February 14, 2026 • 26 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Saturday podcast for you! Ben talks: St. Valentine, Mark Davis/Raiders, Room Full of Puppies & Kittens, & CP3 to TV!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 sole fastion 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 3 (00:29):
Happy Saturday. All right. So usually you hear Ben's voice
come on immediately and he so eloquently enters into the
Fifth Hour podcast. But I had to break in here
for a moment because he sent me this file early,
early on this Saturday morning. Problem sounds like his microphone
was having some issues. Oh it's all right, though, Sit back.
(00:50):
It sounds like he's in front of a college classroom
and you're in one of the seats in the back.
And I know it's hard to picture Ben as a professor,
professor who used the word melt. You know what, it's
audio justice. The Raiders finally do something smart, and of
course Ben has to pee all over their parade. So
(01:12):
that's what it gets. Maybe this is what happens when
you talk smack about my raiders still though, enjoy and
have a great Saturday.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I'm actually on the live air.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
In the Air Everywhere the fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio on this fourteenth day of February,
better known by its gangster name Valentine's Day.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
More on that in a minute on this podcast. On
the Saturday special, we will not be doing a deep
dive on whatever that thing was last night, the celebrity thing,
the young stars thing in the NBA.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We're not going there.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
However, we will go to the Sera Era, the Era
four eight, three, nine, two oh one special, and a
room full of puppies and kittens will have that.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
We begin though, with today being Saint.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Valentine's Day, a day that has often been called a
hallmark holiday, a commercial enterprise here in the United States.
So I wanted to explain for those that have not
been listening over the years exactly how this became what
it is a marketing machine where you you had to
(02:34):
open up your money, your your wallet and get your
money and all stuff. So you got to go all
the way back in the hot tub time machine to
the nineteenth century. And this was not Hallmark there was
a greeting cards company called Esir Howland was I believe
the name of it, and Esir Holland was called the
mother of the American Valentine, and that was the company
(02:58):
that helped popular rise mass produced Valentine's cards.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And we're going back to the mid eighteen hundreds, so.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
It's I mean, you look at the year. I mean,
we're almost going back to twenty years. And that woman's
work was really the start of what pushed America society,
United States society into commercialization. And it was in the
early twentieth century where yep, Hallmark came in and the
(03:31):
Hallmark people expanded the reach because the printing technology had
improved by the early twentieth century, so like, well, we
can do more stuff. So let's mass market these Valentine's
Day cards. We'll do nationwide. We'll have every elementary school
kid have to bring Valentine's Day cards, not just for
their Valentine, but for everyone in the class. And then
(03:53):
that helped cement Valentine's Day as a consumer feeding frenzy.
And then in the nineteen fifties it got cranked up
a couple of more levels. From the nineteen fifties to
the early nineteen seventies. Other companies are like, hey, we
went on that and we want a piece of the pie.
And so then you had these advertisers who were like, hey,
(04:16):
we can sell a lot of flowers, right, Let's get
the dudes to buy flowers for their ladies. How about chocolate. Okay, dude,
we'll get some chocolate's going. Okay, sounds good. And then
it's like, well what about the jewelry. Okay, we'll sell
some diamonds. That sounds good. And hey, I own a restaurant.
I want to sell some fetichini alfredo. Okay, we'll sell
some fetichini alfredo. We'll get people to go out to
(04:38):
dinner on Valentine's Day And so all of those things
came together and it was like you were shamed, you
were not you were not doing your job, you were
not romantic if you didn't buy a card, flowers, chocolates, jewelry,
and you had to go out to dinner. And it
became this major commercial holiday, which it still is. And
(04:59):
then going back to the really nineteen seven, so we're
over fifty years and this is where we are today.
That these advertisers, the florists, the chocolate tears, the people
that make all the stuff. They're like, hey, let's link
this to love. And I saw one SMA. I read
this the other day that Valentine's Day is a twenty
(05:21):
billion dollar plus holiday. Twenty billion plus is spent on
Valentine's Day, the Hallmark Holiday or the Sir Howland Holiday.
My god, all right, moving off from that, So the
Silver and Black that is a team that used to
be good, used to be good. They hired a new savior,
(05:43):
a new messiah this week. His name Clint Kubiak. We
don't want to get too sporty on this.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Stop me.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
If you've you've heard the name Clint Kubiak, you've heard
me talk about it. Another week, another descent into the
Nevada Desert for a man looking to cash in on
Ark Davis's infinite supply of I'm sorry, we're terrible. Here's
a lot of money, come coach or a football team.
