September 19, 2025 • 30 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Hello Yellow, Sugary Lollipop, Into the Amazon, & more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kabbooms.
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.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in
the air everywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Maler and Danny G.
The Weekend starts right now. Happy Friday is the nineteenth
day of September. Just a few hours ago, I got
done with the overnight show and here we are back
in the podcast studio. Danny G Radio will join me
at some point over the weekend. But on this podcast,
(00:53):
The Friday Spectacular, we have Hello, Yellow Sugary Lollipop, and
who knows what else, But we start with this. It
is National Tradesman Day. That's right, National Tradesman Day celebrated
the third Friday of September every year. It's relatively new.
I brought this up because having met a number of
(01:15):
you at various meet and greets over the years in
different parts of the country. A number of you have
worked in the trades you have right, whether you could
be anything from a carpenter like just Josh, you're in
the building maintenance, world, plumbing, electricity, any of that stuff,
(01:36):
and the trades are are massive. I think I would
have done okay in that if I'd learned a skill,
obviously other than talking about sports. But listen, the great
thing about the tradesmen, as you guys know, you don't
really think about it much until you need them, and
it would be almost impossible, if not impossible, to have
(02:00):
a high quality of life without a bunch of tradesmen.
Which is interesting because I did see the stat that
this is not the fun fact, by the way, but
I did you see a stat that one new tradesman
comes into the profession for three old ones, meaning that
every time three tradesmen retire from their profession, only one
(02:23):
new one joins the forces. That is a supply shortage situation.
And according to a recent study from the Hudson Institute,
which I am not sure what that is, but they
I saw this study and they said that the way
things are going, barring some kind of change, there will
be a shortage of tradesmen by twenty fifty, so that's
(02:45):
a generation from now there will be not enough tradesmen
in the world. And there's been this debate, but is
it good for your health to be in the trades
and whatnot. However, based on the fact that a lot
of us have set jobs that we're sitting around, we're
sitting at desk, I sit in the radio studio all night,
(03:08):
that you're not moving, you're not getting your blood flowing.
That actually, as opposed to those type of jobs, seditary jobs,
that if you're in the trades, you're actually healthier because
you're constantly moving your body around, your muscles, your joints,
all that stuff. And I had some friends of mine
(03:28):
that got into the trades and they've made good money,
they've had consistent employment, and the only things they've complained
about sometimes they are having to work on the holidays
because if you're a plumber and somebody's toilet gets clogged
or something like that on Christmas, who you're gonna call?
Gonna call a plumber and all that. But anyway, so
celebrate National Tradesman Day today. And the fun fact, the
(03:51):
fun fact on National Tradesmen's Day, going back to the
Middle Ages, Is it true that when you were a
barber in the Middle Ages, not only were you a barber,
but you also provided your service as a doctor to
the lower class, the lower social class, the poor people
(04:13):
who could not afford to go to an actual Middle
Ages doctor, so they had aches and pains. The barber
turned out to be the doctor. Sounds like something that
Doc Mike out of Chicago would do. Now, on that note,
(04:34):
we turned the page and a story that I was
debating whether or not to share with you. I ultimately
determined that that what happened to me this week is
both educational and also perfect for this format because you,
by listening to the Fifth Hour, are p one your
(04:56):
next level. There's a lot of people. We do very
well on the Overnight Show. There's a lot of people
that listen, but a lot of the people listen just
because we happen to be on at that time. Right,
you have to go out of your way to find
this podcast, right, the Fifth Hour podcast. It is promoted
on the Overnight Show. We do promote it, but you
have to go out of your way to find it.
(05:16):
And you've done that. So it's story time on the
Fifth Hour. Let me tell you about fasting. Now I
have discovered it is not for whims. It's for lunatics,
is what it's what it's for. So for many years
now I have practiced innerminute fasting. You may know that
if you've listened to these podcasts, you know I've talked
(05:37):
about my life choices when it comes to that kind
of thing. So for the most part, the way it
works is one meal a day. Sometimes I will skip
a day and I will stretch out the fast from
say twenty three hours or twenty four hours. I will
go to forty eight hours, sometimes even longer than that,
(05:58):
and I would go without food. Is my personal Michigas.
As my grandfather would say. It's it's kind of like
rooting for the Clippers in the nineties or collecting ticket
stubs from UC Irvine with a guy named Billy Mulligan
who is the coach from their basketball games. You do
it because it makes sense only to you, and that's
(06:19):
why you do it. So this week, this week, though,
the routine betrayed me. So my lovely wife and I
we went out to a rare for US rare for
US meal. Since I usually cook, I like futson around
in the kitchen and so one of us will make
it easy as me. But we'll make food and end
(06:40):
up eating at home. Let's say six days a week,
maybe go out once a week. And so we went
to one of our favorite spots. It's a local spot,
kind of a kind of a place that serves chicken
fingers and pastromi fries. My kind of place, My kind
of place that's soul food. It's so indulgent that if
you had an offensive line or a sumo wrestling outfit,
(07:05):
they would enjoy the food. They would enjoy. It's heavy food. It's,
like I said, soul food. It's fried in memory and regret.
So I broke my fast. I had been fasting for
roughly forty eight hours, and I broke my fast with
some gusto, some razzle dazzle. I gobbled down my delicious
(07:25):
chicken fingers with the honey mustard, the barbecue and the
house sauce, which is kind of like a Thousand Island
type thing. So I hate that. I think Spacoli would approve.
I hugged the wife goodbye as she went to work. Waddled,
I waddled like a penguin out to the parking lot,
to the mal ormobile, thinking was it worth it? Was
(07:48):
it worth it? And see, I had ad home because
I had to prepare for the Ben Mahler Show, and
it takes a lot of time needed to prepare the monologues.
