January 10, 2026 • 30 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Saturday podcast for you! Ben Maller returns with a spicy hot edition of the Fifth Hour Podcast. Binge Benny is featured for the big NFL Wild Card Weekend. Ben also celebrates the return of Al Michaels to NFL broadcasts in 2026 and workshops his dream of being the campaign manager for the NGP, the new green party. (It's not what you think!)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler,
as we hang out together here on this Saturday. It
is the tenth day of January, and it is odd.
On this podcast, we have Binge, Benny, Me and Al
and campaign manager, all of that free weekend audio for you.
(00:54):
We do this not just for the American people, for
all people. Every man will in child. But we begin
with this so it is wild Card Weekend. I don't
if you know about that, but it's Wildcard weekend. Today's
wild Card Saturday, and it is about to explode like
a firecracker in a fireworks factory. It all gets going now.
(01:16):
We're doing this in the morning, so it gets going
a little bit later today. But if you thought the
last season of what was it called the Last of
US season two. I believe it was last year. I
read that that was the most binged show of twenty
twenty five. It had thirty million viewers glued to the
zombie apocalypse drama rama. Wait until you get your hands
(01:42):
on what myself and Tom Looney have in store for
you today. If you haven't watched it yet, we continue
our mission, our life's work, Benny Versus the Penny. There
are three full episodes every NFL playoff game, handicapped this
weekend against the spread, Locked and loaded. This is the
(02:02):
original rest of be back from our NBC glory days,
and it's must see Tube, not must see TV. It's
must see Tube. It's at Bennie Versus Penny at Benni
Vspenny on YouTube. From the Rams Panthers as Carolina, the
biggest home dog in NFL playoff history, at LA looking
(02:24):
to stomp and get revenge Wink Wink not no after
losing the Carolina during the regular season, and the Steelers
and Texans air and Rogers first playoff game as a
Pittsburgh Steeler and the Steelers trying to recreate that Steel
Curtain defense versus Houston, which appears to have the steel
curtain defense the Texans, although CJ. Stroud has not played
(02:47):
well in the road or on the road in the playoffs.
Now we are breaking down every game, spreads, we got
a little humor, spice that on top. There some sneaky trends,
you name it, fun facts, slice, singing up, sharper than
a butcher on Adderall we got you covered on that,
we got you covened on that. Now, think of it
as the super Bowl of binge watching BVP. But you
(03:10):
don't have to wait years and years, and you know
seasons and seasons and there's no gap, and much better
than those poor dopes who have to watch that stuff
on HBO three straight nights. If you want to do
it that way, Saturday, Sunday and money. Of course you
should watch it today before the games. Otherwise it's kind
of pointless, a NonStop playoff chaos. It's kind of like
(03:31):
upgrading from rabbit eared TV to four K gridiron insanity.
You know, Tom's got his dope e one liners, silly shirts,
bad art which hit harder than a Sequon Barkley stiff arm.
And then I'll toss on top of that a study diet.
According to Alfie Allen, a punter and ferdog of analogies
(03:54):
that are supposed to fly faster than Tom Brady running
away from the mess that is the Raiders. Now these
things hotter Benny versus Penny than asphalt in July. And
it's not just your standards sports gambling show. It's appointment
viewing that'll keep you glued like a kid who's got
(04:15):
a sugar rush and looking at all the other candy
in the candy shop through the window. So you don't
need to scoll Netflix today or tomorrow or Monday. You
can mainline the most addictive sports gambling show around three
episodes against zero filler, pure playoff adrenaline. So grab your
wings or my case, the chicken fingers. You mute your
(04:37):
little annoying friends and your group chat the haters, and
fire up Benny versus the Penny. Just like JT the Wingman,
I always smile because JT the wing Man sends me
a photo he's on the treadmill, he's doing the gym
thing on the weekends, and he's got Benny versus the
pennies watching. It's great. And trust me, bro, trust me, Bro,
(04:57):
Once you start, you won't stop until until the show's
over and that's it. But that's that's what binge watching is.
So Benny binge or binge Benny or whatever you want
to call it. And forget the last of us. That
looks like a snoozefest compared to Benny versus the penny.
So enjoy. So turn your page from that. Me and
(05:18):
al let us jenuflect. Let a little candle, Let me
lower my voice. Why because the word is al Michaels
is coming back. Let us discuss. So if you didn't
see this, the news came out yesterday on Friday, and
(05:38):
the question what is your reac shan to al Michaels
staying in the Thursday night booth calling NFL games in
what will be his age eighty two season on planet
Earth in the year twenty twenty six. So my thoughts
on this, I've got the art of pitching, sainthood and
(06:00):
slow cooked stew and we will combine all of these
things together and we are going to make delicious soft pretzels,
is what we're going to make. So let's start with this.