Let me get through all of my daddy's money. Okay,
(06:10):
that sounds good. Now, we did talk about this. We
did a couple of monologues about the Raiders hiring Clint
Kubiak and other moves. The Raiders might make now, if
there is a more lucrative quote starter job close quote
in professional sports than head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I have been unable to find. The blueprint is etched
in stone.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
You show up, you lose more games than a one
legged man in a butt kicking contest, You survive maybe
maybe twenty four months, maybe twenty four months, and then
you ride off into the sunset with a convoy of
Brinks trucks tailing it.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
It's one of the great heists, right, you're driving your SUV.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
You've got a bunch of brinkch trucks filled with cash,
and that's your money. Now. The other day we did
offer a Malard monologue on this very subject. It was
rather benign, rather benign rant, if you will. On the
Malar scale of outrage inducing rants that we do on
a weekly basis, The temperature on this one was luke warm.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It was luke warm. We simply pointed out the obvious.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
The raiders updated slogan is commitment to excrement, and they
have the second worst record in the NFL over the
last two decades, trailing only the Cleveland Browns and the
Race of the Body.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Now we also delivered.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
A body blow, body blow, body blow to Tom Brady,
the minority owner and meddling consultant to Facto GM of
the Raiders.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Brady great quarterback. Sure, However, as.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
A GM, he has been a total capital D disaster,
total capital DE disaster.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
To my absolute shock.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
The jingle Berries who support the Raiders, and these are
mostly old heads of the fan base, they took exception.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
They were there to stand by their man.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And no matter how bad and how ugly things get,
they love them some Raiders. So these guys is still
trying to load highlights on a VHS player from the
last time the Raiders were relevant. And so it's like
they're running on They're doing dialogue.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Everyone else is doing fiber optic. They're doing dialogue. But
here's the kicker.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
If it wasn't just the goobers and the cosmic dust
buddies complaining.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That's fine.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Suddenly at some point, I'm really not sure how any
of this happened. I don't even know how this happens.
The mat of monologue that we did ended up in
the algorithm. Now, you might remember in a previous episode
of the show, we talked about how a certain quarterback
from Indiana. Mister Mendoza also inspired the algorithm to pick
up the monologue that we did, and that went viral,
(09:02):
and here we go happened again. I'm getting barked at
by the Raider fans. My favorite part of this, in
addition to just the ridiculousness of it, was that at
least one, if not too I say this in air
quotes beat writers for the Raiders, whose primary job description,
(09:23):
it would appear.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Is tickling and lickling, licking, ticking, tickling. I can talk
tickling and licking the toes of Mark Davis and his cronies.
So these efficient natos of the.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Raiders were disgusted that I would dare criticize a franchise
that treats winning like a foreign language. And there is
no Rosetta strong. So then came the email wave online
was one thing. So then I got these long manifest
those bitter broken fans claiming they were real people, and
(09:58):
newsslash a huge chunk of your support, if you will,
coming from bought farms in Moldova. Now, how can I
tell it is not rocket scientists? When you see an
account that says the Sarah four eight three nine two
oh one that is a day give what you know what,
(10:24):
random numbers, no profile pick, and a bio that looks
like it was generated in a toaster oven. It's usually
a sign. I saw the sign twenty four to seven. Also,
these accounts send messages out all day at all night.
Not that I'm saying it doesn't happen. I've just never
(10:47):
seen a human being post four hundred times a day
with no personal content. Yeah, I'm sure it may happen.
I just I've never seen it. And it's all repetitive hashtags.
And in this case, it was a lot of commitment
to excellence and slogans that haven't been true since the
Reagan administration in the nineteen eighties, and a lot of
(11:08):
generic responses on these accounts, a lot of generic responses
like so true and check out my profile or click
the link in my profile on almost every post, regardless
of context. Now, we honestly want and not just blowing
smoke here into these microphones in the remote pod studio.
We honestly wonder who's paying for the digital ghost army.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Who is it?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Someone's got to be behind and it just didn't organically
pop up on its own, So who is it. Who's
the one that sends the check to the bat farms
in Maldova to figure.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All this out. I really want to know.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
There's a whole ghost army out there. Is it the NFL?
Probably not, Is it the individual teams? Is it some
mishmiss you know, kind of fusing around dope billionaire fanboy?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Who is it?
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Well, whoever it is, whoever is dabbling around in this,
they actually are doing me a favor. And this is
a PSA in the media landscape for those that have
not been paying attention. In the media landscape of twenty
twenty six, engagement over everything. Engagement is the only currency
that matters.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
That's it. It's all about engagement.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
When you're a real human will silver painted on your
face and you got the spiked shoulder.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Pads and all that, all of those things, all of those.
Speaker 5 (12:31):
Things, that's great. However, when you're generic and it's just
a script running on a server in Eastern Europe, and
it doesn't really do much for me. And every click, though,
is a chi ching chi ching, chi ching chi ching situation,
at least as far as I'm concerned. Elon Musk recently
(12:54):
called modern media a click maximizing machine, and the machine
is humming.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
That's no the way to say it. The machine is humming.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
And so thank you to the handful of actual humans
left and Raider Nation who don't wear a paper bag
on their head.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Direct your rage.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I would advise you to direct your rage at the
front office, directed at the people that are making decisions,
who have turned the logo, that iconic Raider logo, into
a symbol of ineptitude.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And if the.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Raiders, yeah, look this way, if the Raiders were a
Vegas residency, you know we're going to see that show.
