so He leaves Tennessee, Lane Kiffin, goes to SC.
That's his dream job. Way to go. All right. So
USC went from the number one team in the preseason
that year. And that meant something, I guess, for some people, boosters.
So they were the number one team before the 2012 season.
(10:31):
And they went seven and six. There seems to be
a pattern here. And the heat was on. It continued
into 2013. And then... The Sun Devils. Arizona State in Tempe,
where all the hot girls are, in Tempe, Arizona. Arizona
State beat USC 62-41. SC gave up 62 points. So
(10:57):
the Trojans fly back with their tail between their legs
to Los Angeles. They land around 3 in the morning
at LAX. And who do you think says, wait a minute, timeout.
That would be then-athletic director Pat Hayden. who gives Lane
Kiffin the tap on the shoulder, summons Lane Kiffin for
a meeting near the runway. Lane then argues, like, what
(11:21):
are you doing? Give me more time. And Pat Hayden says,
Ixnay on the time A, and you're out of here.
It was in some room at LAX. So Kiffin didn't
even ride the team bus back to the campus, and
it became one of the great moments one of the
great stories of the last generation in college sports. There's
(11:47):
a term called tarmac. Lane Kiffin is responsible and SC
really Pat Hayden because of what he did there. The
term tarmac, which technically the firing happened in some room
at the airport near the runway, rather than literally underneath
the wing of the plane. But the, you know, when
(12:07):
the legend becomes the fact you go with the legend
and it's the, Man that shot Liberty Valance, and this
is that. Lane Kiffin went wheels up as USC's coach
and landed unemployed. Number two, we got to go way back,
almost 20 years ago, 2008. I was doing weekend overnights
at Fox Sports Radio, 2008, and the Al Davis public
(12:30):
execution for Lane Kiffin. And this is wacky, tabacky. So
Al Davis hired, at the time... A 31-year-old Lane Kiffin,
the spawn of Monty Kiffin, respected, beloved, defensive guru Monty Kiffin.
(12:51):
So Lane Kiffin, at age 31, gets an NFL head
coaching job, despite Kiffin had never been a head coach.
And after 20 games, Lane Kiffin coached a team like
he had never coached before. Five and 15 games. Everything
became toxic. Lane became radioactive with Al Davis, and then
(13:14):
Al Davis did one of the great things possible. He
fired Lane Kiffin over the telephone. However, that's just the
beginning of the story. That's not enough. Al called a
news conference and he brought in props like Carrot Top.
He brought in the overhead projector wearing the signature al
(13:37):
davis white jumpsuit he had the overhead projector and for
as i remember and it might have been a little
less than this it was about 10 hours it might
have been only an hour al davis publicly made his
case he prosecuted his case against lane kiffin he among
(13:58):
other things and i went back and i checked my
notes he said al davis that lane kiffin conned him
was a flat-out liar and a professional liar, and he
argued that Kiffin disgraced the Raiders organization. So the Raiders
fired Kiffin for cause, meaning they didn't have to pay
(14:18):
the remainder of his contract. Kiffin, of course, lawyered up,
and an arbitrator eventually sided with the Oakland Raiders. So
Lane Kiffin lost a ton of money. And it's so
funny looking back on it, and Al Davis talking about
how Lane Kiffin had disgraced the Raiders organization. If only
Al knew what his son was going to do when
Al crossed over the pearly gates, my God. So that
(14:40):
was number two. And number one on the Lane Kiffin,
Lane Kiffin exit hall of fame, not a list. Benny's
big board, not a list. We don't do lists. So
number one, Ole Miss just this past year, tarmac 2.0,
the Oxford hostage crisis. Now, the reason this one is
(15:03):
at the very top is because unlike the other gigs
where he was mediocre at Tennessee, didn't do a good
job at SC, stunk with the Raiders, he actually found success,
Lane Kiffin, in Oxford, Mississippi. And this makes it extra special.
Old Miss was 11-1.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They were a.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Top-10 team in college football. They were headed towards the
college football playoff, and that had the perfect mix of
ingredients for for this amazing situation. So you'd think, hey,
everyone would be happy, Lane would be happy, and the
fan base, the boosters would be happy. Well, no, nothing's
(15:43):
that easy with Lane. So it turned out LSU wanted
Lane Kiffin, and they would offer him whatever he wanted.
Florida had also been interested. Ole Miss is like, well,
we don't want you to leave, Lane. We kind of
like you. You're doing a good job, and you fit
into what we're doing, so we want to keep you.
And so it was all this speculation for weeks and
weeks and weeks that played out. And then it came
(16:07):
down to decision day. And so Lane Kiffin, would he stay?
Would he go? Turns out he decided, of course, I'm
a carpetbagger and I'm out of here. So he took
off for Louisiana. And that's where things got just. insane
to the membrane. So Lane wanted to take the LSU job. However,
(16:28):
he figured, well, we're 11-1. Why don't I just finish
out the year here at Ole Miss, and that'll be that. Well,
Ole Miss said, well, that seems like a really bad idea.
That seems like a bad idea. I think we're going
to go no on that. So Kiffin, using his buddies
in the media, his usefulness in the media, he's campaigning
using buddies in the media, surrogates in the media. And
(16:50):
so then he said, well, if they don't let me coach,
I'm going to take the coaches with me to Ole Miss.
I won't allow them to finish the season. And Ole
Miss promoted Pete Golding and then said, okay, well, we're
going to just not have Lane Kiffin. And then that
led to the grand finale, the finale. Another airport. Again,
(17:13):
Ole Miss fans, a mob of them, descended on the
small airport in Oxford, Mississippi. Lane Kiffin's departing assistants getting booed.
The families getting booed. Police began turning away fans because
the parking lots were full. Not a lot going on
(17:34):
in Oxford, Mississippi. Kiffin arrives through the auxiliary entrance. The
emergency personnel helping keep fans away. A state trooper escorts
the vehicle down the runway. Lane gets out. And boo,
boo that man.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Boo.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Obscenities, middle fingers. You know the drill. Little girls, cute
little girls cursing, as Lane would call them, the hotties.
And angry Rebel fans going over the top. It was
so crazy. And what a send-off. Like the last plane
(18:11):
out of a war zone. And then hours later, Lane
Kiffin arrived in Louisiana and he was God's gift to football.
The LSU fans loved him. He went from villain to
conquering hero in the length of a flight from Oxford,
Mississippi to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Just like that. And so
(18:35):
what an amazing run and You got to think that
he's not going to last at LSU. He doesn't last anywhere.
And he'll just move on. He'll go back to the
NFL and say, I wanted to see if I could
figure the NFL out. And that bad taste of Al
Davis's overhead projector, prosecution, how dare you? It's amazing. Like,
(18:59):
you'd think one of these things would be enough. Like,
most people have, if you're a coach, you have one
really nasty breakup. And you got to be good to
have a breakup. Lane Kiffin has created a four-part Netflix
docuseries called How to Lose a Football Job and Alienate
People at the same time. All right, now to the
(19:21):
Mona Lisa of mutilated spuds. I have leftovers. I have
Vegas leftovers. Now, not actual leftovers. Those would not have
survived in the Mallarmobile. I'm talking about More leftover tales
from the naked city where the names are often omitted
to protect the guilty. The naked city. They say it
(19:45):
never sleeps. I say it never stops eating the things
I have. for you do not make any kind of
official itinerary. These are the little moments where you stop
and say, what exactly is happening here? And we begin
with steak. It's just a piece of steak. Now, I have...
(20:08):
said from the bully pulpit for years that I am
not a steakhouse guy. Never have been. It's not my jam.
And there's a very simple reason for this. I am
part of the silent group of highly educated people who
eat their meat well done.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I know. I know.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I know. I know. You might be giving me that
metaphorical death stare as you listen. Oh, I used to
like your mallard, and then you told me about that.
I can't listen. Let me tell you something. You snake snobs,
you can clutch your pearls. You can scream at the computer,
(20:53):
your phone, whatever. Well done, you animal. Yes, well done.
Well done. My people... are legends like Al Michaels, No
Vegetables Well Done, the great Rob Parker, Puka Nakua of
the Rams, Kenny Albert, the great broadcaster, Kenny Albert, burn, baby, burn,
(21:16):
and butterfly cut before you burn it. I want that
cow to have no chance, no chance of being resuscitated.
I don't want the veterinarian to go into the room
and say, okay, let me go over to the table.
You know what? Why don't I take that plate back?
Give me about 20 minutes and I can save the cow.
(21:38):
I see enough blood there. No, cook it. This creates
a problem. When you go to a high-end steakhouse, it
just does. Because when you order a ribeye and you say,
what would you like? Remember Jim Nance, the famous story
of Jim Nance? He said, how do you like your toast?
And he had a photo of burned toast. So if
(21:58):
I went in there and said, listen, How do I
want my ribeye? And the guy says, how do you
want your ribeye? I said, well, let me go out,
and I'll show you my car, and I want to
show you the tires of my car. That's what I
want it to look like. So you do that, and
the waiter looks at you like you just asked him
to urinate on the American flag. There's no way, right?
