October 24, 2025 • 33 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Kangaroos, World Series, Toronto Poetry, Jazz Hands in the Sky, & more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kubbooms.
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 Mahller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g
Radio on location from Lost Wages, Nevada. After doing the
overnight show from the world famous iHeart Media Building, which
is now part of the Fremont Street Experience, we go
into the podcast studio. I'm here in Vegas for a
(00:55):
special meet and greet with the boys from Minnesota. More
on that coming later on, but right now we worry
about today's podcast. We also celebrate National Kangaroo Awareness Day,
another one of those dopey holidays, which got me down
a kangaroo.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Hole, if that's even a thing.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Ossi Waz and Ozzi Momentum and all the other guys
that have been part of the show over the years.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So I fell down this path of fun.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Facts about kangaroos, I didn't find too much. I did
find that around thirty million years ago the kangaroo's ancestors
arrived in the Australian rainforest. I love how they have
these rough dates around thirty million years ago. And the
people that study this stuff for a living they say
(01:49):
that the possum likely developed, or the kangaroo rather developed
from a possum like animal that lived in trees.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And eventually made their way to the ground.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You know how the theory is that human beings were
in the ocean, came out of the ocean, or did
we come out of the ocean?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Anyway, the kangaroo species so it's been in development for
a long long time.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And my favorite fun fact about.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Kangaroos I got from Ozzie Waz who informed me he
lives out in the remote part of Australia, not in
one of the big cities like Perth or Sydney, and
he informed me that out there the kangaroo will instead
of running away from lights or freezing, the kangaroos will
(02:38):
run towards his car, which I'm still laughing at.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
The photos.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
He sent me a couple of years back when his
car was attacked by a kangaroo and really messed it up,
like punching the car.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I also learned that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Skippy was the first big star kangaroo. Skippy the bush Kangaroo,
I'm not making that up, made her television debut in
an Australian children's TV series called Skippy, and that was
one of the first big stars. That was in the
nineteen sixties when the kangaroo became mainstream, or at least
(03:16):
became a star on TV. So on this podcast we
go down memory lane and jazz hands. But let's not
bear the lead, my man, all right, we won't bear
the lead. Tonight it is on like Donkey Gong. I
will be watching from a sportsbook somewhere in Los Wages, Nevada,
the first chapter of what could be a seven part
(03:40):
mini series, the twenty twenty five World Series Game number one,
and I got to I've never been to Toronto. The
Dodgers and Blue Jays tonight in that fine city. I
have thought about Toronto. I have flirted with the idea
of going to Toronto. I even done a little radio
(04:00):
in Toronto, but I have never actually been physically in Toronto.
It's one of those cities that lives in the imagination
in the back of my mind, kind of like a postcard.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
When I think of Toronto, having never been there, I
think of a clean place.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I think of a big metropolis, a big downtown.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think of polite people.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's vaguely exotic because it's a place where I would assume,
just like the reputation of Canada, people apologize with Canadian
nice right, apologize for cutting in line. And I look
at the skyline there, and I love skylines. Of The
skyline of Toronto is amazing. It looks like it was
designed by someone with a passion for crisp lines. And
(04:46):
I don't know about the zoning laws there, but it
looks amazing when I've seen photos of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I have been to Canada exactly twice. Once years ago,
I went to Niagara Falls. I didn't plan on going
to the Canadian side, but let's be hon it, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Really count anyway. You go there.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You go to Buffalo, and then the suburbs of Buffalo's
Niagara Falls, and so you drive to Niagara Falls and
there's a bridge. You can walk across the bridge. There's
some customs people there and boom, welcome to Canada. You
look at the falls from the other side. They look
the same, and you buy some maple candy. You look
(05:24):
at a bunch of Canadian flags, you play a few
arcade games, and it feels like you've actually accomplished something
culturally that's meaningful.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And you know, but it's tourist Canada. It's visitor Canada.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It's kind of like if you took someone from I
don't know, from New Zealand and you put them in
Times Square and said, well, this is New York.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Well no, it's part of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
You can go to Staten Island, you go to Queens,
you go to Brooklyn, you can go depends where you are.
It's like the La and the Man and the Elephant
in that whole thing. But the other trip that I
made was just this year we talked about it, to Vancouver,
a city so beautiful it feels like it was cooked
up in some like AI generation machine, by.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Some really super computer.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You got the mountains in Vancouver, you got the ocean,
you got the trees, the skyline, all of them working
together perfectly in harmony.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It's like a.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Jazz quartet that gives you a cacophony of beautiful sounds
and doesn't miss a beat. Now, my comrade Nico, a
friend of the show, a consumer of this podcast, practically
rolled out the red carpet at the airport Vancouver, and
Nico treated me like I was hosting the tonight show
(06:52):
back when that mattered. Arrived Nico with a nice gift
basket at the Sweet Vancouver Grizzlies hat and those cheese
puff things that they have in Canada, which are ten
times better than we have in America. I got some
soccer swag out of it. Now we ate at every
poutine joint within a ten mile radius of the hotel
(07:17):
we stayed at in Vancouver. We started at the you know,
we started at the local place, which was right around
the corner, and we worked our way through some of
the more exotic places. Went to Chinatown in Vancouver. We
also stared at the skyline.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Like we were.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You'd never seen this before. It been to major cities,
but it was great. We walked to some of the trails,
didn't spend too much time. We wanted to spend more time.
We wont be there for a weekend at Stanley Park,
and I am telling you, hand to god, this park,
Stanley Park makes Central Park looked like a sandbox behind
a rest stop. And it was named after Lord Stanley. Yes,
(07:53):
that Lord Stanley, the guy from the Stanley Cup. And Nico,
who I'm convinced has a secret job with the Canadian
Chamber of Commerce, at least the British Columbia version.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Now, when we got.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Together in Vancouver and we had a meet and greet,
a pretty good turnout considering and we've been on and
off the radio there in Vancouver. So Nico, he insisted,
he said, listen, Toronto's great, Like, maybe we'll get together
in Toronto and we'll see a Maple Leafs game. I've
heard a lot about the experience of going to a
hockey game in Canon and going to Toronto, and specifically
(08:27):
even they never win, you know, you love it and
all this stuff. We want to have me experience that,
and that would be great if it ever happens. I
know his son is on the road to soccer stardom
and he's living his dream and it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
His great doting father and all that.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Now, just for the record, I am not saying this
about my love of Toronto because of the World Series Toronto.