It's at the the hard Rock every every other Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's there.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Whatever, So you go to the Vegas Residency. If you
go there, the curtains would have stayed closed years ago.
There's no magician with no tricks. The singer has permanent laryngitis.
There's nothing they can do. But as long as you
keep watching, right, as long as you just keep watching
(13:58):
to tell me and how much you hate me and
how much my show is irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
You have no idea who I am. And that's why
you do the overnight.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I am going to keep barking into microphones in the
middle of the night. And again, I want to thank
you for helping me while I'm sleeping, mind you, and
you're feeding the bottom line, and for that, I thank you.
I will see you at the ATM machine. Meet me
at the ATM machine now. Meanwhile, turning the page.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
On that.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
A Friday, not Friday afternoon, but Friday morning news thump
from the NFL and the Players Association, which was delicious.
So if you missed it, the NFL won Honkie Salvis.
The NFL won it's grievance against the Players Association, and
the way I understand it, they've effectively banned the union
(14:50):
from publishing player report cards in the future. There was
a memo sent out to all thirty two NFL teams
the the NFLPA. However, the union said it will continue
to collect the report cards. However, they just will not
make them public unless somebody somehow gets their hands on
(15:11):
them and leaks it. Wouldn't that be a shame? Oh
my god, I can't believe that. Okay, Yeah, So an
arbitrator found that the report cards from the NFL players
violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement the CBA by disparaging NFL
clubs and individuals. So that was that and this led
to a hissy fit from several current prominent and former
(15:36):
prominent NFL players who were not having So the question
on this one, question, on this one, do you feel
bad for the NFL players? They fought the machine and
at this point they've lost this battle in the civil
war with the owners? So do you feel bad for
the NFL players that they appear to have lost this
(16:00):
a war thing with the owners? So on this one,
I'm giving the alving sidey. All right, I'm giving the
loving side eye. And the reason I'm giving this sidey
is neither one looks good.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Right.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
They looked like entitled babyeses. It's a great tragedy. It's
also a total embarrassment, right. The arbitrator basically called the
union a bunch of frauds. This was designed, the judge said,
designed under the guise of a scientific exercise. And that's
(16:35):
fancy burbage for we made it up, and we were
we were just looking looking like we wanted to play
the victim cards.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So we just made this whole thing up, and we want
to make the owners look bad.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
And the players refuse to show the data from previous
service and in court, as I read, they admitted, capitally
admitted to picking the responses, doing it for the matrix
and all you click bait rats. They were doing a few.
(17:08):
They handcrafted the players Union. They handcrafted this for the
low information fan who just wants to hop on a
platform like X and mock billionaire owners and all that.
So it's promotional fluff, click and the click, and it's
the shame game. The NFLPA got caught with their hands
(17:28):
in the cookie jar pig skin drama oh rama right
the mini series and for what, seriously, they're belly aching
about the quality of the rizuto in the cafeteria is
essentially what this is a Woody Johnson, who, by the way,
the guy that runs around as the owner of the Jets,
(17:50):
Woody Johnson, is worth four point three billion, four point three.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Billion with B and I was reading.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
That there's some different opinions about what was behind all this,
and he apparently was leading the charge to kill this
Woody Johnson, the aforementioned Woody Johnson, and he's the only
owner who got an f and it clearly touched a
raw nerve for the Jets owner, a really big raw
nerve there for the Jets owner. And he was upset,
(18:22):
and so, yeah, the Jets are fine for now, They're
fine being ripped. Woody Johnson doesn't care, Otherwise he'd fix it.
Doesn't care about being ripped and playing like turds on
almost weekly basis in the NFL. They just don't want
to hear about the daycare center. They don't want to
hear about that. And that's the thing, right, You've got
(18:43):
guys making what is it, two point seven not two
point five, two point seven million a year, and these.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
People will be nice.
Speaker 5 (18:56):
These people are out there complaining about work conditions. Let's
get the world's smallest fioline out. It's like they've been
hard at work, playing basketball at an Indonesia sweatshop making air.
Jordan's like, yeah, I don't think you're doing that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I don't. I mean I might be wrong, but I
don't think you're doing that. So give me a break.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
You're playing a game for billions of dollars, a game
where rarely you have to play back to back. You
almost always have at least a day off between games.