Unless you're like Colin Kaepernick or something like that. But
(22:19):
there's a pause, right? A judgmental pause. Wait, sir, well done. Yeah, yeah,
I like my... I like my steak well done. Sir,
are you sure you want the steak well done? And
I'm like, well, did I stutter? No, I didn't stutter.
That's what I want. And somewhere in the kitchen, the
(22:39):
chef is putting my photograph on a dartboard and crossing
my photograph with a red X. And so steakhouses have
never been my thing. But the last time we were
in Vegas... We ended up at this place called Herbs
and Rye as part of a social gathering. Now, it's
(22:59):
off the strip. They have terrific happy hour deals, and
you can get a really nice steak without having to
surrender your 401k, your firstborn child, and the naming rights
to your dog. So it's a good place. I enjoyed it.
It's affordable by Vegas standards. It's affordable. So the plan
(23:21):
this time was to simply go back, And then the
radio studio situation fell apart, as we've talked about. And
this is where we introduce my friend Bob Ross, PBS
legend Bob Ross, because the studio snafu became a happy
little accident. No radio studio available for me to broadcast
(23:42):
from on Thursday into Friday meant that I suddenly had
an extra night in Las Vegas. Normally, that would be bad.
That would be bad. Vegas has a way of turning
unexpected free time into a police report. If you've ever
seen The Hangover, you know how that works. But my
guy Slug, who has been a loyal member of the
(24:02):
Malheur Militia and a friend of the show for many,
many years, the man who helps put together these Malheur
meet and greets in Vegas... So my guy Slug has
been telling me for years that I needed to visit
his restaurant. Now, I'm not going to name the restaurant,
you know, Tales from the Naked City. I'm not going
to even name the hotel the restaurant is at. We'll
just call it Slug's Secret Steak Emporium. Now, Slug would say,
(24:26):
you got to come in, Maller. The food's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sure it's amazing. Everybody says their restaurant is amazing.
Everybody says that. Nobody ever says, come on in here.
We're serving dog food. It's a great restaurant, though. You'll
love the dog food, right? Never say the food is
mediocre and our mashed potatoes taste like drywall. Like the
(24:52):
famous story, which I think we talked about, I'll have
to check with my guy, Nico, in Vancouver to see.
I think we talked about this a while back on
the mashed potatoes at KFC, the one food dish that
Colonel Sanders, the guy behind Colonel Sanders, KFC, hated was
the mashed potatoes. Anyway, so I figured Slug was doing
(25:16):
what everyone does. He was embellishing, yada, yada, yada. Sure, Slug, yeah.
He had mentioned that some big-name NFL executives and Hollywood
stars were regular customers at his restaurant. And I'm like, okay, sure, please.
How good could a steakhouse be at a hotel on
the Strip in Vegas? When I think of a steakhouse,
(25:39):
I think of a standalone location with valet parking and
all these things. Well, I do owe Slug a rare
and appropriate, rare and appropriate apology because the man rolled
out the red carpet, VIP treatment. The wife and I
(26:01):
went on an actual fancy steak date, so I got
some bonus points. And this obviously was not my natural habitat.
I had to wear nice clothes, somewhat nice clothes. I
am much more comfortable eating something out of a paper
bag with a plastic spork from KFC while sitting in
(26:22):
my car. This is different. You're sitting there, you've got
a nice leather booth, dimmed steakhouse mood lighting, just a
really beautiful room, and I'm really not someone that cares
too much about the ambience, but this was great. I
don't care about... My wife hates going to Walmart because
of the lighting. She complains. I'm like, I don't care.
They give me a better deal. I'll go anywhere for
(26:42):
a better deal. First-class service. Now, the waiter was not slugged.
The guy was amazing. The guy was outstanding. He was tremendous. Now,
this wasn't some run-of-the-mill restaurant where the ketchup bottle makes
a farting noise when you squeeze it. You know what
I'm talking about? Yeah, this was not it. This was class.
(27:04):
And so we looked at the menu. We analyzed it
like we were looking at what plays the call in
the Super Bowl. We ordered. Obviously, there was some steak.
There was a lot of bread. There were side dishes
up to the moon, more side dishes. At some point,
I believe we ordered part of the furniture. I blame
my wife for that. I did not do that. And
(27:25):
then the mashed potatoes arrived. Now, mashed potatoes are normally
an afterthought. Nobody plans their evening around mashed potatoes. I've
yet to meet someone who proposes marriage to mashed potatoes.
Nobody wakes up at 3.30 in the morning screaming, my God,
(27:47):
those potatoes were orgasmic. They're mashed potatoes. They're the bass
player of the steakhouse. They're there. They're important, as important
as something like that could be. However, nobody bought the
concert ticket to see the bass player, except these potatoes.
(28:10):
And I don't want to oversell it. These potatoes were different.
This was the Mona Lisa of mutilated spots. Smooth, creamy, exquisite.
It was potato candy. I was like, I was like,
this is really mashed potatoes. This must be something else.
I took one bite and I looked at my wife.
(28:32):
I was like, well, am I sure about this? And
I took another bite and I said, oh my God,
what the hell is going on? How did they make
the mashed potatoes? Did these potatoes attend culinary finishing school
somewhere in the mountains in Switzerland, the Alps? Were they
massaged before being mashed? Were these potatoes raised and... a
(28:55):
loving two-parent potato household, because these were not normal potatoes.
I wanted to interview the potato. I wanted to interview
the potato maker, the sous chef who made the potatoes.
And I wanted to talk to the potato and say, listen,
when did you realize you were destined for greatness? This
is the Tom Brady, the Michael Jordan, the Babe Ruth
(29:18):
of the potato. Now, don't get me wrong. The steak
was great. The bread was outstanding. Some of the greatest
sourdough bread I've ever had. I think it was sourdough bread.
Everything was wonderful. However, these mashed potatoes, these mashed potatoes
were Mozart. The potatoes were secretariat at the Belmont. It
was the Sistine Chapel restaurant. if Michelangelo had worked in Idaho.
(29:43):
It was like spuds in Idaho. And we ate, we ate,
we ate, until eventually it happens. We were stuffed to
the gills. I was sitting there in that leather-bound booth...
looking like I was about to apply for a job
at Blimpy's. You feel me? Yeah. It's back to my
(30:04):
old ways. My stomach had filled so much, I had
to file a cease and desist order. All right? My
stomach had to. And here's the embarrassing part. We didn't
even make it to dessert. We're talking about a high-end restaurant,
rare meal like this. I don't usually eat at these places.
Special meal, rare night out. And my lard ass filled
(30:29):
up before dessert. I shamed my previous self. I let
down fatty from back in the day. This is amateur hour.
It's kind of like going to Disneyland and getting tired
in the parking lot. Like, what are you doing? You know,
you just walk over to the tram and you got tired.
So I had failed. However, on the official Malheur scale
(30:51):
of culinary arts, from 1 to 10, Slug's secret restaurant receives,
and I'm not going to go crazy here, a 99.
That's the good news. The bad news is, yet again,
I believe Slug has ruined steak for me and the wife.
So think of it like a blessing and a curse,
(31:12):
a double-edged steak knife. Because the next night, we went back,
not realizing that our love of steak had been sullied
because we went to the greatest steakhouse we'd ever been to.
So we went back to this place called Herbs and Rye. Now,
Herbs and Rye was good, perfectly good. But now we
(31:33):
had seen the mountain. When you see the mountain, you
can't go back. It's like flying first class and then
getting assigned seat 47B, Back of the plane, you're near
the bathroom, you can smell the poo, and you're sitting
in between two fat guys who hadn't showered since the
Clinton administration when Bill was chasing Monica Lewinsky around the
(31:56):
White House to get the tongue bath. It's just, you're ruined.
So we arrived Friday night without reservations to this steakhouse,
which was a brilliant tactical maneuver unless it was not.
Friday night, Las Vegas, popular restaurant, no reservation. What could
(32:18):
possibly go wrong? Well, two hours of sitting in the car, waiting.
Our name was on the list. You're seventh on the list.
You're sixth on the list. You're fifth on the list.
If people don't show up to the reservation, we'll move
you up. So we're sitting there in the parking lot.
(32:40):
I'd have the car on because it was still like
100 degrees. I'm playing enough solitaire at this point on
my phone where I briefly considered joining the professional solitaire circuit,
if there's a way to do that. Eventually, we finally
got the message. You are now allowed to enter. Again,
so we went back. I had been to this place before.
(33:00):
Nice room, good lighting, everything pretty much as I remembered it.
And we sat down, and to our left are two tables.