I'm just telling you he was on my list. I
thought of it as I was coming in here to
the remote podcast studio here in Vegas, and and my
list of places I want to go isn't very long anymore,
like I at least in the States. I mean, there's
(09:04):
some other places. I haven't really been anywhere outside. I said, well, Canada,
the States, I understand, North America. I'm staying outside North America.
So the radio days part of this. So my relationship
with Toronto is not geographic as I've laid out. It's
broadcast back way back in a decade called the nineties,
when I was a young lad, a West Coast radio stringer,
(09:28):
just starting out, lugging a tape recorder in clubhouses and dugouts.
I was a semi regular correspondent. And I believe the callers,
and don't hold me to this, as I remember were CJ.
Cl better known as Tom Looney, would say, by its
gangster name, the fan five ninety and I would call in, well,
(09:51):
they would call me.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I didn't call them. They would call me first, say hey,
can you come on at.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Four o'clock our time, which is one o'clock your for
a little hot West Coast baseball talk. And this was
in a period of time the Athletics had some good
teams and so I was never famous. I'm sure nobody
in Toronto remembers me calling in. I was a young,
young idiot and it was only for a few minutes.
But in my head like I was a big star,
(10:16):
and I was a star in Toronto radio. And I
was a guy that even though I was on the phone,
I was talking into microphones and I had opinions and
they asked me my opinions on the Angels of the
Mariners or whoever was going on, and the Dodgers, and it
was cool.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It was a fun thing.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And whenever the Blue Jays would come through Anaheim, I
would hustle down to the big A. I'd grab some
quotes from players in that eraic guys like John al Larude,
Roberto Alamar, Joe Carter. I snagged a bunch of sound
from Cido Gaston.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Who was a smooth operator.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Cido Gaston and the Jays they didn't win in those years.
This was just after their back to back championship appearances
with the back in the early nineties. And then they
had the work stoppage that canceled the World Series in
ninety four, But the clubhouse had the faint smell of
(11:10):
winning still, you know what I mean, Like they still
had that aura, that afterglow from their success, and that
does hang in the air even when the championship drives,
because there's people that say, well, they have championship punigree
as one of the quotes. Now, my friend and I
have not kept up with him. He's in Chicago now
(11:32):
named Chuck Swarsky. Chuck Swersky is the voice or was
the voice of the Toronto Raptors back in that period
of time, and he had a talk show on the
radio in Toronto, and he would have me on as
a correspondent on his show and when the Raptors would
come into La And this actually continued up until COVID
(11:53):
when I stopped going to games on a regular basis
because of well you know why.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
But anyway, at that time we used.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
To it the same when he come up with the
Bulls and he was in Toronto, and he was a original, unique, exciting,
great rhythmic tones from Chuck Swirsky. And he's the guy
who coined Vince sanity and I think he came up
with Airic Canada also for Vince Carter, who was the
(12:20):
big star of the Raptors at.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That period of time.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And if you've ever heard him broadcast a game on
the radio, it is a treat, you know, when you know,
you'd know he made a dunk sound like the moon landing.
It was like the most exciting thing. And I even
I have some friends in the Toronto area. One of
them used to work at Fox Sports Radio, Canadian Mike
(12:43):
Canadian Mike, who worked for our place, worked at TMZ
for a while actually, and he's back in his home
city of Toronto. Toronto's always been near my orbit, I
just never quite touched down. Now there's more to the story,
without dating myself too much, and this is all just
things that are popping into my head with the World
Series starting tonight in Toronto, and so without dating myself,
(13:08):
even though the calendar already has done that for me.
I am actually older than the Toronto Blue Jays, which
is kind of scary. The Jays were born shortly after
I was born. I was already around, I was a toddler.
I was already scribbling box scores and notebooks. I was
memorizing batting averages like they were the Holy Scripture, unless
I was just pooping my bed. Unless I was just
(13:30):
pooping my bed at that time. But back then, the
Blue Jays when I first kind of figured things out,
and when do you figure things out, like nine or ten, nine,
ten or eleven, the Blue Jays were a curiosity. They
were a rumor for someone like me who grew up
in California. Baseball I loved. I was obsessed with baseball
(13:54):
now Canada. When I thought of Canada, I thought of
that Montreal Expos.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
I'd see the Dodgers play the Expos every once in
a while. But Toronto.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That was just kind of foreign, like they were they
were playing baseball next to maple trees, and they had
like ice ranks everywhere and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
And gotta understand, this was before the Interweb.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I grew up in an era, an era where we
would go to the market and every was it every
week or every month. They'd have an encyclopedia you had
to buy, which was the Wikipedia of the time, And
so we didn't have social media and all that stuff
back in my day, and before you could click a
stream and watch a game like we can now whether
(14:40):
it's legal or not. Now I got my baseball knowledge
from the Sporting News. They had these books, the Green
and Red Book, and they had one was for the
National League and one was for the American League, and
that was the Holy Bible. And then you had Peter Gammons,
and he wrote for Sports st Peter Gammons was the
(15:01):
oracle of baseball.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And if he wrote it, it was the Gospel. It
was gospel.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And on Saturday mornings before the NBC Game of the
Week and BC, I got my education from This Week
in Baseball, hosted by the immortal dulcetones of Mel Allen. Now,
This Week in Baseball was not a show, it was
(15:29):
a ritual. And when Mel Allen's voice hit the screen,
and this was old at mel Allen. He had been
the voice of the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
This Week in Baseball, I was in a trance.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And I was lucky enough to get to know Vin
Scully a little bit, and I asked him about Mel Allen, because.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Mel Allen was a hero of mine.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And he talked about how wonderful Mel Allen was, and
mel had fallen. Ben told me the story as he
got a little older, he fell like getting out of
the bathtub. And he was never quite the same after that,
but for me he was wonderful. I remember when the
Jays started to get pretty good in the mid eighties,
(16:12):
like the mid nineteen eighties, they played the Royals and
the playoffs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I think I was like nineteen eighty five and.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Twib notes, which I only learned as an adult, meant
this week in baseball notes. I just thought it was
something else. What's the word twib mean? Is that like twig? No,
it's twib I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Just go with it.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
So I'd watch these twib notes and they'd go around
the major leagues, and again I didn't grow up with being.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Able to watch. The Blue Jays were never ever, as I.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Remember, on the Game of the Week on NBC, because
they had West Coast and East Coast games, you'd always
get the Yankees, and then on the West Coast we'd
get the Dodgers and the Giants and teams like that.
