January 31, 2026 • 34 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Saturday podcast for you! Ben talks: Emergency Maller Monologue on Vikings firing GM, & Hum Baby has Benny rooting for lawyers!!!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Maler and Danny g Radio. The final day of the
month of January. We will flip the calendar on Sunday
to February first, and a week from tomorrow it is
odd Super Bowl sixty. Now try not to talk too
(00:49):
much sports on this podcast. It's the Fifth Hour Parties.
By the way, Danny not with us again. Hopefully he'll
be with us tomorrow. I don't know. But anyway, so
today there's a lot of story to caught my attention.
I didn't do the show overnight obviously, because that was
the day we were done. We did the podcast yesterday.
There's some decent stuff in the NFL that you just
(01:10):
roll your eyes at. For example, Todd munkin the monk Man,
the coach of the Cleveland Browns now who is just
hired this week, who claimed that the Baltimore Ravens tried
to draft Shouldher Sanders, like he was trying to suck
up to Shudhur Sanders. I don't know if you saw
this or not, tried to suck up to him, and
(01:30):
then he claimed that they tried to draft him. Shudhur
Sanders was drafted in the middle actually closer to the
end of the draft, Like when were they planning on
drafting him? He was the one hundred and forty fourth
overall pick in the fifth round the draft's only seven rounds,
Like were they well six rounds? Like what are they
(01:51):
waiting for they got? I mean, it's ridiculous. So I
saw that that was amusing and I got a lot
of him. But by the way, this podcast, we're gonna
have not a mensa and hum baby, not a mensa
and humbaby baby. So I got several emails people upset
that I was not on the show last night, which
always I'm always surprised by this because it's not that
(02:13):
they wanted to hear the show. They just wanted to
hear a monologue about the Vikings. So based on the feedback,
I'm going to do an emergency mal monologue right now
here on the Fifth Hour podcast because a number of
my brothers and sisters that live in the great state
of Minnesota in the Greater Minneapolis area were upset because
the Vikings did something that was very bizarre for late January.
(02:36):
I haven't you heard about it? Or maybe not, perhaps
you were not paying attention. So the Vikings handed a
box to their GM, Quazy adopha mensa. They said, all right, crazy, here,
I want you to have this box. What's in the box?
All right? So we opened the box and there was
there was something pink in there and it appeared to
be a slip. So he was given a pink slip.
(02:57):
That's right. The Vikings they whacked their general manager as
he spent the week scouting college players for the upcoming
NFL Draft. And the coaching carousel is about done, right
about done. The Raiders and the Cardinals were the last
couple of teams. The Raiders have their choice. They're just
(03:17):
waiting for Seattle to be eliminated in the Super Bowl
in the higher of their coach. But anyway, so the
Vikings got rid of this guy Quasya doo fa men's
of the GM. He's gone booted, kicked out, showing the
door however you want to say it. And as the
only one apparently that has my brain plugged in, you
demand a Mallard monologue, And of course I'm still a
(03:39):
little foggy here. I will try to explain what happened
in Minnesota. I have a theory on this. I have
a theory on what happened with the Minnesota football team.
So it's a good jumping off point. Let us discuss
the question why. We'll get to the why. Why did
the Vikings randomly poll as the GM quasy Dolpha mensa.
(04:02):
And this is just a week before a little over
a week before the Super Bowl and a long time
after the season ended, right pretty much a month after
the season ended. So I've got peer one, Pigley Wiggly,
and we'll put those together on the mini malle monologue.
We're gonna make white chocolate Macadamian nut cookies. White chocolate
(04:22):
Macadamian nut cookies. What we're gonna make so a the
answer is why to why? The answer to why, it's
very simple to an Oukham's Razors situation. The simplest answer
is the easiest answer and the right answer, because ownership panicked.
They panicked. Now, I'm not saying that Quzy adolpha mensa.
(04:43):
The GM there, this guy was doing a good job.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying the normal protocol is,
if you're gonna get rid of the GM, you do
it in the regular season. Late in the regular season,
you do it right after the last game. Therefore, you
have your choice of who you want to bring in
as the next A bunch of gms have been hired,
and the music's pretty much done on the game of
(05:05):
musical charity. So the theory is the owner the will
family there in Minnesota, they panic full stop. And this
is not some kind of mystery novel. You do not
even need to activate the MiB, the Mather Investigative Bureau.
This is fear with a pulse. Minnesota's ownership group has
(05:25):
been diagnosed here with a bad case of sd DS.
All right, what is that? What is sd DS? That
is Sam Donald's derangement syndrome. Is what it is? Sam
Donald arrangementercentro. To rephrase this, the internet was howling at
the moon. The purple people. Eater's crowd turned into a
(05:49):
barber shop quartet, and they were humming the chili's jingle,
I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back,
baby back. That's where they were humming, I want my
baby back, baby back, baby back. Instead of ribs, they
wanted their quarterback and ownership blinked. That's it, period, Stop,
(06:09):
it's what. Now. Seattle is in the super Bowl. I
did see their supposedly for sale after the Super Bowl.
So if you want to put a couple of shekels together,
we can buy the Seahawks. But anyway, how great would
that be? How upset would no Stridinus be and JJ
and Httin and crying Craig and blind emmet the Seahawk
fan if I just went down and bought the Seahawks.
Of course that could happen. If I went on a
(06:32):
cross country bank robbery spree for the next fifty years,
I could come up with enough money. Like the Chiefs
superfan is currently locked up in the Gray Bar Hotel. Anyway,
so Seattle's in the Super Bowl. Suddenly the Vikings think
they let the one go, the one that got Away's
slip right through their fingers, which is absurd on just
(06:54):
about every level. It's absurd. Here's why. If you think
Sam Darnold is the reason that the Seattle Seahawks are
in the super Bowl, you don't know ball. You don't
You're incriminating yourself. That is not analysis, That is just superstition.
Have you not been paying attention? That's like lighting candles
(07:17):
and blaming the furniture, Like, what are you doing? Dumping
the general manage Again, this guy didn't do a great job. Fine,
I get it. He didn't really do well. The draft
has not been good. But getting rid of the GM
was a sacrifice to the angry mob with the pitchforks
and the torches and all that. Someone had to be
tossed into the volcano, the metaphorical volcano, so the noise
(07:40):
would stop and the football gods. More importantly, these social
media matrix people demand it a pound of flesh, and
it just happened. The short straw was taken by the
GM there quasi adolpha mensa. He was the guy, the
GM there who took it. He was convenient haunted by
things that go bumpity bump in the night, like talk radio,
(08:04):
social media, the echo chamber, Watch out for the echo chamber.
Now what about Peer one. I'm not talking about Peer
one imports. I'm talking about Peer one exports. That's the
issue here right out. You go see you later if
you act like an adult on this one. And I
have an unpopular opinion, but I'm gonna stick to my opinion.