And yeah, so you're making two point seven million or
whatever that is, and it's.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Gonna go up. It only goes up. It every goes down.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
And you want free snacks and a personal shopper for
you as well. And they sound like they're spoiled celebrities
with the ridiculous, ridiculous situation.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
That's going on right now.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
And so if I guess I would compare it to music,
that the cop would be music.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And you hear these stories every most while.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
I remember back in the day, Mariah Carey asked for
a room full of puppies and that's when she would
travel on the road, she had to.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Have a room filled with puppies and kids. Van Halen
picked the brown eminem out of the bowl.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
That would be more because he's psychotic, but he did
it right, and so that happened. And yeah, it's wacky, wacky, wacky,
wacky wacky. How about you got Mariah Carey with the
puppies and the kids out, van Halen picking the brown
Eminem's out of the bowl.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
No brown Eminem's, get him out of here.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
And so all these players I'm talking about, the guys
on Pittsburgh on this issue, they seem to be obtuse,
which is odd to me, Like I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
What is going on here? You know, It's like, come on,
what are we doing.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
They don't even realize the players how bad they look
to the regular schmo working the nine to five, forty
plus hours a week, can't afford a tickets seeing them play,
can't afford any time off to go hang out with
the family. And they agreed. The players agreed to it.
And this is something why we have sports talk radio.
We are there for the fan because you cannot trust
(21:12):
any of these coaches cannot do it. As much as
the NBA wants that out there that you cannot, you
can't do it.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
So I mean, you look.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Around and everything's going on, and I go back to
Article forty nine, Section six. It's right there, and black
and white, not black and silver like the rated black
and white, or you can look it up on your tablet.
They willingly gave, the players willingly gave their right to
publicly criticize the owners and the teams or the league.
(21:45):
So they can't do it. They're violating the bylaws of
the NFL. These guys poked the fire breathing dragon and
got burned. And so yeah, the Dolphins and the Vikings
are the supposedly the two greatest places to play football.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's wonderful. Who cares. Nobody cares about that. Do you
sit there?
Speaker 5 (22:01):
And so I can't support this team because they had
a low rating on the fan thing.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
No, no, it's not about that. It's it's about going
out winning playoff games.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
The Cardinals, I don't remember who they played, but they
were right there. They were the Cardinals with the bottom
of the NFL this past year. And the ratings game
just doesn't seem to work that well.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Right, it's not.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
People take it way too seriously, and that's it. That's
just all is. And so it's football, that's It's not
some corporate retreat of the four seasons.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's not that.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
And this was just obviously public humiliation. That's what this was.
And listen, we get it. They tried the union, the
players union, try to use these report cards as a weapon,
and the arbitrator just disarmed them and sent them to
the corner and they have to put their nose against
the wall for time out.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's what you got to do. And you're millionaires and you're.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Upset because you're eating your lukewarm Risuto, We'll just eat
your lukewarm room temperature at Risuto, and you know, get
on the plane. Stop acting like your life is a
hardship because the chat the chartered flight did not have
enough leg room, Like, oh my god, I I again,
it's like, what are you doing. I don't get it.
(23:22):
I do not understand. But that's where we are. That
is that is where we are. Just absolutely freaking great,
absolutely freaking great.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Uh. And I did not purposely do I'm gonna tur
the picture.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
I did not purposely do a rant about Chris Paul
and his retirement. You should have retired a couple of
years ago. He's been hanging around the clippers. Finally were
the grown ups in the room and they got rid
of Chris Paul, which is what should have happened to
other teams a couple of years ago. And finally Chris
(23:58):
Paul realized anily right before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You know what, I think. I think I'm good. I
think I'm good on that.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
And now he's gonna annoy this because from what I've
been told, Chris Paul is going to get one of
these TV jobs. I think he's going to be doing
stuff at ESPN. But either way, Chris Paul will be
on television. I would say between now and the start
of the playoffs. Playoffs, which is also fun because he
is the old coach and his team nowhere near the playoffs,
(24:30):
right nowhere near the playoffs at all.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
All right, it is a fifth Hour with.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Me, Ben Maller and Danny g on this Valentine's Day, Saturday.
We will have a brand spanking new mail bag tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Tomorrow is another day, and I've already checked the mail bag.
I got a couple of questions about Steven A. Smith
becoming the president. And if you think Steven A.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Smith is going to going to become the president of
the United.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
States, well I got some I got some chicken farms
in Kawhi.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I would like to give to you. You can have them.
I'm not that's not a joke. I'll give them to you.
To send me your address.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
And he come on, he's he's been out there the
freezing out of the coaching ranks. So if you had
no clue that this was a possibility, bad job, all right,
with playing ranks, I should say, all right, we'll get
out on that. Have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Whoever the
malord plan. And I remind you boys all the time
(25:31):
you're still listening. This is an added bonus the Malord
plan here, and it typically works when Valentine's Day does
not fall today on a Saturday, but if it's during
the week, you're like, listen, I gotta go out. I
got to do stuff I'm not and I got work things.
I can't hang out with you, but I'd love to
hang out with.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You on Monday.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
And then on Monday morning, you go out to Supermarket
Steve Supermarket, Steve's Place grocery store, and you buy the
fifty percent off chocolates, you buy the fifty seven percent
off little thing of a jig for Valentine's Day, and
you're good.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
That's all you have to do.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Just boom boom baby, boom baby, boom bite my boom baby,
just like that. All right, yes, very good. On that
note again, have a great day today. We'll get the
mail bag on Sunday, that will be tomorrow, and we
will talk to you then.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Later. Skater Asta pasta my folation.