So twib notes would cut to Exhibition Stadium and Mel
would say, with a booming delivery, this week in baseball
(17:05):
we go to Toronto, where the Blue Jays are flying
high top the American League East standings, and then they'd
cut away to a shot of the manager, and they
go through and the camera would pan to George Bell,
Lloyd Moseby, and Jesse Barfield.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That amazing outfield of that era.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
And in my child ears, my boyhood ears, that was mythic,
like I was told these are the greatest outfielders assembled
in that generation, and I believed it, like that was
the top outfield in baseball. You had the bazooka, the
cannon for Jesse Barfield's arm. You had George Bell known
(17:45):
as Taco Bell, who swung like he was trying to
hit the ball into Hudson May.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
And you had the great Lloyd.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Moseby, a smooth operator himself, just like the manager. And
of course you can't tell the story of growing up
watching baseball and watching the Blue Jays from afar, not
a fan, just watching as a casual fan of ball baseball.
The Dave Winfield story. Now, you know, you know when
it comes to Dave Winfield. So in nineteen eighty three,
(18:17):
Winfield accidentally during a game with a batted ball, killed
a seagull at Exhibition Stadium, which was this football stadium
that was not designed for baseball, and it was very
odd on television.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I'd watch it.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I always have to sell the Blue Jays is on
this weekend baseball or when the Angels would go there.
And it was very bizarre because there's all these seats
that weren't used, and they had the water right near
there anyway, So Dave Winfield hit a seagull, killed it,
and the Canadian Mounties arrested him for cruelty to animals.
Hand to God, as I remember it, and they arrested
(18:54):
him like over a bird. A bird is the word
only in Canada. Can a man hit four hundred and
sixty five home runs and still be remembered as a
winged casualty. It is the stuff of legends. I'm an
old dude now, I guess I don't know, and when
do you come old?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And I remember it now.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That story is part of the weird mythology of Toronto baseball,
like the Snow Games, the stadium that turned into a
relic before it even hit twenty, the Joe Carter leap
in the air in nineteen ninety three, a moment that
still echoes every single October. So the World Series is tonight,
(19:32):
and so here we are the Dodgers heading north to
play the Jays tonight, and I've been around again. I've
been around the edges of Toronto. My whole run here
in radiof waxed loquacious here. I don't know how long
this podcast is, but I've talked to you. I've talked
to the fans of Toronto. The radio show that I
do overnight has been on and off the radio in
(19:53):
Toronto and Hamilton, and we go on, we go off
station has changed formats.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
It's the radio world.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
We have a lot of listeners in Hamilton and some
in Toronto that have interacted. We did a Boston meet
and greet back in twenty nineteen, I think it was
twenty eighteen, and had a guy drive down from Canada
from Toronto drove down to Boston.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Which was kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And so I've been on the airwaves on and off
there called in back in the day when the Blue
Jays were still kind of good.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And I learned, you know, I learned.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Because of all that the mythology of Toronto baseball, watching
the highlight reels and just never walk the streets, and
there's there's some kind of weird poetic part to that,
like some cities you visit, some cities you kind of imagine,
and Toronto is still imagination for me. It's a city
I know kind of without knowing, and I'll go there
(20:48):
and I hope I'm not disappointed. Sometimes you go places
you're not disappointed. But someday I'll get there and I'll
stand outside the Rogers Center and I'll stare up at
the CN Tower and I'll eat some ballpark poutine and
I'll check that.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Box and then I'll move on to something else.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
But it really started my fascination with the lack of
information about the Blue Jays, and it was all because
of this week in baseball. So while I have a
fascination with Toronto, Go, Dodgers Go, They're in town.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
There.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Cannot wait for tonight. Always fun to watch the world.
There's gonna be extra special from the sportsbook here, and
I'm not sure which sportsbook.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I'm gonna go to.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
We'll figure that out at a later day, but we
look forward to it in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Now, before I get out of here, I did want
to mention not that I'm going anywhere, I actually have
some I'm doing in Vegas. I have to go to
bed in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
But I've been seeing this so often during these baseball
playoffs and other college football and different sporting events I've
been watching. I have to bring this up, so it's
about a commercial, but just bear with me. So the
thing about airline commercials is that they're all little Broadway shows.
At least, it seems like like that everyone's teeth sparkles
(22:02):
like they've been polished by the tooth fairy herself.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Personally, she didn't even need any money.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
The skies are always cheerful, everyone's smiling, like I said,
And when I fly, I see a lot of people
that are in bad moods. I see many people that
haven't showered in a long time. I see people that
look like they would rather.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Be anywhere else than the airport.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And I've never seen in one of these commercials as
screaming baby. I've never seen being stuck in the middle
seat between two guys who smell like old tuna fish
sandwiches and are bigger than the girth of the plane. No,
what I see on these commercials, it's always a choreographed,
(22:50):
happy clappy celebration where everyone's twirling their carry ons like
they're starring and singing in the rain right, and now lately,
as I've watched the baseball playoffs, I have been hit
over the head. I'm sure you have as well with
a barrage. I think they are thirty second musicals about
Southwest Airlines. Good looking people dancing in different locations, laughing
(23:14):
like the gate change was the greatest thing that ever happened,
because they get the walk by the Cinabun and they
didn't know the cinapun was there. You know, the usual
standards stuff, and not necessarily this one. But you see
the guy spinning the suitcase like he's Fred Astare with
the Samsonite. The woman does the chat cha cha while
(23:34):
the flight attendant beams with pride.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
In the background.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
This commercial featured a lady who's smiling and excited because
of what Southwest Airlines is doing. So she took a
watermelon in the grocery store and pretended she was Gallagher
and slammed the thing. Now, so if you didn't know
any better, if you didn't any better, you would think
Southwest was giving away free chip trips to Fiji just
(24:00):
by watching the commercial. And as an added bonus, a
foot massage, a manny and a petty and a warm
chocolate chip cookie. But they are not no no, no,
no no. They are announcing, and they're spending a lot
of money doing this, a lot of ad time.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I guess they're soft. Announcing hasn't started yet.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
That the very thing that made Southwest special, the thing
that made Southwest Airlines stand out above the crowd, is
going away and there's nothing you can do about it.