There's bullet points that go into that, and I have
to find things that I'm interested in. So then my
stomach whispered back as I was settling in for the
(08:08):
relatively short drive back to the Malor mansion, and the
stomach whispered, oh you think so, huh okay. Now by
the time I hit the road, that whisper had become
a primal scream. And this restaurant's about ten minutes from
(08:29):
the Malor Mansion, and yet I felt like I was
carrying a live hand grenade in my gut. You ever
had that, We've all had that, right, you've had that.
I've had it before. I haven't had in a while.
Now you should know, and maybe you do that roughly
five or six years ago. I think it was six
years ago. Now, I had my gallbladder removed. Yeah, Now,
(08:54):
if you've had that happen, you know this. If not,
if you lived long enough and eat fried food, that's
going to happen. So it changes the way the machinery
works in the body. Your body keeps score. Why would
your body keep score? And the thing about it, it's
a little trickerations because the body waits for the exact
(09:14):
wrong time to remind you, and then all of a sudden,
it is Dante's inferno. We are talking death con one
as a gastro intestinal emergency situation. So keep in mind,
I have a ten minute drive. I was staring down
a red light parade, one after another after another, like
(09:37):
rush hour in midtown Manhattan, a sea of red, a
red sea. So now I'm doing inventory. I got what
appears to be a gastro intestinal hand grenade in my
stomach that is fertilized. I've got a good amount of
(09:57):
time to go. And I did the malth and it
wrote back in my head, no chance, in that little
cartoon bubble them above my head. No chance. So now
this becomes a two minute drill, but not not a
two minute drill that you might think is going to
be successful, because this is a two minute drill, except
the quarterback had no timeouts. It was a pouring rainstorm.
(10:21):
The quarterback also had two left feet, and the clock
was mocking the quarterback. So I end up making it.
I said about ten minutes, but I made it about
eight minutes in and it was a couple of minutes
from the Malor mansion. And suddenly, imagine the US Space program,
(10:42):
NASA counting down five four, three two one. We have
lift off. We have lift off. Apollo eleven has blasted
off into space. Now, in my case, it wasn't a
P eleven. It was kaboom. Let's just say, in that moment,
(11:04):
I became a Cleveland Browns fan. In that moment, I
became a Cleveland Browns fan. The Malormobile was christened in
brown Town. If you will in Brownston, what can brown
do for you? Now, for the record, I want to
clarify this because some of you knuckleheads, like just Josh
and others. We'll run with this. And I did have
(11:28):
a famous incident at a park when I was walking
around getting steps in and totally dropped a bomb on you,
a poop bomb in a public restroom. That was like
a crime scene. So this was not that. So I'm
in the car. I mentioned kaboom. The Malomobile was disheveled,
(11:50):
but for the record, it was technically not poop. This
was Billy Ruben I am told is the term it's yellow,
hello yellow, definitely not mellow yellow. It is not mellow yellow.
It was Mana Zuma's revenge or in this case, Malar's revenge.
We'll rebrand it Malar's revenge or put the highlight of
(12:13):
their Malard's gut punch. So, in other words, the exact
kind of technicality that only those of us who are
middle aged men would cling to when describing our own humiliation.
So technically, not poop is a phrase that could serve
as an epithet for many things here that have gone
(12:34):
on around this time and maybe my generation anyway. So
the good news is, and this is the most important
part to me, This is the most important part, because
when we had five four three two one, we have
lift off, we have lift off of Apollo eleven or
in this case, you know what. So I was worried.
Oh my god, I mean, this is this is a lot.
(12:56):
There's a lot going on, and the car is going
to be destroyed. I gotta use the car to I
have a long drive. It's gonna stink, it's gonna be terrible.
This is a nightmare situation. The good news one word
one word, containment, very important word. Most of the bodily
(13:17):
oil spill the Exxon Valdis, the Malar Valdis. Most of
it was captured by the clothing and not the upholstery
in the car. So this made it a messy, certainly humiliating,
but survivable. Fumbo rooskate. All right again this I had
(13:37):
no control at that point. I would have obviously not
had that happen. I tried to find somewhere to stop
along the way and the places I was looking to stop.
By the time I figured out I needed to stop,
I was not near anywhere to stop. So I did
make it to the Malor mansion. I parked, and unfortunately,
(13:59):
much to my disappoint I had to sit there for
several minutes. It seemed like it was about three hours.
It was probably only five minutes, but I was waiting
because there's a kind of a green area, grassy area
in front of the house, and one of my neighbors
was walking her dog at the worst possible time. My
whole plan was, all right, boom, get their park, run
(14:20):
into the house, and take care of business. Now, keep
in mind, I don't even know this middle aged woman
who's my neighbor. I don't know a few of the neighbors,
but not many. Nevertheless, you cannot make eye contact. In
that moment. You are covered with shrapnel. Right you have
been hit with some AMMO and your down range and
(14:41):
it's just kind of soaking into everything. At this point,
you can still feel it as you move around. It's
a big mess. So you wait for the coast to clear.
And then at that moment, all of a sudden, I realized,
wait a minute, the path is clear. It's go time. Okay,
it's go time? Was that me? So then you sprint? Okay,
(15:03):
you sprint like you sained bolt across the lawn. I
know Ferg dog's very fast, so he knows that I
don't know about alf. So I had the laundry situation,
which was unfortunately a hazmat situation, and then I had
that on and then I had shame. There was some shame.
Now the wife was at work, so I didn't have
(15:23):
to worry about that. I get in the house and
it was a malor rescue and recovery mission. It was swift.
