February 17, 2023 • 42 mins
Ben Maller & Danny G. have fun telling behind the scenes Super Bowl stories for your Friday! They're talking: Legends with Wings, Swag Treasure Map, Guns for Hire, Bonus Parker, Scavenger Hunt, "Highsman Hotel" & LIMED!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kaboom. If you thought four hours a day, minutes a
week was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now in the air everywhere. The Fifth
Hour with Ben Mallard and Danny G Radio. Yeah Mallard
to the normal routine, the daily grind, The weekend grind
(00:45):
is upon us, and this is our Friday kick off
the weekend podcast, Danny G back to the the daily
slop of sports talk radio. After a fun weekend and
and for you, it was all week in Eenix at
the Super Bowl, and I thought, what better way to
kick off the weekend then a complete look back at
(01:09):
everything that took place, all the stories that we did
not have time to get to as it was a
wild scene as we were recording those podcasts on on
Friday and Saturday and all that last weekend. Yeah, And
I would like to start by saying this recap is
brought to you by Bounty that's right, that's right, yes, uh,
(01:31):
And I think we should start by explaining how that worked,
because some people were emailing me like what was going on?
It seemed like you didn't realize who was gonna be there,
and I'm like, I wanted to write back to everybody.
But the way that works, we were sitting on these
really comfortable chairs on there there there was a podcast
(01:51):
set up that the company Fox Sports Radio had the
main stage and that off to the right was a
bunch of really nice comfortable chair ars and they had
recording equipment and that was for a podcast. So we
me and Danny were sitting off the side and we
had multiple people Danny going around who were looking for
(02:12):
people to come on the podcast. Yeah. Well, our booking
agent for our network. She kept coming up to me
and whispering in my ear options for guests for our podcast.
The nice guy you are you don't like to be
the bad guy, which I understand. We would have to
uh nicely decline certain guests that I didn't think we're
(02:36):
worthy of Ben Mallor's podcast, and she looked a little
irritated from time to time, but it paid off because
after saying no, no, thank you, no, no, thank you.
Third time was the charm, because that's when she walked
to Emmett Smith over to us. Yeah. So I had
no idea, neither did Danny g that Emmett Smith was
(02:57):
going to pop up. And in my peripheral vision, in
off to the side, I see this group of people
because Emmett's got his son with him, he's got some
pr people, some you know, it's a whole posse of people.
And so I just like look off the side and
the first thing I saw was this bowl of chicken wings.
(03:18):
I got excited, and then I didn't even look who
was holding the chicken wings. And then there was like
paper towels. I was hoping Emmett Smith was promoting like
some sort of barbecue sauce. Yeah, yeah, that would have
been great. And then so I was like, well, wait
a minute, this is the all time leading rusher in
NFL history just popped up out of nowhere, out of
(03:38):
thin air, like abracadabra, hocus pocus. And so that was
that was pretty cool. We had no idea that that
was gonna happen. And you did turn down Danny's not exaggerating.
You turned down multiple people and I'm just like, Okay, fine,
we'll talk to that person. I don't really want to
talk to that person, but we can. We can do it.
You know, if they want us to talk to that person,
(03:58):
I can do five minute for that person. How hard
could that be? No one wanted, Nobody wants to hear that.
But I was like, I could do it. Why. It
is a wild scene though at this Radio Row because
and I wasn't the one last year. We were there
a little bit and and just kind of experiencing everything.
It's like a swap meet, yeah, I would say, a
fancy swap meet. Yeah, because you've got all these high
(04:23):
falutin PR people that are walking around who an agents, uh.
And you just see these people and some of them
you recognize. I saw Lee Steinberg just like wandering around
aimlessly at Radio Row, at the agent for Patrick Mahomes.
But all these guys and women are trying to sell
their clients to get airtime. They're wharing themselves out to
(04:46):
get airtime so they can sell your paper towels or
god only knows what. And it's weird with the players
wandering around two ben former and current. Because I ran
to the bathroom, I'm standing there get a quick C
N RP break and Kurt Warner is taking a whiz
(05:06):
at the urinal right next to me. It's a magical urinal.
Kurt Warner Hall of Fame m VP quarterback Kurt Warner
right there urinating in the bathroom. There were I will
give the NFL credit, there were a lot of bathrooms.
There were bathrooms on each side, so I felt like
(05:26):
there were plenty of bathrooms, multiple you need that. There's
hundreds and hundreds of people in that thing off to
the side there, so they needed to diversify their snacks though.
I felt like they were chocolate heavy and maybe like
chips and stuff like that. But I felt sick anytime
I went over to the snack table. Yeah, well that's
(05:49):
snack table. That's a whole different thing. You mentioned this
last week, and it was. It was crazy. It was
like being at Costco, but they only had M and M's.
They were like TwixT bars. There's a lot of different
candy products. There was like big packages of gum, lots
of soda soda out of the ass. Yeah, there was
(06:12):
plenty of that and it was all lined up behind
off to the side. You had to, like, I didn't
know where it was. You told me, Danny, you gave
me the treasure map, and you told me like where
to go to get all the stuff, and and it
was it was great. I mean the water was great
to have the bottled water. That was good. Yeah, the
other stuff. Back in my big eating days, I would
(06:34):
have loved that. I would have grabbed like a big
five pound bag and M and M and M and Amazon.
I would just eating it. I would have been gone
for it and all that stuff. But and and and
also point out that the the security, I felt like
I was at the Pentagon when I had to walk
into different rooms and I had to like flash my
my badge all the different layers of security, which was
(06:57):
really funny. When I was doing the Overnight Show and
I was the most protected man in the history of radio,
I felt like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern because I
was only the only person in that entire hall, that
convention center in Phoenix, and at every door, and there
were a bunch of doors, there were multiple security guards.
There were police officers like dudes with guns like just
(07:21):
wandering around and all of it. For me, Danny, I
felt like the most important guy in radio that here
I am in the middle of the night at this
lazy convention center. Everyone else is sleeping and non stop,
NonStop security. No one was gonna mess with me. No, no,
(07:42):
these people would have taken a bullet for me, Danny. Normally,
those fine folks would have been in their warm bed sleeping.
How do you feel about the fact that you made
them all stay up throughout the night. No. I was
told that they were there all like every day, that
they had to be there, like the guard, the equipment.
(08:03):
They were probably were lying. The other thing I noticed
doing the overnight show was how annoyed there were only
a few East Coast morning shows. There was a show
from Philly Boomer as Siasin was there for the w
f And show, and there was I think Toucher and Rich.
I didn't see Toucher and Rich. I those are the
guys that follow our show in Boston on the Sports Hub,
(08:24):
and I wanted to meet I wanted to meet Toucher.
I think he was. He was there and unfortunately I
couldn't find him. I got a weird look from Boomer
as Siasin's producer. It seemed like the guys were kind
of annoyed that I was there because I hadn't been
there all week, and they came in and I was
like barking and screaming and all that stuff. Brian Billy,
(08:47):
Brian Billick. So it seemed like they were annoyed by that.
They were they were bothered by that. I was also
annoyed that the NFL would not allow regular people into
Radio Row because last year there were there were a
regular like fans that got to walk around and see
what was going on, and we were totally segregated from
(09:09):
everyone else. I didn't like that. Yeah, there were fans
standing outside the convention Center holding footballs and pens and
hoping they would get a glimpse of superstars to sign
their memorabilia. And you're right. There usually would be a
fan Day or a v I P Day where they
would parade a couple hundred fans through the radio Row.
(09:31):
They can't blame it on COVID when they did it
once last year, somebody tried giving me the COVID excuse,
and I was like, oh, give me a break now, Well,
you know what they say, and this this works for
anything the rest of our lives. Danny out of an
abundance of caution. You say that, who's gonna question, right,
an abundance of caution, I've decided to not wipe my ass. Well, okay,
(09:56):
you know, I don't know about it's a caution. Maybe
he's got bad toilet paper or something like that. I
don't know. But I was pumped out because I had
this in my head. When I got the word that
we were gonna be doing I was gonna be doing
the Overnight Show. I was like, all right, this is cool,
Like I can I can meet some of the big
fans of the show that live in Phoenix are happening
to be at the super Bowl, and I was like,
(10:18):
all right, this is exciting. And then I showed up
and I found out no one was allowed in and
even if you bought money for the n or you
paid money for the NFL experience, you could still not
be part of it. And I was like, that that
kind of stupid. That's that's kind of I know. Dominican
Mike was in town. Doc Mike was very upset, and
(10:40):
several other p ones. Your boy Sean was really upset
that he couldn't hang out with you, and uh Lee,
who's famous on the show. He doesn't work overnight anymore.