And they're telling you this as good news because they're
doing it with jazz hands. They're giving you jazz hands.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Now.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Once upon a time, in a land far far away,
Southwest was the funky cousin, the upstart airline. They were
the black sheep of the airline community. Everyone else these
days charged charged you for essentially breathing. They do like
the nickel and dime situation that we have here in
(25:01):
Vegas with the overcharging, and that's a lot of the
airline industry right, just a bad attitude. But Southwest was different.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
They weren't like that.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
No baggage fees, no seat assignments, just line up, pick
your spot, first come, first serve. They weren't glamorous, but
they were honest. They were the waffle house of the sky.
If you will come as you are eat all the
hash browns you want, and we'll get you where you're going.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
And that's it.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But now now the waffle house is adding a dress
code and a nine dollars fee for the privilege of
sitting at the counter, if you will, metaphorically, so Southwest,
if you have not heard the reason they're spending so
much money on commercials, they are very excited with jazz
hands to announce and a woman spiking a watermelon that
(25:53):
Southwest is morphing into every other stale, boring, overpriced airline line,
the place where customer service goes to die, in fact,
customer services.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Code for you'll pay extra for.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
That, but I got it for free. I don't understand.
I don't get it. I don't get it. What's going on?
That kind of thing, because that's the way of the world,
reminds me of a famous a famous tune that was
(26:32):
about the man upstairs, The man upstairs, And I've quoted
these lyrics a few times, right, maybe this I think
it's the boys upstairs, I think is what the song is.
It's a Tom Petty song and it's all the boys
upstairs want to see is how much you'll pay for
(26:54):
what you used to get for free. And this is
a great example. This is a great example of that.
Now I complain about this stuff. I've talked about this
on the podcast before. My wife's like, oh, it's just
you know, that's the price of stuff. Now, I said, well,
it wasn't the price of stuff. They were able to
survive without having us to spend that. It's all the
(27:14):
dumb stuff. It's all all the stupid stuff that bothers
me anyway. So Southwest is going to be like every
other airline and you'll pay extra. They want you to
smile while they slip the hand into your back pocket
and take your wallet out and empty all of your
money and all that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
They want to run up your credit.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Card and they want to hand you a plate of
steam broccoli and let you know that it is apple pie.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It is French apple pie, and it's all the mode
and you're going to love it.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And that is that isn't evolution, it's erosion. And the
marketing team knows exactly what they're doing. I'm not ripping them,
I would. I understand why they're doing it. It's some
big ad firm and that's why the commercials are so
aggressively cheerful. They're trying to inoculate you against outrage. You
shouldn't be happy or shouldn't be angry, because everyone's happy.
(28:08):
It's hard to get mad at a person doing the
electric slide or a woman slamming down a watermelon. It's
like getting angry at a golden retriever. You can't get
angry at a golden retriever.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Or a baby.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
The brilliance, if you can call it that in a sick,
twisted way of modern corporate America. Listen, I'm part of
the advertising world also, but it's how it packages bad news.
As a block party. They tell you, hey, your ticket
is getting more expensive. But look, here's a ukulele. It's
(28:42):
the it's the look over here. So that's what magic is.
The whole point of magic is to get your eyes
looking somewhere else. We also all have a blind spot
right in front of us. And the magicians they were
con artists, but they figured that out. And I love magic.
I just know the hustle. I've learned the scam. And
they tell you the thing you loved about the airline
(29:02):
is vanishing.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The bags fly free.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The some people like the open seating, the bags fly
free thing is the big one for me. But here's
a drone shot of somebody smiling and a nice, nice
looking woman in man and they're high fiving.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
In slow motion.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
They sell you inconvenience wrapped in confetti. And the cool
part is that for years, Southwest built an identity on
being the other airline.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
It's kind of like my theory on America started out,
you know, taxation without representation. We're going to go start
our own country here, and you know, give it a
couple hundred years, and there's like so much tax it's insane,
especially if living where I live, in the People's Republic
of California and where you can't get a free bag
at the grocery store or use a plastic straw, and
(29:53):
because they're worried about the environment, and then the whole
place burns up and all those things go in the sky. Anyway,
but you know, they're looking out and they're taxing you
for the honor of looking out for you because you're
not an adult and you can't figure it out. But again, listen,
you know the identity was they were different and you
didn't they didn't have to play those games, and we
(30:15):
all bought in There are very many loyal customers. I
used to fly Southwest quite a bit on my traveling days,
and you're just another passenger at the mercy of another
airline conglomerate that's decided customer service is best measured by
how efficiently they can convince you the sucker, to pay
for what used to be for free. And what's next
(30:36):
a surcharge. If you dare to smile without the approval
of the airline, that is going to cost you a
preferred breathing zone. And we'll have the a breathing zone,
the b breathing zone, and the sea breathing zone.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
For nineteen ninety nine. And that's the get in price.
The buy now price will.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Be much higher down the line. It's the power of marketing.
It's the power mark you know.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's what this is.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
You can change people's perspective and all that is just
just has to put enough costs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
You just have to put enough gloss in there.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
And if you polish the pig enough, you start thinking
maybe just maybe it's not a pig, maybe it's a
show pony, it's not a pig, and maybe you'll clap
and it's great, and I would advise you to not
be fooled when a company that once prided itself on
being different starts acting like everyone else and everything else.
(31:30):
The confetti is not a celebration. That is camouflage. That's right,
when it looks like a sprinkle cookie with all the
different colors, that's camouflage.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And it's the clown world.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So listen, go ahead, they're obviously not consulting with a
weekend podcast. Go ahead, Southwest, crank up the old music there,
spin the suitcases, do the jazz hands, body slam whoever
you want with a smile, and hire the top Tony
Award winning choreographer. But I see the broccoli, and no
amount of jazz hands, no amount of smiling and winking
(32:06):
at the cameras going to make it taste like delicious
apple pie.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It's just not.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And on that note, we'll get out, have a wonderful
rest of your Friday here with my man Danny G
producing this podcast, and we will be back at it again.
A story that has never been told. I'm saving this
for the Saturday podcast. It is a lasso of a
good time. Let me just say, a lasso of a
(32:33):
good time. So we'll save that for the Saturday Pot.
Have a wonderful rest of your day today. I will
be hanging out in Vegas. If you're in town here
and you wanna say hello, If you're a fan of
the show, and you're not crazy, and you've taken a
shower within the last few days.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'd love to meet you.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So send me a message, and I'm on Twitter at
Ben Maler. I'll check it throughout the day. I normally
don't do that, but for you, I will do that anyway.
I have a great rest of your day. And as
much as I talked about Toronto, if I got paid
for every time I said that name, I'd make a
lot of money. The Dodgers are going to win the
World Series and that is that. Later skater aasta pasta.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Now gotta murder, I gotta go
Kubbooms.