Amazon Prime did confirm I was reading about this yesterday.
They confirmed the ageless wonder We'll be back in the
booth for the upcoming next season. Still of the playoff's
(06:21):
going on, and if you listen closely, if you listen
close to you could hear the groans of social media
a holes, the nitpickers being drowned out by the sound
of a perfectly time pause between a third down snap
building up the drama. Now, Al says that the passion
(06:43):
still exists. He said, quote, I feel really good, still
love what I do. Let me translate that using the
Mallard decoder ring. That means that he does he have
the fast ball. No, it's the art of pitching. There's
more ways than just one to get hitters out. You can, Yeah,
(07:03):
you can overpower a batter with ninety seven mile on
hour fastballs. Yeah. However, Al, at this point he didn't
have the fastball anymore. He's just trying to beguile hitters
with finesse and finesse pitchers rely on what change ups, curveballs,
dramatic pauses, and other breaking pitches, and so Tonight, Al
Michaels is on the call Packers and Bears at Soldier
(07:28):
Field on the shores of Lake Michigan. His thirty first
NFL broadcast from the Cathedral by the Lake thirty one.
It's not a resume, that is a time capsule. His
first game there was in nineteen eighty six. Ronald Reagan
was in off his hair spray, was undefeated, and people
(07:51):
still believe that the Bears quarterback situation would sort itself out. Yeah.
Of course, at that time, the Bears had tremendous, tremendous
def So al Michaels has been the primary voice of
Thursday Night Football on Amazon since twenty twenty two. Here
we are in twenty twenty six, and that extends a
run of forty years, four decades of Al Michael's on primetime.
(08:17):
That's two generations that have grown up with Al Michaels
on NFL primetime games. Now, for me, Al is on
the path to sainthood for broadcasters, if there is such
a thing. Someday he will be entombed in the Valley
of the Kings with microphones wrapped in a linen made
out of his old play charts, his old call sheets,
(08:38):
clutching the microphone, whispering, do you believe in miracles? I
could see that happening, unless I can. Yeah, that miracle,
by the way, the miracle on ice the big one,
the big one. And if you're keeping score, that call alone,
that miracle on ice call alone, all those years ago
earns Al Michaels a lifetime exemption from the hot take
(09:02):
goolog Right, he gets a full exemption from the hot
take attacks and all that. But wait, there's more. Like
every good infomercial, Al didn't stop there. He just kept
going and going and going, like the energizer buddy. More like,
I guess an Al's case, a classic buick that has
a lot of miles refuses to die because it was
(09:23):
actually built back when people titaned bolts, made things with
pride and made things to last, didn't make things to
fall apart. Within a couple of years now, Al started
calling games I think I saw was nineteen seventy one.
Nineteen seventy one called the Reds, the Giants called baseball
minor league baseball in Hawaii, back when they had a
(09:45):
minor league team in Hawaii. Let me paint the picture
Mallar style to put in perspective here. The nineteen seventy
one Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick was in the White House.
Watergate had blown the doors off yet a home, the
Median Home cost in America twenty four thousand dollars. A
(10:07):
new car was thirty five hundred dollars. You get gas.
A gallon of gas would cost you thirty six cents.
A stamp was eight cents. We just had one of
our buddies from Ohio sent a nice gift package of
things because you can visit the studio. One of our
guys in Dayton fifty dollars in shipping. Fifty dollars this
(10:27):
guy spent to send packages to the studio. A stamp
back then eight cents. Cigarettes. You're smoker forty five cents
a pack of cigarettes if you love the nicotine. In
other words, to put a ball on this, if you
had twenty bucks, you were like Rockefeller, or a more
modern reference I guess would be Jeff Bezos or any
(10:50):
of those rich tech guys that run the run the
world right Elon Musk. So, according to the inflation mallor math,
if you had twenty dollars when al Michael started brought
casting in nineteen seventy one, one hundred and you'd have
one hundred and fifty eight dollars. One hundred and fifty
eight dollars you would have. So if you had one
(11:12):
hundred dollars back then, you'd have over six hundred dollars today.
If my malord math is correct. That's a costco run
with emotional damage. And through all of that, think about
what has happened in the world since nineteen seventy one Wars.