But Lee used to work at a quickie mart in
Phoenix and he wanted to meet me and I it
was been cool to hang out with everybody brand and
some of these other guys, but uh, the NFL security
(11:04):
stone walling my fine plans to hang out with people,
and and then I was like, well, I'll do a
last minute Mallard meet and greed, but those never really
go well because people need more notice and that usually
doesn't work. But then I got called in because I
had to work an extra show on Friday after we
were done podcasting, and that actually led to a scavenger hunt, Danny,
(11:30):
that I must get into. Now, this is a podcast exclusive.
No one else has this content. Let's have Marcel tweeked
this out. Yeah, this is a global exclusive. This is
almost as big as when Marcel let the world know
the Titanic had crashed and no one else had reported
that on radio because radio did not exist when the
(11:52):
Titanic crashed. On Friday, I was asked by the boss
to do a bonus show. Now, Danny, I don't think
I had much wiggo room to get out of this, right,
because they they invited me to come to the super Bowl,
so I kind of had to play along, right. Yeah.
So not only did we do the podcasting, we did,
(12:14):
you know, a bunch of podcasts, and after that wrapped up,
you immediately went on the air with Covino and Rich
to do that show. So I headed over to Marley's
Sports bar in downtown Phoenix. Now it was lunchtime, it
was late in the afternoon, and I was like, okay,
this is kind of cool. I had heard about Marley's
(12:35):
when I'd watched Suns games on the satellite or listen
to them on the radio feed thunder Dan Martley. This
place has been around for a long time. Dan Marley
played for the Suns in the nineties. That's a long
time ago. So I figured this place must be really good.
It's been around that long. I mean, holy crap, this
must be like the greatest sports bar around. Most of
(12:56):
these places don't last that long. So I told the
wife who was with him, as let's go to Marley's.
It's right across the street. This is great. Thunder Dan.
You know, she had no idea who that is. She
is not a sports fan. She give a rats ask
who Dan Marley is. Uh, I gotta tell you. I don't.
Did you eat there, Danny? Did you? Okay? Not impressed?
(13:19):
Not not impressed. I was disappointed. I was expecting more.
I think this place has been around for thirty years.
I got the chicken fingers and fries and it wasn't bad,
but it felt like they bought it and they just
kind of put it in the microwave or something like,
you know, they bought it a Costco. They bought a
big bag of chicken fingers and just put in it.
(13:41):
And the ambiance was pretty cool. There was a good
vibe going. The food was not good. So on the
Mallard Food Review restaurant review one to ten, I'm gonna
give it a three. Marley's gets a three. And maybe
it was just a bad day because there were a
lot of people. The place was packed because of the
Super Bowl. I enjoyed the ambiance. It seemed like a
(14:02):
cool place to hang out, but the food sucked. And
I mean that's kind of the most important thing at
a restaurant, the food. Am I wrong in that? Danny?
Is that a bad take by me? Because I don't
think that's a bad take. I think that's the propertake. No,
I mean, unless it's just known as a bar, but
this is a restaurant, right, Well, it is a restaurant. Bar,
(14:24):
it's a sports bar, but I think restaurant you've been
around a long time. Yeah, it's not like some dirty,
damp bar right where it's just a bunch of bar
stools and pool tables. Well, and that's a great location
because you've got the Diamondbacks Stadium on one side a
couple of blocks away, and then on the other side
you've got the Son's Arena all of downtown Phoenix right there.
(14:48):
So it's if you're a sports bar, where where would
you rather be than between a basketball arena and a
baseball stadium? Although who's going to Diamondback games these days? Uh?
They blow and uh the suns are good and everyone
was all excited because of Kevin Durant trading. But but anyway,
so that was my my lunch experience. So then we
headed back to Radio Row for the odd couple. We
(15:10):
had a production meeting, something that I have not done
in many years, a production meeting with the producer before
the show to go over the show. This is this
is foreign to me, Danny. I'm not used to this. Normally,
I just show up and turn the mic on and
that's it. Um. We had to pre record a couple
of things for the show and do that kind of stuff.
(15:33):
But wrong Button. Bob, my old producer from the show
The Overnight Show, is producing The Odd Couple, so it's
great to see him. And I was in for Chris Broussard,
who was off on assignment doing television. So I was
told I would only be on for an hour with
the Great Rob Parker, and we went over a bunch
(15:54):
of topics. We were spitballing topics and whatnot, and supposed
to be sixty minutes, I ended up doing an extra
thirty minutes of content because I was told that Chris
was running a little late. We had we had Aiden
Hutchinson on. I heard you guys ripping Lebron James. Rob
(16:16):
despises he absolutely despises the Lions. So he was goofing
on the Lions with Aiden Hutchison of the Lions, who
did admit, I'll give him credit, he did admit even
though he's a Michigan boy, he grew up in Michigan,
does not did not grow up a Lions fan. Right
there in the in the belly of the beast down
there and he now he plays for the hometown team,
(16:38):
which ruins the story Danny the the ready made boiler
plate story. Hometown kid plays for childhood favorite team, leads
them to the super Bowl. No, uh, he might lead
them to the super Bowl someday, but that was not
his childhood team at all. Uh in any way, so
(16:59):
that was cool. And then you know, I did the
thirty minutes and when that ended, it was on like
Donkey Kong. Radio role was being torn apart at that point,
as the Friday night people were leaving, people are running
to the airport, a lot of radio dudes scrambling to
(17:19):
get to their flights to get back to god only
knows where. And as the demolition of radio rose taking place,
myself and Rob Party not Brussard's there, but me and
Rob Parker decide to team up. We got together in
a long segment and went on a scavenger hunt around
(17:42):
around around I handed god, am I making this up?
By the way, So we were looking around because because
Bob Gara had pointed out, hey, it's Friday night and
a lot of people leave stuff behind because they're they're
in a rush to get to the airport. There's stuff
they can't take on the plane with them, and so
that of course perked my interest up. And Rob Parker,
(18:04):
who loves a deal more than me, Uh, you know,
we're both cut out of the same cloth on that.
We're you know, tight wads, and so Rob got all
excited and we were we were running around, we were
going from table to table. Was it was radio road
being torn down. Me and Rob were going around and
we're picking up all the goodies that people that left behind. It.
(18:27):
Did you find Jim Rome's workout gloves? I found Jim
Jim Rome's hair, Jael I found some of that that
was off off to the side. Uh, that was that
was pretty neat. I think Boomer Siason left an old
pair of Bengals underwear that he had worn. But I
mean it was just it was there was a lot
of crap, a lot of stuff that we didn't want.
(18:49):
But one man's trash is another man's treasure. And I
actually scored multiple hats that people that left behind. Rob
did also, and it's great. These are for like media
companies that I've never heard of that are trying to
get their name out and it's great because these hats
(19:10):
are the kind of hats when you go to the
gym or you work out or summertime. Who gives a
ship if they get all sweaty because they're free hats.
It doesn't matter when they get all nasty, you can
just throw them away. And then at the at the
very end, we then hit the stash of candy and
(19:30):
chips and water and we loaded up. I took one
of those big bags, you know, the big bags of
M and M's five pound bag and M and M's
I grabbed that, and there were a bunch of other
like chips, random chips and stuff. And but I thought
we did pretty well. We made out like bandits considering
(19:51):
we only walked around. It was like a ten minute
treasure hunt. We walked around there, and so we've got
a couple of workout hats and can andy, chips, some water.
The water was not a good idea. We took a
lot of water. But then we realized when you go
to the airport, even if it's sealed, they don't let
you take the water, so you're screwed. So we donated
(20:12):
the water. We took it to the airport and we
donated the water to the some charity at the airport.
Or whether they're gonna give it to people that are
down on their luck, Danny, so they'll get And actually
I think they said the charity the airport gives the
water to is for people migrants that are like I
(20:33):
guess they die out in the Arizona desert because there's
no water out there, you know, they cross over from Mexico.
I just gave him the water to do what you
want with it. I'm good with that. That was your
good deed. It was really the NFL that gave me
the water, and then I passed it forward. So it's
the NFL's good deed. And what do you think happened
(20:55):
to the rest of that? They were still palettes in water,
Like what happens to that? For next year's radio? Well, yeah,
those M and m's will last nuclear war. Those M
and m's go forever, man. Yeah, those in the gum
the chips would probably be the only thing slightly stale.