(08:25):
I'm gonna die on this take on this mountain. So
letting Sam Donald walk was not the problem. It was not.
If you look at what Sam Donald did this year
in Seattle, I'm reasonable. Don't shake your head, no, no,
don't shake your head. No. I'm a reasonable observer. Sam
Donald was by Sam Donald, measuring him by Sam Donald.
(08:46):
He was solid. He wasn't spectacular. This was not one
of the great performances. He wasn't as good as Matthew
Stafford or Drake may or someone like that. He wasn't
And to circle back to our friend Roberto the bus
driver using bus driver lingo, Sam Donald was not the
bus driver for the Seahawks. He was a bus writer.
(09:10):
He was the one paying the fare in the back
of the bus. The numbers are right there. He had
fourteen interceptions, near the bottom of the league second half
of the season. It was the ninety nine, meaning nine
picks and nine touchdowns. That is a coin flip. And
it's got a drinking problem. And the trend line matters.
It does matter, Sam Donald. For all these people up
(09:32):
in arms, Oh my god, his touchdowns year to year,
if you go side by side from Minnesota Seattle, his
touchdowns were down almost thirty percent from his season starting
in the Twin Cities. The interceptions were up. Inconsistency still
ravages Sam Donald. It's like a rash that goes away
(09:55):
and comes back. You know, It's like you have a
gluten allergy and it comes back. This is who he is,
Sam Donald. Will win a bunch of games for you
in a month or two and then go out and
in the Super Bowl a week from him tomorrow, he'll
ride the vombit comment. That's it, So spare me the
pearl clutching right the GM in this case, Uh, you know,
(10:18):
this guy gets absolutely vaporized. Bye bye, Adolpha Mansa get
out of here. So he gets vaporized. He's out. He's
the guy to take the hit on this. And I
guess again this happens that that's how this works. Fine,
but it wasn't accountability. It was appeasement. This was made
(10:41):
for appeasement. Ownership heard the cacophony of shaky wisdom, mistook
mistook that for wisdom, that just the noise and all that,
And so they confused the pressure the banging on pots
and pans as legitimate proof. And now they've gotten neither right,
(11:02):
poltergeist peer pressure. When you don't know where the noise
is coming from, what do you do? You start breaking
your own stuff? Like I think the noise is coming
from the sofa. Let me pull all the cushions off
the sofa and I'm gonna start fuxing around with it.
Now I think it's coming from the dishwasher, So why
(11:22):
don't I take everything out of the dishwasher, all the
trays and all that, and I'm gonna take my screwdriver
and kind of go around now, Okay, Page two. So
the other question on this story, and I'll be brief.
This is a mini Mallor monologue, and there's some other
things I want to talk about the question that I
had on my mind. Though, if Sam Donald's departure, we
(11:43):
can all agree knowledgeable people wasn't the main issue for
the Vikings. What was meaning that that was not the crime.
That's like jaywalking. They took a guy that had been
a big spicy meat ball of Pooh and he played
one year, played Okay, fell apart at the end. You
(12:05):
let him go. That's fine. The real issue I think
we can agree is that they put in the grocery
cart afterwards, meaning these are pigly wiggly problems. What is
a pigly wiggly problem or the Pickli Wiggily is a
great Southern grocery chain which is by far the greatest
(12:28):
named store for shopping for food I've ever come across
in my time on this planet, the Pigley Wiggily. But
I'm getting to a picky wiggly problem is picking groceries.
That's what this is. That's what all of this is.
The Vikings did not starve. They didn't become improverished because
(12:48):
Sam Donald left. They starved because they bought the wrong meat.
They did. Where's the beef? Well, what't Eddy? This is
shopping malpre practice. That's the issue. And for those of
you that are a little slow because it's the weekend
and you're in the back of the room there and
you're wearing your noise canceling headphones, letting Sam Donold walk
(13:12):
was fine. We would have done the same thing. The
mistake is this. You thought you were buying Kobe beef
and you came home, you took the bag, you took
the beef out of the bag, and you said, where's
the beef? And there was no Kobe beef. It was
mince meat pie a Frankenstein food. You wanted Kobe beef,
(13:37):
you got mince meat, the apples, the dried fruit, the
almond paste, the booze, nothing that actually fills you up,
and nothing you look forward eating. No one's ever woken
up and said, I really want some of that that
mince meat today. That would really make me happy. I
really want that. No one ever says that. And the
butcher who made the call was crazy. This guy at
(13:57):
Dolphamenza the GM there, he looked at the display case
and said, that's the one right there, premium, I'd like that.
He pointed at it, and then he took it and
they put some plastic grap on it, and then he
put it in his back. Wrong label, wrong cut, wrong century,
check the receipt. The Vikings hitched their purple wagon to
(14:20):
JJ McCarthy, a Michigan man, a Michigan man who should
have stayed at Michigan and coached at Michigan. Three years
into his NFL. I remember first year he redshirted because
he was hurt. Second year, this past year he played.
And here we are sitting after two years and where
(14:41):
are we at? So year three is upcoming and he
is still the UI guy. Soft center, need refrigeration and
not ready to serve. Will give you a massive case
of die die diarrhea. That is not a franchise quarterback.
That is a dessert you leave out for too long,
(15:03):
is what that is. And when you take a step back,
it does fit the Vikings mindset. My entire life has
been good enough is good enough? Now I have no
skin in the game. We got a lot of friends
in Minnesota. You guys have been great. You love the show.
I had a wonderful time at the Mermaid when we
got together with Eke and Roseville, Minnesota and hollering James
(15:26):
and all the al all the all the guys and
those where all the good delis are all you guys
that showed. It was wonderful. And again thanks to our
friend spin Cycle Regina for making that happen. So the
Vikings franchises like, well, they're never really that bad. They're
just never consistently that good. It's not excellence, it's not domination.
(15:49):
It's just adequate. It's if the government was a football team,
they'd be the Minnesota Vikings. It's government work football. It
meets the minimal's standard. It passes inspection. And I go
back to that word adequate because I feel like that's
that's the word, you know. Don't go above and beyond
(16:11):
the call of duty. Just do the bare minimum. Nothing inspiring,
nothing bold, just a shrug with shoulder pads. And it
is a cultural thing, right the Twin Cities. They love
play Minnesota and Ice. Right, Minnesota and Ice. One of
the most amazing things I've be into was it's actually
(16:33):
in Vegas, but it was four in the morning during
the NFL regular season, and the in the Morning show
from Kfan was there broadcasting at four in the morning,
or I think they started then, might have been earlier.
So I walk in. They invited me to come hang
out with them. I walk in and it was insane.
(16:58):
It was bonkers. There's meat, sauce and all the boys
on the stage and there were hundreds of people at
four in the morning. All Minnesotans who were there to
watch the morning show was it was great. So it
was very nice. Right, you don't want to offend anyone,
you know, swing too hard. If you don't swing too hard,
you don't miss big. You don't just line up and
(17:20):
you clap a little bit and hope the other team
screws up first. And that's that and just how you
end up with a marinate of mediocrity. But you have optimism.