We've had attacked nine to eleven wokesters. We've had all
kinds of freaks of nature that have taken over pop
(11:34):
culture and whatnot. The rules have changed. Streaming is now
a thing. Podcasting what we're doing right now, the invention
in NFL games of the blue medical tent. When Al
started calling NFL games, if you got knocked out, just
rub some dirt in your forehead, don't be a pussy
(11:54):
willow and get back out on the field. Now everything
stops and all that, and so Al Michaels has been there,
He's seen it. This is not his first rodeo. He's
been around the block a couple of times as well,
calmly narrating all the football chaos. And he's like a
museum guide for the NFL. Think about it. He started
(12:17):
was Pete Roselle was the commissioner the NFL back in
the day. And how Luckierre we how Luckierre we that Now,
after this season wraps, Al Michaels he said he's heading
to Lake Placid to honor the gold medal US hockey team,
which helped also elevate his career, and during a recent
(12:41):
chit chat, Al laid out the secret he told Mad
Dog the secret sauce to longevity. He said, I'll go
as long as I can if I can still do
it at the level that satisfies me. Not you, by
the way, And that's not ego, that's a standard. The
standard is the standard, as Mike Thomon likes to say.
And that is the same thing you know, it's it's
(13:03):
the same thing that that's missing when people scream online.
Al's lost it. I don't like this. He's not exciting enough.
He doesn't bark, he's not action. He's not acting like
a caffeinated auctioneer. He's not doing that. What's wrong with you?
Come on, Al? Come on? Al. Al doesn't shout, he
(13:25):
doesn't obviously not. I'm hear say he does. He lets
the moment breathe. And if it was music, he is
not electric dance music. He's obviously not. He's not disco.
He's smooth jazz, keeping your jazz commercial free. Al Michaels,
(13:45):
he's a fireplace. He's not a ring light. You want
a ring light, He's not a ring light. He don't
know what a ring light is. And let's talk about
the komodo dragging the room, the snuffle effects in the room.
Respect for your elders. Now, in many Asian cultures, In
many Asian cultures, elders are revered. Wisdom is currency. It
(14:10):
is you need to learn from these people, you need
to appreciate them. In America, we send grandpa to the
convalescent home to play shuffleboard and bingo and tell him
to stop bothering us. You're telling me the same story,
you old geezer. What is wrong with you? And I
(14:31):
to that, I say, foe foo. If broadcasting we're a monastery,
al Michaels would be the monk. Everyone actually sits around
and listens to tell me another story. Al Michaels, I
want to hear another story. Now. You know how I
feel about social media being the matrix and all that.
This social media hullabaloo, the pandemonium around al Michaels, I
(14:53):
believe is largely manufactured. Now, what is my evidence on that.
So I had some downtime yesterday and I started fussing
around with my phone and I clicked on one of
the stories that had al Michaels returning to Amazon because
I was interested in it and I wanted to see
what was going on, And so I accidentally saw some
of the comments on there, and then I said, oh,
(15:15):
let me much like the matrix, let me fall down
the rabbit hole. And I did, and I started clicking
on people that were just bashing the hell out al Michaels,
just dropping a guillotine on top of his neck. And
so I kept going through and I noticed as I
was going through this, most, not all, most of the
(15:36):
accounts had all the hallmarks, all the earmarks of fake accounts,
bought accounts. Now, the part I don't understand, and I'm
not that smart, you know, I'm just doing a weekend
podcast right now and I do the overnight show, is
what is the agenda there? Like why would someone have
an orchestrated bought attack against al Michaels. It doesn't make
(15:57):
a lot of sense to me, Like there's some bot
farm in Maldo where they're like, all right, let's stop
attacking Trump. Let's talk, let's attack Al Michaels. I don't
understand that, but there they were all the things that
I'm told to look for. The low number of followers,
the same amount of people you're following, there's a certain
algorithm that tells you it's a bot. And most of
(16:19):
these accounts that were taking shots at Al Michaels were
fake accounts, and they were saying a lot of the
same things anyway, saying a lot of same things anyway,
So I think this is mostly manufactured. You'd think that
Al takes a horse and buggy to work. And one
thing about Al, he always stays at the Presidential Suite
when he travels, and he's got car service, And yeah,
(16:42):
he doesn't. He doesn't do the horse and buggy. He prepares,
he watches. He knows when to speak. He also knows
when to shut up. And that skill alone puts him
ahead of ninety five percent of the younger generation of announcers,
who treat every second like they're trying to get a
viral moment on TikTok. Every single moment needs to go
(17:04):
viral on the TikTok and all that stuff, and it
just come on, take a breath, Take a breath, as
Doc Mike would say. Now, there are exceptions. I'm not
gonna say there's every young get off my lawn, every
young broadcast Noah Eagle Pops Future Goat Noah Eagle, Amazing,
Amazing on NBC. Had a chance to meet him as
(17:27):
a young lad. He's like nineteen, he started doing Clipper
games on the radio, and so he's the exception of
the rule. But by and large, the new wave is
loud soup. It's all salt, no stock and al Michaels.