(21:16):
That is a fair point. So looking back at the
week that was at the super Bowl, there was one
other story that I have and I know you've got
some stories as well, but there's one other story I
wanted to give, and we were gonna give this on
the Sunday podcast, but unfortunately we had a bunch of
great interviews and we ran out of time. So I'm
gonna call this one the heisman. So I mentioned the
(21:38):
hotel issues that myself and the wife had. We were
in a demilitarized zone. It was like Camp Fallujah. It
was just brutal the original hotel. So we had a
scramble to find another hotel. And this is at the
very last minute. Hotel rates are going through the roof,
and the company was actually pretty cool. They realized that
(22:02):
we probably should not have put mallar up any demilitarized zone.
It's unsafe. So we were able to cancel the reservation.
You probably remember that. And then my wife scrambled to
find a new hotel, and considering all the stuff going
on in Phoenix with that big golf tournament, to waste
management tournament and Super Bowl, easier said than done. She
(22:24):
was able to track down this boutique hotel near downtown,
so that problem was solved kind of. So we check
into this hotel. We get to this hotel, my wife's like, hey,
good news, this is a cannabis free hotel, she says,
And that was kind of random. I was like, why
(22:44):
would there be a cannabi Why would somebody promote their
cannabis free hotel? That doesn't make any sense. But I
was like, okay, whatever, I was in a hurry. And uh,
it turns out, Danny that my wife, in her haste
to read the sign, let's just say she was a
little bit off. This was actually a cannabis friendly hotel,
(23:08):
not a cannabis free hotel. Uh, the complete opposite. She
had misread it. And uh and so this was like
a weed smoker's paradise, smoke weed. No, you were so
chill on Friday. I know, I was ready mellow. The
hotel transformed super a weekend. They had signs in in
(23:33):
the in the in the in the lobby of the
hotel Cannabis Capital. It read, and they had another sign
that said fourth and twenty. I'm gonna send this to
you just so I I can show you that I'm
not I'm not making this up. But it was the
Heisman thing that got my attention. Okay, because this is hilarious.
(23:58):
Not only is it the can of his capital. They
had the invite only party all weekend long, dubbed Fourth
Hotel Takeover. They had a meet and greet mixer. There
was a Madden qualifying event. I guess you could smoke
the weed and play Madden. But the star of the show,
Danny the star the star of the show, Josh Gordon. No,
(24:23):
that would have been good. This guy also pretty good.
They dubbed it fourth and twenty the Hotel Takeover Ricky
Williams really Williams picture from the text you just sent me,
just sent you. That was in the lobby, Danny. That's
what we saw on the lobby. And if you look
(24:45):
at the very bottom, they have the names of the
different companies that are part of this event. And if
you'll notice at the very top of that bottom part,
it says Heisman. I believe that's Ricky Williams Weed Company,
which is brilliant, the former Heisman Trophy winner. Of course
this is spelled a little differently, Danny. You notice H, I, G, H, S,
(25:12):
M A and Heisman with Ricky Williams. They had a
d had a pool party right in the middle of hotel.
They had a DJ. There was a guy and I
got a little confused by this, Danny. There was a
guy dubbed weed Mann I Love you, but it didn't
(25:32):
look anything like our weed Man. This guy had tights
on and he was like the DJ. He was at
the DJ, so instead of Superman, it was weed Man, Like, yeah,
I get you. Did he have a did you have
a green cape? No? He had like green and white
tights on. He did have a cape. I don't think
(25:53):
that it was green though, I don't know what color
the the cape was so that this music was like blasting.
It was while everyone's having a good time and all that,
and um, it was quite quite the scene at the
at the hotel, and and people were like, we were
getting a lot of uber and lift rides around Phoenix
and we get dropped at the hotel and every one,
(26:15):
what's going on at your hotel? What is nothing? Nothing
at all? You know, it's just just a random Friday
or Saturday. That's all. Just a couple of kids having
a grand old time. Why is there a banner outside
your hotel that says I supply, Oh yeah, it's uh,
(26:36):
it's funny. I got in the elevator. I'll show you
this to Danie. I'll send this to you here. And
I saw I saw this in the elevator. Okay, that's good.
There you go. I'll get you excited. Your hotel sounds
way more fun than mine. Well, you were probably staying
right near the convention center. We were. We were pretty,
you know, a decent drive away, so we right. I
(26:57):
see a poster. It says, I want you to get
High House Elevations Lounge. And there's a football player and it
it looks like a bunch of smoke behind the Yeah,
he's got a he's got one of those visors on
his helmet and that's the only thing that's lit up wrong.
(27:19):
How much money do you think Ricky Williams is making
from this? He must be getting filthy rich off this, right, Yeah, Well,
we know Tyson has made a ton of money from
his crops and his ranch. He has different products out,
so I'm guessing Ricky Williams has made a nice little
living off of his companies. He was the first well
known athlete to do it. Yeah. I had a friend
(27:41):
of mine, casual friend, who was an NBA broadcaster. This
is probably five, six, seven years ago now, and he
had been an NBA radio and television commentator for a
local team. He left that job he got a weed
license in the state of Oregon. And this guy played
(28:03):
in the end. He wasn't a star in the NBA.
He played. He was a role player, bench player, but
he played like seven or eight years in the NBA.
So he made a decent amount of money. He told me.
Within the first year and a half doing the weed,
he made more money than he had made his entire
career in the NBA. It's nuts, absolutely nuts, man. The guy,
(28:26):
it said, was like like a licensed money because he
was one of the first people in that state to
get one of these licenses. And remember how excited people were.
They didn't have to go to the underground to get
their weed. They could just, you know, go to the
If you're in a weed friendly state, you could go
down to a you know establishment and you didn't be
shady about it, or even if you were, you could
(28:47):
get a medical card pretty easy and then go to
the dispensary and and get it from somebody with a
license like that. Yeah, exactly, um so. And then to
wrap it up, I had a chance to catch up
with my cousin who lives in Phoenix, one of my cousins.
I didn't get to see everybody because of time constraints,
but I got to hang out with my cousin a
little bit and the great Turk Stevens, who you know,
(29:10):
you working at a different network than the network that
that I worked in at Fox Sports Radio, but you
were I think at NBC, right, Yeah. Yeah, So I
caught up with Turk lives in the Phoenix area and
he says, hello, he's a former sports radio vet. Now
he's been a teacher for a long time, like ten
years or something like that. Almost ten years. He's been
(29:31):
a pe teacher. Yeah, a nice guy. He did a
national updates for us their at NBC. Yeah, he worked
on my show. And he was the one of the
Pennies in the early days of Benny versus the penny.
It was Benny ben versus the coin back then, So
that was that was how the coin. That sounds weird, Yeah,
it is kind of weird. Yeah, I gotta tell before
(29:54):
we we wrapped this up, I don't know you've got
anything else that I The one person I was most
impressed with that I saw Radio Row, although I didn't
get a photo. I was trying to get a photo
with the guy Flavor Flame, who you booked on Cano
Rich and he that guy is such an expert. This guy.
You can tell this guy no public enemy back in
the day and all that. He's been a big deal
since the eighties. This guy knows how to slide through
(30:16):
a crowd and not stop for photos and move what
what a maestro flavor flav is He avoids hits like
Josh Jacobs. Yeah, no, no, he slithers through crowds. I
was very impressed. I was like, Okay, I'll catch up
with him. You know, he's kind of getting up there
(30:37):
in age, he's older than I am. I can probably
catch up with him now. No. I mean, he bounced
off the Caveno Enriched stage and then he just kind
of slid, he glided, and all these people, all these
losers like me, are trying to get a photo with him,
and he just cruised into the V I P section
where we were not allowed. And that's how he did it.
It's a solid move. And I also noticed like behind
(30:58):
our stage there was a walkway and a lot of
like Emmett Smith came out of that walk was it
seemed it wasn't like off limits, but a lot of
people didn't know about it, and so it seemed like
some of the bigger names were walking in the back
there in the hedges that's where we saw Darren Waller
passed by as we were broadcasting anything else. Didn't want
(31:20):
to add anything that stands out here from the week
that was at the super Bowl super Bowl fifty seven
in Phoenix. Yeah, I got a quick story Instead of slimed,
I'll call it lined. You know those stupid scooters they
have all over the streets in the corners, Yeah, they're
called lime. Friday night, when I got finished with post
(31:42):
production and you were on the air with Rob, I
took off finally to to close out my week. Covino
and Rich they were already long gone at some restaurant
in Scottsdale, so I had to find my own dinner,
which was fine, and I was going to meet up
with them later. I had a little bit of a
mission because the ubers were not popping. They were like
(32:04):
twenty minutes away. It was a twenty five minute walk
to the hotel, which we did as a show quite
a few times during the week, so I had an
executive decision to make. I was really tired from a
long work week. I'm like, can I do this? Last
twenty five minute walk to the hotel, had my heavy
backpack on, and then the other problem. You've probably dealt
(32:26):
with this in your life where you need to get
an uber but your phone is about to die. Oh yeah,
that sucks. It's like a ticking time bomb because you're like,
can the uber get to me before my phone dies.