I went as fast as I could. The only one
in the house was my dog, Moxie. Moxie opened her
eyes and she looked at me in shame. There was
some shame there. She didn't say anything because she can't talk,
(15:45):
but my English bulldog Moxie definitely knew something was not
right and that I was closer to her than I
was another human being. So the clothes immediately go on
the washer, all the clothes, everything. I then high tailored
to the shower. The car has to be cleaned after
the shower. And indignity, well, dignity is not not easy
(16:09):
in this. But here's the lesson. All right, here's the
lesson to my friends, you boys and girls. Fasting is
kind of like life. This is a weird part of
aging that and I don't think I'm that old. I
don't feel that old, although this certainly made me feel older.
But your body keeps finding new ways to remind you that.
(16:32):
You might think you are in control, you might think
you have a choke hold on the game of life,
but you are not in control. You can be disciplined
for years. You can control your schedule, fast every day.
Think you're doing what's right at the time for the
zeitgeist of the time. But one plate of delicious deep
(16:56):
fried golden brown chicken fingers and a big bucket of
pastromi fries. Will remind you that in the end, the
randomness of life always wins. Right. You can plan the fast,
you can plan the aftermath of said fast, all of that.
Clearly I didn't do that properly. My game plan was
(17:18):
not great. And every so often, when you get to
the point of life that I'm at here and a
lot of you guys are at in middle age, your
body taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, buddy,
hey about it. Remember me, Yeah, the warranty, it's expired.
You need a new warranty. And so that was that
(17:41):
was my very interesting afternoon. And I did not mention
it on the radio show for obvious reasons. So if
you hear this, you're listening right now, you're obviously hearing this.
You're one of the few that have heard the story.
So it's onward and upward. And next time I have
a forty eight hour fast, I will remember to not
eat pastrami fries, chicken, maybe some grilled chicken and some rice,
(18:05):
and that'll be good. That'll be good. So moving on
from that, I want to turn the page to the Amazon.
We go to the Amazon all right, So the Amazon
I saw this. I was gonna mention it on the
Overnight Show. I didn't get to it. I wanted to
bring it up with you here, and I don't know
if you know exactly what I'm talking about. This is
not about al Michael's performance last night on The Thrilling,
(18:28):
Riveting Bill's Dolphins game. It's not about that. So the
new basketball season is starting soon. Oh, you shouldn't talk
about the NBA. It's not really about the NBA. It's
about Amazon. So Amazon is about to jump into the
deep end of the basketball pool. They are strutting around
like not peacocks because that's NBC. But they're strutting around
(18:50):
like the biggest, baddest company in the world, Amazon, and
they're in bed now with the NBA and they us.
They had to take the WNBA. Who's watching that crap?
What's the first thing the big boss, this guy named
Jay Marine that sounds like a fake name. What's the
first thing this big boss, j Marine tells us? He
says the mantra of Amazon NBA coverage, The mantra of
(19:15):
this outfit is too It's three words, celebrate and educate, period.
Stop celebrate and educate. Let me repeat that for those
of you in the back of the room. Celebrate and educate.
That's the plan for the Amazon Amazon Prime. Now my
reaction is not three words, it's three letters. O MG
(19:39):
O MG, as in, oh my god. Now I am
not great at a lot of things. You might think
I suck itt radio whatever. However, I have worked in
the broadcasting business for a long time and that's not
how I was raised. That was not how I was
raised in broadcasting, and I don't know anyone else who
(19:59):
wants that content. To me, that's not broadcasting. When you
say celebrate and educate, that's not broadcasting. That's the Soviet
prov the news service is what that is. That's propaganda
in a stream. Celebrate and educate. That's a kindergarten slogan.
That's a company picnic where everybody gets a little gold star.
(20:20):
It's just for showing up. You get a little gold
star and some potato salad. Congratulations. But I don't like
potato salad. It's disgusting. Now as I understand it, the
plan here is, instead of breaking down bad defenses, are
calling out a star player who mailed it in, because
God knows that never happens. Instead, what we're gonna get
(20:41):
is a ten minute package of someone's dog rescue story. Right, Oh,
he saved his dog from being eaten by a bunch
of coyotes. The Amazon NBA logo should be a puffer
fish who says no, who says no. It is sugarcoating,
is what like? From what I have read again, I've
(21:02):
read the trades on this. It's Amazon serving you a
sugary lollipop and telling you it's a cheeseburger and fries. Well,
I wanted a cheeseburger in fries. You get the sugary lollipop.
I didn't want the lollipop. I wanted the cheeseburger and fries.
It doesn't matter. We're serving sugar sugary lollipops. You should
enjoy the sugary lollipop. It's on sale on Amazon Prime.
But I wanted a cheeseburger and fries. It doesn't matter.
(21:24):
Here's my main problem, all right, and listen. I understand
everyone's different, and I get that. But for the most part,
viewers are not dumb. Okay, some are, some are, but
viewers are not dumb. You insult people's intelligence with puff pieces.
It's like putting on a classic Sugar Loaf record. Don't
(21:46):
call us, We'll call you. Don't call us, we'll call you.
And that's what the fans will be humming when they
tune out. You know, the nonsense. Because the goal you
put me in charge, you make me the boss. The
goal should be to entertain and to inform, not to
(22:07):
sell me a cheesy version of pro basketball where everything
is sunshine and rainbows, unicorns and the whole thing so
bull of cherries. You're going against human nature. We're all hardwired,
all of us. I don't care your gender or your race.