He's like, I'm not some loud soup. I'm not all salt,
I'm not no stock. I'm slow cook Stew is what
(17:52):
I am? Slow cook stew. That is me, That is me?
And yes, is he mellow at time? Yeah he is.
He's mellow now, his inflections don't spike like a heart
monitor in a horror movie. And there's a level of
confidence that he's still able to call a great game
and he doesn't have to go up and all that stuff.
(18:14):
And when you've seen everything, you don't flinch at a
screen pass. You don't. And as an added bonus, and
I must full disclosure talk about this as an added
bonus personal bias alert, as I have something in common
with al Michaels. We shared dietary habits. The most famous
(18:34):
quirk of the life of al Michaels, who famously said
that he never has eaten a vegetable ever. He said, quote,
man does not need vegetables to survive. Quotes quote That
is not a diet, That is a philosophy, that is
a life goal. Meat, potatoes and destiny. And I believe
(18:57):
in the cause. I believe, I stand and in lockstep.
I stand in lockstep with al Michaels. I do, I
just say, And so tonight, when al Michaels opens his
mouth and the game begins, al Michaels and Herbie understand
(19:18):
what you're hearing. I understand. You're not just hearing Packers
versus Bears, dumb bears, the Green Packers and the Rgo Bears,
the monstrous of Midway, the trees hells. Make sure when
you come down, stop at the Cheese Castle and Kenosha
on your way down from Green Bay. What you're hearing
is greatness, continuity, history. You're hearing history. You're hearing a
(19:44):
living archive who still loves what he does and does
what he loves the craft, right that. Yeah, is it nostalgia?
Of course it is for me part of it. You know,
growing up, I was a little nine year old kid.
I wanted to be on the radio. I want to
be on TV. And there was al Michael's calling him
Monday night game with you know, I'm trying to think
who he was with at that time. It was Frank Gifford,
(20:07):
or might have even been before that he was. I
remember watching al Michael's doing a Monday night baseball game
before before time, and it was him, And how would
co sell? It's just great? And so he still does
it and he meets his own standards, not your standards,
and Amazon's okay with it, and Jim Harball would say,
(20:28):
who's got it better than us? And again, how lucky
are we? So I urge you to enjoy it while
you can't. Is this is getting eighty two? You're eighty two?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
You know?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah? That many more games to call, you know, because someday,
and sooner than later, the booth will be quieter. They'll
get some hot shot hipster broadcaster in there, and the
pauses are going to be gone, and you'll realize what
you know hemy once in a while. It'd be nice
if you just hit the pause button. That'd be pretty cool.
(21:01):
I meanwhile, turning the page. Let's workshop. I'm gonna continue
the anti vegetable movement that Al Michaels gave that famous quote,
one of the great quotes of all time. Man does
not need vegetables to survive, and Al is the proof
of that. He said, well, you don't need your vegetable.
I remember my mom, If you don't need your vegetables,
you're not gonna grow tall. You're not You're bah blah
(21:21):
blah blah b Well, mom, Al Michaels is eighty gonna
be eighty two and seems perfectly fine. That's a good run.
He's on bonus time, right. He's in the average life
like seventy five, I think, or something like the average
mail is to about seventy five. So Al's on bonus time.
He's on bonus time. Good for him. Now, I got
to tell you, I'm still traumatized by the little rascals.
(21:44):
I used to watch reruns when I was a kid.
That character Alfalfa, they say, the father of all foods.
Alfalfa for me, it was nightmare fuel. For me. It
was nightmare fuel. It was, And so I said, we're
going to workshop this anti vegetable movement. Let's think of
this like politics. You know, you have people fighting team red,
team blue. There's very few bipartisan issues. And I understand
(22:07):
there's already a Green Party. I know there's a Green Party,
but this is the New Green Party, all right, n GP,
the New Green Party. Did you write that down? Yeah?
N g e New Green Party. And al Michaels is
(22:29):
part of our party. Puka Nakool of the Rams and yours.
Truly we are all big anti veggie people. Now imagine
if you will, that for this little exercise, little workshop,
I am the campaign manager some pillars of our movement
against the industrialized agriculture in America, Big Aggie, we'll call
(22:53):
it big Aggie, big Farm. I can't say pharma because
that's that's pharmaceudals. So our slogans here, what would they be?
I'm the campaign Meager Vegetable lives matter, stand up, speak out,
stop the slaughter of salad, to stop it, stop it.
(23:13):
This election season, I want you to join the anti
veggie movement because every carot deserves a future, every broccoli
deserves a childhood and every legome deserves liberty. Dropped the mic.