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 sole fastion 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 3 (00:29):
Happy Saturday. All right. So usually you hear Ben's voice
come on immediately and he so eloquently enters into the
Fifth Hour podcast. But I had to break in here
for a moment because he sent me this file early,
early on this Saturday morning. Problem sounds like his microphone
was having some issues. Oh it's all right, though, Sit back.
(00:50):
It sounds like he's in front of a college classroom
and you're in one of the seats in the back.
And I know it's hard to picture Ben as a professor,
professor who used the word melt. You know what, it's
audio justice. The Raiders finally do something smart, and of
course Ben has to pee all over their parade. So
(01:12):
that's what it gets. Maybe this is what happens when
you talk smack about my raiders still though, enjoy and
have a great Saturday.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I'm actually on the live air.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
In the Air Everywhere the fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio on this fourteenth day of February,
better known by its gangster name Valentine's Day.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
More on that in a minute on this podcast. On
the Saturday special, we will not be doing a deep
dive on whatever that thing was last night, the celebrity thing,
the young stars thing in the NBA.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We're not going there.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
However, we will go to the Sera Era, the Era
four eight, three, nine, two oh one special, and a
room full of puppies and kittens will have that.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
We begin though, with today being Saint.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Valentine's Day, a day that has often been called a
hallmark holiday, a commercial enterprise here in the United States.
So I wanted to explain for those that have not
been listening over the years exactly how this became what
it is a marketing machine where you you had to
(02:34):
open up your money, your your wallet and get your
money and all stuff. So you got to go all
the way back in the hot tub time machine to
the nineteenth century. And this was not Hallmark there was
a greeting cards company called Esir Howland was I believe
the name of it, and Esir Holland was called the
mother of the American Valentine, and that was the company
(02:58):
that helped popular rise mass produced Valentine's cards.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And we're going back to the mid eighteen hundreds, so.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
It's I mean, you look at the year. I mean,
we're almost going back to twenty years. And that woman's
work was really the start of what pushed America society,
United States society into commercialization. And it was in the
early twentieth century where yep, Hallmark came in and the
(03:31):
Hallmark people expanded the reach because the printing technology had
improved by the early twentieth century, so like, well, we
can do more stuff. So let's mass market these Valentine's
Day cards. We'll do nationwide. We'll have every elementary school
kid have to bring Valentine's Day cards, not just for
their Valentine, but for everyone in the class. And then
(03:53):
that helped cement Valentine's Day as a consumer feeding frenzy.
And then in the nineteen fifties it got cranked up
a couple of more levels. From the nineteen fifties to
the early nineteen seventies. Other companies are like, hey, we
went on that and we want a piece of the pie.
And so then you had these advertisers who were like, hey,
(04:16):
we can sell a lot of flowers, right, Let's get
the dudes to buy flowers for their ladies. How about chocolate. Okay, dude,
we'll get some chocolate's going. Okay, sounds good. And then
it's like, well what about the jewelry. Okay, we'll sell
some diamonds. That sounds good. And hey, I own a restaurant.
I want to sell some fetichini alfredo. Okay, we'll sell
some fetichini alfredo. We'll get people to go out to
(04:38):
dinner on Valentine's Day And so all of those things
came together and it was like you were shamed, you
were not you were not doing your job, you were
not romantic if you didn't buy a card, flowers, chocolates, jewelry,
and you had to go out to dinner. And it
became this major commercial holiday, which it still is. And
(04:59):
then going back to the really nineteen seven, so we're
over fifty years and this is where we are today.
That these advertisers, the florists, the chocolate tears, the people
that make all the stuff. They're like, hey, let's link
this to love. And I saw one SMA. I read
this the other day that Valentine's Day is a twenty
(05:21):
billion dollar plus holiday. Twenty billion plus is spent on
Valentine's Day, the Hallmark Holiday or the Sir Howland Holiday.
My god, all right, moving off from that, So the
Silver and Black that is a team that used to
be good, used to be good. They hired a new savior,
(05:43):
a new messiah this week. His name Clint Kubiak. We
don't want to get too sporty on this.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Stop me.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
If you've you've heard the name Clint Kubiak, you've heard
me talk about it. Another week, another descent into the
Nevada Desert for a man looking to cash in on
Ark Davis's infinite supply of I'm sorry, we're terrible. Here's
a lot of money, come coach or a football team.