(22:30):
I don't care about any of that stuff because we're
all the same. When you peel back all the layers,
it's human nature. If it bleeds, it leads. As a
phrase in television news, the reason that is a phrase
is because people love that crap. They can't get enough
of that crap and spoiler alert. People love the negative,
(22:53):
whether it's negative news or a negative story about an athlete,
and they crave the train wreck, the drama orama, as
we like to say the flame outs. You have to
know what the customer wants, and you have to give
the customer what they want, and that is what drives
the conversation. Amazon has more than enough money. They have
(23:17):
plenty of research, market research that they shows us. They
are aware of the situation. This is not some kind
of new situation from the Book of Revelations. Sports are
filled with juicy drama. They just are players who hate coaches,
coaches who hate the media, media who hate the players,
and the coaches. And professional sports in particular are about
(23:40):
the conflict. The star athlete who's more concerned about his
TikTok than making the jump shot and practicing his jump shot,
the Matador defense or ela that is a problem. So
it's about someone. If you're doing it right, it's highlighting
someone in an NBA game choking in the clutch, leaning
(24:04):
into load management, or a coach losing the locker room.
People will tune in for that. They're not going to
tune in for the marshmallowy stuff. They don't flip on
a game to hear a bedtime story. Amazon doesn't want
to show you the warts, the soft underbelly, the screw ups,
the reality of the game. They want to tuck you
(24:27):
into bed with a warm glass of milk and a
bedtime story about how everyone is a winner. You're a winner,
Little Johnny, You're a winner. It's like Amazon is officially
smoking the psychedelic rock pipe. The people involved in this
NBA stuff like totally out of touch on this. And
you know what this is. It's a kale smoothie. It's
(24:50):
a kale smoothie with a bit of glitter on top.
I don't need glitter. I don't want kale either. But
Amazon thinks it's a party. It tastes like it's disgusting. Meanwhile,
the fan, what does the fan want? I just want
to chill out. Most people that consume sports, it's a pastime.
(25:11):
It's something you do after a long day at work.
It's something that you do to kind of chill out,
and you just want to have a beer and some
hot wings or whatever your jam is. For me, it's
chicken fingers. You don't want some corporate ted talk about
celebrating and educating. Celebrating and educating. This isn't broadcasting. It's
narrow casting and it's marketing, is what it is. It's
(25:35):
those things. And Amazon just announced to the world that
they'd rather be what Oprah's book Club than Monday Night
Basketball or whatever it's going to be now, the other
conspiracy let me put on my tinfoil hat here. So
the other conspiracy on this is that the NBA wanted this,
(25:55):
that this is what the NBA wants, That the Amazon
people are just file following the marching orders of big Basketball.
And for a while I have heard from the people
that I know that work in the NBA that the
league office and I'm not sure exactly whether it's Adam
Silver or people below Adam Silver, it doesn't really matter.
(26:16):
People that live in that Manhattan bubble bubble that work
in the in the NBA league offices have long been
bothered by what they deem a negative cloud that covers
the NBA, that they don't celebrate. They don't celebrate basketball.
So when I heard the word celebrate, that was immediately
(26:39):
an alarm bell that went on, Well, wait a minute.
That's one of the things that I've heard in the
feedback I've got. They were very upset with Jeff Van
Gundy for his criticism of the sport, for his criticism
of the officiating. He has been exiled. He's on the
LA Clippers coaching staff. So Van Gundy is an example
of that. They also, despite being tremendously popular, have issues
(27:03):
with Charles Barkley and Shaquill O'Neal and the whole shocking
of fool mocking some of the players and Charles Barkley,
those guys who are unhinged with their commentary. It does
rub people wrong and they're bothered. People work for the NBA,
some of them, again, not all of them. This is
a small minority, but clearly a vocal minority who have
(27:23):
been bothered by that presentation of their product. They believe
that their product is all high and mighty and that
they should celebrate. That's the celebrate thing. The other concern
the NBA has is the fan base getting older people
my age and older that like basketball, and younger people
(27:47):
only consume the highlights, which is appropriate because we did
a rant about Adam Silver and his situation where he
said it's just a highlight sport and then he tried
to put tried to unring the bell and all that.
So I bring this up in addition because the perception
is that Amazon Prime is going to be a younger
audience and that there'll be people that will click on
(28:10):
Amazon Prime that aren't basketball fans, and so they want
the league office wants to educate the people that are
casuals that are not fully invested, which seems fine in theory,
but in reality not so good because you're offending your
(28:33):
base to gain what a few more possible consumers of
your product, but you're going to upset a larger percentage
of people that already know the game and don't want
to be educated like they're in kindergarten and learn the
ABC's and the one two threes. They already know that stuff.
(28:54):
They're already aware of that stuff. All right, we'll get
out on that. Danny should join me at some point.
We'll have a new podcast on Saturday and a new
one on Sunday. By the way, before I forget, if
you want to send an email in I checked the
other day. I have not checked this morning here on Friday,
(29:14):
but the other day we were a little slow in
the email. So if we don't get enough, we will
not have a mailbag. So if you want to be
in the mail bag and make sure we have a
Sunday pod, I mean, we're planning on doing it. We
have a few, but we usually have a lot more
than this, so I don't know what happened with the email.
So hopefully we'll get a few more of you to
(29:35):
send us an email. Real fifth hour at gmail dot
com is the email address. That's real fifth hour at
gmail dot com and just all letters, no numbers. Name
in city if you want credit, Name in city if
you want credit, and that is that. Have a wonderful
(29:56):
rest of your Friday. It's a final Friday. Days of
a baseball regular season. That's almost over. We got some
college football today and then the big weekend. We'll cover
it all as we go forward. But have a great,
glorious rest of your Friday. We will talk to you
next time. And as Danny g would say, Asta pasta
(30:20):
or is it later, skater, Aloha means goodbye riva, don
jay or bye bye see. That's what Dick and Dayton says.