(23:33):
How about this? For too long? Big salad has controlled
the narrative. For too long. Humans have marched into grocery
stores like zombies, with reckless abandon ripping innocent greens from
their homes, tearing families of asparagus apart, and sentencing helpless
zucchinis to life on a cutting board. No more, no more,
(24:00):
put us stop this right now. And I urge you.
I beg you to join the NGP, the New Green Party.
It's not bad, right, I mean, it can touch it
up a little bit. We'll clean that up and post. Now,
if I were to make a thirty second political ad,
as you know, I love my Live Reads, it's our
(24:23):
number one, our number two. So let's let's attempt this,
all right. I want you to let me know what
you think, and if this becomes a thing, we can start.
But again, the NGP, the New Green Party. So this
is a thirty second think of this like a political
ad election season, Vegetable Lives Matter vl M or whatever.
(24:49):
So it starts out in my head, and again this
is the cartoon bubble the top my head. So it
starts out with some somber piano music, and then there's
a slow zoom on a lonely carrot in a field,
and it's all by itself. It's all by itself. And
then the the commercial starts, and I'm just imagine I'm
(25:11):
the narrator. It's Ben Maler here to speak out against
the industrial complex of big veggie. For too long in
this country, innocent vegetables have suffered in silence, ripped from
their homes, chopped without mercy, tossed into salads without a
second thought. So at this point and paused the commercial.
(25:34):
It's a TV commercial, so we cut to black and
white footage of broccolia, a really beautiful piece of broccoli
trembling in the wind. Now we get back to the
narrator voice. I'm gonna be the narrator, but now I
gotta go. Let me do that. I got aho slur.
But now a movement rises, a movement that says no more,
(25:56):
a movement that believes every leafy green deserves the chance
to live a long, full, productive life in nature where
they belong, not on your dinner plate. So we then change,
because it's TV commercial, so we have the music really
starts to swell at this point, it's like, really, you know,
(26:18):
you know, it's a real sappy yeah. And then we'll
sell patriotism. We'll get the American flag. We'll have that light,
you know, lighting that American flag style lighting behind and
then an untouched it's all emotional here, untouched head of lettuce.
So so sappy music, just imagine that. And then you
(26:42):
got that lighting like it's on the American flag and
then behind the untouched head of lettuce. All right, let's
get back to the to the copy. So the narrative was,
join the anti vegetable movement, stand up for spinach, fight
for freedom of peas, protect the pod born. All right.
Then we pause again because it's TV commercials, so we
(27:03):
pause again, dramatic, dramatic pause. Vegetable lives matter because even
salads deserve justice. And then you fade fade to black,
and then you put on there paid for by the
New Green Party. All right, so yeah, we can dress
(27:24):
it up a little bit. That's just my idea, just
my idea for my campaign. I think we can all
get behind that. I think everyone will get behind that
and we will all be better off. And that is
the one thing we can all find appealing, because even
people that eat vegetables don't usually like they pretend likely
(27:46):
like vegetable. You know, I'm talking those people that are like, oh,
I like vegetable, I'm a vegetable person. I'm better than
you and all this stuff. I'm like, I don't think
you're I think you're just programmed, right, You're indoctrinated into that.
And that's the issue there, you and your little leafy
greens and all that stuff. I know, the smell of califlower,
(28:08):
you think that's good. You might want to grow to
the doctor. You look forward to eating a plate of
Brussels sprouts. I think you had some trauma as a child. Hey,
you think a sweet potato is as good as a
regular potato? Come on, now, there is an exception, and
I fully admit it, because every rule has an exception. Garlic.
Garlic is the exception. That's it. That's the only exception.
(28:33):
And I don't want to hear any complaints about that.
And technically they say garlic is the vegetable, but I
just believe that's because the garlic people. The garlic people
want garlic to be part of the vegetable community because
they think it's cool. They think it's cool. And we
all know that garlic is a crossover because it can
(28:54):
deter vampires from attacking. And who wants to be a
act by vampires? I don't know anybody wants to be
attacked by vampires. And so vampires exposed the garlic, uh,
you know what, they just they have terrible problems. It's
a big issue for them in the vampire community. And
(29:14):
and the other thing is it's it's a great vegetable.