At one table, there's another couple sitting. enjoying a nice
steak dinner, right there, at the middle table. So we're
on one side. On the other side of the room,
there's the couple having their steak. And in the middle table,
(33:24):
there's a pretty attractive young woman. I don't know how
old she was. I imagine she's probably in her late 20s,
early 30s. And she's sitting there completely alone. And she
had a big old steak, like a porterhouse steak there.
Had a glass of what appeared to be wine. She
had some side dishes, and then in front of her,
(33:44):
she was by herself, there was a phone mounted on
a little stand. And she's talking on the phone, or
she's talking to the phone, she's not checking, she's not
checking the phone, she's not texting, she's not having a,
some kind of, she's not taking a picture of the
steak or anything like that, she's just kind of like,
it's weird, I've never seen this before. She's having dinner
(34:10):
with her iPhone on, And she's talking to the phone.
There's a full conversation. I'm watching this and I'm thinking,
have I entered into another dimension of the Twilight Zone?
Because I have seen a lot of bizarre activity at
restaurants as I've lived a good amount of my life.
And I've seen a lot of things. I've seen people
(34:31):
clip their fingernails, pick boogers. I've seen screaming children, a
lot of those rugrats at restaurants. I've seen old people
fighting with other old people, young people fighting with other
young people. I've seen people send food back because apparently
the parsley offended them. And eating three quarters of their
meal saying, I didn't like this meal. I'm not going
(34:52):
to pay for it. Well, you just ate three quarters
of it. I don't care. I'm not paying for it.
I've never seen this. So again, an attractive woman, all
dolled up. She had a nice little sexy outfit on.
And she's having an intimate steak dinner. She got all
dressed up to have a nice steak dinner with her iPhone.
And apparently this is a thing. So I started futzing
around doing some keyboard research and all that. And I
(35:16):
was like, whoa, like things that make you go, huh?
Like this, I was like, is it a virtual date?
It could have been on live stream. It could have been,
there's a term I looked up called mukbang. That is
from our friends in South Korea, mukbang. That is the
(35:38):
phenomena that apparently took off, I guess, about 20 years ago,
according to what I found on the internet, where people
broadcast themselves eating while interacting with viewers, sometimes receiving virtual
gifts or donations. So is this like panhandling for biscuits?
Is that what that is? So I found out there's
a phrase other than mukbang, which I'm going to use,
(36:00):
and it's floating around the... dark web for the broader
fascination with watching other people eat. It's called gastronomic voyeurism.
What in the world? Gastronomic voyeurism. Now that is a phrase.
Gastronomic voyeurism. It sounds like something you would make up
(36:26):
for a comic book or something. It wouldn't be real.
And it's like something you should have to disclose, I guess,
if you're applying for a loan for your mortgage or something.
What are your hobbies? Well, I imagine that on like
a dating site. Well, I enjoy hiking, reading and gastronomic voyeurism. Yeah. OK.
(36:46):
Call security. However, apparently some of you people enjoy watching
other people eat, and it's very odd. I don't get it.
People watching people play video games used to be a
big thing. I guess it still is. That doesn't make
a lot of sense to me. I'm just not wired
(37:08):
that way. Hey, knock yourself out. So I had many
questions as we were sitting down getting ready to get
our food, like, Is there a minimum wage on this? Like,
how much would that be? Is there one person watching?
Are 500 people watching? Is somebody in Cleveland sending her
(37:32):
$ 20 because she ate a baked potato in a sultry,
sexy way? Does the restaurant know about this? Do you
have to get permission? You're broadcasting from the restaurant. Do
you have to get permission? Is there a SAG card
that you have to get for this? Do you have
to have an agent? Can you imagine if you have
to have an agent? How freaking nuts would that be?
(37:55):
And your agent calls you. Well, listen, sweetheart, I can
get you a table of Applebee's on Tuesday, Whataburger on Thursday,
but I talked to the people over at Ruth's Chris. Yeah,
Ruth's Chris, the famous steakhouse.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They say they will get you a table, but they
want exclusivity. They want you to be loyal to them.
They don't want you going to Whataburger, Applebee's, or Wienerschnitzel.
They don't want you going to Culver's. You're not allowed
to go to Culver's. You could only go to Ruth's Chris. Well,
what if I want to go to Bojangles? You can't
go to Bojangles. Only Ruth's Chris. Okay. And the other
thing I was thinking was like, this has to only
(38:29):
work for chicks, right? This can't work for men. Like, right?
I couldn't do this. I mean, I could do it.
Imagine me getting my phone and putting a stand there
and I'd buy a stand on Amazon and having people
pay money to watch a six-foot-something bald dude, middle-aged or
(38:51):
older now, inhale chicken fingers. Methinks not so much. Now,
I suspect the market has spoken. Nobody is going to
send virtual roses to me because I successfully finished the breadbasket.
And anyway, I'm an introvert. I could do the camera
thing because you're not actually physically there. Now, normally, I
(39:11):
have absolutely no interest in talking to strangers in social situations.
I just don't. You could sit next to me for
six hours on a Delta flight from God only knows where,
and I will happily pretend... that you do not exist
(39:33):
however this woman for some reason I wanted answers I
wanted to walk over and say excuse me ma'am what
the hell are you doing now my wife sensed this
as you know if you're married or if you're a
wife or a future wife or a former wife, wives
(39:55):
have radar. She looked at me and immediately gave me
the universal married person wife signal, like a bat signal.
She gave me the look. Not a finger. She didn't
point the finger. She gave me the look. The look.
Every husband knows the look. It says, don't you dare.
(40:20):
And often it's just shortened to don't. There are no
words necessary other than just don't. The I's say knock
it off. Do not turn this into an awkward situation.
It's already an awkward situation. Just don't make it any
more awkward. So I obeyed against every journalistic instinct in
(40:43):
my body. Not that I'm really a journalist. I let
sleeping dogs lie. Or in this case, I let a
20-something woman continue to have a cyber steak date with
her phone. And that is apparently the zeitgeist of where
we are right now. That's the spot we're in. Forget
dinner for two. Can I have dinner for one plus
(41:07):
3,700 anonymous people and bots on the Internet? Well, anyway,
that was that. Then came our final meal. The following
day after the meet and greet, a nice Italian meal.
And this place is not just an Italian restaurant. It's
open until 1 in the morning. That is my kind
(41:30):
of restaurant. You can get chicken parm, chicken parmigiana, as
Marcel in Brooklyn would say, at midnight. That is civilization.
We stopped at this place called Bootleggers. Called Bootleggers. If
you've ever been there, it's good. And they got a bar,
a nice little bar. It's a giant restaurant. They host
a lot of weddings and things like that. It's on
(41:51):
our way out of Vegas, heading back towards LA. It's
on Las Vegas Boulevard, but not the part of the
strip where it's all built up. And eventually there'll be
hotels down there and all that. And so, fine. I
ordered my chicken parm, got my side of fettuccine Alfredo,
a little garlic bread, had my water. Nothing complicated. Standard
order for me in an Italian restaurant. I was physically
(42:11):
drained because this was hours after being talked out and
way too much socializing at the Mallard meet and greet.
So there really wasn't much conversation with my wife. There
was a lot of looking at our phones and just
kind of mumbling and just me, the wife and my
chicken parm and fettuccine. It was peaceful. It was beautiful.
(42:34):
I enjoyed the garlic bread. I had five bites of
the chicken parm. I had two bites of the fettuccine Alfredo.
I then took a drink of water. And I was
a little tired. I was in the weird spot. And
the glass slipped slightly, just slightly out of my hands.
And it hit the table, my glass of water. And
(42:57):
as the late, great Al McCoy, at least late from
the Voice of the Suns and whatnot, as Al McCoy,
the old Suns broadcaster, used to say on those radio broadcasts, Wham! Bam! Slam! Kaboom! Kerflooey!
The glass exploded. It didn't just crack. Not a chip
(43:19):
or two. It exploded. Exploded hundreds, if not thousands of
pieces all over my side of the table, covering my
chicken parm, right? Covering my chicken parm, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Yeah. And it looked like somebody had thrown a brick
through a windshield. And I've had that happen. I was driving, actually,
the sunroof on my Mallarmobile. I got hit with a brick.
And let me tell you, that glass goes everywhere. And
the glass here was in the air everywhere, on the table,
as I said. It was in my plate, all over
the chicken parm, the fettuccine. And I looked at my wife.
(44:01):
I said, listen, did I slam this thing down? I
didn't seem like I slammed it. And she was looking,
and she said, no. I was like, I must have
developed incredible Hulk strength. And she said, no, no, no,
you didn't. You didn't slam it. It just kind of slipped.
I saw it. It slipped out of your hand. And
so apparently I hit the exact microscopic pressure point on
(44:24):
the glass. And I found the Achilles heel of a
water tumbler, whatever you want to call it. And Bruce
Banner takes gamma radiation from This must have been, my
determination was that, well, I don't have gamma radiation like
Bruce Banner. This must have been leftover from that mashed
(44:46):
potatoes that I had had the night before. The same result,
the Hulk smash water glass. Unfortunately, my newly discovered superpower
destroyed my dinner. I took, again, five bites of the
chicken parmigiana, a couple of bites of the fettuccine. I
had a lot of garlic bread, and that was it.