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 Mahller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g
Radio on location from Lost Wages, Nevada. After doing the
overnight show from the world famous iHeart Media Building, which
is now part of the Fremont Street Experience, we go
into the podcast studio. I'm here in Vegas for a
(00:55):
special meet and greet with the boys from Minnesota. More
on that coming later on, but right now we worry
about today's podcast. We also celebrate National Kangaroo Awareness Day,
another one of those dopey holidays, which got me down
a kangaroo.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Hole, if that's even a thing.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Ossi Waz and Ozzi Momentum and all the other guys
that have been part of the show over the years.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So I fell down this path of fun.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Facts about kangaroos, I didn't find too much. I did
find that around thirty million years ago the kangaroo's ancestors
arrived in the Australian rainforest. I love how they have
these rough dates around thirty million years ago. And the
people that study this stuff for a living they say
(01:49):
that the possum likely developed, or the kangaroo rather developed
from a possum like animal that lived in trees.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And eventually made their way to the ground.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You know how the theory is that human beings were
in the ocean, came out of the ocean, or did
we come out of the ocean?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Anyway, the kangaroo species so it's been in development for
a long long time.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And my favorite fun fact about.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Kangaroos I got from Ozzie Waz who informed me he
lives out in the remote part of Australia, not in
one of the big cities like Perth or Sydney, and
he informed me that out there the kangaroo will instead
of running away from lights or freezing, the kangaroos will
(02:38):
run towards his car, which I'm still laughing at.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
The photos.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
He sent me a couple of years back when his
car was attacked by a kangaroo and really messed it up,
like punching the car.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I also learned that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Skippy was the first big star kangaroo. Skippy the bush Kangaroo,
I'm not making that up, made her television debut in
an Australian children's TV series called Skippy, and that was
one of the first big stars. That was in the
nineteen sixties when the kangaroo became mainstream, or at least
(03:16):
became a star on TV. So on this podcast we
go down memory lane and jazz hands. But let's not
bear the lead, my man, all right, we won't bear
the lead. Tonight it is on like Donkey Gong. I
will be watching from a sportsbook somewhere in Los Wages, Nevada,
the first chapter of what could be a seven part
(03:40):
mini series, the twenty twenty five World Series Game number one,
and I got to I've never been to Toronto. The
Dodgers and Blue Jays tonight in that fine city. I
have thought about Toronto. I have flirted with the idea
of going to Toronto. I even done a little radio
(04:00):
in Toronto, but I have never actually been physically in Toronto.
It's one of those cities that lives in the imagination
in the back of my mind, kind of like a postcard.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
When I think of Toronto, having never been there, I
think of a clean place.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I think of a big metropolis, a big downtown.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think of polite people.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's vaguely exotic because it's a place where I would assume,
just like the reputation of Canada, people apologize with Canadian
nice right, apologize for cutting in line. And I look
at the skyline there, and I love skylines. Of The
skyline of Toronto is amazing. It looks like it was
designed by someone with a passion for crisp lines. And
(04:46):
I don't know about the zoning laws there, but it
looks amazing when I've seen photos of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I have been to Canada exactly twice. Once years ago,
I went to Niagara Falls. I didn't plan on going
to the Canadian side, but let's be hon it, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Really count anyway. You go there.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You go to Buffalo, and then the suburbs of Buffalo's
Niagara Falls, and so you drive to Niagara Falls and
there's a bridge. You can walk across the bridge. There's
some customs people there and boom, welcome to Canada. You
look at the falls from the other side. They look
the same, and you buy some maple candy. You look
(05:24):
at a bunch of Canadian flags, you play a few
arcade games, and it feels like you've actually accomplished something
culturally that's meaningful.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And you know, but it's tourist Canada. It's visitor Canada.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It's kind of like if you took someone from I
don't know, from New Zealand and you put them in
Times Square and said, well, this is New York.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Well no, it's part of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
You can go to Staten Island, you go to Queens,
you go to Brooklyn, you can go depends where you are.
It's like the La and the Man and the Elephant
in that whole thing. But the other trip that I
made was just this year we talked about it, to Vancouver,
a city so beautiful it feels like it was cooked
up in some like AI generation machine, by.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Some really super computer.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You got the mountains in Vancouver, you got the ocean,
you got the trees, the skyline, all of them working
together perfectly in harmony.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It's like a.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Jazz quartet that gives you a cacophony of beautiful sounds
and doesn't miss a beat. Now, my comrade Nico, a
friend of the show, a consumer of this podcast, practically
rolled out the red carpet at the airport Vancouver, and
Nico treated me like I was hosting the tonight show
(06:52):
back when that mattered. Arrived Nico with a nice gift
basket at the Sweet Vancouver Grizzlies hat and those cheese
puff things that they have in Canada, which are ten
times better than we have in America. I got some
soccer swag out of it. Now we ate at every
poutine joint within a ten mile radius of the hotel
(07:17):
we stayed at in Vancouver. We started at the you know,
we started at the local place, which was right around
the corner, and we worked our way through some of
the more exotic places. Went to Chinatown in Vancouver. We
also stared at the skyline.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Like we were.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You'd never seen this before. It been to major cities,
but it was great. We walked to some of the trails,
didn't spend too much time. We wanted to spend more time.
We wont be there for a weekend at Stanley Park,
and I am telling you, hand to god, this park,
Stanley Park makes Central Park looked like a sandbox behind
a rest stop. And it was named after Lord Stanley. Yes,
(07:53):
that Lord Stanley, the guy from the Stanley Cup. And Nico,
who I'm convinced has a secret job with the Canadian
Chamber of Commerce, at least the British Columbia version.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Now, when we got.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Together in Vancouver and we had a meet and greet,
a pretty good turnout considering and we've been on and
off the radio there in Vancouver. So Nico, he insisted,
he said, listen, Toronto's great, Like, maybe we'll get together
in Toronto and we'll see a Maple Leafs game. I've
heard a lot about the experience of going to a
hockey game in Canon and going to Toronto, and specifically
(08:27):
even they never win, you know, you love it and
all this stuff. We want to have me experience that,
and that would be great if it ever happens. I
know his son is on the road to soccer stardom
and he's living his dream and it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
His great doting father and all that.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Now, just for the record, I am not saying this
about my love of Toronto because of the World Series Toronto.