Let me get through all of my daddy's money. Okay,
(06:10):
that sounds good. Now, we did talk about this. We
did a couple of monologues about the Raiders hiring Clint
Kubiak and other moves. The Raiders might make now, if
there is a more lucrative quote starter job close quote
in professional sports than head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I have been unable to find. The blueprint is etched
in stone.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
You show up, you lose more games than a one
legged man in a butt kicking contest, You survive maybe
maybe twenty four months, maybe twenty four months, and then
you ride off into the sunset with a convoy of
Brinks trucks tailing it.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
It's one of the great heists, right, you're driving your SUV.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
You've got a bunch of brinkch trucks filled with cash,
and that's your money. Now. The other day we did
offer a Malard monologue on this very subject. It was
rather benign, rather benign rant, if you will. On the
Malar scale of outrage inducing rants that we do on
a weekly basis, The temperature on this one was luke warm.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It was luke warm. We simply pointed out the obvious.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
The raiders updated slogan is commitment to excrement, and they
have the second worst record in the NFL over the
last two decades, trailing only the Cleveland Browns and the
Race of the Body.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Now we also delivered.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
A body blow, body blow, body blow to Tom Brady,
the minority owner and meddling consultant to Facto GM of
the Raiders.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Brady great quarterback. Sure, However, as.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
A GM, he has been a total capital D disaster,
total capital DE disaster.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
To my absolute shock.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
The jingle Berries who support the Raiders, and these are
mostly old heads of the fan base, they took exception.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
They were there to stand by their man.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And no matter how bad and how ugly things get,
they love them some Raiders. So these guys is still
trying to load highlights on a VHS player from the
last time the Raiders were relevant. And so it's like
they're running on They're doing dialogue.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Everyone else is doing fiber optic. They're doing dialogue. But
here's the kicker.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
If it wasn't just the goobers and the cosmic dust
buddies complaining.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That's fine.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Suddenly at some point, I'm really not sure how any
of this happened. I don't even know how this happens.
The mat of monologue that we did ended up in
the algorithm. Now, you might remember in a previous episode
of the show, we talked about how a certain quarterback
from Indiana. Mister Mendoza also inspired the algorithm to pick
up the monologue that we did, and that went viral,
(09:02):
and here we go happened again. I'm getting barked at
by the Raider fans. My favorite part of this, in
addition to just the ridiculousness of it, was that at
least one, if not too I say this in air
quotes beat writers for the Raiders, whose primary job description,
(09:23):
it would appear.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Is tickling and lickling, licking, ticking, tickling. I can talk
tickling and licking the toes of Mark Davis and his cronies.
So these efficient natos of the.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Raiders were disgusted that I would dare criticize a franchise
that treats winning like a foreign language. And there is
no Rosetta strong. So then came the email wave online
was one thing. So then I got these long manifest
those bitter broken fans claiming they were real people, and
(09:58):
newsslash a huge chunk of your support, if you will,
coming from bought farms in Moldova. Now, how can I
tell it is not rocket scientists? When you see an
account that says the Sarah four eight three nine two
oh one that is a day give what you know what,
(10:24):
random numbers, no profile pick, and a bio that looks
like it was generated in a toaster oven. It's usually
a sign. I saw the sign twenty four to seven. Also,
these accounts send messages out all day at all night.
Not that I'm saying it doesn't happen. I've just never
(10:47):
seen a human being post four hundred times a day
with no personal content. Yeah, I'm sure it may happen.
I just I've never seen it. And it's all repetitive hashtags.
And in this case, it was a lot of commitment
to excellence and slogans that haven't been true since the
Reagan administration in the nineteen eighties, and a lot of
(11:08):
generic responses on these accounts, a lot of generic responses
like so true and check out my profile or click
the link in my profile on almost every post, regardless
of context. Now, we honestly want and not just blowing
smoke here into these microphones in the remote pod studio.
We honestly wonder who's paying for the digital ghost army.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Who is it?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Someone's got to be behind and it just didn't organically
pop up on its own, So who is it. Who's
the one that sends the check to the bat farms
in Maldova to figure.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All this out. I really want to know.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
There's a whole ghost army out there. Is it the NFL?
Probably not, Is it the individual teams? Is it some
mishmiss you know, kind of fusing around dope billionaire fanboy?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Who is it?
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Well, whoever it is, whoever is dabbling around in this,
they actually are doing me a favor. And this is
a PSA in the media landscape for those that have
not been paying attention. In the media landscape of twenty
twenty six, engagement over everything. Engagement is the only currency
that matters.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
That's it. It's all about engagement.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
When you're a real human will silver painted on your
face and you got the spiked shoulder.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Pads and all that, all of those things, all of those.
Speaker 5 (12:31):
Things, that's great. However, when you're generic and it's just
a script running on a server in Eastern Europe, and
it doesn't really do much for me. And every click, though,
is a chi ching chi ching, chi ching chi ching situation,
at least as far as I'm concerned. Elon Musk recently
(12:54):
called modern media a click maximizing machine, and the machine
is humming.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
That's no the way to say it. The machine is humming.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
And so thank you to the handful of actual humans
left and Raider Nation who don't wear a paper bag
on their head.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Direct your rage.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I would advise you to direct your rage at the
front office, directed at the people that are making decisions,
who have turned the logo, that iconic Raider logo, into
a symbol of ineptitude.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And if the.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Raiders, yeah, look this way, if the Raiders were a
Vegas residency, you know we're going to see that show.