The chicken parm was contaminated by shrapnel. I was like, well,
(45:07):
I could probably pick the glass out. And the wife said,
ixnay on that. Now, the restaurant was very nice. They
offered to make me another dish of chicken parm and fettuccine.
And I said, no, I don't want that. And then
because I was like kind of in a bad mood.
And I was like, I was actually kind of full anyway.
I was just drained. And so they took the meal
(45:28):
off the bill, which was very kind. So I do
want to thank the fine people. I'll name the restaurant Bootleggers.
It's called Bootlecker's Italian Restaurant in Vegas. Good Italian food,
nice people, pretty cool bar area, weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals,
all that stuff. And apparently glassware that recognizes my immense
physical power and immediately surrenders. So there was that. Now,
(45:54):
I have one final, final... I know I'm getting long here,
but one final Vegas leftover. It was not as hot
as some previous trips. When I say not as hot,
it was only like 112 a couple of days. Only 112.
That's Vegas logic, by the way. Beautiful day today. The
dashboard only melted a little. Now, that's good. It only
melted a little. Baby steps. So my wife was still
(46:17):
in bed. This was on, I guess it was on Saturday.
My wife was in bed. So I walked a couple
of blocks away. There was a store that I was
going to just walk. It's a clothing store, but they
have a discount section, which is pretty big, and clothes
for me. So I was like, all right. So it's
like two blocks away. Again, 112-degree heat. Tactical genius. As
(46:39):
I'm walking, I look underneath the hotel area, and there
it is, the entrance. Now, what is it the entrance to?
Is it the entrance to a secret casino, a speakeasy? No, no, no.
the entrance to a demon portal, the famous tunnels underneath
Las Vegas. I've seen YouTube videos on this. I've seen
(47:01):
documentaries on this. They're really the flood control infrastructure of
Las Vegas, not some actual underground metropolis, the hidden city. However,
people have created their lives underground, makeshift living spaces down there.
Because if you're homeless in Vegas, it's not always a
good idea to sit out in 112-degree weather And again,
(47:25):
I had seen some videos on this over the years,
this strange subterranean world beneath all the glitz and glamour
of Vegas and all the gambling and debauchery of the casinos.
But I'd never noticed one of the entrances like this,
like right in front of me on my own eyes.
And I was walking and there it was. It was
dark concrete signs basically telling you stay out, keep out.
(47:48):
It's not safe. And so you're thinking, well, did you
go into the demon portal? Well, I'll explain. So my
first thought was, what has happened down there, right? And
I did think about maybe there was a hole in
the fence. I could have walked down there. I did not.
But just to think, like above ground, you got all
(48:08):
these billion-dollar casinos, great steakhouses. You got slot machines, fountains, tourists,
people paying attractive women to eat steak on camera. And
then below ground, who knows? It looked like the border
crossing into another sovereign nation. The People's Republic of UV
(48:34):
under Vegas. No sunlight. No Bellagio fountains. The smell of urine.
No resort fees. That's good. No parking to pay for.
No $ 35 parking. You can park your shopping cart wherever
you want. And I stood there staring into the tunnel.
And I was thinking about the entire trip. the radio
studio falling apart, being unable to broadcast, the happy little accident,
(48:59):
my guy Bob Ross, that led to going to Slug's restaurant,
which led to the greatest mashed potatoes of my life,
the woman dining by herself all dolled up with her phone,
my incredible Hulk destruction at the Italian restaurant with the glassware,
and now the gateway to subterranean Las Vegas. And that's
(49:23):
the magic of these type of things. That's going to Vegas.
You make plans. Vegas laughs at you. Bob Ross paints
over them. And suddenly you've discovered culinary heaven, gastronomic voyeurism,
superhuman strength, and the entrance to an underground world all
within about 48 hours. And somehow the thing that I'm
(49:44):
still thinking about, not the tunnels, not the exploding glass,
not the attractive woman having dinner by herself with the Internet.
Those mashed potatoes. The Mona Lisa again of mutated spuds.
And somewhere in Las Vegas, Slug is probably laughing. He
tried to tell me. I didn't listen. I'm stubborn. I thought, ah,
(50:04):
it's just a piece of steak. It turns out I
was right. The steak was just the steak. The potatoes,
the mashed potatoes were the main event. My God. All right,
we'll get out of here on that. I will have
the mailbag tomorrow. We'll have a bunch of email from you.
You can send messages in realfifthouratgmail.com. That's realfifthouratgmail.com. So make
(50:30):
sure to check that out. On Sunday, have a great day.
Enjoy the college football today. I'll be watching that LSU-Clemson game.
I got that. That was the game I circled. These
other games look completely horrific. So if there's one game,
that's the game, and I'm sure we'll talk about that
a little bit when we get back to the radio
show to see how good old Lane Kiffin does there
(50:51):
in his LSU. Can you imagine if he loses? Holy crap.
All right, we'll talk more about that later. Have a
wonderful Saturday. And as my friend Dick and Dayton would say, bye-bye, bye-bye.
Kaboom if you thought four hours a day 1200 minutes
a week was enough think again he's the last remnants
of the old republic a sole bastion of fairness he
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse wow the clearinghouse of
hot takes break free for something special the fifth hour
(00:23):
with ben maller starts right now.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben Maller,
and you. We are together here on this college football Saturday.
You're listening live on tape to the Fifth Hour as
it is the fifth day of September. There are just
117 days to go. That's it. And then we move
(00:54):
on to 2027, the... Express train. Choo-choo. Not wasting any time.
Not wasting any time. You are in safe hands on
this podcast, this Saturday special. We've got the Exit Hall
of Fame, the Mona Lisa of mutilated spuds, and who
knows what else. We begin, though, celebrating the most appropriate
(01:16):
holiday for today as so many, as you are listening
to this, are tailgating out about enjoying collegiate football. It
is National Tailgate Day today. A literal term, which I
think we all know, right? There's no one theory on
(01:40):
the origin story of tailgating. It obviously involves the automobile,
the lowering of the tailgate. In 1869, there's a origin
story where fans supposedly gathered around the First college football game,
Rutgers and Princeton, although that's not modern tailgating. There's another
(02:04):
story involving Yale. Some of the historians saying that the
fans at Yale would travel by train to games in
the late 1800s, and they brought food and drinks. Because
get this, apparently in the 1800s, they had not figured
out how to price gouge the people that went to
college football games because the concessions were not exactly booming
(02:28):
at that time. And then when the modern automobile came
around shortly after that and became a thing in the
early to mid-20th century, well, that's when it really obviously
became the deal that it is today. And the greatest
tailgating I've ever been to is either Buffalo, I've got
(02:50):
to say probably Kansas City. I've not been to a
Packer game. I've heard amazing things about Green Bay and
the tailgating there. I was at an Oklahoma Sooners game.
That was pretty wild. People were boozing and barbecuing at
like 8 in the morning. That was next level. The
Bills Mafia, they've got all the table jumping and all that.
They didn't have that. When I was at a Bills game,
(03:11):
it was before that became a thing. And Kansas City,
my guy Bob Fesco, he took me to a Chiefs tailgate,
and it was one of the great days I had.
They had this symbolic burning of the, they were playing
the Broncos, and they had this symbolic burning of the
stuffed animal horsey. But I love barbecue, so that was great.
I've heard a lot of good things about Ole Miss.
(03:33):
The Grove, which is supposedly, they don't tailgate in your
usual stereotypical asphalt parking lot. They The fans of the Rebels,
the Ole Miss Rebels, they gather beneath trees on campus
there at the Grove. Remember, there was that famous incident
back in the day. It's also World Beard Day today.
(03:54):
World Beard Day, which is something I celebrate when I'm
too lazy to shave. Now, World Beard Day moves every
year because it falls on the first Saturday of September,
which is today, the unofficial holiday, a celebration of beards.
And Alexander the Great, you want some fun facts about beards? Yes,
you do. I know you do, Fergdog and Alf. I know.
(04:17):
And Malapropguy. Alexander the Great reportedly encouraging his soldiers to
shave partly because, this is so great, because an enemy
could grab a beard during hand-to-hand combat. And so he's like, hey, listen,
this is a competitive advantage. It reminds me every once
in a while, somebody will come out in the NFL,
have really long hair. And this has happened a few times.