I'm just telling you he was on my list. I
thought of it as I was coming in here to
the remote podcast studio here in Vegas, and and my
list of places I want to go isn't very long anymore,
like I at least in the States. I mean, there's
(09:04):
some other places. I haven't really been anywhere outside. I said, well, Canada,
the States, I understand, North America. I'm staying outside North America.
So the radio days part of this. So my relationship
with Toronto is not geographic as I've laid out. It's
broadcast back way back in a decade called the nineties,
when I was a young lad, a West Coast radio stringer,
(09:28):
just starting out, lugging a tape recorder in clubhouses and dugouts.
I was a semi regular correspondent. And I believe the callers,
and don't hold me to this, as I remember were CJ.
Cl better known as Tom Looney, would say, by its
gangster name, the fan five ninety and I would call in, well,
(09:51):
they would call me.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I didn't call them. They would call me first, say hey,
can you come on at.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Four o'clock our time, which is one o'clock your for
a little hot West Coast baseball talk. And this was
in a period of time the Athletics had some good
teams and so I was never famous. I'm sure nobody
in Toronto remembers me calling in. I was a young,
young idiot and it was only for a few minutes.
But in my head like I was a big star,
(10:16):
and I was a star in Toronto radio. And I
was a guy that even though I was on the phone,
I was talking into microphones and I had opinions and
they asked me my opinions on the Angels of the
Mariners or whoever was going on, and the Dodgers, and it
was cool.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It was a fun thing.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And whenever the Blue Jays would come through Anaheim, I
would hustle down to the big A. I'd grab some
quotes from players in that eraic guys like John al Larude,
Roberto Alamar, Joe Carter. I snagged a bunch of sound
from Cido Gaston.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Who was a smooth operator.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Cido Gaston and the Jays they didn't win in those years.
This was just after their back to back championship appearances
with the back in the early nineties. And then they
had the work stoppage that canceled the World Series in
ninety four, But the clubhouse had the faint smell of
(11:10):
winning still, you know what I mean, Like they still
had that aura, that afterglow from their success, and that
does hang in the air even when the championship drives,
because there's people that say, well, they have championship punigree
as one of the quotes. Now, my friend and I
have not kept up with him. He's in Chicago now
(11:32):
named Chuck Swarsky. Chuck Swersky is the voice or was
the voice of the Toronto Raptors back in that period
of time, and he had a talk show on the
radio in Toronto, and he would have me on as
a correspondent on his show and when the Raptors would
come into La And this actually continued up until COVID
(11:53):
when I stopped going to games on a regular basis
because of well you know why.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
But anyway, at that time we used.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
To it the same when he come up with the
Bulls and he was in Toronto, and he was a original, unique, exciting,
great rhythmic tones from Chuck Swirsky. And he's the guy
who coined Vince sanity and I think he came up
with Airic Canada also for Vince Carter, who was the
(12:20):
big star of the Raptors at.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That period of time.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
And if you've ever heard him broadcast a game on
the radio, it is a treat, you know, when you know,
you'd know he made a dunk sound like the moon landing.
It was like the most exciting thing. And I even
I have some friends in the Toronto area. One of
them used to work at Fox Sports Radio, Canadian Mike
(12:43):
Canadian Mike, who worked for our place, worked at TMZ
for a while actually, and he's back in his home
city of Toronto. Toronto's always been near my orbit, I
just never quite touched down. Now there's more to the story,
without dating myself too much, and this is all just
things that are popping into my head with the World
Series starting tonight in Toronto, and so without dating myself,
(13:08):
even though the calendar already has done that for me.
I am actually older than the Toronto Blue Jays, which
is kind of scary. The Jays were born shortly after
I was born. I was already around, I was a toddler.
I was already scribbling box scores and notebooks. I was
memorizing batting averages like they were the Holy Scripture, unless
I was just pooping my bed. Unless I was just
(13:30):
pooping my bed at that time. But back then, the
Blue Jays when I first kind of figured things out,
and when do you figure things out, like nine or ten, nine,
ten or eleven, the Blue Jays were a curiosity. They
were a rumor for someone like me who grew up
in California. Baseball I loved. I was obsessed with baseball
(13:54):
now Canada. When I thought of Canada, I thought of
that Montreal Expos.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
I'd see the Dodgers play the Expos every once in
a while. But Toronto.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That was just kind of foreign, like they were they
were playing baseball next to maple trees, and they had
like ice ranks everywhere and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
And gotta understand, this was before the Interweb.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I grew up in an era, an era where we
would go to the market and every was it every
week or every month. They'd have an encyclopedia you had
to buy, which was the Wikipedia of the time, And
so we didn't have social media and all that stuff
back in my day, and before you could click a
stream and watch a game like we can now whether
(14:40):
it's legal or not. Now I got my baseball knowledge
from the Sporting News. They had these books, the Green
and Red Book, and they had one was for the
National League and one was for the American League, and
that was the Holy Bible. And then you had Peter Gammons,
and he wrote for Sports st Peter Gammons was the
(15:01):
oracle of baseball.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And if he wrote it, it was the Gospel. It
was gospel.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And on Saturday mornings before the NBC Game of the
Week and BC, I got my education from This Week
in Baseball, hosted by the immortal dulcetones of Mel Allen. Now,
This Week in Baseball was not a show, it was
(15:29):
a ritual. And when Mel Allen's voice hit the screen,
and this was old at mel Allen. He had been
the voice of the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
This Week in Baseball, I was in a trance.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And I was lucky enough to get to know Vin
Scully a little bit, and I asked him about Mel Allen, because.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Mel Allen was a hero of mine.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
And he talked about how wonderful Mel Allen was, and
mel had fallen. Ben told me the story as he
got a little older, he fell like getting out of
the bathtub. And he was never quite the same after that,
but for me he was wonderful. I remember when the
Jays started to get pretty good in the mid eighties,
(16:12):
like the mid nineteen eighties, they played the Royals and
the playoffs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I think I was like nineteen eighty five and.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Twib notes, which I only learned as an adult, meant
this week in baseball notes. I just thought it was
something else. What's the word twib mean? Is that like twig? No,
it's twib I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Just go with it.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
So I'd watch these twib notes and they'd go around
the major leagues, and again I didn't grow up with being.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Able to watch. The Blue Jays were never ever, as I.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Remember, on the Game of the Week on NBC, because
they had West Coast and East Coast games, you'd always
get the Yankees, and then on the West Coast we'd
get the Dodgers and the Giants and teams like that.