So the foundation was already cracked, and you don't again,
you don't blame the grocery store for what you cook.
You blame the person that did the shopping and cook
(17:40):
the meal. And right now the kitchen smells smells like leftovers,
I would say. So the kill shot would be the
story that came out this week, which was likely leaked
more likely than not by a dosa mensa dopha mensa.
The GM there the former GM that the Vikings were
looking at the quarterback duo of Anthony Richardson and Mac Jones,
(18:04):
which is like, well, wait a minute, what do you
do We have our guy, you said he was our guy.
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Meanwhile turning the page, Hum baby humbaby now I am
about to do something on this fifth hour podcast in
Polite Society that earns you side eye.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And a.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Sigh and a question. Who hurts you? Right? Who hurts you?
You want to take a guess what I'm talking about here.
It's a bit of a riddle. I see Alf knows.
Alf knows when I say a homebaby, Alf knows right away.
I don't know about Ferg Dog. I don't know about
Ferg Dog. Not sure about him. So reveal answers, Reveal answers.
(18:49):
I am standing, and I'm clapping for lawyers who goofed.
I've got to know now, I'm not talking about these
billboard lawyers. I would venture I guess that there is
no one, no one who lives in a city that
has more billboard lawyers than Los Angeles. I'm just pointing
(19:10):
that out. So, but I am clapping for these attorneys.
And I know lawyers are usually the people that you
tolerate the way you tolerate a long rain delay when
you're at a baseball game. It's annoying, it's inevitable because
you looked at the weather app and somehow it's still
expensive because you're buying food and all that. But on
this one. I want to give these these lawyers the
(19:30):
full Rocky Balboa montage, and let me explain why if
the allegations are true, the San Francisco Giants, that's a
baseball team, not a good one, did not just sell tickets.
They sold the illusion of a price and then hit
fans with the old razzle dazzle at the finish line.
(19:50):
So if you know what I'm talking about, you might,
I don't know, maybe not, maybe not. So I saw this,
so I was going to do a monologue about it
during the week, and I didn't get to it because
of some other football stuff, and I figured we had
a little time here on a Saturdays, so I did
want to talk about it. It's a passionate topic of
conversation for me, So I will spare you all of
(20:11):
the nitty gritty, right I will just I understand when
when when you hear me say, hey, I like you
know these these lawyers, the reason is because they're fighting
back against the up charging everyone. As far as the
everyone does it thing, which some people everyone's doing it,
don't care. That's not a defense, by the way, that
(20:33):
is a confession. With better poster. It's like the cheating assstros.
I just call them assholes. We're on the podcast. They're
cheating assholes from Houston, right. So those guys that their
fan base, if you want to call them that. They're like,
oh no, I've in the terrible and all those guys
are like, oh yeah, yeah, Well everyone was doing it.
Everyone was doing it. Okay. Well again, it's like getting
(20:55):
pulled over for speeding and say, well, the officers, how
fast were you going? Well, officer, I was going ninety
nine miles. Well, you know the speed limit here is
like sixty five. You can't go ninety nine. Well I
know that, sir, but I was actually going the flow
of traffic. Everyone was going to the same speed. So
what are you doing? But they still give you a ticket,
They give you an expensive ticket. But here's the basic
setup of this skullduggery, and it's a proposed class action suit.
(21:18):
It's in federal court that says the giants advertised one
price and then presto abreka dabra checkout. They added extra
convenience and processing fees that were not disclosed up front,
and what the lawsuit calls junk fees because that's what
(21:40):
they are. If this is true, allegedly inflating totals for
hundreds of thousands of people that bought tickets to watch
that bad baseball team. Now, the person named the plaintiff
will call him Wand because that's his name. He claims
that he bought two tickets that were advertised for ten
dollars each, then watched the toll climb to twenty nine
(22:01):
dollars after the fees all of a sudden appeared at checkout.
That is not convenience in my world. That is what's
known as a shakedown with a digital receipt. Congratulations, and
the piece demissons. The masterpiece is because the Internet is
basically a mall kiosk. That's all it is, right, the Internet.
(22:24):
They want you to buy stuff or watch porn, that's it.
And so there's a countdown clock on here. The suit
alleges that this guy Wan was he felt pressure by
a timer, limiting the time to review details, enter payment
info and agree to terms. The classic but wait, there's
more energy, except instead of a second set of steak knives,
(22:48):
you get a third line item labeled because we can sucker,
get that dumb money. Get that dumb money. Baby, you
gotta do it all right, So get that dumb money anyway.
So this is where my inner malar cynicism pops up.
I put on the trench code, I hold the decoder ring.
(23:09):
The whole trick is psychological. Now I've actually studied this
over the years. I'm fascinated by the things that people
do in business to sell products, and people end up
buying things. They think it's their own decision, but they're
actually swayed. It's fascinating. When I worked at WEI briefly
(23:31):
in Boston, I did a couple of years fill in
nighttime shows at WI. While working at Fox Sports Radio.
One of the other talk show hosts also had a
full time job. He was a lollipop salesman. Doesn't that
sound like it's out of a nineteen nineties comedy? A
guy traveling around as a lollipop salesman. And so I
(23:51):
talked to him a couple of times about this, and
he explained to me that the lollipop game, the way
that it works, is that most of the people that
buy lollipops didn't want to buy lollipops. They had no intention.
They went into Target or Walmart or wherever. They didn't
plan on getting any lollipops. However, it is strategic placement
(24:15):
and they pay money. Was telling me, like, yeah, we've
deals with all these big box stores and the grocery
chains like Kroger, and we put the lollipops. We've done
market research. We know exactly where to put the lollipops
when the person's putting their groceries on the thing that
where their eyeballs are, where they look, and then we
know a certain percentage of those people are hungry and
(24:37):
they like lollipops and they haven't had one in a
long time, and so they'll buy the lollipop. And so
that's that's why they do it. It's a psychological trick,
and you're not in this case, you're not buying a
ticket anymore. You're buying the sunk cost of fallacy. These
sunk cost of fallacy. You see, once you've picked the seat,
like on these websites or your phone, you pick the
(24:57):
seat and you'll line the data up. You've already imagined
having a soft pretzel, some garlic fries, that nice beer,
the cold beer on the warm day. You text all
your boys in the group chat. You've committed. You're emotionally there,
you're primed to pay the nonsense fee just to avoid
(25:19):
starting over. It's not commerce. It's a hostage negotiation with
better fonts. And you know the playbook right, because it
has not changed in the last almost fifty years, going
back to the nineteen eighties in the infomercial era. It's
just upgraded from call now to tap now, same flim
flam houckerism. It's just a different screen now. The greatest
(25:43):
hits on this are supplies are limited. Translation, panic is profitable.