Bye bye, gotta murder, I gotta go
Kabbooms.
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.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in
the air everywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Maler and Danny G.
The Weekend starts right now. Happy Friday is the nineteenth
day of September. Just a few hours ago, I got
done with the overnight show and here we are back
in the podcast studio. Danny G Radio will join me
at some point over the weekend. But on this podcast,
(00:53):
The Friday Spectacular, we have Hello, Yellow Sugary Lollipop, and
who knows what else, But we start with this. It
is National Tradesman Day. That's right, National Tradesman Day celebrated
the third Friday of September every year. It's relatively new.
I brought this up because having met a number of
(01:15):
you at various meet and greets over the years in
different parts of the country. A number of you have
worked in the trades you have right, whether you could
be anything from a carpenter like just Josh, you're in
the building maintenance, world, plumbing, electricity, any of that stuff,
(01:36):
and the trades are are massive. I think I would
have done okay in that if I'd learned a skill,
obviously other than talking about sports. But listen, the great
thing about the tradesmen, as you guys know, you don't
really think about it much until you need them, and
it would be almost impossible, if not impossible, to have
(02:00):
a high quality of life without a bunch of tradesmen.
Which is interesting because I did see the stat that
this is not the fun fact, by the way, but
I did you see a stat that one new tradesman
comes into the profession for three old ones, meaning that
every time three tradesmen retire from their profession, only one
(02:23):
new one joins the forces. That is a supply shortage situation.
And according to a recent study from the Hudson Institute,
which I am not sure what that is, but they
I saw this study and they said that the way
things are going, barring some kind of change, there will
be a shortage of tradesmen by twenty fifty, so that's
(02:45):
a generation from now there will be not enough tradesmen
in the world. And there's been this debate, but is
it good for your health to be in the trades
and whatnot. However, based on the fact that a lot
of us have set jobs that we're sitting around, we're
sitting at desk, I sit in the radio studio all night,
(03:08):
that you're not moving, you're not getting your blood flowing.
That actually, as opposed to those type of jobs, seditary jobs,
that if you're in the trades, you're actually healthier because
you're constantly moving your body around, your muscles, your joints,
all that stuff. And I had some friends of mine
(03:28):
that got into the trades and they've made good money,
they've had consistent employment, and the only things they've complained
about sometimes they are having to work on the holidays
because if you're a plumber and somebody's toilet gets clogged
or something like that on Christmas, who you're gonna call?
Gonna call a plumber and all that. But anyway, so
celebrate National Tradesman Day today. And the fun fact, the
(03:51):
fun fact on National Tradesmen's Day, going back to the
Middle Ages, Is it true that when you were a
barber in the Middle Ages, not only were you a barber,
but you also provided your service as a doctor to
the lower class, the lower social class, the poor people
(04:13):
who could not afford to go to an actual Middle
Ages doctor, so they had aches and pains. The barber
turned out to be the doctor. Sounds like something that
Doc Mike out of Chicago would do. Now, on that note,
(04:34):
we turned the page and a story that I was
debating whether or not to share with you. I ultimately
determined that that what happened to me this week is
both educational and also perfect for this format because you,
by listening to the Fifth Hour, are p one your
(04:56):
next level. There's a lot of people. We do very
well on the Overnight Show. There's a lot of people
that listen, but a lot of the people listen just
because we happen to be on at that time. Right,
you have to go out of your way to find
this podcast, right, the Fifth Hour podcast. It is promoted
on the Overnight Show. We do promote it, but you
have to go out of your way to find it.
(05:16):
And you've done that. So it's story time on the
Fifth Hour. Let me tell you about fasting. Now I
have discovered it is not for whims. It's for lunatics,
is what it's what it's for. So for many years
now I have practiced innerminute fasting. You may know that
if you've listened to these podcasts, you know I've talked
(05:37):
about my life choices when it comes to that kind
of thing. So for the most part, the way it
works is one meal a day. Sometimes I will skip
a day and I will stretch out the fast from
say twenty three hours or twenty four hours. I will
go to forty eight hours, sometimes even longer than that,
(05:58):
and I would go without food. Is my personal Michigas.
As my grandfather would say. It's it's kind of like
rooting for the Clippers in the nineties or collecting ticket
stubs from UC Irvine with a guy named Billy Mulligan
who is the coach from their basketball games. You do
it because it makes sense only to you, and that's
(06:19):
why you do it. So this week, this week, though,
the routine betrayed me. So my lovely wife and I
we went out to a rare for US rare for
US meal. Since I usually cook, I like futson around
in the kitchen and so one of us will make
it easy as me. But we'll make food and end
(06:40):
up eating at home. Let's say six days a week,
maybe go out once a week. And so we went
to one of our favorite spots. It's a local spot,
kind of a kind of a place that serves chicken
fingers and pastromi fries. My kind of place, My kind
of place that's soul food. It's so indulgent that if
you had an offensive line or a sumo wrestling outfit,
(07:05):
they would enjoy the food. They would enjoy. It's heavy food. It's,
like I said, soul food. It's fried in memory and regret.
So I broke my fast. I had been fasting for
roughly forty eight hours, and I broke my fast with
some gusto, some razzle dazzle. I gobbled down my delicious
(07:25):
chicken fingers with the honey mustard, the barbecue and the
house sauce, which is kind of like a Thousand Island
type thing. So I hate that. I think Spacoli would approve.
I hugged the wife goodbye as she went to work. Waddled,
I waddled like a penguin out to the parking lot,
to the mal ormobile, thinking was it worth it? Was
(07:48):
it worth it? And see, I had ad home because
I had to prepare for the Ben Mahler Show, and
it takes a lot of time needed to prepare the monologues.