It's at the the hard Rock every every other Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's there.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Whatever, So you go to the Vegas Residency. If you
go there, the curtains would have stayed closed years ago.
There's no magician with no tricks. The singer has permanent laryngitis.
There's nothing they can do. But as long as you
keep watching, right, as long as you just keep watching
(13:58):
to tell me and how much you hate me and
how much my show is irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
You have no idea who I am. And that's why
you do the overnight.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I am going to keep barking into microphones in the
middle of the night. And again, I want to thank
you for helping me while I'm sleeping, mind you, and
you're feeding the bottom line, and for that, I thank you.
I will see you at the ATM machine. Meet me
at the ATM machine now. Meanwhile, turning the page.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
On that.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
A Friday, not Friday afternoon, but Friday morning news thump
from the NFL and the Players Association, which was delicious.
So if you missed it, the NFL won Honkie Salvis.
The NFL won it's grievance against the Players Association, and
the way I understand it, they've effectively banned the union
(14:50):
from publishing player report cards in the future. There was
a memo sent out to all thirty two NFL teams
the the NFLPA. However, the union said it will continue
to collect the report cards. However, they just will not
make them public unless somebody somehow gets their hands on
(15:11):
them and leaks it. Wouldn't that be a shame? Oh
my god, I can't believe that. Okay, Yeah, So an
arbitrator found that the report cards from the NFL players
violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement the CBA by disparaging NFL
clubs and individuals. So that was that and this led
to a hissy fit from several current prominent and former
(15:36):
prominent NFL players who were not having So the question
on this one, question, on this one, do you feel
bad for the NFL players? They fought the machine and
at this point they've lost this battle in the civil
war with the owners? So do you feel bad for
the NFL players that they appear to have lost this
(16:00):
a war thing with the owners? So on this one,
I'm giving the alving sidey. All right, I'm giving the
loving side eye. And the reason I'm giving this sidey
is neither one looks good.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Right.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
They looked like entitled babyeses. It's a great tragedy. It's
also a total embarrassment, right. The arbitrator basically called the
union a bunch of frauds. This was designed, the judge said,
designed under the guise of a scientific exercise. And that's
(16:35):
fancy burbage for we made it up, and we were
we were just looking looking like we wanted to play
the victim cards.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So we just made this whole thing up, and we want
to make the owners look bad.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
And the players refuse to show the data from previous
service and in court, as I read, they admitted, capitally
admitted to picking the responses, doing it for the matrix
and all you click bait rats. They were doing a few.
(17:08):
They handcrafted the players Union. They handcrafted this for the
low information fan who just wants to hop on a
platform like X and mock billionaire owners and all that.
So it's promotional fluff, click and the click, and it's
the shame game. The NFLPA got caught with their hands
(17:28):
in the cookie jar pig skin drama oh rama right
the mini series and for what, seriously, they're belly aching
about the quality of the rizuto in the cafeteria is
essentially what this is a Woody Johnson, who, by the way,
the guy that runs around as the owner of the Jets,
(17:50):
Woody Johnson, is worth four point three billion, four point three.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Billion with B and I was reading.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
That there's some different opinions about what was behind all this,
and he apparently was leading the charge to kill this
Woody Johnson, the aforementioned Woody Johnson, and he's the only
owner who got an f and it clearly touched a
raw nerve for the Jets owner, a really big raw
nerve there for the Jets owner. And he was upset,
(18:22):
and so, yeah, the Jets are fine for now, They're
fine being ripped. Woody Johnson doesn't care, Otherwise he'd fix it.
Doesn't care about being ripped and playing like turds on
almost weekly basis in the NFL. They just don't want
to hear about the daycare center. They don't want to
hear about that. And that's the thing, right, You've got
(18:43):
guys making what is it, two point seven not two
point five, two point seven million a year, and these.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
People will be nice.
Speaker 5 (18:56):
These people are out there complaining about work conditions. Let's
get the world's smallest fioline out. It's like they've been
hard at work, playing basketball at an Indonesia sweatshop making air.
Jordan's like, yeah, I don't think you're doing that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I don't. I mean I might be wrong, but I
don't think you're doing that. So give me a break.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
You're playing a game for billions of dollars, a game
where rarely you have to play back to back. You
almost always have at least a day off between games.
And yeah, so you're making two point seven million or
whatever that is, and it's.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Gonna go up. It only goes up. It every goes down.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
And you want free snacks and a personal shopper for
you as well. And they sound like they're spoiled celebrities
with the ridiculous, ridiculous situation.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
That's going on right now.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
And so if I guess I would compare it to music,
that the cop would be music.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And you hear these stories every most while.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
I remember back in the day, Mariah Carey asked for
a room full of puppies and that's when she would
travel on the road, she had to.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Have a room filled with puppies and kids. Van Halen
picked the brown eminem out of the bowl.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
That would be more because he's psychotic, but he did
it right, and so that happened. And yeah, it's wacky, wacky, wacky,
wacky wacky. How about you got Mariah Carey with the
puppies and the kids out, van Halen picking the brown
Eminem's out of the bowl.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
No brown Eminem's, get him out of here.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
And so all these players I'm talking about, the guys
on Pittsburgh on this issue, they seem to be obtuse,
which is odd to me, Like I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
What is going on here? You know, It's like, come on,
what are we doing.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
They don't even realize the players how bad they look
to the regular schmo working the nine to five, forty
plus hours a week, can't afford a tickets seeing them play,
can't afford any time off to go hang out with
the family. And they agreed. The players agreed to it.