And for those of us that are part of the
movement here against the just shoving vegetables down our throat,
the garlic again, we consider that a non vegetable. It's it's,
it's it's it's a little bit of this. It's like
a super thing, is what. And it's nature's antibiotic, right,
(29:38):
Garlic is nature's antibiotic, and so we we take that
as our own anyway, all right, we'll get out on that,
have a wonderful rest of your Saturday, and please enjoy
those NFL games Benny versus the pay Remember you gotta
binge watch Benny versus the Penny. And we will have
a mail bag for you, have a mail bag for you,
and we'll do that on obviously tomorrow on Sunday and
(30:02):
talk to you then Aloha. I think that Aloha right, yeah,
okay now bopulation
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. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler,
as we hang out together here on this Saturday. It
is the tenth day of January, and it is odd.
On this podcast, we have Binge, Benny, Me and Al
and campaign manager, all of that free weekend audio for you.
(00:54):
We do this not just for the American people, for
all people. Every man will in child. But we begin
with this so it is wild Card Weekend. I don't
if you know about that, but it's Wildcard weekend. Today's
wild Card Saturday, and it is about to explode like
a firecracker in a fireworks factory. It all gets going now.
(01:16):
We're doing this in the morning, so it gets going
a little bit later today. But if you thought the
last season of what was it called the Last of
US season two. I believe it was last year. I
read that that was the most binged show of twenty
twenty five. It had thirty million viewers glued to the
zombie apocalypse drama rama. Wait until you get your hands
(01:42):
on what myself and Tom Looney have in store for
you today. If you haven't watched it yet, we continue
our mission, our life's work, Benny Versus the Penny. There
are three full episodes every NFL playoff game, handicapped this
weekend against the spread, Locked and loaded. This is the
(02:02):
original rest of be back from our NBC glory days,
and it's must see Tube, not must see TV. It's
must see Tube. It's at Bennie Versus Penny at Benni
Vspenny on YouTube. From the Rams Panthers as Carolina, the
biggest home dog in NFL playoff history, at LA looking
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to stomp and get revenge Wink Wink not no after
losing the Carolina during the regular season, and the Steelers
and Texans air and Rogers first playoff game as a
Pittsburgh Steeler and the Steelers trying to recreate that Steel
Curtain defense versus Houston, which appears to have the steel
curtain defense the Texans, although CJ. Stroud has not played
(02:47):
well in the road or on the road in the playoffs.
Now we are breaking down every game, spreads, we got
a little humor, spice that on top. There some sneaky trends,
you name it, fun facts, slice, singing up, sharper than
a butcher on Adderall we got you covered on that,
we got you covened on that. Now, think of it
as the super Bowl of binge watching BVP. But you
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don't have to wait years and years, and you know
seasons and seasons and there's no gap, and much better
than those poor dopes who have to watch that stuff
on HBO three straight nights. If you want to do
it that way, Saturday, Sunday and money. Of course you
should watch it today before the games. Otherwise it's kind
of pointless, a NonStop playoff chaos. It's kind of like
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upgrading from rabbit eared TV to four K gridiron insanity.
You know, Tom's got his dope e one liners, silly shirts,
bad art which hit harder than a Sequon Barkley stiff arm.
And then I'll toss on top of that a study diet.
According to Alfie Allen, a punter and ferdog of analogies
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that are supposed to fly faster than Tom Brady running
away from the mess that is the Raiders. Now these
things hotter Benny versus Penny than asphalt in July. And
it's not just your standards sports gambling show. It's appointment
viewing that'll keep you glued like a kid who's got
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a sugar rush and looking at all the other candy
in the candy shop through the window. So you don't
need to scoll Netflix today or tomorrow or Monday. You
can mainline the most addictive sports gambling show around three
episodes against zero filler, pure playoff adrenaline. So grab your
wings or my case, the chicken fingers. You mute your
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little annoying friends and your group chat the haters, and
fire up Benny versus the Penny. Just like JT the Wingman,
I always smile because JT the wing Man sends me
a photo he's on the treadmill, he's doing the gym
thing on the weekends, and he's got Benny versus the
pennies watching. It's great. And trust me, bro, trust me, Bro,
(04:57):
Once you start, you won't stop until until the show's
over and that's it. But that's that's what binge watching is.
So Benny binge or binge Benny or whatever you want
to call it. And forget the last of us. That
looks like a snoozefest compared to Benny versus the penny.
So enjoy. So turn your page from that. Me and
(05:18):
al let us jenuflect. Let a little candle, Let me
lower my voice. Why because the word is al Michaels
is coming back. Let us discuss. So if you didn't
see this, the news came out yesterday on Friday, and
(05:38):
the question what is your reac shan to al Michaels
staying in the Thursday night booth calling NFL games in
what will be his age eighty two season on planet
Earth in the year twenty twenty six. So my thoughts
on this, I've got the art of pitching, sainthood and
(06:00):
slow cooked stew and we will combine all of these
things together and we are going to make delicious soft pretzels,
is what we're going to make. So let's start with this.