There's bullet points that go into that, and I have
to find things that I'm interested in. So then my
stomach whispered back as I was settling in for the
(08:08):
relatively short drive back to the Malor mansion, and the
stomach whispered, oh you think so, huh okay. Now by
the time I hit the road, that whisper had become
a primal scream. And this restaurant's about ten minutes from
(08:29):
the Malor Mansion, and yet I felt like I was
carrying a live hand grenade in my gut. You ever
had that, We've all had that, right, you've had that.
I've had it before. I haven't had in a while.
Now you should know, and maybe you do that roughly
five or six years ago. I think it was six
years ago. Now, I had my gallbladder removed. Yeah, Now,
(08:54):
if you've had that happen, you know this. If not,
if you lived long enough and eat fried food, that's
going to happen. So it changes the way the machinery
works in the body. Your body keeps score. Why would
your body keep score? And the thing about it, it's
a little trickerations because the body waits for the exact
(09:14):
wrong time to remind you, and then all of a sudden,
it is Dante's inferno. We are talking death con one
as a gastro intestinal emergency situation. So keep in mind,
I have a ten minute drive. I was staring down
a red light parade, one after another after another, like
(09:37):
rush hour in midtown Manhattan, a sea of red, a
red sea. So now I'm doing inventory. I got what
appears to be a gastro intestinal hand grenade in my
stomach that is fertilized. I've got a good amount of
(09:57):
time to go. And I did the malth and it
wrote back in my head, no chance, in that little
cartoon bubble them above my head. No chance. So now
this becomes a two minute drill, but not not a
two minute drill that you might think is going to
be successful, because this is a two minute drill, except
the quarterback had no timeouts. It was a pouring rainstorm.
(10:21):
The quarterback also had two left feet, and the clock
was mocking the quarterback. So I end up making it.
I said about ten minutes, but I made it about
eight minutes in and it was a couple of minutes
from the Malor mansion. And suddenly, imagine the US Space program,
(10:42):
NASA counting down five four, three two one. We have
lift off. We have lift off. Apollo eleven has blasted
off into space. Now, in my case, it wasn't a
P eleven. It was kaboom. Let's just say, in that moment,
(11:04):
I became a Cleveland Browns fan. In that moment, I
became a Cleveland Browns fan. The Malormobile was christened in
brown Town. If you will in Brownston, what can brown
do for you? Now, for the record, I want to
clarify this because some of you knuckleheads, like just Josh
and others. We'll run with this. And I did have
(11:28):
a famous incident at a park when I was walking
around getting steps in and totally dropped a bomb on you,
a poop bomb in a public restroom. That was like
a crime scene. So this was not that. So I'm
in the car. I mentioned kaboom. The Malomobile was disheveled,
(11:50):
but for the record, it was technically not poop. This
was Billy Ruben I am told is the term it's yellow,
hello yellow, definitely not mellow yellow. It is not mellow yellow.
It was Mana Zuma's revenge or in this case, Malar's revenge.
We'll rebrand it Malar's revenge or put the highlight of
(12:13):
their Malard's gut punch. So, in other words, the exact
kind of technicality that only those of us who are
middle aged men would cling to when describing our own humiliation.
So technically, not poop is a phrase that could serve
as an epithet for many things here that have gone
(12:34):
on around this time and maybe my generation anyway. So
the good news is, and this is the most important
part to me, This is the most important part, because
when we had five four three two one, we have
lift off, we have lift off of Apollo eleven or
in this case, you know what. So I was worried.
Oh my god, I mean, this is this is a lot.
(12:56):
There's a lot going on, and the car is going
to be destroyed. I gotta use the car to I
have a long drive. It's gonna stink, it's gonna be terrible.
This is a nightmare situation. The good news one word
one word, containment, very important word. Most of the bodily
(13:17):
oil spill the Exxon Valdis, the Malar Valdis. Most of
it was captured by the clothing and not the upholstery
in the car. So this made it a messy, certainly humiliating,
but survivable. Fumbo rooskate. All right again this I had
(13:37):
no control at that point. I would have obviously not
had that happen. I tried to find somewhere to stop
along the way and the places I was looking to stop.
By the time I figured out I needed to stop,
I was not near anywhere to stop. So I did
make it to the Malor mansion. I parked, and unfortunately,
(13:59):
much to my disappoint I had to sit there for
several minutes. It seemed like it was about three hours.
It was probably only five minutes, but I was waiting
because there's a kind of a green area, grassy area
in front of the house, and one of my neighbors
was walking her dog at the worst possible time. My
whole plan was, all right, boom, get their park, run
(14:20):
into the house, and take care of business. Now, keep
in mind, I don't even know this middle aged woman
who's my neighbor. I don't know a few of the neighbors,
but not many. Nevertheless, you cannot make eye contact. In
that moment. You are covered with shrapnel. Right you have
been hit with some AMMO and your down range and
(14:41):
it's just kind of soaking into everything. At this point,
you can still feel it as you move around. It's
a big mess. So you wait for the coast to clear.
And then at that moment, all of a sudden, I realized,
wait a minute, the path is clear. It's go time. Okay,
it's go time? Was that me? So then you sprint? Okay,
(15:03):
you sprint like you sained bolt across the lawn. I
know Ferg dog's very fast, so he knows that I
don't know about alf. So I had the laundry situation,
which was unfortunately a hazmat situation, and then I had
that on and then I had shame. There was some shame.
Now the wife was at work, so I didn't have
(15:23):
to worry about that. I get in the house and
it was a malor rescue and recovery mission. It was swift.