(04:40):
I've done monologues on it. And then inevitably, it'll be
like a running back or something. And the defensive player
will just grab the hair and twist it. And they're like,
what are we doing? Yeah, how about that? Now, in
ancient Egypt, facial hair would signify status. However, some pharaohs
(05:03):
famously wore false beards. Even back then, they were con artists. Now,
my favorite beard story, which is the most American beard
story you could have, goes back to the 1860s. Abraham Lincoln,
who kind of became a big deal, he grew out
his legendary beard. Every time you see an image of
(05:24):
Abraham Lincoln with almost... I can't think of anyone I've
seen in years that didn't have the beard. He always
has the beard. The legend, and who knows, this could
be like George Washington and the cherry tree.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Who knows?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Who knows? I wasn't alive. You weren't alive then. Abraham
Lincoln supposedly grew his famous beard because an 11-year-old girl
named Grace Bedell wrote him in the 1860s, essentially saying, hey, dude,
you're ugly. And if you grow some whiskers, that would
actually improve your appearance. And he did. Now, I wonder,
(05:59):
Lincoln kept losing elections. I think it was like eight
times before he finally got elected. If he had had
the beard earlier, would that have helped him politically? And
he was the first U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, to wear
a full beard while in office. Of course, to be fair,
there hadn't been that many presidents prior to Lincoln. The
(06:20):
ZZ Top, which was big when I was a kid.
Billy Gibbons. I mean, that's next level. Dusty Hill, the
enormous beards. And my favorite part of that is, and
I remember some of my boys pointing out that we
thought it was hilarious that the drummer named Frank beard,
ironically was the only member without a giant beard in
(06:44):
ZZ top. And his name was literally a beard. What
are we doing? Uh, they've been crazy. So I, Peter,
the great of Russia had a beard tax. Cause why not? Uh,
just tax everything, just tax everything. And, Knock yourself out.
There's a bunch of other stuff, but that's enough. Now
we get to a special feature add-on item. This is
(07:08):
not on the main menu. It is an add-on item.
It is the Exit Hall of Fame Lane Kiffin Edition
Benny's Big Board. So I'd mentioned this during the week,
and I really want to dig into it. So I
don't do lists. As you know, Terry in England, who's
been on the mailbag with me and now does not.
(07:29):
listen live, unfortunately, but my man Terry in England. Not
a list. Benny's big board, Lane Kiffin's exit Hall of
Fame will go from four to one, four to one,
grading these on things like humiliation, absolute chaos. That's the
key thing here. Absolute chaos, bitterness, and the overall absurdity,
(07:53):
which is just a regular day in the world of
Lane Kiffin. who is the modern-day carnival barker of our
times in football. And I was worried. I remember when
some of the bigger names in college football exited. I
was like, oh, man, these guys are all kind of boring.
And I guess every generation has to have these groups
of clowns. And I'm all for it. I'm all for it.
(08:15):
And Lane's my age. I think we're about the same age.
So I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
All right, number four on Benny's big board. Not a list,
not a list. Number four, Benny's big board, Lane Kiffin's
exit Hall of Fame. Well, we got to go with Tennessee.
The great Knoxville escape. We were on the radio at
Fox in 2010 documenting, which was after just one season,
(08:40):
a 7-6 record for Lane Kiffin. 14 months after he
arrived in Tennessee, Lane Kiffin got a phone call from
his besties out in California saying, hey, why don't you
come back to USC? And he decided, hey, that's my
dream job. That's my dream job. So he announced Lane
(09:01):
Kiffin that he was leaving Tennessee for USC. The players
were up in arms because it was no NIL at
that time, and people had gone there and dedicated themselves
to Lane Kiffin. So the players were upset. The student
body descended at the football complex. There was mass chaos.
(09:22):
There were mattresses and sofas being burned on the street.
Police became involved. Tennessee officials accused Lane Kiffin's staff of
dirty pool, contacting recruits on the way out. And so
Lane essentially escaped Knoxville while there was a mob of
(09:45):
volunteer nation, and they were holding pitchforks and torches. And
the main reason this is only number four is he
wasn't fired. right he left like he left and that
was mild compared to some of the other things that
happened now number three on the big board benny's big
(10:06):
board lane kiffin's exit hall of fame number three usc
2013 so He leaves Tennessee, Lane Kiffin, goes to SC.
That's his dream job. Way to go. All right. So
USC went from the number one team in the preseason
that year. And that meant something, I guess, for some people, boosters.
So they were the number one team before the 2012 season.
(10:31):
And they went seven and six. There seems to be
a pattern here. And the heat was on. It continued
into 2013. And then... The Sun Devils. Arizona State in Tempe,
where all the hot girls are, in Tempe, Arizona. Arizona
State beat USC 62-41. SC gave up 62 points. So
(10:57):
the Trojans fly back with their tail between their legs
to Los Angeles. They land around 3 in the morning
at LAX. And who do you think says, wait a minute, timeout.
That would be then-athletic director Pat Hayden. who gives Lane
Kiffin the tap on the shoulder, summons Lane Kiffin for
a meeting near the runway. Lane then argues, like, what
(11:21):
are you doing? Give me more time. And Pat Hayden says,
Ixnay on the time A, and you're out of here.
It was in some room at LAX. So Kiffin didn't
even ride the team bus back to the campus, and
it became one of the great moments one of the
great stories of the last generation in college sports. There's
(11:47):
a term called tarmac. Lane Kiffin is responsible and SC
really Pat Hayden because of what he did there. The
term tarmac, which technically the firing happened in some room
at the airport near the runway, rather than literally underneath
the wing of the plane. But the, you know, when
(12:07):
the legend becomes the fact you go with the legend
and it's the, Man that shot Liberty Valance, and this
is that. Lane Kiffin went wheels up as USC's coach
and landed unemployed. Number two, we got to go way back,
almost 20 years ago, 2008. I was doing weekend overnights
at Fox Sports Radio, 2008, and the Al Davis public
(12:30):
execution for Lane Kiffin. And this is wacky, tabacky. So
Al Davis hired, at the time... A 31-year-old Lane Kiffin,
the spawn of Monty Kiffin, respected, beloved, defensive guru Monty Kiffin.
(12:51):
So Lane Kiffin, at age 31, gets an NFL head
coaching job, despite Kiffin had never been a head coach.
And after 20 games, Lane Kiffin coached a team like
he had never coached before. Five and 15 games. Everything
became toxic. Lane became radioactive with Al Davis, and then
(13:14):
Al Davis did one of the great things possible. He
fired Lane Kiffin over the telephone. However, that's just the
beginning of the story. That's not enough. Al called a
news conference and he brought in props like Carrot Top.
He brought in the overhead projector wearing the signature al
(13:37):
davis white jumpsuit he had the overhead projector and for
as i remember and it might have been a little
less than this it was about 10 hours it might
have been only an hour al davis publicly made his
case he prosecuted his case against lane kiffin he among
(13:58):
other things and i went back and i checked my
notes he said al davis that lane kiffin conned him
was a flat-out liar and a professional liar, and he
argued that Kiffin disgraced the Raiders organization. So the Raiders
fired Kiffin for cause, meaning they didn't have to pay
(14:18):
the remainder of his contract. Kiffin, of course, lawyered up,
and an arbitrator eventually sided with the Oakland Raiders. So
Lane Kiffin lost a ton of money. And it's so
funny looking back on it, and Al Davis talking about
how Lane Kiffin had disgraced the Raiders organization. If only
Al knew what his son was going to do when
Al crossed over the pearly gates, my God. So that
(14:40):
was number two. And number one on the Lane Kiffin,
Lane Kiffin exit hall of fame, not a list. Benny's
big board, not a list. We don't do lists. So
number one, Ole Miss just this past year, tarmac 2.0,
the Oxford hostage crisis. Now, the reason this one is
(15:03):
at the very top is because unlike the other gigs
where he was mediocre at Tennessee, didn't do a good
job at SC, stunk with the Raiders, he actually found success,
Lane Kiffin, in Oxford, Mississippi. And this makes it extra special.
Old Miss was 11-1.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They were a.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Top-10 team in college football. They were headed towards the
college football playoff, and that had the perfect mix of
ingredients for for this amazing situation. So you'd think, hey,
everyone would be happy, Lane would be happy, and the
fan base, the boosters would be happy. Well, no, nothing's
(15:43):
that easy with Lane. So it turned out LSU wanted
Lane Kiffin, and they would offer him whatever he wanted.
Florida had also been interested. Ole Miss is like, well,
we don't want you to leave, Lane. We kind of
like you. You're doing a good job, and you fit
into what we're doing, so we want to keep you.
And so it was all this speculation for weeks and
weeks and weeks that played out. And then it came
(16:07):
down to decision day. And so Lane Kiffin, would he stay?
Would he go? Turns out he decided, of course, I'm
a carpetbagger and I'm out of here. So he took
off for Louisiana. And that's where things got just. insane
to the membrane. So Lane wanted to take the LSU job. However,
(16:28):
he figured, well, we're 11-1. Why don't I just finish
out the year here at Ole Miss, and that'll be that. Well,
Ole Miss said, well, that seems like a really bad idea.
That seems like a bad idea. I think we're going
to go no on that. So Kiffin, using his buddies
in the media, his usefulness in the media, he's campaigning
using buddies in the media, surrogates in the media. And
(16:50):
so then he said, well, if they don't let me coach,
I'm going to take the coaches with me to Ole Miss.