You better get this or you're not gonna be able
to get it. Only a few left at this price,
meaning there's urgency because you never know the price this
is going to go up. Assign numbers to customers. This
(26:04):
is also a great trick that translation on that congratulations
you've been promoted to special. Now you have to pay
extra because there's someone behind you. And the countdown clock,
which is just classic fomo fear of missing out on
the product. The clock is ticking. It's like a James
Bond movie. You got the sticks of dynamite. You gotta
(26:25):
get this thing or else before the diamond dynamite blows up. Now,
this is I ought to be clear. This is not
just a San Francisco Giants thing. Although it is fun
for me to take shots at the Giants as Jay
Scoop and some others. No, they used to be a
rival of the Dodgers. I think they've pretty much given
up at this point. Dodgers are like secretariat compared to
the Giants. But this lawsuit is framed as the third
(26:47):
of its kind. It's aimed at Major League Baseball teams
in and it's all come in the last couple of months.
Similar allegations made against the Boston Red Sox and the
Washington Nationals. In the Red Sox case, for example, they're
alleging the lawsuit a typical seven dollars order fee, which
raises the obvious question, how does clicking purchase cost seven
(27:12):
dollars to process? Is? Seriously, what are you doing? Is
one person single handly carrying the electrons across the Charles River.
They're in Boston, what do they do? And then the
Nationals lawsuit, which was filed in DC federal court, similarly
claims years of junk fees cheating customers out of millions,
(27:37):
cheating customers. It's not exactly subtle, of course, neither is
the business model. So now the giants reportedly stopped charging
these fees in July of twenty twenty four. They were
forced to because at the time, the Biden administration put
rules into as I understand it, to not allow these
in certain cases. And there's also a law in California,
(27:59):
the People's Republic of California, the communist state, that has
a law there, law SB four seventy eight. I believe
it is honest pricing or hidden fees law, and it's
illegal for most businesses to advertise a price that does
not include the required fees et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
(28:20):
taxes and shipping and all that stuff. So that's in California.
But let me do a little Benny the butcher here
and I'm gonna trim the fat. So the stopping is nice,
the refunding is nice, like they stop, but what about
the refund The lawsuit says fans haven't been paid back
(28:41):
for the years of alleged junk fees. And if you're
a fan, that part that hits you right because it's
the it's the sports equivalent hits you in the nuts
of getting called for holding after the touchdown and the
being told well, I don't worry. We stopped, we stopped holding.
So we're good. So great, What does the points you
took off the board? What happens to the points you
(29:03):
took the board? Anything with the points you took off
the board. No, you can't. You can't get those back.
You took the points off the board. All right. So
this is why again I am rooting for lawyers, legal haymakers.
Body blows. Body blows. Not because I'm naive enough to
think that every fee disappears forever, however, because somebody has
(29:23):
to play watchdog while the rest of us suckers are
just trying to buy a couple of seats. Or you
should not need you should not need an accounting fee
or degree. Rather, they shouldn't need an accounting degree and
a blood pressure cuff to buy tickets to a ballgame.
And junk fees are the same monster and little different costumes.
(29:45):
And it's one of those things. Once you hear about
the trick, you can't unhear it. Once you see it,
you can't unsee it. You start spotting it everywhere. It's
like the mal Ard militia of sleeper self. For example,
some of the ones that really get up my it
took us. The resort fees. That fee is like mugging
with mints on the pillow. A resort fee so you
(30:06):
can get a newspaper which nobody reads, and access to
the gym which nobody uses. How about airline family seating fees,
which turns parenting into a pay per view event. That's
always nice. I love the late payment fees that multiply
like rabbits rabbit, what up rabbit in a carrot patch.
You've got the overdraft fees that operate like a trapdoor.
(30:29):
The living wage that one living wage restaurant surcharges. And
I say this carefully and it should be addressed. You
should pay a living wage, not by passing the buck
with a line item that makes the customer feel like
they're the bad guy. They're the villain. You've got termination
(30:51):
fees for internet service. You've got to pay to break up.
You've got out of network ATM fees because you're hungry
and you're in the neighborhood and you need cash. Online
convenience fees. That's my favorite oxymoron. It's right up there
with jumbo shrimp. Shrimp not supposed to be jumbo anyway.
A lot of times. These fees are just ways, obviously
(31:13):
for companies to gouge you and I, and they do
it in stealth bomber mode to get it, or they
get an unfair advantage over competitors and all that. But
here's the deal. That's just the playboy. I want to
be too dramatic. That's how they do it. So advertise low.
This is the oldest trick in the book. You advertise low.
You hook the customer on the product and the price point.
(31:34):
Then you fatten the built the last possible moment, when
the person who's shopping's brain has already moved on from
should I to fine, I'm doing it like that's the
move there. That's the trick. Ration. And yes, I know
that professional sports teams will argue that these fees fund operations, technology, staffing.
(31:58):
You can insert any kind of corporate jargon you want,
and that's what they're going to say, which is okay,
that's I know they're gonna say that, But put it
in the price. Just raise a second. I go to
Vegas and they have all these these junk fees. Just
raise the price of the rooms. That's what you want.
Just raise the price and give me a flat fee,
and that's they'll pay it if I want to go.
If not, I'll go, say somewhere else. But don't lure
(32:19):
me in like the Giants did with a ten dollars ticket.
And then you do the math and you add on
all these extra fees and all that, and two ten
dollars tickets, you add nine dollars on. I'm already halfway
down the water slide at that point. Because the thing
about the fan, I would say, especially baseball fans more
(32:40):
than some others, like you're loyal to a fall. There's
nothing worse than a bad baseball team. You still go.
You show up. People show up. Early in the season,
weather's nasty, it's cold, it's rainy. It's cold and rainy.
Late in the season, in the middle oftentimes it's like
a frying pan and you're sitting out there melting and
it's nightmare time. And people show up. Weather in San
(33:03):
Francisco's wild. You got foggy days, foggy nights, and you
go in your bullpen pukes all over itself. You still
show up. You got a clown car for a lineup,
doesn't matter. You're there and you pay, and you watch,
and you suffer and you celebrate it. And I think
that all most fans ask for is maybe it's being
(33:24):
old fashioned here, just being a knucklehead. Is that the
number you see is the number you pay, and not
but wait, there's more, and not time's almost up. Check
out now, because that's not a ticketing experience. That is
a mugging with a countdown clock. So you got that.
(33:45):
There you go, all right. It is the Ben Malar
Show on the weekends. We'll be back tomorrow with the
Ben Maler Show. We'll have a new episode of that
tomorrow night. We've got the Fifth Hour Tomorrow the mail Bag.
On the fifth hour, we'll have Super Bowl week covers.
I will be in San Francisco later in the week,
(34:07):
so I look forward to that. But the Mailbag is tomorrow.
Danny hopefully will join us. Have a wonderful rest of
your Saturday, the last day of January twenty twenty six,
and we'll catch you on the next Fifth Hour podcast. Aloha,
my Felacia.
Kutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Maler and Danny g Radio. The final day of the
month of January. We will flip the calendar on Sunday
to February first, and a week from tomorrow it is
odd Super Bowl sixty. Now try not to talk too
(00:49):
much sports on this podcast. It's the Fifth Hour Parties.
By the way, Danny not with us again. Hopefully he'll
be with us tomorrow. I don't know. But anyway, so
today there's a lot of story to caught my attention.
I didn't do the show overnight obviously, because that was
the day we were done. We did the podcast yesterday.
There's some decent stuff in the NFL that you just
(01:10):
roll your eyes at. For example, Todd munkin the monk Man,
the coach of the Cleveland Browns now who is just
hired this week, who claimed that the Baltimore Ravens tried
to draft Shouldher Sanders, like he was trying to suck
up to Shudhur Sanders. I don't know if you saw
this or not, tried to suck up to him, and
(01:30):
then he claimed that they tried to draft him. Shudhur
Sanders was drafted in the middle actually closer to the
end of the draft, Like when were they planning on
drafting him? He was the one hundred and forty fourth
overall pick in the fifth round the draft's only seven rounds,
Like were they well six rounds? Like what are they
(01:51):
waiting for they got? I mean, it's ridiculous. So I
saw that that was amusing and I got a lot
of him. But by the way, this podcast, we're gonna
have not a mensa and hum baby, not a mensa
and humbaby baby. So I got several emails people upset
that I was not on the show last night, which
always I'm always surprised by this because it's not that
(02:13):
they wanted to hear the show. They just wanted to
hear a monologue about the Vikings. So based on the feedback,
I'm going to do an emergency mal monologue right now
here on the Fifth Hour podcast because a number of
my brothers and sisters that live in the great state
of Minnesota in the Greater Minneapolis area were upset because
the Vikings did something that was very bizarre for late January.
(02:36):
I haven't you heard about it? Or maybe not, perhaps
you were not paying attention. So the Vikings handed a
box to their GM, Quazy adopha mensa. They said, all right, crazy, here,
I want you to have this box. What's in the box?
All right? So we opened the box and there was
there was something pink in there and it appeared to
be a slip. So he was given a pink slip.
(02:57):
That's right. The Vikings they whacked their general manager as
he spent the week scouting college players for the upcoming
NFL Draft. And the coaching carousel is about done, right
about done. The Raiders and the Cardinals were the last
couple of teams. The Raiders have their choice. They're just
(03:17):
waiting for Seattle to be eliminated in the Super Bowl
in the higher of their coach. But anyway, so the
Vikings got rid of this guy Quasya doo fa men's
of the GM. He's gone booted, kicked out, showing the
door however you want to say it. And as the
only one apparently that has my brain plugged in, you
demand a Mallard monologue, And of course I'm still a
(03:39):
little foggy here. I will try to explain what happened
in Minnesota. I have a theory on this. I have
a theory on what happened with the Minnesota football team.
So it's a good jumping off point. Let us discuss
the question why. We'll get to the why. Why did
the Vikings randomly poll as the GM quasy Dolpha mensa.
(04:02):
And this is just a week before a little over
a week before the Super Bowl and a long time
after the season ended, right pretty much a month after
the season ended. So I've got peer one, Pigley Wiggly,
and we'll put those together on the mini malle monologue.
We're gonna make white chocolate Macadamian nut cookies. White chocolate
(04:22):
Macadamian nut cookies. What we're gonna make so a the
answer is why to why? The answer to why, it's
very simple to an Oukham's Razors situation. The simplest answer
is the easiest answer and the right answer, because ownership panicked.
They panicked. Now, I'm not saying that Quzy adolpha mensa.
(04:43):
The GM there, this guy was doing a good job.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying the normal protocol is,
if you're gonna get rid of the GM, you do
it in the regular season. Late in the regular season,
you do it right after the last game. Therefore, you
have your choice of who you want to bring in
as the next A bunch of gms have been hired,
and the music's pretty much done on the game of
(05:05):
musical charity. So the theory is the owner the will
family there in Minnesota, they panic full stop. And this
is not some kind of mystery novel. You do not
even need to activate the MiB, the Mather Investigative Bureau.
This is fear with a pulse. Minnesota's ownership group has
(05:25):
been diagnosed here with a bad case of sd DS.
All right, what is that? What is sd DS? That
is Sam Donald's derangement syndrome. Is what it is? Sam
Donald arrangementercentro. To rephrase this, the internet was howling at
the moon. The purple people. Eater's crowd turned into a
(05:49):
barber shop quartet, and they were humming the chili's jingle,
I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back,
baby back. That's where they were humming, I want my
baby back, baby back, baby back. Instead of ribs, they
wanted their quarterback and ownership blinked. That's it, period, Stop,
(06:09):
it's what. Now. Seattle is in the super Bowl. I
did see their supposedly for sale after the Super Bowl.
So if you want to put a couple of shekels together,
we can buy the Seahawks. But anyway, how great would
that be? How upset would no Stridinus be and JJ
and Httin and crying Craig and blind emmet the Seahawk
fan if I just went down and bought the Seahawks.
Of course that could happen. If I went on a
(06:32):
cross country bank robbery spree for the next fifty years,
I could come up with enough money. Like the Chiefs
superfan is currently locked up in the Gray Bar Hotel. Anyway,
so Seattle's in the Super Bowl. Suddenly the Vikings think
they let the one go, the one that got Away's
slip right through their fingers, which is absurd on just
(06:54):
about every level. It's absurd. Here's why. If you think
Sam Darnold is the reason that the Seattle Seahawks are
in the super Bowl, you don't know ball. You don't
You're incriminating yourself. That is not analysis, That is just superstition.
Have you not been paying attention? That's like lighting candles
(07:17):
and blaming the furniture, Like, what are you doing? Dumping
the general manage Again, this guy didn't do a great job. Fine,
I get it. He didn't really do well. The draft
has not been good. But getting rid of the GM
was a sacrifice to the angry mob with the pitchforks
and the torches and all that. Someone had to be
tossed into the volcano, the metaphorical volcano, so the noise
(07:40):
would stop and the football gods. More importantly, these social
media matrix people demand it a pound of flesh, and
it just happened. The short straw was taken by the
GM there quasi adolpha mensa. He was the guy, the
GM there who took it. He was convenient haunted by
things that go bumpity bump in the night, like talk radio,
(08:04):
social media, the echo chamber, Watch out for the echo chamber.
Now what about Peer one. I'm not talking about Peer
one imports. I'm talking about Peer one exports. That's the
issue here right out. You go see you later if
you act like an adult on this one. And I
have an unpopular opinion, but I'm gonna stick to my opinion.
(08:25):
I'm gonna die on this take on this mountain. So
letting Sam Donald walk was not the problem. It was not.