It's like that scene in every holiday like Hollywood movie
where like you can see the clock on the dynamite
and sticking down You're like, what is it gonna We're
gonna make it? Is it gonna explode? And boom goes
(32:49):
to dynamite. I find uh somewhere to plug in for
a few minutes to give my phone a little bit
of a charge. It happened to be the Renaissance Hotel
near the Convention Center, and they had a little block party,
an NFL block party going on. I slide my way
like flavor Flavor into the bar area right outside the bar,
(33:11):
and I plug into an outlet and I'm sitting there
just looking through some some podcast notes and things. I
was still wrapping up and guess who walked by? Christian Watson, Yeah,
who we had interviewed. Yeah, we had interviewed on the
fifth hour. And He's like, bro, come to the bar.
(33:34):
I'm gonna buy you a drink, and I told him
I'm charging my phone, and he's like, oh, hang on,
I'm gonna bring the drink to you. So he brings
the drink to me. I'm sitting there outside this little
party and I have a drink now, sitting on the
table with my phone plugged in. He was the nicest guy,
so obviously that's the hotel he was staying at. That's cool, man.
(33:57):
I'm pulling for that guy. That's my new favorite receiver,
by the way, Christian Watson. I want to see that
guy in up in the Hall of Fame. Same. So
now I have a drink and um, I'm waiting for
my phone to charge. I get like a thirty percent charge.
That'll do it all right. Put the heavy backpack back
on and I'm on foot and I'm like, okay, you
(34:18):
know what instead of uber right now, let me find
something to eat. As I walked to the hotel, you know,
it was hard in the downtown area because there was
really cheap food like taco stands, and then there was
really fancy restaurants, like you feel like you needed a jacket. Finally,
I saw some cops inside a Mexican restaurant and if
(34:44):
the local police are in there. You know it must
be one of their hangout spots. The food's gotta be decent.
So I get some tacos and enchilada, get the combination
plate to go. The guy hooks it up, he bags
it really nice for me, And now I'm like, you
know what, I don't want to mess with an uber.
I don't want to wait around for this food to
(35:04):
get cold. I'm gonna just scan my phone on one
of these Lime scooters. Take your camera, you scan the
little barcode, it starts up, the light comes on. How
much does this cost these scooters? I've never been on
one of these scooters? What does the cost? It's a
really good deal. It's eight dollars a minute US tacks. Well,
(35:28):
you know, the thing in Phoenix is all those minor
league stadiums. I've I've heard this from a million sports writers, like,
if you ever rent a car in Phoenix, you don't
want to do it at Sky Harbor Airport because that's
where they put all the taxes to pay for the
minor league stadiums, and so you have to go outside.
So I I assume outside the airport, but I assume
everything like that that's how they make all their money
(35:50):
back for these stadiums, and they jack up the price
for these scooters and all that other stuff. Yeah, and
and by the way, I'm still a little bit under
the weather. And I think I got sick on this night, Ben,
because as you know, it was pretty cold out on
some of the nights there in Phoenix. It's a people
and as you know from a previous episode of The
Fifth Hour, Danny, those scooters have more germs on them
(36:14):
than I'm not kidding, like they've done studies that for
for whatever reason, the Neanderthals that use those scooters on
the regular do not wash their hands, and God only
knows where their hands go, and they're disgusting. I remembered
you talking about that on the podcast. So I had
my hand sanitizer. Okay, it's like four dollars to get
(36:37):
the scooters started, and then it's like I think it said,
forty cents for every minute afterwards. It's not that far
off a ride at this point, I've already walked halfway
looking for food. I just my legs are tired. I'm
a little tired. I need to get the other half
in on this scooter. So I'm jamming down the street bend.
(36:57):
I look like a local. I'm weaving in and out
of the people who are going to the NFL Fan Experience,
and I'm like, suckers, I'm popping Wheelie's up curbs. I
get to the hotel problem. When I try to turn
the scooter off, it says I'm in a prohibited area
of the city. I cannot park the scooter there. Oh no.
(37:22):
And I'm like, you gotta be effing kidding me, man.
So it shows like this little map, almost like a GPS.
So I have to find a dumb street now where
I can put the scooter on a corner. I finally
find that and have wasted time now and money. There's
other ones on a corner. I park it right next
to another Lime scooter. I'm like, all right, now, it's
(37:43):
gonna be like a little bit of a walk to
the hotel. But I'm cool. I can park this thing
and get rid of it. Scan it to turn off
the ride. Blank page comes up and it says cannot
load your account. Oh no, And I'm like what, So
I do it again, Scan it again, try it again,
(38:03):
turn my phone off, reset my phone. I was out
there trying to turn this damn scooter off for forty
five minutes. What I talked to, uh like the NFL
Experience volunteers, to a cop that was on the corner
next to the hotel, and he told me, yeah, he's like,
(38:25):
people have been having trouble with those stupid scooters all week.
I didn't want to leave this thing unattended. So how
much was it? I'm doing the MATHA it's a forty
cents times what forty You were there eighteen forty five minutes?
Is that right? Oh man, that's a that's a decent
amount of cash just to stand around. Well, you're gonna
(38:46):
have to wait it out, he said. Eventually it'll turn
itself off, hopefully, he said hopefully. And I was like,
you gotta be f and kidding me. Now at this point,
my food is cold. I'm pissed. I'm I'm sitting there
on the curb and in my mind I'm thinking about
Coveno and Rich sitting at a nice steak dinner, and
(39:10):
I like, how the hell did I just get lined
on my last night here in Phoenix. Finally this freaking
thing turns itself off because it said that I had
it parked for so many minutes. It was idle for
too long, so they were going to automatically turn it off. Okay, Yeah,
I had to send an email to the company, back
(39:31):
and forth emails all week long while I'm back at home.
Then they still have not taken that big charge off
of my debit. Well, just expensive to the company, Danny.
I'm sure the company will take care of it, right,
they put that expense account. Nothing to worry about. Yes,
Scott would look at this and be like, why was
this writing around on a scooter for an hour? You
(39:52):
spent two hundred dollars on a scooter? What are you talking?
Got a hotel room for that? What's wrong with you? You? Oop?
That's I. Before we forget, I just I wanted to
add one last thing here. So I also went to
my first Super Bowl party. Rob Parker got me into
a Friday night Super Bowl party. V I p status
(40:17):
at the party? Were you popping bottles? It was all right.
I was expecting it to be a little more lavish.
I I don't know what I thought in my head,
but I didn't expect it to be what it was.
It was good. I had a good time. The wife
she had a good time. It was fun. We showed
up a little late, and um, they had like food
trucks and they had people walking around with a different
(40:39):
little finger foods and things like that. And they did
have the open bar because we were v I P.
So that was cool. But that was one so I
can check that off my bucket list. I've now been
to a super Bowl party. Who it used to be
one of our listeners, and I doubt she's still around
as a listener, was still alive, but every year she
would send me the same email. This is back in
(41:00):
the early two thousand's. She was a party planner. She
was looking for quasi celebrities to host super Bowl parties,
and she'd always eave me, are you gonna be in Atlanta?