I won't allow them to finish the season. And Ole
Miss promoted Pete Golding and then said, okay, well, we're
going to just not have Lane Kiffin. And then that
led to the grand finale, the finale. Another airport. Again,
(17:13):
Ole Miss fans, a mob of them, descended on the
small airport in Oxford, Mississippi. Lane Kiffin's departing assistants getting booed.
The families getting booed. Police began turning away fans because
the parking lots were full. Not a lot going on
(17:34):
in Oxford, Mississippi. Kiffin arrives through the auxiliary entrance. The
emergency personnel helping keep fans away. A state trooper escorts
the vehicle down the runway. Lane gets out. And boo,
boo that man.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Boo.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Obscenities, middle fingers. You know the drill. Little girls, cute
little girls cursing, as Lane would call them, the hotties.
And angry Rebel fans going over the top. It was
so crazy. And what a send-off. Like the last plane
(18:11):
out of a war zone. And then hours later, Lane
Kiffin arrived in Louisiana and he was God's gift to football.
The LSU fans loved him. He went from villain to
conquering hero in the length of a flight from Oxford,
Mississippi to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Just like that. And so
(18:35):
what an amazing run and You got to think that
he's not going to last at LSU. He doesn't last anywhere.
And he'll just move on. He'll go back to the
NFL and say, I wanted to see if I could
figure the NFL out. And that bad taste of Al
Davis's overhead projector, prosecution, how dare you? It's amazing. Like,
(18:59):
you'd think one of these things would be enough. Like,
most people have, if you're a coach, you have one
really nasty breakup. And you got to be good to
have a breakup. Lane Kiffin has created a four-part Netflix
docuseries called How to Lose a Football Job and Alienate
People at the same time. All right, now to the
(19:21):
Mona Lisa of mutilated spuds. I have leftovers. I have
Vegas leftovers. Now, not actual leftovers. Those would not have
survived in the Mallarmobile. I'm talking about More leftover tales
from the naked city where the names are often omitted
to protect the guilty. The naked city. They say it
(19:45):
never sleeps. I say it never stops eating the things
I have. for you do not make any kind of
official itinerary. These are the little moments where you stop
and say, what exactly is happening here? And we begin
with steak. It's just a piece of steak. Now, I have...
(20:08):
said from the bully pulpit for years that I am
not a steakhouse guy. Never have been. It's not my jam.
And there's a very simple reason for this. I am
part of the silent group of highly educated people who
eat their meat well done.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I know. I know.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I know. I know. You might be giving me that
metaphorical death stare as you listen. Oh, I used to
like your mallard, and then you told me about that.
I can't listen. Let me tell you something. You snake snobs,
you can clutch your pearls. You can scream at the computer,
(20:53):
your phone, whatever. Well done, you animal. Yes, well done.
Well done. My people... are legends like Al Michaels, No
Vegetables Well Done, the great Rob Parker, Puka Nakua of
the Rams, Kenny Albert, the great broadcaster, Kenny Albert, burn, baby, burn,
(21:16):
and butterfly cut before you burn it. I want that
cow to have no chance, no chance of being resuscitated.
I don't want the veterinarian to go into the room
and say, okay, let me go over to the table.
You know what? Why don't I take that plate back?
Give me about 20 minutes and I can save the cow.
(21:38):
I see enough blood there. No, cook it. This creates
a problem. When you go to a high-end steakhouse, it
just does. Because when you order a ribeye and you say,
what would you like? Remember Jim Nance, the famous story
of Jim Nance? He said, how do you like your toast?
And he had a photo of burned toast. So if
(21:58):
I went in there and said, listen, How do I
want my ribeye? And the guy says, how do you
want your ribeye? I said, well, let me go out,
and I'll show you my car, and I want to
show you the tires of my car. That's what I
want it to look like. So you do that, and
the waiter looks at you like you just asked him
to urinate on the American flag. There's no way, right?
Unless you're like Colin Kaepernick or something like that. But
(22:19):
there's a pause, right? A judgmental pause. Wait, sir, well done. Yeah, yeah,
I like my... I like my steak well done. Sir,
are you sure you want the steak well done? And
I'm like, well, did I stutter? No, I didn't stutter.
That's what I want. And somewhere in the kitchen, the
(22:39):
chef is putting my photograph on a dartboard and crossing
my photograph with a red X. And so steakhouses have
never been my thing. But the last time we were
in Vegas... We ended up at this place called Herbs
and Rye as part of a social gathering. Now, it's
(22:59):
off the strip. They have terrific happy hour deals, and
you can get a really nice steak without having to
surrender your 401k, your firstborn child, and the naming rights
to your dog. So it's a good place. I enjoyed it.
It's affordable by Vegas standards. It's affordable. So the plan
(23:21):
this time was to simply go back, And then the
radio studio situation fell apart, as we've talked about. And
this is where we introduce my friend Bob Ross, PBS
legend Bob Ross, because the studio snafu became a happy
little accident. No radio studio available for me to broadcast
(23:42):
from on Thursday into Friday meant that I suddenly had
an extra night in Las Vegas. Normally, that would be bad.
That would be bad. Vegas has a way of turning
unexpected free time into a police report. If you've ever
seen The Hangover, you know how that works. But my
guy Slug, who has been a loyal member of the
(24:02):
Malheur Militia and a friend of the show for many,
many years, the man who helps put together these Malheur
meet and greets in Vegas... So my guy Slug has
been telling me for years that I needed to visit
his restaurant. Now, I'm not going to name the restaurant,
you know, Tales from the Naked City. I'm not going
to even name the hotel the restaurant is at. We'll
just call it Slug's Secret Steak Emporium. Now, Slug would say,
(24:26):
you got to come in, Maller. The food's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sure it's amazing. Everybody says their restaurant is amazing.
Everybody says that. Nobody ever says, come on in here.
We're serving dog food. It's a great restaurant, though. You'll
love the dog food, right? Never say the food is
mediocre and our mashed potatoes taste like drywall. Like the
(24:52):
famous story, which I think we talked about, I'll have
to check with my guy, Nico, in Vancouver to see.
I think we talked about this a while back on
the mashed potatoes at KFC, the one food dish that
Colonel Sanders, the guy behind Colonel Sanders, KFC, hated was
the mashed potatoes. Anyway, so I figured Slug was doing
(25:16):
what everyone does. He was embellishing, yada, yada, yada. Sure, Slug, yeah.
He had mentioned that some big-name NFL executives and Hollywood
stars were regular customers at his restaurant. And I'm like, okay, sure, please.
How good could a steakhouse be at a hotel on
the Strip in Vegas? When I think of a steakhouse,
(25:39):
I think of a standalone location with valet parking and
all these things. Well, I do owe Slug a rare
and appropriate, rare and appropriate apology because the man rolled
out the red carpet, VIP treatment. The wife and I
(26:01):
went on an actual fancy steak date, so I got
some bonus points. And this obviously was not my natural habitat.
I had to wear nice clothes, somewhat nice clothes. I
am much more comfortable eating something out of a paper
bag with a plastic spork from KFC while sitting in
(26:22):
my car. This is different. You're sitting there, you've got
a nice leather booth, dimmed steakhouse mood lighting, just a
really beautiful room, and I'm really not someone that cares
too much about the ambience, but this was great. I
don't care about... My wife hates going to Walmart because
of the lighting. She complains. I'm like, I don't care.
They give me a better deal. I'll go anywhere for
(26:42):
a better deal. First-class service. Now, the waiter was not slugged.
The guy was amazing. The guy was outstanding. He was tremendous. Now,
this wasn't some run-of-the-mill restaurant where the ketchup bottle makes
a farting noise when you squeeze it. You know what
I'm talking about? Yeah, this was not it. This was class.
(27:04):
And so we looked at the menu. We analyzed it
like we were looking at what plays the call in
the Super Bowl. We ordered. Obviously, there was some steak.
There was a lot of bread. There were side dishes
up to the moon, more side dishes. At some point,
I believe we ordered part of the furniture. I blame
my wife for that. I did not do that. And
(27:25):
then the mashed potatoes arrived. Now, mashed potatoes are normally
an afterthought. Nobody plans their evening around mashed potatoes. I've
yet to meet someone who proposes marriage to mashed potatoes.
Nobody wakes up at 3.30 in the morning screaming, my God,
(27:47):
those potatoes were orgasmic. They're mashed potatoes. They're the bass
player of the steakhouse. They're there. They're important, as important
as something like that could be. However, nobody bought the
concert ticket to see the bass player, except these potatoes.
(28:10):
And I don't want to oversell it. These potatoes were different.
This was the Mona Lisa of mutilated spots. Smooth, creamy, exquisite.
It was potato candy. I was like, I was like,
this is really mashed potatoes. This must be something else.
I took one bite and I looked at my wife.