If you look at what Sam Donald did this year
in Seattle, I'm reasonable. Don't shake your head, no, no,
don't shake your head. No. I'm a reasonable observer. Sam
Donald was by Sam Donald, measuring him by Sam Donald.
(08:46):
He was solid. He wasn't spectacular. This was not one
of the great performances. He wasn't as good as Matthew
Stafford or Drake may or someone like that. He wasn't
And to circle back to our friend Roberto the bus
driver using bus driver lingo, Sam Donald was not the
bus driver for the Seahawks. He was a bus writer.
(09:10):
He was the one paying the fare in the back
of the bus. The numbers are right there. He had
fourteen interceptions, near the bottom of the league second half
of the season. It was the ninety nine, meaning nine
picks and nine touchdowns. That is a coin flip. And
it's got a drinking problem. And the trend line matters.
It does matter, Sam Donald. For all these people up
(09:32):
in arms, Oh my god, his touchdowns year to year,
if you go side by side from Minnesota Seattle, his
touchdowns were down almost thirty percent from his season starting
in the Twin Cities. The interceptions were up. Inconsistency still
ravages Sam Donald. It's like a rash that goes away
(09:55):
and comes back. You know, It's like you have a
gluten allergy and it comes back. This is who he is,
Sam Donald. Will win a bunch of games for you
in a month or two and then go out and
in the Super Bowl a week from him tomorrow, he'll
ride the vombit comment. That's it, So spare me the
pearl clutching right the GM in this case, Uh, you know,
(10:18):
this guy gets absolutely vaporized. Bye bye, Adolpha Mansa get
out of here. So he gets vaporized. He's out. He's
the guy to take the hit on this. And I
guess again this happens that that's how this works. Fine,
but it wasn't accountability. It was appeasement. This was made
(10:41):
for appeasement. Ownership heard the cacophony of shaky wisdom, mistook
mistook that for wisdom, that just the noise and all that,
And so they confused the pressure the banging on pots
and pans as legitimate proof. And now they've gotten neither right,
(11:02):
poltergeist peer pressure. When you don't know where the noise
is coming from, what do you do? You start breaking
your own stuff? Like I think the noise is coming
from the sofa. Let me pull all the cushions off
the sofa and I'm gonna start fuxing around with it.
Now I think it's coming from the dishwasher, So why
(11:22):
don't I take everything out of the dishwasher, all the
trays and all that, and I'm gonna take my screwdriver
and kind of go around now, Okay, Page two. So
the other question on this story, and I'll be brief.
This is a mini Mallor monologue, and there's some other
things I want to talk about the question that I
had on my mind. Though, if Sam Donald's departure, we
(11:43):
can all agree knowledgeable people wasn't the main issue for
the Vikings. What was meaning that that was not the crime.
That's like jaywalking. They took a guy that had been
a big spicy meat ball of Pooh and he played
one year, played Okay, fell apart at the end. You
(12:05):
let him go. That's fine. The real issue I think
we can agree is that they put in the grocery
cart afterwards, meaning these are pigly wiggly problems. What is
a pigly wiggly problem or the Pickli Wiggily is a
great Southern grocery chain which is by far the greatest
(12:28):
named store for shopping for food I've ever come across
in my time on this planet, the Pigley Wiggily. But
I'm getting to a picky wiggly problem is picking groceries.
That's what this is. That's what all of this is.
The Vikings did not starve. They didn't become improverished because
(12:48):
Sam Donald left. They starved because they bought the wrong meat.
They did. Where's the beef? Well, what't Eddy? This is
shopping malpre practice. That's the issue. And for those of
you that are a little slow because it's the weekend
and you're in the back of the room there and
you're wearing your noise canceling headphones, letting Sam Donold walk
(13:12):
was fine. We would have done the same thing. The
mistake is this. You thought you were buying Kobe beef
and you came home, you took the bag, you took
the beef out of the bag, and you said, where's
the beef? And there was no Kobe beef. It was
mince meat pie a Frankenstein food. You wanted Kobe beef,
(13:37):
you got mince meat, the apples, the dried fruit, the
almond paste, the booze, nothing that actually fills you up,
and nothing you look forward eating. No one's ever woken
up and said, I really want some of that that
mince meat today. That would really make me happy. I
really want that. No one ever says that. And the
butcher who made the call was crazy. This guy at
(13:57):
Dolphamenza the GM there, he looked at the display case
and said, that's the one right there, premium, I'd like that.
He pointed at it, and then he took it and
they put some plastic grap on it, and then he
put it in his back. Wrong label, wrong cut, wrong century,
check the receipt. The Vikings hitched their purple wagon to
(14:20):
JJ McCarthy, a Michigan man, a Michigan man who should
have stayed at Michigan and coached at Michigan. Three years
into his NFL. I remember first year he redshirted because
he was hurt. Second year, this past year he played.
And here we are sitting after two years and where
(14:41):
are we at? So year three is upcoming and he
is still the UI guy. Soft center, need refrigeration and
not ready to serve. Will give you a massive case
of die die diarrhea. That is not a franchise quarterback.
That is a dessert you leave out for too long,
(15:03):
is what that is. And when you take a step back,
it does fit the Vikings mindset. My entire life has
been good enough is good enough? Now I have no
skin in the game. We got a lot of friends
in Minnesota. You guys have been great. You love the show.
I had a wonderful time at the Mermaid when we
got together with Eke and Roseville, Minnesota and hollering James
(15:26):
and all the al all the all the guys and
those where all the good delis are all you guys
that showed. It was wonderful. And again thanks to our
friend spin Cycle Regina for making that happen. So the
Vikings franchises like, well, they're never really that bad. They're
just never consistently that good. It's not excellence, it's not domination.
(15:49):
It's just adequate. It's if the government was a football team,
they'd be the Minnesota Vikings. It's government work football. It
meets the minimal's standard. It passes inspection. And I go
back to that word adequate because I feel like that's
that's the word, you know. Don't go above and beyond
(16:11):
the call of duty. Just do the bare minimum. Nothing inspiring,
nothing bold, just a shrug with shoulder pads. And it
is a cultural thing, right the Twin Cities. They love
play Minnesota and Ice. Right, Minnesota and Ice. One of
the most amazing things I've be into was it's actually
(16:33):
in Vegas, but it was four in the morning during
the NFL regular season, and the in the Morning show
from Kfan was there broadcasting at four in the morning,
or I think they started then, might have been earlier.
So I walk in. They invited me to come hang
out with them. I walk in and it was insane.
(16:58):
It was bonkers. There's meat, sauce and all the boys
on the stage and there were hundreds of people at
four in the morning. All Minnesotans who were there to
watch the morning show was it was great. So it
was very nice. Right, you don't want to offend anyone,
you know, swing too hard. If you don't swing too hard,
you don't miss big. You don't just line up and
(17:20):
you clap a little bit and hope the other team
screws up first. And that's that and just how you
end up with a marinate of mediocrity. But you have optimism.