And this is something why we have sports talk radio.
We are there for the fan because you cannot trust
(21:12):
any of these coaches cannot do it. As much as
the NBA wants that out there that you cannot, you
can't do it.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
So I mean, you look.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Around and everything's going on, and I go back to
Article forty nine, Section six. It's right there, and black
and white, not black and silver like the rated black
and white, or you can look it up on your tablet.
They willingly gave, the players willingly gave their right to
publicly criticize the owners and the teams or the league.
(21:45):
So they can't do it. They're violating the bylaws of
the NFL. These guys poked the fire breathing dragon and
got burned. And so yeah, the Dolphins and the Vikings
are the supposedly the two greatest places to play football.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's wonderful. Who cares. Nobody cares about that. Do you
sit there?
Speaker 5 (22:01):
And so I can't support this team because they had
a low rating on the fan thing.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
No, no, it's not about that. It's it's about going
out winning playoff games.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
The Cardinals, I don't remember who they played, but they
were right there. They were the Cardinals with the bottom
of the NFL this past year. And the ratings game
just doesn't seem to work that well.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Right, it's not.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
People take it way too seriously, and that's it. That's
just all is. And so it's football, that's It's not
some corporate retreat of the four seasons.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's not that.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
And this was just obviously public humiliation. That's what this was.
And listen, we get it. They tried the union, the
players union, try to use these report cards as a weapon,
and the arbitrator just disarmed them and sent them to
the corner and they have to put their nose against
the wall for time out.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's what you got to do. And you're millionaires and you're.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Upset because you're eating your lukewarm Risuto, We'll just eat
your lukewarm room temperature at Risuto, and you know, get
on the plane. Stop acting like your life is a
hardship because the chat the chartered flight did not have
enough leg room, Like, oh my god, I I again,
it's like, what are you doing. I don't get it.
(23:22):
I do not understand. But that's where we are. That
is that is where we are. Just absolutely freaking great,
absolutely freaking great.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Uh. And I did not purposely do I'm gonna tur
the picture.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
I did not purposely do a rant about Chris Paul
and his retirement. You should have retired a couple of
years ago. He's been hanging around the clippers. Finally were
the grown ups in the room and they got rid
of Chris Paul, which is what should have happened to
other teams a couple of years ago. And finally Chris
(23:58):
Paul realized anily right before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You know what, I think. I think I'm good. I
think I'm good on that.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
And now he's gonna annoy this because from what I've
been told, Chris Paul is going to get one of
these TV jobs. I think he's going to be doing
stuff at ESPN. But either way, Chris Paul will be
on television. I would say between now and the start
of the playoffs. Playoffs, which is also fun because he
is the old coach and his team nowhere near the playoffs,
(24:30):
right nowhere near the playoffs at all.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
All right, it is a fifth Hour with.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Me, Ben Maller and Danny g on this Valentine's Day, Saturday.
We will have a brand spanking new mail bag tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Tomorrow is another day, and I've already checked the mail bag.
I got a couple of questions about Steven A. Smith
becoming the president. And if you think Steven A.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Smith is going to going to become the president of
the United.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
States, well I got some I got some chicken farms
in Kawhi.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I would like to give to you. You can have them.
I'm not that's not a joke. I'll give them to you.
To send me your address.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
And he come on, he's he's been out there the
freezing out of the coaching ranks. So if you had
no clue that this was a possibility, bad job, all right,
with playing ranks, I should say, all right, we'll get
out on that. Have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Whoever the
malord plan. And I remind you boys all the time
(25:31):
you're still listening. This is an added bonus the Malord
plan here, and it typically works when Valentine's Day does
not fall today on a Saturday, but if it's during
the week, you're like, listen, I gotta go out. I
got to do stuff I'm not and I got work things.
I can't hang out with you, but I'd love to
hang out with.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You on Monday.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
And then on Monday morning, you go out to Supermarket
Steve Supermarket, Steve's Place grocery store, and you buy the
fifty percent off chocolates, you buy the fifty seven percent
off little thing of a jig for Valentine's Day, and
you're good.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
That's all you have to do.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Just boom boom baby, boom baby, boom bite my boom baby,
just like that. All right, yes, very good. On that
note again, have a great day today. We'll get the
mail bag on Sunday, that will be tomorrow, and we
will talk to you then.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Later. Skater Asta pasta my folation.
Host
Ben Maller
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