Are you gonna be in Miami or New Orleans or
San Diego or whoever the super Bowl was? And every
year I'd read back, no, I'm not going to be there,
and she's always like, well, we'll have a party. We'll
(41:20):
have you as the headline or on the party. And
it now that I'm actually going to these things, I
have no one to throw the party. So you outlived her,
I guess. So anyway, we'll get out on that. We've
got a full weekend of pods as you know. Saturday
a brand spanking new Life of Mallard, Life of Danny
g podcast, the mail Bag on Sunday. Anything to promote here, Danny,
(41:43):
anything at all you want to promote as always go
to the app either I Heart or you know wherever
you get your podcasts and listen to everything from last
week and of course listen to FSR Live on the
I Heart app. Long that is I second that have
(42:04):
a great rest of your day. Thank you, remember five
stars on the podcast and tell a friend word of
mouth advertising the way to go and we'll catch you
next time later. Skater gott a murder, Gotta go
Kaboom. If you thought four hours a day, minutes a
week was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now in the air everywhere. The Fifth
Hour with Ben Mallard and Danny G Radio. Yeah Mallard
to the normal routine, the daily grind, The weekend grind
(00:45):
is upon us, and this is our Friday kick off
the weekend podcast, Danny G back to the the daily
slop of sports talk radio. After a fun weekend and
and for you, it was all week in Eenix at
the Super Bowl, and I thought, what better way to
kick off the weekend then a complete look back at
(01:09):
everything that took place, all the stories that we did
not have time to get to as it was a
wild scene as we were recording those podcasts on on
Friday and Saturday and all that last weekend. Yeah, And
I would like to start by saying this recap is
brought to you by Bounty that's right, that's right, yes, uh,
(01:31):
And I think we should start by explaining how that worked,
because some people were emailing me like what was going on?
It seemed like you didn't realize who was gonna be there,
and I'm like, I wanted to write back to everybody.
But the way that works, we were sitting on these
really comfortable chairs on there there there was a podcast
(01:51):
set up that the company Fox Sports Radio had the
main stage and that off to the right was a
bunch of really nice comfortable chair ars and they had
recording equipment and that was for a podcast. So we
me and Danny were sitting off the side and we
had multiple people Danny going around who were looking for
(02:12):
people to come on the podcast. Yeah. Well, our booking
agent for our network. She kept coming up to me
and whispering in my ear options for guests for our podcast.
The nice guy you are you don't like to be
the bad guy, which I understand. We would have to
uh nicely decline certain guests that I didn't think we're
(02:36):
worthy of Ben Mallor's podcast, and she looked a little
irritated from time to time, but it paid off because
after saying no, no, thank you, no, no, thank you.
Third time was the charm, because that's when she walked
to Emmett Smith over to us. Yeah. So I had
no idea, neither did Danny g that Emmett Smith was
(02:57):
going to pop up. And in my peripheral vision, in
off to the side, I see this group of people
because Emmett's got his son with him, he's got some
pr people, some you know, it's a whole posse of people.
And so I just like look off the side and
the first thing I saw was this bowl of chicken wings.
(03:18):
I got excited, and then I didn't even look who
was holding the chicken wings. And then there was like
paper towels. I was hoping Emmett Smith was promoting like
some sort of barbecue sauce. Yeah, yeah, that would have
been great. And then so I was like, well, wait
a minute, this is the all time leading rusher in
NFL history just popped up out of nowhere, out of
(03:38):
thin air, like abracadabra, hocus pocus. And so that was
that was pretty cool. We had no idea that that
was gonna happen. And you did turn down Danny's not exaggerating.
You turned down multiple people and I'm just like, Okay, fine,
we'll talk to that person. I don't really want to
talk to that person, but we can. We can do it.
You know, if they want us to talk to that person,
(03:58):
I can do five minute for that person. How hard
could that be? No one wanted, Nobody wants to hear that.
But I was like, I could do it. Why. It
is a wild scene though at this Radio Row because
and I wasn't the one last year. We were there
a little bit and and just kind of experiencing everything.
It's like a swap meet, yeah, I would say, a
fancy swap meet. Yeah, because you've got all these high
(04:23):
falutin PR people that are walking around who an agents, uh.
And you just see these people and some of them
you recognize. I saw Lee Steinberg just like wandering around
aimlessly at Radio Row, at the agent for Patrick Mahomes.
But all these guys and women are trying to sell
their clients to get airtime. They're wharing themselves out to
(04:46):
get airtime so they can sell your paper towels or
god only knows what. And it's weird with the players
wandering around two ben former and current. Because I ran
to the bathroom, I'm standing there get a quick C
N RP break and Kurt Warner is taking a whiz
(05:06):
at the urinal right next to me. It's a magical urinal.
Kurt Warner Hall of Fame m VP quarterback Kurt Warner
right there urinating in the bathroom. There were I will
give the NFL credit, there were a lot of bathrooms.
There were bathrooms on each side, so I felt like
(05:26):
there were plenty of bathrooms, multiple you need that. There's
hundreds and hundreds of people in that thing off to
the side there, so they needed to diversify their snacks though.
I felt like they were chocolate heavy and maybe like
chips and stuff like that. But I felt sick anytime
I went over to the snack table. Yeah, well that's
(05:49):
snack table. That's a whole different thing. You mentioned this
last week, and it was. It was crazy. It was
like being at Costco, but they only had M and M's.
They were like TwixT bars. There's a lot of different
candy products. There was like big packages of gum, lots
of soda soda out of the ass. Yeah, there was
(06:12):
plenty of that and it was all lined up behind
off to the side. You had to, like, I didn't
know where it was. You told me, Danny, you gave
me the treasure map, and you told me like where
to go to get all the stuff, and and it
was it was great. I mean the water was great
to have the bottled water. That was good. Yeah, the
other stuff. Back in my big eating days, I would
(06:34):
have loved that. I would have grabbed like a big
five pound bag and M and M and M and Amazon.
I would just eating it. I would have been gone
for it and all that stuff. But and and and
also point out that the the security, I felt like
I was at the Pentagon when I had to walk
into different rooms and I had to like flash my
my badge all the different layers of security, which was
(06:57):
really funny. When I was doing the Overnight Show and
I was the most protected man in the history of radio,
I felt like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern because I
was only the only person in that entire hall, that
convention center in Phoenix, and at every door, and there
were a bunch of doors, there were multiple security guards.
There were police officers like dudes with guns like just
(07:21):
wandering around and all of it. For me, Danny, I
felt like the most important guy in radio that here
I am in the middle of the night at this
lazy convention center. Everyone else is sleeping and non stop,
NonStop security. No one was gonna mess with me. No, no,
(07:42):
these people would have taken a bullet for me, Danny. Normally,
those fine folks would have been in their warm bed sleeping.
How do you feel about the fact that you made
them all stay up throughout the night. No. I was
told that they were there all like every day, that
they had to be there, like the guard, the equipment.
(08:03):
They were probably were lying. The other thing I noticed
doing the overnight show was how annoyed there were only
a few East Coast morning shows. There was a show
from Philly Boomer as Siasin was there for the w
f And show, and there was I think Toucher and Rich.
I didn't see Toucher and Rich. I those are the
guys that follow our show in Boston on the Sports Hub,
(08:24):
and I wanted to meet I wanted to meet Toucher.
I think he was. He was there and unfortunately I
couldn't find him. I got a weird look from Boomer
as Siasin's producer. It seemed like the guys were kind
of annoyed that I was there because I hadn't been
there all week, and they came in and I was
like barking and screaming and all that stuff. Brian Billy,
(08:47):
Brian Billick. So it seemed like they were annoyed by that.
They were they were bothered by that. I was also
annoyed that the NFL would not allow regular people into
Radio Row because last year there were there were a
regular like fans that got to walk around and see
what was going on, and we were totally segregated from
(09:09):
everyone else. I didn't like that. Yeah, there were fans
standing outside the convention Center holding footballs and pens and
hoping they would get a glimpse of superstars to sign
their memorabilia. And you're right. There usually would be a
fan Day or a v I P Day where they
would parade a couple hundred fans through the radio Row.
(09:31):
They can't blame it on COVID when they did it
once last year, somebody tried giving me the COVID excuse,
and I was like, oh, give me a break now, Well,
you know what they say, and this this works for
anything the rest of our lives. Danny out of an
abundance of caution. You say that, who's gonna question, right,
an abundance of caution, I've decided to not wipe my ass. Well, okay,
(09:56):
you know, I don't know about it's a caution. Maybe
he's got bad toilet paper or something like that. I
don't know. But I was pumped out because I had
this in my head. When I got the word that
we were gonna be doing I was gonna be doing
the Overnight Show. I was like, all right, this is cool,
Like I can I can meet some of the big
fans of the show that live in Phoenix are happening
to be at the super Bowl, and I was like,
(10:18):
all right, this is exciting. And then I showed up
and I found out no one was allowed in and
even if you bought money for the n or you
paid money for the NFL experience, you could still not
be part of it. And I was like, that that
kind of stupid. That's that's kind of I know. Dominican
Mike was in town. Doc Mike was very upset, and
(10:40):
several other p ones. Your boy Sean was really upset
that he couldn't hang out with you, and uh Lee,
who's famous on the show. He doesn't work overnight anymore.