So the foundation was already cracked, and you don't again,
you don't blame the grocery store for what you cook.
You blame the person that did the shopping and cook
(17:40):
the meal. And right now the kitchen smells smells like leftovers,
I would say. So the kill shot would be the
story that came out this week, which was likely leaked
more likely than not by a dosa mensa dopha mensa.
The GM there the former GM that the Vikings were
looking at the quarterback duo of Anthony Richardson and Mac Jones,
(18:04):
which is like, well, wait a minute, what do you
do We have our guy, you said he was our guy.
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Meanwhile turning the page, Hum baby humbaby now I am
about to do something on this fifth hour podcast in
Polite Society that earns you side eye.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And a.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Sigh and a question. Who hurts you? Right? Who hurts you?
You want to take a guess what I'm talking about here.
It's a bit of a riddle. I see Alf knows.
Alf knows when I say a homebaby, Alf knows right away.
I don't know about Ferg Dog. I don't know about
Ferg Dog. Not sure about him. So reveal answers, Reveal answers.
(18:49):
I am standing, and I'm clapping for lawyers who goofed.
I've got to know now, I'm not talking about these
billboard lawyers. I would venture I guess that there is
no one, no one who lives in a city that
has more billboard lawyers than Los Angeles. I'm just pointing
(19:10):
that out. So, but I am clapping for these attorneys.
And I know lawyers are usually the people that you
tolerate the way you tolerate a long rain delay when
you're at a baseball game. It's annoying, it's inevitable because
you looked at the weather app and somehow it's still
expensive because you're buying food and all that. But on
this one. I want to give these these lawyers the
(19:30):
full Rocky Balboa montage, and let me explain why if
the allegations are true, the San Francisco Giants, that's a
baseball team, not a good one, did not just sell tickets.
They sold the illusion of a price and then hit
fans with the old razzle dazzle at the finish line.
(19:50):
So if you know what I'm talking about, you might,
I don't know, maybe not, maybe not. So I saw this,
so I was going to do a monologue about it
during the week, and I didn't get to it because
of some other football stuff, and I figured we had
a little time here on a Saturdays, so I did
want to talk about it. It's a passionate topic of
conversation for me, So I will spare you all of
(20:11):
the nitty gritty, right I will just I understand when
when when you hear me say, hey, I like you
know these these lawyers, the reason is because they're fighting
back against the up charging everyone. As far as the
everyone does it thing, which some people everyone's doing it,
don't care. That's not a defense, by the way, that
(20:33):
is a confession. With better poster. It's like the cheating assstros.
I just call them assholes. We're on the podcast. They're
cheating assholes from Houston, right. So those guys that their
fan base, if you want to call them that. They're like,
oh no, I've in the terrible and all those guys
are like, oh yeah, yeah, Well everyone was doing it.
Everyone was doing it. Okay. Well again, it's like getting
(20:55):
pulled over for speeding and say, well, the officers, how
fast were you going? Well, officer, I was going ninety
nine miles. Well, you know the speed limit here is
like sixty five. You can't go ninety nine. Well I
know that, sir, but I was actually going the flow
of traffic. Everyone was going to the same speed. So
what are you doing? But they still give you a ticket,
They give you an expensive ticket. But here's the basic
setup of this skullduggery, and it's a proposed class action suit.
(21:18):
It's in federal court that says the giants advertised one
price and then presto abreka dabra checkout. They added extra
convenience and processing fees that were not disclosed up front,
and what the lawsuit calls junk fees because that's what
(21:40):
they are. If this is true, allegedly inflating totals for
hundreds of thousands of people that bought tickets to watch
that bad baseball team. Now, the person named the plaintiff
will call him Wand because that's his name. He claims
that he bought two tickets that were advertised for ten
dollars each, then watched the toll climb to twenty nine
(22:01):
dollars after the fees all of a sudden appeared at checkout.
That is not convenience in my world. That is what's
known as a shakedown with a digital receipt. Congratulations, and
the piece demissons. The masterpiece is because the Internet is
basically a mall kiosk. That's all it is, right, the Internet.
(22:24):
They want you to buy stuff or watch porn, that's it.
And so there's a countdown clock on here. The suit
alleges that this guy Wan was he felt pressure by
a timer, limiting the time to review details, enter payment
info and agree to terms. The classic but wait, there's
more energy, except instead of a second set of steak knives,
(22:48):
you get a third line item labeled because we can sucker,
get that dumb money. Get that dumb money. Baby, you
gotta do it all right, So get that dumb money anyway.
So this is where my inner malar cynicism pops up.
I put on the trench code, I hold the decoder ring.
(23:09):
The whole trick is psychological. Now I've actually studied this
over the years. I'm fascinated by the things that people
do in business to sell products, and people end up
buying things. They think it's their own decision, but they're
actually swayed. It's fascinating. When I worked at WEI briefly
(23:31):
in Boston, I did a couple of years fill in
nighttime shows at WI. While working at Fox Sports Radio.
One of the other talk show hosts also had a
full time job. He was a lollipop salesman. Doesn't that
sound like it's out of a nineteen nineties comedy? A
guy traveling around as a lollipop salesman. And so I
(23:51):
talked to him a couple of times about this, and
he explained to me that the lollipop game, the way
that it works, is that most of the people that
buy lollipops didn't want to buy lollipops. They had no intention.
They went into Target or Walmart or wherever. They didn't
plan on getting any lollipops. However, it is strategic placement
(24:15):
and they pay money. Was telling me, like, yeah, we've
deals with all these big box stores and the grocery
chains like Kroger, and we put the lollipops. We've done
market research. We know exactly where to put the lollipops
when the person's putting their groceries on the thing that
where their eyeballs are, where they look, and then we
know a certain percentage of those people are hungry and
(24:37):
they like lollipops and they haven't had one in a
long time, and so they'll buy the lollipop. And so
that's that's why they do it. It's a psychological trick,
and you're not in this case, you're not buying a
ticket anymore. You're buying the sunk cost of fallacy. These
sunk cost of fallacy. You see, once you've picked the seat,
like on these websites or your phone, you pick the
(24:57):
seat and you'll line the data up. You've already imagined
having a soft pretzel, some garlic fries, that nice beer,
the cold beer on the warm day. You text all
your boys in the group chat. You've committed. You're emotionally there,
you're primed to pay the nonsense fee just to avoid
(25:19):
starting over. It's not commerce. It's a hostage negotiation with
better fonts. And you know the playbook right, because it
has not changed in the last almost fifty years, going
back to the nineteen eighties in the infomercial era. It's
just upgraded from call now to tap now, same flim
flam houckerism. It's just a different screen now. The greatest
(25:43):
hits on this are supplies are limited. Translation, panic is profitable.