Amazon Prime did confirm I was reading about this yesterday.
They confirmed the ageless wonder We'll be back in the
booth for the upcoming next season. Still of the playoff's
(06:21):
going on, and if you listen closely, if you listen
close to you could hear the groans of social media
a holes, the nitpickers being drowned out by the sound
of a perfectly time pause between a third down snap
building up the drama. Now, Al says that the passion
(06:43):
still exists. He said, quote, I feel really good, still
love what I do. Let me translate that using the
Mallard decoder ring. That means that he does he have
the fast ball. No, it's the art of pitching. There's
more ways than just one to get hitters out. You can, Yeah,
(07:03):
you can overpower a batter with ninety seven mile on
hour fastballs. Yeah. However, Al, at this point he didn't
have the fastball anymore. He's just trying to beguile hitters
with finesse and finesse pitchers rely on what change ups, curveballs,
dramatic pauses, and other breaking pitches, and so Tonight, Al
Michaels is on the call Packers and Bears at Soldier
(07:28):
Field on the shores of Lake Michigan. His thirty first
NFL broadcast from the Cathedral by the Lake thirty one.
It's not a resume, that is a time capsule. His
first game there was in nineteen eighty six. Ronald Reagan
was in off his hair spray, was undefeated, and people
(07:51):
still believe that the Bears quarterback situation would sort itself out. Yeah.
Of course, at that time, the Bears had tremendous, tremendous
def So al Michaels has been the primary voice of
Thursday Night Football on Amazon since twenty twenty two. Here
we are in twenty twenty six, and that extends a
run of forty years, four decades of Al Michael's on primetime.
(08:17):
That's two generations that have grown up with Al Michaels
on NFL primetime games. Now, for me, Al is on
the path to sainthood for broadcasters, if there is such
a thing. Someday he will be entombed in the Valley
of the Kings with microphones wrapped in a linen made
out of his old play charts, his old call sheets,
(08:38):
clutching the microphone, whispering, do you believe in miracles? I
could see that happening, unless I can. Yeah, that miracle,
by the way, the miracle on ice the big one,
the big one. And if you're keeping score, that call alone,
that miracle on ice call alone, all those years ago
earns Al Michaels a lifetime exemption from the hot take
(09:02):
goolog Right, he gets a full exemption from the hot
take attacks and all that. But wait, there's more. Like
every good infomercial, Al didn't stop there. He just kept
going and going and going, like the energizer buddy. More like,
I guess an Al's case, a classic buick that has
a lot of miles refuses to die because it was
(09:23):
actually built back when people titaned bolts, made things with
pride and made things to last, didn't make things to
fall apart. Within a couple of years now, Al started
calling games I think I saw was nineteen seventy one.
Nineteen seventy one called the Reds, the Giants called baseball
minor league baseball in Hawaii, back when they had a
(09:45):
minor league team in Hawaii. Let me paint the picture
Mallar style to put in perspective here. The nineteen seventy
one Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick was in the White House.
Watergate had blown the doors off yet a home, the
Median Home cost in America twenty four thousand dollars. A
(10:07):
new car was thirty five hundred dollars. You get gas.
A gallon of gas would cost you thirty six cents.
A stamp was eight cents. We just had one of
our buddies from Ohio sent a nice gift package of
things because you can visit the studio. One of our
guys in Dayton fifty dollars in shipping. Fifty dollars this
(10:27):
guy spent to send packages to the studio. A stamp
back then eight cents. Cigarettes. You're smoker forty five cents
a pack of cigarettes if you love the nicotine. In
other words, to put a ball on this, if you
had twenty bucks, you were like Rockefeller, or a more
modern reference I guess would be Jeff Bezos or any
(10:50):
of those rich tech guys that run the run the
world right Elon Musk. So, according to the inflation mallor math,
if you had twenty dollars when al Michael started brought
casting in nineteen seventy one, one hundred and you'd have
one hundred and fifty eight dollars. One hundred and fifty
eight dollars you would have. So if you had one
(11:12):
hundred dollars back then, you'd have over six hundred dollars today.
If my malord math is correct. That's a costco run
with emotional damage. And through all of that, think about
what has happened in the world since nineteen seventy one Wars.