(28:32):
I was like, well, am I sure about this? And
I took another bite and I said, oh my God,
what the hell is going on? How did they make
the mashed potatoes? Did these potatoes attend culinary finishing school
somewhere in the mountains in Switzerland, the Alps? Were they
massaged before being mashed? Were these potatoes raised and... a
(28:55):
loving two-parent potato household, because these were not normal potatoes.
I wanted to interview the potato. I wanted to interview
the potato maker, the sous chef who made the potatoes.
And I wanted to talk to the potato and say, listen,
when did you realize you were destined for greatness? This
is the Tom Brady, the Michael Jordan, the Babe Ruth
(29:18):
of the potato. Now, don't get me wrong. The steak
was great. The bread was outstanding. Some of the greatest
sourdough bread I've ever had. I think it was sourdough bread.
Everything was wonderful. However, these mashed potatoes, these mashed potatoes
were Mozart. The potatoes were secretariat at the Belmont. It
was the Sistine Chapel restaurant. if Michelangelo had worked in Idaho.
(29:43):
It was like spuds in Idaho. And we ate, we ate,
we ate, until eventually it happens. We were stuffed to
the gills. I was sitting there in that leather-bound booth...
looking like I was about to apply for a job
at Blimpy's. You feel me? Yeah. It's back to my
(30:04):
old ways. My stomach had filled so much, I had
to file a cease and desist order. All right? My
stomach had to. And here's the embarrassing part. We didn't
even make it to dessert. We're talking about a high-end restaurant,
rare meal like this. I don't usually eat at these places.
Special meal, rare night out. And my lard ass filled
(30:29):
up before dessert. I shamed my previous self. I let
down fatty from back in the day. This is amateur hour.
It's kind of like going to Disneyland and getting tired
in the parking lot. Like, what are you doing? You know,
you just walk over to the tram and you got tired.
So I had failed. However, on the official Malheur scale
(30:51):
of culinary arts, from 1 to 10, Slug's secret restaurant receives,
and I'm not going to go crazy here, a 99.
That's the good news. The bad news is, yet again,
I believe Slug has ruined steak for me and the wife.
So think of it like a blessing and a curse,
(31:12):
a double-edged steak knife. Because the next night, we went back,
not realizing that our love of steak had been sullied
because we went to the greatest steakhouse we'd ever been to.
So we went back to this place called Herbs and Rye. Now,
Herbs and Rye was good, perfectly good. But now we
(31:33):
had seen the mountain. When you see the mountain, you
can't go back. It's like flying first class and then
getting assigned seat 47B, Back of the plane, you're near
the bathroom, you can smell the poo, and you're sitting
in between two fat guys who hadn't showered since the
Clinton administration when Bill was chasing Monica Lewinsky around the
(31:56):
White House to get the tongue bath. It's just, you're ruined.
So we arrived Friday night without reservations to this steakhouse,
which was a brilliant tactical maneuver unless it was not.
Friday night, Las Vegas, popular restaurant, no reservation. What could
(32:18):
possibly go wrong? Well, two hours of sitting in the car, waiting.
Our name was on the list. You're seventh on the list.
You're sixth on the list. You're fifth on the list.
If people don't show up to the reservation, we'll move
you up. So we're sitting there in the parking lot.
(32:40):
I'd have the car on because it was still like
100 degrees. I'm playing enough solitaire at this point on
my phone where I briefly considered joining the professional solitaire circuit,
if there's a way to do that. Eventually, we finally
got the message. You are now allowed to enter. Again,
so we went back. I had been to this place before.
(33:00):
Nice room, good lighting, everything pretty much as I remembered it.
And we sat down, and to our left are two tables.
At one table, there's another couple sitting. enjoying a nice
steak dinner, right there, at the middle table. So we're
on one side. On the other side of the room,
there's the couple having their steak. And in the middle table,
(33:24):
there's a pretty attractive young woman. I don't know how
old she was. I imagine she's probably in her late 20s,
early 30s. And she's sitting there completely alone. And she
had a big old steak, like a porterhouse steak there.
Had a glass of what appeared to be wine. She
had some side dishes, and then in front of her,
(33:44):
she was by herself, there was a phone mounted on
a little stand. And she's talking on the phone, or
she's talking to the phone, she's not checking, she's not
checking the phone, she's not texting, she's not having a,
some kind of, she's not taking a picture of the
steak or anything like that, she's just kind of like,
it's weird, I've never seen this before. She's having dinner
(34:10):
with her iPhone on, And she's talking to the phone.
There's a full conversation. I'm watching this and I'm thinking,
have I entered into another dimension of the Twilight Zone?
Because I have seen a lot of bizarre activity at
restaurants as I've lived a good amount of my life.
And I've seen a lot of things. I've seen people
(34:31):
clip their fingernails, pick boogers. I've seen screaming children, a
lot of those rugrats at restaurants. I've seen old people
fighting with other old people, young people fighting with other
young people. I've seen people send food back because apparently
the parsley offended them. And eating three quarters of their
meal saying, I didn't like this meal. I'm not going
(34:52):
to pay for it. Well, you just ate three quarters
of it. I don't care. I'm not paying for it.
I've never seen this. So again, an attractive woman, all
dolled up. She had a nice little sexy outfit on.
And she's having an intimate steak dinner. She got all
dressed up to have a nice steak dinner with her iPhone.
And apparently this is a thing. So I started futzing
around doing some keyboard research and all that. And I
(35:16):
was like, whoa, like things that make you go, huh?
Like this, I was like, is it a virtual date?
It could have been on live stream. It could have been,
there's a term I looked up called mukbang. That is
from our friends in South Korea, mukbang. That is the
(35:38):
phenomena that apparently took off, I guess, about 20 years ago,
according to what I found on the internet, where people
broadcast themselves eating while interacting with viewers, sometimes receiving virtual
gifts or donations. So is this like panhandling for biscuits?
Is that what that is? So I found out there's
a phrase other than mukbang, which I'm going to use,
(36:00):
and it's floating around the... dark web for the broader
fascination with watching other people eat. It's called gastronomic voyeurism.
What in the world? Gastronomic voyeurism. Now that is a phrase.
Gastronomic voyeurism. It sounds like something you would make up
(36:26):
for a comic book or something. It wouldn't be real.
And it's like something you should have to disclose, I guess,
if you're applying for a loan for your mortgage or something.
What are your hobbies? Well, I imagine that on like
a dating site. Well, I enjoy hiking, reading and gastronomic voyeurism. Yeah. OK.
(36:46):
Call security. However, apparently some of you people enjoy watching
other people eat, and it's very odd. I don't get it.
People watching people play video games used to be a
big thing. I guess it still is. That doesn't make
a lot of sense to me. I'm just not wired
(37:08):
that way. Hey, knock yourself out. So I had many
questions as we were sitting down getting ready to get
our food, like, Is there a minimum wage on this? Like,
how much would that be? Is there one person watching?
Are 500 people watching? Is somebody in Cleveland sending her
(37:32):
$ 20 because she ate a baked potato in a sultry,
sexy way? Does the restaurant know about this? Do you
have to get permission? You're broadcasting from the restaurant. Do
you have to get permission? Is there a SAG card
that you have to get for this? Do you have
to have an agent? Can you imagine if you have
to have an agent? How freaking nuts would that be?
(37:55):
And your agent calls you. Well, listen, sweetheart, I can
get you a table of Applebee's on Tuesday, Whataburger on Thursday,
but I talked to the people over at Ruth's Chris. Yeah,
Ruth's Chris, the famous steakhouse.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They say they will get you a table, but they
want exclusivity. They want you to be loyal to them.
They don't want you going to Whataburger, Applebee's, or Wienerschnitzel.
They don't want you going to Culver's. You're not allowed
to go to Culver's. You could only go to Ruth's Chris. Well,
what if I want to go to Bojangles? You can't
go to Bojangles. Only Ruth's Chris. Okay. And the other
thing I was thinking was like, this has to only
(38:29):
work for chicks, right? This can't work for men. Like, right?
I couldn't do this. I mean, I could do it.
Imagine me getting my phone and putting a stand there
and I'd buy a stand on Amazon and having people
pay money to watch a six-foot-something bald dude, middle-aged or
(38:51):
older now, inhale chicken fingers. Methinks not so much. Now,
I suspect the market has spoken. Nobody is going to
send virtual roses to me because I successfully finished the breadbasket.
And anyway, I'm an introvert. I could do the camera
thing because you're not actually physically there. Now, normally, I
(39:11):
have absolutely no interest in talking to strangers in social situations.
I just don't. You could sit next to me for
six hours on a Delta flight from God only knows where,
and I will happily pretend... that you do not exist
(39:33):
however this woman for some reason I wanted answers I
wanted to walk over and say excuse me ma'am what
the hell are you doing now my wife sensed this
as you know if you're married or if you're a
wife or a future wife or a former wife, wives
(39:55):
have radar. She looked at me and immediately gave me
the universal married person wife signal, like a bat signal.