So twib notes would cut to Exhibition Stadium and Mel
would say, with a booming delivery, this week in baseball
(17:05):
we go to Toronto, where the Blue Jays are flying
high top the American League East standings, and then they'd
cut away to a shot of the manager, and they
go through and the camera would pan to George Bell,
Lloyd Moseby, and Jesse Barfield.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That amazing outfield of that era.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
And in my child ears, my boyhood ears, that was mythic,
like I was told these are the greatest outfielders assembled
in that generation, and I believed it, like that was
the top outfield in baseball. You had the bazooka, the
cannon for Jesse Barfield's arm. You had George Bell known
(17:45):
as Taco Bell, who swung like he was trying to
hit the ball into Hudson May.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
And you had the great Lloyd.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Moseby, a smooth operator himself, just like the manager. And
of course you can't tell the story of growing up
watching baseball and watching the Blue Jays from afar, not
a fan, just watching as a casual fan of ball baseball.
The Dave Winfield story. Now, you know, you know when
it comes to Dave Winfield. So in nineteen eighty three,
(18:17):
Winfield accidentally during a game with a batted ball, killed
a seagull at Exhibition Stadium, which was this football stadium
that was not designed for baseball, and it was very
odd on television.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I'd watch it.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I always have to sell the Blue Jays is on
this weekend baseball or when the Angels would go there.
And it was very bizarre because there's all these seats
that weren't used, and they had the water right near
there anyway, So Dave Winfield hit a seagull, killed it,
and the Canadian Mounties arrested him for cruelty to animals.
Hand to God, as I remember it, and they arrested
(18:54):
him like over a bird. A bird is the word
only in Canada. Can a man hit four hundred and
sixty five home runs and still be remembered as a
winged casualty. It is the stuff of legends. I'm an
old dude now, I guess I don't know, and when
do you come old?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And I remember it now.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That story is part of the weird mythology of Toronto baseball,
like the Snow Games, the stadium that turned into a
relic before it even hit twenty, the Joe Carter leap
in the air in nineteen ninety three, a moment that
still echoes every single October. So the World Series is tonight,
(19:32):
and so here we are the Dodgers heading north to
play the Jays tonight, and I've been around again. I've
been around the edges of Toronto. My whole run here
in radiof waxed loquacious here. I don't know how long
this podcast is, but I've talked to you. I've talked
to the fans of Toronto. The radio show that I
do overnight has been on and off the radio in
(19:53):
Toronto and Hamilton, and we go on, we go off
station has changed formats.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
It's the radio world.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
We have a lot of listeners in Hamilton and some
in Toronto that have interacted. We did a Boston meet
and greet back in twenty nineteen, I think it was
twenty eighteen, and had a guy drive down from Canada
from Toronto drove down to Boston.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Which was kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And so I've been on the airwaves on and off
there called in back in the day when the Blue
Jays were still kind of good.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And I learned, you know, I learned.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Because of all that the mythology of Toronto baseball, watching
the highlight reels and just never walk the streets, and
there's there's some kind of weird poetic part to that,
like some cities you visit, some cities you kind of imagine,
and Toronto is still imagination for me. It's a city
I know kind of without knowing, and I'll go there
(20:48):
and I hope I'm not disappointed. Sometimes you go places
you're not disappointed. But someday I'll get there and I'll
stand outside the Rogers Center and I'll stare up at
the CN Tower and I'll eat some ballpark poutine and
I'll check that.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Box and then I'll move on to something else.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
But it really started my fascination with the lack of
information about the Blue Jays, and it was all because
of this week in baseball. So while I have a
fascination with Toronto, Go, Dodgers Go, They're in town.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
There.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Cannot wait for tonight. Always fun to watch the world.
There's gonna be extra special from the sportsbook here, and
I'm not sure which sportsbook.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I'm gonna go to.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
We'll figure that out at a later day, but we
look forward to it in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Now, before I get out of here, I did want
to mention not that I'm going anywhere, I actually have
some I'm doing in Vegas. I have to go to
bed in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
But I've been seeing this so often during these baseball
playoffs and other college football and different sporting events I've
been watching. I have to bring this up, so it's
about a commercial, but just bear with me. So the
thing about airline commercials is that they're all little Broadway shows.
At least, it seems like like that everyone's teeth sparkles
(22:02):
like they've been polished by the tooth fairy herself.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Personally, she didn't even need any money.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
The skies are always cheerful, everyone's smiling, like I said,
And when I fly, I see a lot of people
that are in bad moods. I see many people that
haven't showered in a long time. I see people that
look like they would rather.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Be anywhere else than the airport.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And I've never seen in one of these commercials as
screaming baby. I've never seen being stuck in the middle
seat between two guys who smell like old tuna fish
sandwiches and are bigger than the girth of the plane. No,
what I see on these commercials, it's always a choreographed,
(22:50):
happy clappy celebration where everyone's twirling their carry ons like
they're starring and singing in the rain right, and now lately,
as I've watched the baseball playoffs, I have been hit
over the head. I'm sure you have as well with
a barrage. I think they are thirty second musicals about
Southwest Airlines. Good looking people dancing in different locations, laughing
(23:14):
like the gate change was the greatest thing that ever happened,
because they get the walk by the Cinabun and they
didn't know the cinapun was there. You know, the usual
standards stuff, and not necessarily this one. But you see
the guy spinning the suitcase like he's Fred Astare with
the Samsonite. The woman does the chat cha cha while
(23:34):
the flight attendant beams with pride.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
In the background.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
This commercial featured a lady who's smiling and excited because
of what Southwest Airlines is doing. So she took a
watermelon in the grocery store and pretended she was Gallagher
and slammed the thing. Now, so if you didn't know
any better, if you didn't any better, you would think
Southwest was giving away free chip trips to Fiji just
(24:00):
by watching the commercial. And as an added bonus, a
foot massage, a manny and a petty and a warm
chocolate chip cookie. But they are not no no, no,
no no. They are announcing, and they're spending a lot
of money doing this, a lot of ad time.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I guess they're soft. Announcing hasn't started yet.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
That the very thing that made Southwest special, the thing
that made Southwest Airlines stand out above the crowd, is
going away and there's nothing you can do about it.
And they're telling you this as good news because they're
doing it with jazz hands. They're giving you jazz hands.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Now.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Once upon a time, in a land far far away,
Southwest was the funky cousin, the upstart airline. They were
the black sheep of the airline community. Everyone else these
days charged charged you for essentially breathing. They do like
the nickel and dime situation that we have here in
(25:01):
Vegas with the overcharging, and that's a lot of the
airline industry right, just a bad attitude. But Southwest was different.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
They weren't like that.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
No baggage fees, no seat assignments, just line up, pick
your spot, first come, first serve. They weren't glamorous, but
they were honest. They were the waffle house of the sky.