I went as fast as I could. The only one
in the house was my dog, Moxie. Moxie opened her
eyes and she looked at me in shame. There was
some shame there. She didn't say anything because she can't talk,
(15:45):
but my English bulldog Moxie definitely knew something was not
right and that I was closer to her than I
was another human being. So the clothes immediately go on
the washer, all the clothes, everything. I then high tailored
to the shower. The car has to be cleaned after
the shower. And indignity, well, dignity is not not easy
(16:09):
in this. But here's the lesson. All right, here's the
lesson to my friends, you boys and girls. Fasting is
kind of like life. This is a weird part of
aging that and I don't think I'm that old. I
don't feel that old, although this certainly made me feel older.
But your body keeps finding new ways to remind you that.
(16:32):
You might think you are in control, you might think
you have a choke hold on the game of life,
but you are not in control. You can be disciplined
for years. You can control your schedule, fast every day.
Think you're doing what's right at the time for the
zeitgeist of the time. But one plate of delicious deep
(16:56):
fried golden brown chicken fingers and a big bucket of
pastromi fries. Will remind you that in the end, the
randomness of life always wins. Right. You can plan the fast,
you can plan the aftermath of said fast, all of that.
Clearly I didn't do that properly. My game plan was
(17:18):
not great. And every so often, when you get to
the point of life that I'm at here and a
lot of you guys are at in middle age, your
body taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, buddy,
hey about it. Remember me, Yeah, the warranty, it's expired.
You need a new warranty. And so that was that
(17:41):
was my very interesting afternoon. And I did not mention
it on the radio show for obvious reasons. So if
you hear this, you're listening right now, you're obviously hearing this.
You're one of the few that have heard the story.
So it's onward and upward. And next time I have
a forty eight hour fast, I will remember to not
eat pastrami fries, chicken, maybe some grilled chicken and some rice,
(18:05):
and that'll be good. That'll be good. So moving on
from that, I want to turn the page to the Amazon.
We go to the Amazon all right, So the Amazon
I saw this. I was gonna mention it on the
Overnight Show. I didn't get to it. I wanted to
bring it up with you here, and I don't know
if you know exactly what I'm talking about. This is
not about al Michael's performance last night on The Thrilling,
(18:28):
Riveting Bill's Dolphins game. It's not about that. So the
new basketball season is starting soon. Oh, you shouldn't talk
about the NBA. It's not really about the NBA. It's
about Amazon. So Amazon is about to jump into the
deep end of the basketball pool. They are strutting around
like not peacocks because that's NBC. But they're strutting around
(18:50):
like the biggest, baddest company in the world, Amazon, and
they're in bed now with the NBA and they us.
They had to take the WNBA. Who's watching that crap?
What's the first thing the big boss, this guy named
Jay Marine that sounds like a fake name. What's the
first thing this big boss, j Marine tells us? He
says the mantra of Amazon NBA coverage, The mantra of
(19:15):
this outfit is too It's three words, celebrate and educate, period.
Stop celebrate and educate. Let me repeat that for those
of you in the back of the room. Celebrate and educate.
That's the plan for the Amazon Amazon Prime. Now my
reaction is not three words, it's three letters. O MG
(19:39):
O MG, as in, oh my god. Now I am
not great at a lot of things. You might think
I suck itt radio whatever. However, I have worked in
the broadcasting business for a long time and that's not
how I was raised. That was not how I was
raised in broadcasting, and I don't know anyone else who
(19:59):
wants that content. To me, that's not broadcasting. When you
say celebrate and educate, that's not broadcasting. That's the Soviet
prov the news service is what that is. That's propaganda
in a stream. Celebrate and educate. That's a kindergarten slogan.
That's a company picnic where everybody gets a little gold star.
(20:20):
It's just for showing up. You get a little gold
star and some potato salad. Congratulations. But I don't like
potato salad. It's disgusting. Now as I understand it, the
plan here is, instead of breaking down bad defenses, are
calling out a star player who mailed it in, because
God knows that never happens. Instead, what we're gonna get
(20:41):
is a ten minute package of someone's dog rescue story. Right, Oh,
he saved his dog from being eaten by a bunch
of coyotes. The Amazon NBA logo should be a puffer
fish who says no, who says no. It is sugarcoating,
is what like? From what I have read again, I've
(21:02):
read the trades on this. It's Amazon serving you a
sugary lollipop and telling you it's a cheeseburger and fries. Well,
I wanted a cheeseburger in fries. You get the sugary lollipop.
I didn't want the lollipop. I wanted the cheeseburger and fries.
It doesn't matter. We're serving sugar sugary lollipops. You should
enjoy the sugary lollipop. It's on sale on Amazon Prime.
But I wanted a cheeseburger and fries. It doesn't matter.
(21:24):
Here's my main problem, all right, and listen. I understand
everyone's different, and I get that. But for the most part,
viewers are not dumb. Okay, some are, some are, but
viewers are not dumb. You insult people's intelligence with puff pieces.
It's like putting on a classic Sugar Loaf record. Don't
(21:46):
call us, We'll call you. Don't call us, we'll call you.
And that's what the fans will be humming when they
tune out. You know, the nonsense. Because the goal you
put me in charge, you make me the boss. The
goal should be to entertain and to inform, not to
(22:07):
sell me a cheesy version of pro basketball where everything
is sunshine and rainbows, unicorns and the whole thing so
bull of cherries. You're going against human nature. We're all hardwired,
all of us. I don't care your gender or your race.