But Lee used to work at a quickie mart in
Phoenix and he wanted to meet me and I it
was been cool to hang out with everybody brand and
some of these other guys, but uh, the NFL security
(11:04):
stone walling my fine plans to hang out with people,
and and then I was like, well, I'll do a
last minute Mallard meet and greed, but those never really
go well because people need more notice and that usually
doesn't work. But then I got called in because I
had to work an extra show on Friday after we
were done podcasting, and that actually led to a scavenger hunt, Danny,
(11:30):
that I must get into. Now, this is a podcast exclusive.
No one else has this content. Let's have Marcel tweeked
this out. Yeah, this is a global exclusive. This is
almost as big as when Marcel let the world know
the Titanic had crashed and no one else had reported
that on radio because radio did not exist when the
(11:52):
Titanic crashed. On Friday, I was asked by the boss
to do a bonus show. Now, Danny, I don't think
I had much wiggo room to get out of this, right,
because they they invited me to come to the super Bowl,
so I kind of had to play along, right. Yeah.
So not only did we do the podcasting, we did,
(12:14):
you know, a bunch of podcasts, and after that wrapped up,
you immediately went on the air with Covino and Rich
to do that show. So I headed over to Marley's
Sports bar in downtown Phoenix. Now it was lunchtime, it
was late in the afternoon, and I was like, okay,
this is kind of cool. I had heard about Marley's
(12:35):
when I'd watched Suns games on the satellite or listen
to them on the radio feed thunder Dan Martley. This
place has been around for a long time. Dan Marley
played for the Suns in the nineties. That's a long
time ago. So I figured this place must be really good.
It's been around that long. I mean, holy crap, this
must be like the greatest sports bar around. Most of
(12:56):
these places don't last that long. So I told the
wife who was with him, as let's go to Marley's.
It's right across the street. This is great. Thunder Dan.
You know, she had no idea who that is. She
is not a sports fan. She give a rats ask
who Dan Marley is. Uh, I gotta tell you. I don't.
Did you eat there, Danny? Did you? Okay? Not impressed?
(13:19):
Not not impressed. I was disappointed. I was expecting more.
I think this place has been around for thirty years.
I got the chicken fingers and fries and it wasn't bad,
but it felt like they bought it and they just
kind of put it in the microwave or something like,
you know, they bought it a Costco. They bought a
big bag of chicken fingers and just put in it.
(13:41):
And the ambiance was pretty cool. There was a good
vibe going. The food was not good. So on the
Mallard Food Review restaurant review one to ten, I'm gonna
give it a three. Marley's gets a three. And maybe
it was just a bad day because there were a
lot of people. The place was packed because of the
Super Bowl. I enjoyed the ambiance. It seemed like a
(14:02):
cool place to hang out, but the food sucked. And
I mean that's kind of the most important thing at
a restaurant, the food. Am I wrong in that? Danny?
Is that a bad take by me? Because I don't
think that's a bad take. I think that's the propertake. No,
I mean, unless it's just known as a bar, but
this is a restaurant, right, Well, it is a restaurant. Bar,
(14:24):
it's a sports bar, but I think restaurant you've been
around a long time. Yeah, it's not like some dirty,
damp bar right where it's just a bunch of bar
stools and pool tables. Well, and that's a great location
because you've got the Diamondbacks Stadium on one side a
couple of blocks away, and then on the other side
you've got the Son's Arena all of downtown Phoenix right there.
(14:48):
So it's if you're a sports bar, where where would
you rather be than between a basketball arena and a
baseball stadium? Although who's going to Diamondback games these days? Uh?
They blow and uh the suns are good and everyone
was all excited because of Kevin Durant trading. But but anyway,
so that was my my lunch experience. So then we
headed back to Radio Row for the odd couple. We
(15:10):
had a production meeting, something that I have not done
in many years, a production meeting with the producer before
the show to go over the show. This is this
is foreign to me, Danny. I'm not used to this. Normally,
I just show up and turn the mic on and
that's it. Um. We had to pre record a couple
of things for the show and do that kind of stuff.
(15:33):
But wrong Button. Bob, my old producer from the show
The Overnight Show, is producing The Odd Couple, so it's
great to see him. And I was in for Chris Broussard,
who was off on assignment doing television. So I was
told I would only be on for an hour with
the Great Rob Parker, and we went over a bunch
(15:54):
of topics. We were spitballing topics and whatnot, and supposed
to be sixty minutes, I ended up doing an extra
thirty minutes of content because I was told that Chris
was running a little late. We had we had Aiden
Hutchinson on. I heard you guys ripping Lebron James. Rob
(16:16):
despises he absolutely despises the Lions. So he was goofing
on the Lions with Aiden Hutchison of the Lions, who
did admit, I'll give him credit, he did admit even
though he's a Michigan boy, he grew up in Michigan,
does not did not grow up a Lions fan. Right
there in the in the belly of the beast down
there and he now he plays for the hometown team,
(16:38):
which ruins the story Danny the the ready made boiler
plate story. Hometown kid plays for childhood favorite team, leads
them to the super Bowl. No, uh, he might lead
them to the super Bowl someday, but that was not
his childhood team at all. Uh in any way, so
(16:59):
that was cool. And then you know, I did the
thirty minutes and when that ended, it was on like
Donkey Kong. Radio role was being torn apart at that point,
as the Friday night people were leaving, people are running
to the airport, a lot of radio dudes scrambling to
(17:19):
get to their flights to get back to god only
knows where. And as the demolition of radio rose taking place,
myself and Rob Party not Brussard's there, but me and
Rob Parker decide to team up. We got together in
a long segment and went on a scavenger hunt around
(17:42):
around around I handed god, am I making this up?
By the way, So we were looking around because because
Bob Gara had pointed out, hey, it's Friday night and
a lot of people leave stuff behind because they're they're
in a rush to get to the airport. There's stuff
they can't take on the plane with them, and so
that of course perked my interest up. And Rob Parker,
(18:04):
who loves a deal more than me, Uh, you know,
we're both cut out of the same cloth on that.
We're you know, tight wads, and so Rob got all
excited and we were we were running around, we were
going from table to table. Was it was radio road
being torn down. Me and Rob were going around and
we're picking up all the goodies that people that left behind. It.
(18:27):
Did you find Jim Rome's workout gloves? I found Jim
Jim Rome's hair, Jael I found some of that that
was off off to the side. Uh, that was that
was pretty neat. I think Boomer Siason left an old
pair of Bengals underwear that he had worn. But I
mean it was just it was there was a lot
of crap, a lot of stuff that we didn't want.
(18:49):
But one man's trash is another man's treasure. And I
actually scored multiple hats that people that left behind. Rob
did also, and it's great. These are for like media
companies that I've never heard of that are trying to
get their name out and it's great because these hats
(19:10):
are the kind of hats when you go to the
gym or you work out or summertime. Who gives a
ship if they get all sweaty because they're free hats.
It doesn't matter when they get all nasty, you can
just throw them away. And then at the at the
very end, we then hit the stash of candy and
(19:30):
chips and water and we loaded up. I took one
of those big bags, you know, the big bags of
M and M's five pound bag and M and M's
I grabbed that, and there were a bunch of other
like chips, random chips and stuff. And but I thought
we did pretty well. We made out like bandits considering
(19:51):
we only walked around. It was like a ten minute
treasure hunt. We walked around there, and so we've got
a couple of workout hats and can andy, chips, some water.
The water was not a good idea. We took a
lot of water. But then we realized when you go
to the airport, even if it's sealed, they don't let
you take the water, so you're screwed. So we donated
(20:12):
the water. We took it to the airport and we
donated the water to the some charity at the airport.
Or whether they're gonna give it to people that are
down on their luck, Danny, so they'll get And actually
I think they said the charity the airport gives the
water to is for people migrants that are like I
(20:33):
guess they die out in the Arizona desert because there's
no water out there, you know, they cross over from Mexico.
I just gave him the water to do what you
want with it. I'm good with that. That was your
good deed. It was really the NFL that gave me
the water, and then I passed it forward. So it's
the NFL's good deed. And what do you think happened
(20:55):
to the rest of that? They were still palettes in water,
Like what happens to that? For next year's radio? Well, yeah,
those M and m's will last nuclear war. Those M
and m's go forever, man. Yeah, those in the gum
the chips would probably be the only thing slightly stale.