She gave me the look. Not a finger. She didn't
point the finger. She gave me the look. The look.
Every husband knows the look. It says, don't you dare.
(40:20):
And often it's just shortened to don't. There are no
words necessary other than just don't. The I's say knock
it off. Do not turn this into an awkward situation.
It's already an awkward situation. Just don't make it any
more awkward. So I obeyed against every journalistic instinct in
(40:43):
my body. Not that I'm really a journalist. I let
sleeping dogs lie. Or in this case, I let a
20-something woman continue to have a cyber steak date with
her phone. And that is apparently the zeitgeist of where
we are right now. That's the spot we're in. Forget
dinner for two. Can I have dinner for one plus
(41:07):
3,700 anonymous people and bots on the Internet? Well, anyway,
that was that. Then came our final meal. The following
day after the meet and greet, a nice Italian meal.
And this place is not just an Italian restaurant. It's
open until 1 in the morning. That is my kind
(41:30):
of restaurant. You can get chicken parm, chicken parmigiana, as
Marcel in Brooklyn would say, at midnight. That is civilization.
We stopped at this place called Bootleggers. Called Bootleggers. If
you've ever been there, it's good. And they got a bar,
a nice little bar. It's a giant restaurant. They host
a lot of weddings and things like that. It's on
(41:51):
our way out of Vegas, heading back towards LA. It's
on Las Vegas Boulevard, but not the part of the
strip where it's all built up. And eventually there'll be
hotels down there and all that. And so, fine. I
ordered my chicken parm, got my side of fettuccine Alfredo,
a little garlic bread, had my water. Nothing complicated. Standard
order for me in an Italian restaurant. I was physically
(42:11):
drained because this was hours after being talked out and
way too much socializing at the Mallard meet and greet.
So there really wasn't much conversation with my wife. There
was a lot of looking at our phones and just
kind of mumbling and just me, the wife and my
chicken parm and fettuccine. It was peaceful. It was beautiful.
(42:34):
I enjoyed the garlic bread. I had five bites of
the chicken parm. I had two bites of the fettuccine Alfredo.
I then took a drink of water. And I was
a little tired. I was in the weird spot. And
the glass slipped slightly, just slightly out of my hands.
And it hit the table, my glass of water. And
(42:57):
as the late, great Al McCoy, at least late from
the Voice of the Suns and whatnot, as Al McCoy,
the old Suns broadcaster, used to say on those radio broadcasts, Wham! Bam! Slam! Kaboom! Kerflooey!
The glass exploded. It didn't just crack. Not a chip
(43:19):
or two. It exploded. Exploded hundreds, if not thousands of
pieces all over my side of the table, covering my
chicken parm, right? Covering my chicken parm, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Yeah. And it looked like somebody had thrown a brick
through a windshield. And I've had that happen. I was driving, actually,
the sunroof on my Mallarmobile. I got hit with a brick.
And let me tell you, that glass goes everywhere. And
the glass here was in the air everywhere, on the table,
as I said. It was in my plate, all over
the chicken parm, the fettuccine. And I looked at my wife.
(44:01):
I said, listen, did I slam this thing down? I
didn't seem like I slammed it. And she was looking,
and she said, no. I was like, I must have
developed incredible Hulk strength. And she said, no, no, no,
you didn't. You didn't slam it. It just kind of slipped.
I saw it. It slipped out of your hand. And
so apparently I hit the exact microscopic pressure point on
(44:24):
the glass. And I found the Achilles heel of a
water tumbler, whatever you want to call it. And Bruce
Banner takes gamma radiation from This must have been, my
determination was that, well, I don't have gamma radiation like
Bruce Banner. This must have been leftover from that mashed
(44:46):
potatoes that I had had the night before. The same result,
the Hulk smash water glass. Unfortunately, my newly discovered superpower
destroyed my dinner. I took, again, five bites of the
chicken parmigiana, a couple of bites of the fettuccine. I
had a lot of garlic bread, and that was it.
The chicken parm was contaminated by shrapnel. I was like, well,
(45:07):
I could probably pick the glass out. And the wife said,
ixnay on that. Now, the restaurant was very nice. They
offered to make me another dish of chicken parm and fettuccine.
And I said, no, I don't want that. And then
because I was like kind of in a bad mood.
And I was like, I was actually kind of full anyway.
I was just drained. And so they took the meal
(45:28):
off the bill, which was very kind. So I do
want to thank the fine people. I'll name the restaurant Bootleggers.
It's called Bootlecker's Italian Restaurant in Vegas. Good Italian food,
nice people, pretty cool bar area, weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals,
all that stuff. And apparently glassware that recognizes my immense
physical power and immediately surrenders. So there was that. Now,
(45:54):
I have one final, final... I know I'm getting long here,
but one final Vegas leftover. It was not as hot
as some previous trips. When I say not as hot,
it was only like 112 a couple of days. Only 112.
That's Vegas logic, by the way. Beautiful day today. The
dashboard only melted a little. Now, that's good. It only
melted a little. Baby steps. So my wife was still
(46:17):
in bed. This was on, I guess it was on Saturday.
My wife was in bed. So I walked a couple
of blocks away. There was a store that I was
going to just walk. It's a clothing store, but they
have a discount section, which is pretty big, and clothes
for me. So I was like, all right. So it's
like two blocks away. Again, 112-degree heat. Tactical genius. As
(46:39):
I'm walking, I look underneath the hotel area, and there
it is, the entrance. Now, what is it the entrance to?
Is it the entrance to a secret casino, a speakeasy? No, no, no.
the entrance to a demon portal, the famous tunnels underneath
Las Vegas. I've seen YouTube videos on this. I've seen
(47:01):
documentaries on this. They're really the flood control infrastructure of
Las Vegas, not some actual underground metropolis, the hidden city. However,
people have created their lives underground, makeshift living spaces down there.
Because if you're homeless in Vegas, it's not always a
good idea to sit out in 112-degree weather And again,
(47:25):
I had seen some videos on this over the years,
this strange subterranean world beneath all the glitz and glamour
of Vegas and all the gambling and debauchery of the casinos.
But I'd never noticed one of the entrances like this,
like right in front of me on my own eyes.
And I was walking and there it was. It was
dark concrete signs basically telling you stay out, keep out.
(47:48):
It's not safe. And so you're thinking, well, did you
go into the demon portal? Well, I'll explain. So my
first thought was, what has happened down there, right? And
I did think about maybe there was a hole in
the fence. I could have walked down there. I did not.
But just to think, like above ground, you got all
(48:08):
these billion-dollar casinos, great steakhouses. You got slot machines, fountains, tourists,
people paying attractive women to eat steak on camera. And
then below ground, who knows? It looked like the border
crossing into another sovereign nation. The People's Republic of UV
(48:34):
under Vegas. No sunlight. No Bellagio fountains. The smell of urine.
No resort fees. That's good. No parking to pay for.
No $ 35 parking. You can park your shopping cart wherever
you want. And I stood there staring into the tunnel.
And I was thinking about the entire trip. the radio
studio falling apart, being unable to broadcast, the happy little accident,
(48:59):
my guy Bob Ross, that led to going to Slug's restaurant,
which led to the greatest mashed potatoes of my life,
the woman dining by herself all dolled up with her phone,
my incredible Hulk destruction at the Italian restaurant with the glassware,
and now the gateway to subterranean Las Vegas. And that's
(49:23):
the magic of these type of things. That's going to Vegas.
You make plans. Vegas laughs at you. Bob Ross paints
over them. And suddenly you've discovered culinary heaven, gastronomic voyeurism,
superhuman strength, and the entrance to an underground world all
within about 48 hours. And somehow the thing that I'm
(49:44):
still thinking about, not the tunnels, not the exploding glass,
not the attractive woman having dinner by herself with the Internet.
Those mashed potatoes. The Mona Lisa again of mutated spuds.
And somewhere in Las Vegas, Slug is probably laughing. He
tried to tell me. I didn't listen. I'm stubborn. I thought, ah,
(50:04):
it's just a piece of steak. It turns out I
was right. The steak was just the steak. The potatoes,
the mashed potatoes were the main event. My God. All right,
we'll get out of here on that. I will have
the mailbag tomorrow. We'll have a bunch of email from you.
You can send messages in realfifthouratgmail.com. That's realfifthouratgmail.com. So make
(50:30):
sure to check that out. On Sunday, have a great day.
Enjoy the college football today. I'll be watching that LSU-Clemson game.
I got that. That was the game I circled. These
other games look completely horrific. So if there's one game,
that's the game, and I'm sure we'll talk about that
a little bit when we get back to the radio
show to see how good old Lane Kiffin does there
(50:51):
in his LSU. Can you imagine if he loses? Holy crap.
All right, we'll talk more about that later. Have a
wonderful Saturday. And as my friend Dick and Dayton would say, bye-bye, bye-bye.
Host
Ben Maller
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