You better get this or you're not gonna be able
to get it. Only a few left at this price,
meaning there's urgency because you never know the price this
is going to go up. Assign numbers to customers. This
(26:04):
is also a great trick that translation on that congratulations
you've been promoted to special. Now you have to pay
extra because there's someone behind you. And the countdown clock,
which is just classic fomo fear of missing out on
the product. The clock is ticking. It's like a James
Bond movie. You got the sticks of dynamite. You gotta
(26:25):
get this thing or else before the diamond dynamite blows up. Now,
this is I ought to be clear. This is not
just a San Francisco Giants thing. Although it is fun
for me to take shots at the Giants as Jay
Scoop and some others. No, they used to be a
rival of the Dodgers. I think they've pretty much given
up at this point. Dodgers are like secretariat compared to
the Giants. But this lawsuit is framed as the third
(26:47):
of its kind. It's aimed at Major League Baseball teams
in and it's all come in the last couple of months.
Similar allegations made against the Boston Red Sox and the
Washington Nationals. In the Red Sox case, for example, they're
alleging the lawsuit a typical seven dollars order fee, which
raises the obvious question, how does clicking purchase cost seven
(27:12):
dollars to process? Is? Seriously, what are you doing? Is
one person single handly carrying the electrons across the Charles River.
They're in Boston, what do they do? And then the
Nationals lawsuit, which was filed in DC federal court, similarly
claims years of junk fees cheating customers out of millions,
(27:37):
cheating customers. It's not exactly subtle, of course, neither is
the business model. So now the giants reportedly stopped charging
these fees in July of twenty twenty four. They were
forced to because at the time, the Biden administration put
rules into as I understand it, to not allow these
in certain cases. And there's also a law in California,
(27:59):
the People's Republic of California, the communist state, that has
a law there, law SB four seventy eight. I believe
it is honest pricing or hidden fees law, and it's
illegal for most businesses to advertise a price that does
not include the required fees et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
(28:20):
taxes and shipping and all that stuff. So that's in California.
But let me do a little Benny the butcher here
and I'm gonna trim the fat. So the stopping is nice,
the refunding is nice, like they stop, but what about
the refund The lawsuit says fans haven't been paid back
(28:41):
for the years of alleged junk fees. And if you're
a fan, that part that hits you right because it's
the it's the sports equivalent hits you in the nuts
of getting called for holding after the touchdown and the
being told well, I don't worry. We stopped, we stopped holding.
So we're good. So great, What does the points you
took off the board? What happens to the points you
(29:03):
took the board? Anything with the points you took off
the board. No, you can't. You can't get those back.
You took the points off the board. All right. So
this is why again I am rooting for lawyers, legal haymakers.
Body blows. Body blows. Not because I'm naive enough to
think that every fee disappears forever, however, because somebody has
(29:23):
to play watchdog while the rest of us suckers are
just trying to buy a couple of seats. Or you
should not need you should not need an accounting fee
or degree. Rather, they shouldn't need an accounting degree and
a blood pressure cuff to buy tickets to a ballgame.
And junk fees are the same monster and little different costumes.
(29:45):
And it's one of those things. Once you hear about
the trick, you can't unhear it. Once you see it,
you can't unsee it. You start spotting it everywhere. It's
like the mal Ard militia of sleeper self. For example,
some of the ones that really get up my it
took us. The resort fees. That fee is like mugging
with mints on the pillow. A resort fee so you
(30:06):
can get a newspaper which nobody reads, and access to
the gym which nobody uses. How about airline family seating fees,
which turns parenting into a pay per view event. That's
always nice. I love the late payment fees that multiply
like rabbits rabbit, what up rabbit in a carrot patch.
You've got the overdraft fees that operate like a trapdoor.
(30:29):
The living wage that one living wage restaurant surcharges. And
I say this carefully and it should be addressed. You
should pay a living wage, not by passing the buck
with a line item that makes the customer feel like
they're the bad guy. They're the villain. You've got termination
(30:51):
fees for internet service. You've got to pay to break up.
You've got out of network ATM fees because you're hungry
and you're in the neighborhood and you need cash. Online
convenience fees. That's my favorite oxymoron. It's right up there
with jumbo shrimp. Shrimp not supposed to be jumbo anyway.
A lot of times. These fees are just ways, obviously
(31:13):
for companies to gouge you and I, and they do
it in stealth bomber mode to get it, or they
get an unfair advantage over competitors and all that. But
here's the deal. That's just the playboy. I want to
be too dramatic. That's how they do it. So advertise low.
This is the oldest trick in the book. You advertise low.
You hook the customer on the product and the price point.
(31:34):
Then you fatten the built the last possible moment, when
the person who's shopping's brain has already moved on from
should I to fine, I'm doing it like that's the
move there. That's the trick. Ration. And yes, I know
that professional sports teams will argue that these fees fund operations, technology, staffing.
(31:58):
You can insert any kind of corporate jargon you want,
and that's what they're going to say, which is okay,
that's I know they're gonna say that, But put it
in the price. Just raise a second. I go to
Vegas and they have all these these junk fees. Just
raise the price of the rooms. That's what you want.
Just raise the price and give me a flat fee,
and that's they'll pay it if I want to go.
If not, I'll go, say somewhere else. But don't lure
(32:19):
me in like the Giants did with a ten dollars ticket.
And then you do the math and you add on
all these extra fees and all that, and two ten
dollars tickets, you add nine dollars on. I'm already halfway
down the water slide at that point. Because the thing
about the fan, I would say, especially baseball fans more
(32:40):
than some others, like you're loyal to a fall. There's
nothing worse than a bad baseball team. You still go.
You show up. People show up. Early in the season,
weather's nasty, it's cold, it's rainy. It's cold and rainy.
Late in the season, in the middle oftentimes it's like
a frying pan and you're sitting out there melting and
it's nightmare time. And people show up. Weather in San
(33:03):
Francisco's wild. You got foggy days, foggy nights, and you
go in your bullpen pukes all over itself. You still
show up. You got a clown car for a lineup,
doesn't matter. You're there and you pay, and you watch,
and you suffer and you celebrate it. And I think
that all most fans ask for is maybe it's being
(33:24):
old fashioned here, just being a knucklehead. Is that the
number you see is the number you pay, and not
but wait, there's more, and not time's almost up. Check
out now, because that's not a ticketing experience. That is
a mugging with a countdown clock. So you got that.
(33:45):
There you go, all right. It is the Ben Malar
Show on the weekends. We'll be back tomorrow with the
Ben Maler Show. We'll have a new episode of that
tomorrow night. We've got the Fifth Hour Tomorrow the mail Bag.
On the fifth hour, we'll have Super Bowl week covers.
I will be in San Francisco later in the week,
(34:07):
so I look forward to that. But the Mailbag is tomorrow.
Danny hopefully will join us. Have a wonderful rest of
your Saturday, the last day of January twenty twenty six,
and we'll catch you on the next Fifth Hour podcast. Aloha,
my Felacia.
Host
Ben Maller
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