(21:16):
That is a fair point. So looking back at the
week that was at the super Bowl, there was one
other story that I have and I know you've got
some stories as well, but there's one other story I
wanted to give, and we were gonna give this on
the Sunday podcast, but unfortunately we had a bunch of
great interviews and we ran out of time. So I'm
gonna call this one the heisman. So I mentioned the
(21:38):
hotel issues that myself and the wife had. We were
in a demilitarized zone. It was like Camp Fallujah. It
was just brutal the original hotel. So we had a
scramble to find another hotel. And this is at the
very last minute. Hotel rates are going through the roof,
and the company was actually pretty cool. They realized that
(22:02):
we probably should not have put mallar up any demilitarized zone.
It's unsafe. So we were able to cancel the reservation.
You probably remember that. And then my wife scrambled to
find a new hotel, and considering all the stuff going
on in Phoenix with that big golf tournament, to waste
management tournament and Super Bowl, easier said than done. She
(22:24):
was able to track down this boutique hotel near downtown,
so that problem was solved kind of. So we check
into this hotel. We get to this hotel, my wife's like, hey,
good news, this is a cannabis free hotel, she says,
And that was kind of random. I was like, why
(22:44):
would there be a cannabi Why would somebody promote their
cannabis free hotel? That doesn't make any sense. But I
was like, okay, whatever, I was in a hurry. And uh,
it turns out, Danny that my wife, in her haste
to read the sign, let's just say she was a
little bit off. This was actually a cannabis friendly hotel,
(23:08):
not a cannabis free hotel. Uh, the complete opposite. She
had misread it. And uh and so this was like
a weed smoker's paradise, smoke weed. No, you were so
chill on Friday. I know, I was ready mellow. The
hotel transformed super a weekend. They had signs in in
(23:33):
the in the in the in the lobby of the
hotel Cannabis Capital. It read, and they had another sign
that said fourth and twenty. I'm gonna send this to
you just so I I can show you that I'm
not I'm not making this up. But it was the
Heisman thing that got my attention. Okay, because this is hilarious.
(23:58):
Not only is it the can of his capital. They
had the invite only party all weekend long, dubbed Fourth
Hotel Takeover. They had a meet and greet mixer. There
was a Madden qualifying event. I guess you could smoke
the weed and play Madden. But the star of the show,
Danny the star the star of the show, Josh Gordon. No,
(24:23):
that would have been good. This guy also pretty good.
They dubbed it fourth and twenty the Hotel Takeover Ricky
Williams really Williams picture from the text you just sent me,
just sent you. That was in the lobby, Danny. That's
what we saw on the lobby. And if you look
(24:45):
at the very bottom, they have the names of the
different companies that are part of this event. And if
you'll notice at the very top of that bottom part,
it says Heisman. I believe that's Ricky Williams Weed Company,
which is brilliant, the former Heisman Trophy winner. Of course
this is spelled a little differently, Danny. You notice H, I, G, H, S,
(25:12):
M A and Heisman with Ricky Williams. They had a
d had a pool party right in the middle of hotel.
They had a DJ. There was a guy and I
got a little confused by this, Danny. There was a
guy dubbed weed Mann I Love you, but it didn't
(25:32):
look anything like our weed Man. This guy had tights
on and he was like the DJ. He was at
the DJ, so instead of Superman, it was weed Man, Like, yeah,
I get you. Did he have a did you have
a green cape? No? He had like green and white
tights on. He did have a cape. I don't think
(25:53):
that it was green though, I don't know what color
the the cape was so that this music was like blasting.
It was while everyone's having a good time and all that,
and um, it was quite quite the scene at the
at the hotel, and and people were like, we were
getting a lot of uber and lift rides around Phoenix
and we get dropped at the hotel and every one,
(26:15):
what's going on at your hotel? What is nothing? Nothing
at all? You know, it's just just a random Friday
or Saturday. That's all. Just a couple of kids having
a grand old time. Why is there a banner outside
your hotel that says I supply, Oh yeah, it's uh,
(26:36):
it's funny. I got in the elevator. I'll show you
this to Danie. I'll send this to you here. And
I saw I saw this in the elevator. Okay, that's good.
There you go. I'll get you excited. Your hotel sounds
way more fun than mine. Well, you were probably staying
right near the convention center. We were. We were pretty,
you know, a decent drive away, so we right. I
(26:57):
see a poster. It says, I want you to get
High House Elevations Lounge. And there's a football player and it
it looks like a bunch of smoke behind the Yeah,
he's got a he's got one of those visors on
his helmet and that's the only thing that's lit up wrong.
(27:19):
How much money do you think Ricky Williams is making
from this? He must be getting filthy rich off this, right, Yeah, Well,
we know Tyson has made a ton of money from
his crops and his ranch. He has different products out,
so I'm guessing Ricky Williams has made a nice little
living off of his companies. He was the first well
known athlete to do it. Yeah. I had a friend
(27:41):
of mine, casual friend, who was an NBA broadcaster. This
is probably five, six, seven years ago now, and he
had been an NBA radio and television commentator for a
local team. He left that job he got a weed
license in the state of Oregon. And this guy played
(28:03):
in the end. He wasn't a star in the NBA.
He played. He was a role player, bench player, but
he played like seven or eight years in the NBA.
So he made a decent amount of money. He told me.
Within the first year and a half doing the weed,
he made more money than he had made his entire
career in the NBA. It's nuts, absolutely nuts, man. The guy,
(28:26):
it said, was like like a licensed money because he
was one of the first people in that state to
get one of these licenses. And remember how excited people were.
They didn't have to go to the underground to get
their weed. They could just, you know, go to the
If you're in a weed friendly state, you could go
down to a you know establishment and you didn't be
shady about it, or even if you were, you could
(28:47):
get a medical card pretty easy and then go to
the dispensary and and get it from somebody with a
license like that. Yeah, exactly, um so. And then to
wrap it up, I had a chance to catch up
with my cousin who lives in Phoenix, one of my cousins.
I didn't get to see everybody because of time constraints,
but I got to hang out with my cousin a
little bit and the great Turk Stevens, who you know,
(29:10):
you working at a different network than the network that
that I worked in at Fox Sports Radio, but you
were I think at NBC, right, Yeah. Yeah, So I
caught up with Turk lives in the Phoenix area and
he says, hello, he's a former sports radio vet. Now
he's been a teacher for a long time, like ten
years or something like that. Almost ten years. He's been
(29:31):
a pe teacher. Yeah, a nice guy. He did a
national updates for us their at NBC. Yeah, he worked
on my show. And he was the one of the
Pennies in the early days of Benny versus the penny.
It was Benny ben versus the coin back then, So
that was that was how the coin. That sounds weird, Yeah,
it is kind of weird. Yeah, I gotta tell before
(29:54):
we we wrapped this up, I don't know you've got
anything else that I The one person I was most
impressed with that I saw Radio Row, although I didn't
get a photo. I was trying to get a photo
with the guy Flavor Flame, who you booked on Cano
Rich and he that guy is such an expert. This guy.
You can tell this guy no public enemy back in
the day and all that. He's been a big deal
since the eighties. This guy knows how to slide through
(30:16):
a crowd and not stop for photos and move what
what a maestro flavor flav is He avoids hits like
Josh Jacobs. Yeah, no, no, he slithers through crowds. I
was very impressed. I was like, Okay, I'll catch up
with him. You know, he's kind of getting up there
(30:37):
in age, he's older than I am. I can probably
catch up with him now. No. I mean, he bounced
off the Caveno Enriched stage and then he just kind
of slid, he glided, and all these people, all these
losers like me, are trying to get a photo with him,
and he just cruised into the V I P section
where we were not allowed. And that's how he did it.
It's a solid move. And I also noticed like behind
(30:58):
our stage there was a walkway and a lot of
like Emmett Smith came out of that walk was it
seemed it wasn't like off limits, but a lot of
people didn't know about it, and so it seemed like
some of the bigger names were walking in the back
there in the hedges that's where we saw Darren Waller
passed by as we were broadcasting anything else. Didn't want
(31:20):
to add anything that stands out here from the week
that was at the super Bowl super Bowl fifty seven
in Phoenix. Yeah, I got a quick story Instead of slimed,
I'll call it lined. You know those stupid scooters they
have all over the streets in the corners, Yeah, they're
called lime. Friday night, when I got finished with post
(31:42):
production and you were on the air with Rob, I
took off finally to to close out my week. Covino
and Rich they were already long gone at some restaurant
in Scottsdale, so I had to find my own dinner,
which was fine, and I was going to meet up
with them later. I had a little bit of a
mission because the ubers were not popping. They were like
(32:04):
twenty minutes away. It was a twenty five minute walk
to the hotel, which we did as a show quite
a few times during the week, so I had an
executive decision to make. I was really tired from a
long work week. I'm like, can I do this? Last
twenty five minute walk to the hotel, had my heavy
backpack on, and then the other problem. You've probably dealt
(32:26):
with this in your life where you need to get
an uber but your phone is about to die. Oh yeah,
that sucks. It's like a ticking time bomb because you're like,
can the uber get to me before my phone dies.