If you will come as you are eat all the
hash browns you want, and we'll get you where you're going.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
And that's it.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But now now the waffle house is adding a dress
code and a nine dollars fee for the privilege of
sitting at the counter, if you will, metaphorically, so Southwest,
if you have not heard the reason they're spending so
much money on commercials, they are very excited with jazz
hands to announce and a woman spiking a watermelon that
(25:53):
Southwest is morphing into every other stale, boring, overpriced airline line,
the place where customer service goes to die, in fact,
customer services.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Code for you'll pay extra for.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
That, but I got it for free. I don't understand.
I don't get it. I don't get it. What's going on?
That kind of thing, because that's the way of the world,
reminds me of a famous a famous tune that was
(26:32):
about the man upstairs, The man upstairs, And I've quoted
these lyrics a few times, right, maybe this I think
it's the boys upstairs, I think is what the song is.
It's a Tom Petty song and it's all the boys
upstairs want to see is how much you'll pay for
(26:54):
what you used to get for free. And this is
a great example. This is a great example of that.
Now I complain about this stuff. I've talked about this
on the podcast before. My wife's like, oh, it's just
you know, that's the price of stuff. Now, I said, well,
it wasn't the price of stuff. They were able to
survive without having us to spend that. It's all the
(27:14):
dumb stuff. It's all all the stupid stuff that bothers
me anyway. So Southwest is going to be like every
other airline and you'll pay extra. They want you to
smile while they slip the hand into your back pocket
and take your wallet out and empty all of your
money and all that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
They want to run up your credit.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Card and they want to hand you a plate of
steam broccoli and let you know that it is apple pie.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It is French apple pie, and it's all the mode
and you're going to love it.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And that is that isn't evolution, it's erosion. And the
marketing team knows exactly what they're doing. I'm not ripping them,
I would. I understand why they're doing it. It's some
big ad firm and that's why the commercials are so
aggressively cheerful. They're trying to inoculate you against outrage. You
shouldn't be happy or shouldn't be angry, because everyone's happy.
(28:08):
It's hard to get mad at a person doing the
electric slide or a woman slamming down a watermelon. It's
like getting angry at a golden retriever. You can't get
angry at a golden retriever.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Or a baby.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
The brilliance, if you can call it that in a sick,
twisted way of modern corporate America. Listen, I'm part of
the advertising world also, but it's how it packages bad news.
As a block party. They tell you, hey, your ticket
is getting more expensive. But look, here's a ukulele. It's
(28:42):
the it's the look over here. So that's what magic is.
The whole point of magic is to get your eyes
looking somewhere else. We also all have a blind spot
right in front of us. And the magicians they were
con artists, but they figured that out. And I love magic.
I just know the hustle. I've learned the scam. And
they tell you the thing you loved about the airline
(29:02):
is vanishing.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The bags fly free.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The some people like the open seating, the bags fly
free thing is the big one for me. But here's
a drone shot of somebody smiling and a nice, nice
looking woman in man and they're high fiving.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
In slow motion.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
They sell you inconvenience wrapped in confetti. And the cool
part is that for years, Southwest built an identity on
being the other airline.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
It's kind of like my theory on America started out,
you know, taxation without representation. We're going to go start
our own country here, and you know, give it a
couple hundred years, and there's like so much tax it's insane,
especially if living where I live, in the People's Republic
of California and where you can't get a free bag
at the grocery store or use a plastic straw, and
(29:53):
because they're worried about the environment, and then the whole
place burns up and all those things go in the sky. Anyway,
but you know, they're looking out and they're taxing you
for the honor of looking out for you because you're
not an adult and you can't figure it out. But again, listen,
you know the identity was they were different and you
didn't they didn't have to play those games, and we
(30:15):
all bought in There are very many loyal customers. I
used to fly Southwest quite a bit on my traveling days,
and you're just another passenger at the mercy of another
airline conglomerate that's decided customer service is best measured by
how efficiently they can convince you the sucker, to pay
for what used to be for free. And what's next
(30:36):
a surcharge. If you dare to smile without the approval
of the airline, that is going to cost you a
preferred breathing zone. And we'll have the a breathing zone,
the b breathing zone, and the sea breathing zone.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
For nineteen ninety nine. And that's the get in price.
The buy now price will.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Be much higher down the line. It's the power of marketing.
It's the power mark you know.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's what this is.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
You can change people's perspective and all that is just
just has to put enough costs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
You just have to put enough gloss in there.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
And if you polish the pig enough, you start thinking
maybe just maybe it's not a pig, maybe it's a
show pony, it's not a pig, and maybe you'll clap
and it's great, and I would advise you to not
be fooled when a company that once prided itself on
being different starts acting like everyone else and everything else.
(31:30):
The confetti is not a celebration. That is camouflage. That's right,
when it looks like a sprinkle cookie with all the
different colors, that's camouflage.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And it's the clown world.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So listen, go ahead, they're obviously not consulting with a
weekend podcast. Go ahead, Southwest, crank up the old music there,
spin the suitcases, do the jazz hands, body slam whoever
you want with a smile, and hire the top Tony
Award winning choreographer. But I see the broccoli, and no
amount of jazz hands, no amount of smiling and winking
(32:06):
at the cameras going to make it taste like delicious
apple pie.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It's just not.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And on that note, we'll get out, have a wonderful
rest of your Friday here with my man Danny G
producing this podcast, and we will be back at it again.
A story that has never been told. I'm saving this
for the Saturday podcast. It is a lasso of a
good time. Let me just say, a lasso of a
(32:33):
good time. So we'll save that for the Saturday Pot.
Have a wonderful rest of your day today. I will
be hanging out in Vegas. If you're in town here
and you wanna say hello, If you're a fan of
the show, and you're not crazy, and you've taken a
shower within the last few days.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'd love to meet you.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So send me a message, and I'm on Twitter at
Ben Maler. I'll check it throughout the day. I normally
don't do that, but for you, I will do that anyway.
I have a great rest of your day. And as
much as I talked about Toronto, if I got paid
for every time I said that name, I'd make a
lot of money. The Dodgers are going to win the
World Series and that is that. Later skater aasta pasta.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Now gotta murder, I gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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