(22:30):
I don't care about any of that stuff because we're
all the same. When you peel back all the layers,
it's human nature. If it bleeds, it leads. As a
phrase in television news, the reason that is a phrase
is because people love that crap. They can't get enough
of that crap and spoiler alert. People love the negative,
(22:53):
whether it's negative news or a negative story about an athlete,
and they crave the train wreck, the drama orama, as
we like to say the flame outs. You have to
know what the customer wants, and you have to give
the customer what they want, and that is what drives
the conversation. Amazon has more than enough money. They have
(23:17):
plenty of research, market research that they shows us. They
are aware of the situation. This is not some kind
of new situation from the Book of Revelations. Sports are
filled with juicy drama. They just are players who hate coaches,
coaches who hate the media, media who hate the players,
and the coaches. And professional sports in particular are about
(23:40):
the conflict. The star athlete who's more concerned about his
TikTok than making the jump shot and practicing his jump shot,
the Matador defense or ela that is a problem. So
it's about someone. If you're doing it right, it's highlighting
someone in an NBA game choking in the clutch, leaning
(24:04):
into load management, or a coach losing the locker room.
People will tune in for that. They're not going to
tune in for the marshmallowy stuff. They don't flip on
a game to hear a bedtime story. Amazon doesn't want
to show you the warts, the soft underbelly, the screw ups,
the reality of the game. They want to tuck you
(24:27):
into bed with a warm glass of milk and a
bedtime story about how everyone is a winner. You're a winner,
Little Johnny, You're a winner. It's like Amazon is officially
smoking the psychedelic rock pipe. The people involved in this
NBA stuff like totally out of touch on this. And
you know what this is. It's a kale smoothie. It's
(24:50):
a kale smoothie with a bit of glitter on top.
I don't need glitter. I don't want kale either. But
Amazon thinks it's a party. It tastes like it's disgusting. Meanwhile,
the fan, what does the fan want? I just want
to chill out. Most people that consume sports, it's a pastime.
(25:11):
It's something you do after a long day at work.
It's something that you do to kind of chill out,
and you just want to have a beer and some
hot wings or whatever your jam is. For me, it's
chicken fingers. You don't want some corporate ted talk about
celebrating and educating. Celebrating and educating. This isn't broadcasting. It's
narrow casting and it's marketing, is what it is. It's
(25:35):
those things. And Amazon just announced to the world that
they'd rather be what Oprah's book Club than Monday Night
Basketball or whatever it's going to be now, the other
conspiracy let me put on my tinfoil hat here. So
the other conspiracy on this is that the NBA wanted this,
(25:55):
that this is what the NBA wants, That the Amazon
people are just file following the marching orders of big Basketball.
And for a while I have heard from the people
that I know that work in the NBA that the
league office and I'm not sure exactly whether it's Adam
Silver or people below Adam Silver, it doesn't really matter.
(26:16):
People that live in that Manhattan bubble bubble that work
in the in the NBA league offices have long been
bothered by what they deem a negative cloud that covers
the NBA, that they don't celebrate. They don't celebrate basketball.
So when I heard the word celebrate, that was immediately
(26:39):
an alarm bell that went on, Well, wait a minute.
That's one of the things that I've heard in the
feedback I've got. They were very upset with Jeff Van
Gundy for his criticism of the sport, for his criticism
of the officiating. He has been exiled. He's on the
LA Clippers coaching staff. So Van Gundy is an example
of that. They also, despite being tremendously popular, have issues
(27:03):
with Charles Barkley and Shaquill O'Neal and the whole shocking
of fool mocking some of the players and Charles Barkley,
those guys who are unhinged with their commentary. It does
rub people wrong and they're bothered. People work for the NBA,
some of them, again, not all of them. This is
a small minority, but clearly a vocal minority who have
(27:23):
been bothered by that presentation of their product. They believe
that their product is all high and mighty and that
they should celebrate. That's the celebrate thing. The other concern
the NBA has is the fan base getting older people
my age and older that like basketball, and younger people
(27:47):
only consume the highlights, which is appropriate because we did
a rant about Adam Silver and his situation where he
said it's just a highlight sport and then he tried
to put tried to unring the bell and all that.
So I bring this up in addition because the perception
is that Amazon Prime is going to be a younger
audience and that there'll be people that will click on
(28:10):
Amazon Prime that aren't basketball fans, and so they want
the league office wants to educate the people that are
casuals that are not fully invested, which seems fine in theory,
but in reality not so good because you're offending your
(28:33):
base to gain what a few more possible consumers of
your product, but you're going to upset a larger percentage
of people that already know the game and don't want
to be educated like they're in kindergarten and learn the
ABC's and the one two threes. They already know that stuff.
(28:54):
They're already aware of that stuff. All right, we'll get
out on that. Danny should join me at some point.
We'll have a new podcast on Saturday and a new
one on Sunday. By the way, before I forget, if
you want to send an email in I checked the
other day. I have not checked this morning here on Friday,
(29:14):
but the other day we were a little slow in
the email. So if we don't get enough, we will
not have a mailbag. So if you want to be
in the mail bag and make sure we have a
Sunday pod, I mean, we're planning on doing it. We
have a few, but we usually have a lot more
than this, so I don't know what happened with the email.
So hopefully we'll get a few more of you to
(29:35):
send us an email. Real fifth hour at gmail dot
com is the email address. That's real fifth hour at
gmail dot com and just all letters, no numbers. Name
in city if you want credit, Name in city if
you want credit, and that is that. Have a wonderful
(29:56):
rest of your Friday. It's a final Friday. Days of
a baseball regular season. That's almost over. We got some
college football today and then the big weekend. We'll cover
it all as we go forward. But have a great,
glorious rest of your Friday. We will talk to you
next time. And as Danny g would say, Asta pasta
(30:20):
or is it later, skater, Aloha means goodbye riva, don
jay or bye bye see. That's what Dick and Dayton says.
Bye bye, gotta murder, I gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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