It's like that scene in every holiday like Hollywood movie
where like you can see the clock on the dynamite
and sticking down You're like, what is it gonna We're
gonna make it? Is it gonna explode? And boom goes
(32:49):
to dynamite. I find uh somewhere to plug in for
a few minutes to give my phone a little bit
of a charge. It happened to be the Renaissance Hotel
near the Convention Center, and they had a little block party,
an NFL block party going on. I slide my way
like flavor Flavor into the bar area right outside the bar,
(33:11):
and I plug into an outlet and I'm sitting there
just looking through some some podcast notes and things. I
was still wrapping up and guess who walked by? Christian Watson, Yeah,
who we had interviewed. Yeah, we had interviewed on the
fifth hour. And He's like, bro, come to the bar.
(33:34):
I'm gonna buy you a drink, and I told him
I'm charging my phone, and he's like, oh, hang on,
I'm gonna bring the drink to you. So he brings
the drink to me. I'm sitting there outside this little
party and I have a drink now, sitting on the
table with my phone plugged in. He was the nicest guy,
so obviously that's the hotel he was staying at. That's cool, man.
(33:57):
I'm pulling for that guy. That's my new favorite receiver,
by the way, Christian Watson. I want to see that
guy in up in the Hall of Fame. Same. So
now I have a drink and um, I'm waiting for
my phone to charge. I get like a thirty percent charge.
That'll do it all right. Put the heavy backpack back
on and I'm on foot and I'm like, okay, you
(34:18):
know what instead of uber right now, let me find
something to eat. As I walked to the hotel, you know,
it was hard in the downtown area because there was
really cheap food like taco stands, and then there was
really fancy restaurants, like you feel like you needed a jacket. Finally,
I saw some cops inside a Mexican restaurant and if
(34:44):
the local police are in there. You know it must
be one of their hangout spots. The food's gotta be decent.
So I get some tacos and enchilada, get the combination
plate to go. The guy hooks it up, he bags
it really nice for me, And now I'm like, you
know what, I don't want to mess with an uber.
I don't want to wait around for this food to
(35:04):
get cold. I'm gonna just scan my phone on one
of these Lime scooters. Take your camera, you scan the
little barcode, it starts up, the light comes on. How
much does this cost these scooters? I've never been on
one of these scooters? What does the cost? It's a
really good deal. It's eight dollars a minute US tacks. Well,
(35:28):
you know, the thing in Phoenix is all those minor
league stadiums. I've I've heard this from a million sports writers, like,
if you ever rent a car in Phoenix, you don't
want to do it at Sky Harbor Airport because that's
where they put all the taxes to pay for the
minor league stadiums, and so you have to go outside.
So I I assume outside the airport, but I assume
everything like that that's how they make all their money
(35:50):
back for these stadiums, and they jack up the price
for these scooters and all that other stuff. Yeah, and
and by the way, I'm still a little bit under
the weather. And I think I got sick on this night, Ben,
because as you know, it was pretty cold out on
some of the nights there in Phoenix. It's a people
and as you know from a previous episode of The
Fifth Hour, Danny, those scooters have more germs on them
(36:14):
than I'm not kidding, like they've done studies that for
for whatever reason, the Neanderthals that use those scooters on
the regular do not wash their hands, and God only
knows where their hands go, and they're disgusting. I remembered
you talking about that on the podcast. So I had
my hand sanitizer. Okay, it's like four dollars to get
(36:37):
the scooters started, and then it's like I think it said,
forty cents for every minute afterwards. It's not that far
off a ride at this point, I've already walked halfway
looking for food. I just my legs are tired. I'm
a little tired. I need to get the other half
in on this scooter. So I'm jamming down the street bend.
(36:57):
I look like a local. I'm weaving in and out
of the people who are going to the NFL Fan Experience,
and I'm like, suckers, I'm popping Wheelie's up curbs. I
get to the hotel problem. When I try to turn
the scooter off, it says I'm in a prohibited area
of the city. I cannot park the scooter there. Oh no.
(37:22):
And I'm like, you gotta be effing kidding me, man.
So it shows like this little map, almost like a GPS.
So I have to find a dumb street now where
I can put the scooter on a corner. I finally
find that and have wasted time now and money. There's
other ones on a corner. I park it right next
to another Lime scooter. I'm like, all right, now, it's
(37:43):
gonna be like a little bit of a walk to
the hotel. But I'm cool. I can park this thing
and get rid of it. Scan it to turn off
the ride. Blank page comes up and it says cannot
load your account. Oh no, And I'm like what, So
I do it again, Scan it again, try it again,
(38:03):
turn my phone off, reset my phone. I was out
there trying to turn this damn scooter off for forty
five minutes. What I talked to, uh like the NFL
Experience volunteers, to a cop that was on the corner
next to the hotel, and he told me, yeah, he's like,
(38:25):
people have been having trouble with those stupid scooters all week.
I didn't want to leave this thing unattended. So how
much was it? I'm doing the MATHA it's a forty
cents times what forty You were there eighteen forty five minutes?
Is that right? Oh man, that's a that's a decent
amount of cash just to stand around. Well, you're gonna
(38:46):
have to wait it out, he said. Eventually it'll turn
itself off, hopefully, he said hopefully. And I was like,
you gotta be f and kidding me. Now at this point,
my food is cold. I'm pissed. I'm I'm sitting there
on the curb and in my mind I'm thinking about
Coveno and Rich sitting at a nice steak dinner, and
(39:10):
I like, how the hell did I just get lined
on my last night here in Phoenix. Finally this freaking
thing turns itself off because it said that I had
it parked for so many minutes. It was idle for
too long, so they were going to automatically turn it off. Okay, Yeah,
I had to send an email to the company, back
(39:31):
and forth emails all week long while I'm back at home.
Then they still have not taken that big charge off
of my debit. Well, just expensive to the company, Danny.
I'm sure the company will take care of it, right,
they put that expense account. Nothing to worry about. Yes,
Scott would look at this and be like, why was
this writing around on a scooter for an hour? You
(39:52):
spent two hundred dollars on a scooter? What are you talking?
Got a hotel room for that? What's wrong with you? You? Oop?
That's I. Before we forget, I just I wanted to
add one last thing here. So I also went to
my first Super Bowl party. Rob Parker got me into
a Friday night Super Bowl party. V I p status
(40:17):
at the party? Were you popping bottles? It was all right.
I was expecting it to be a little more lavish.
I I don't know what I thought in my head,
but I didn't expect it to be what it was.
It was good. I had a good time. The wife
she had a good time. It was fun. We showed
up a little late, and um, they had like food
trucks and they had people walking around with a different
(40:39):
little finger foods and things like that. And they did
have the open bar because we were v I P.
So that was cool. But that was one so I
can check that off my bucket list. I've now been
to a super Bowl party. Who it used to be
one of our listeners, and I doubt she's still around
as a listener, was still alive, but every year she
would send me the same email. This is back in
(41:00):
the early two thousand's. She was a party planner. She
was looking for quasi celebrities to host super Bowl parties,
and she'd always eave me, are you gonna be in Atlanta?
Are you gonna be in Miami or New Orleans or
San Diego or whoever the super Bowl was? And every
year I'd read back, no, I'm not going to be there,
and she's always like, well, we'll have a party. We'll
(41:20):
have you as the headline or on the party. And
it now that I'm actually going to these things, I
have no one to throw the party. So you outlived her,
I guess. So anyway, we'll get out on that. We've
got a full weekend of pods as you know. Saturday
a brand spanking new Life of Mallard, Life of Danny
g podcast, the mail Bag on Sunday. Anything to promote here, Danny,
(41:43):
anything at all you want to promote as always go
to the app either I Heart or you know wherever
you get your podcasts and listen to everything from last
week and of course listen to FSR Live on the
I Heart app. Long that is I second that have
(42:04):
a great rest of your day. Thank you, remember five
stars on the podcast and tell a friend word of
mouth advertising the way to go and we'll catch you
next time later. Skater gott a murder, Gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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