We've had attacked nine to eleven wokesters. We've had all
kinds of freaks of nature that have taken over pop
(11:34):
culture and whatnot. The rules have changed. Streaming is now
a thing. Podcasting what we're doing right now, the invention
in NFL games of the blue medical tent. When Al
started calling NFL games, if you got knocked out, just
rub some dirt in your forehead, don't be a pussy
(11:54):
willow and get back out on the field. Now everything
stops and all that, and so Al Michaels has been there,
He's seen it. This is not his first rodeo. He's
been around the block a couple of times as well,
calmly narrating all the football chaos. And he's like a
museum guide for the NFL. Think about it. He started
(12:17):
was Pete Roselle was the commissioner the NFL back in
the day. And how Luckierre we how Luckierre we that Now,
after this season wraps, Al Michaels he said he's heading
to Lake Placid to honor the gold medal US hockey team,
which helped also elevate his career, and during a recent
(12:41):
chit chat, Al laid out the secret he told Mad
Dog the secret sauce to longevity. He said, I'll go
as long as I can if I can still do
it at the level that satisfies me. Not you, by
the way, And that's not ego, that's a standard. The
standard is the standard, as Mike Thomon likes to say.
And that is the same thing you know, it's it's
(13:03):
the same thing that that's missing when people scream online.
Al's lost it. I don't like this. He's not exciting enough.
He doesn't bark, he's not action. He's not acting like
a caffeinated auctioneer. He's not doing that. What's wrong with you?
Come on, Al? Come on? Al. Al doesn't shout, he
(13:25):
doesn't obviously not. I'm hear say he does. He lets
the moment breathe. And if it was music, he is
not electric dance music. He's obviously not. He's not disco.
He's smooth jazz, keeping your jazz commercial free. Al Michaels,
(13:45):
he's a fireplace. He's not a ring light. You want
a ring light, He's not a ring light. He don't
know what a ring light is. And let's talk about
the komodo dragging the room, the snuffle effects in the room.
Respect for your elders. Now, in many Asian cultures, In
many Asian cultures, elders are revered. Wisdom is currency. It
(14:10):
is you need to learn from these people, you need
to appreciate them. In America, we send grandpa to the
convalescent home to play shuffleboard and bingo and tell him
to stop bothering us. You're telling me the same story,
you old geezer. What is wrong with you? And I
(14:31):
to that, I say, foe foo. If broadcasting we're a monastery,
al Michaels would be the monk. Everyone actually sits around
and listens to tell me another story. Al Michaels, I
want to hear another story. Now. You know how I
feel about social media being the matrix and all that.
This social media hullabaloo, the pandemonium around al Michaels, I
(14:53):
believe is largely manufactured. Now, what is my evidence on that.
So I had some downtime yesterday and I started fussing
around with my phone and I clicked on one of
the stories that had al Michaels returning to Amazon because
I was interested in it and I wanted to see
what was going on, And so I accidentally saw some
of the comments on there, and then I said, oh,
(15:15):
let me much like the matrix, let me fall down
the rabbit hole. And I did, and I started clicking
on people that were just bashing the hell out al Michaels,
just dropping a guillotine on top of his neck. And
so I kept going through and I noticed as I
was going through this, most, not all, most of the
(15:36):
accounts had all the hallmarks, all the earmarks of fake accounts,
bought accounts. Now, the part I don't understand, and I'm
not that smart, you know, I'm just doing a weekend
podcast right now and I do the overnight show, is
what is the agenda there? Like why would someone have
an orchestrated bought attack against al Michaels. It doesn't make
(15:57):
a lot of sense to me, Like there's some bot
farm in Maldo where they're like, all right, let's stop
attacking Trump. Let's talk, let's attack Al Michaels. I don't
understand that, but there they were all the things that
I'm told to look for. The low number of followers,
the same amount of people you're following, there's a certain
algorithm that tells you it's a bot. And most of
(16:19):
these accounts that were taking shots at Al Michaels were
fake accounts, and they were saying a lot of the
same things anyway, saying a lot of same things anyway,
So I think this is mostly manufactured. You'd think that
Al takes a horse and buggy to work. And one
thing about Al, he always stays at the Presidential Suite
when he travels, and he's got car service, And yeah,
(16:42):
he doesn't. He doesn't do the horse and buggy. He prepares,
he watches. He knows when to speak. He also knows
when to shut up. And that skill alone puts him
ahead of ninety five percent of the younger generation of announcers,
who treat every second like they're trying to get a
viral moment on TikTok. Every single moment needs to go
(17:04):
viral on the TikTok and all that stuff, and it
just come on, take a breath, Take a breath, as
Doc Mike would say. Now, there are exceptions. I'm not
gonna say there's every young get off my lawn, every
young broadcast Noah Eagle Pops Future Goat Noah Eagle, Amazing,
Amazing on NBC. Had a chance to meet him as
(17:27):
a young lad. He's like nineteen, he started doing Clipper
games on the radio, and so he's the exception of
the rule. But by and large, the new wave is
loud soup. It's all salt, no stock and al Michaels.
He's like, I'm not some loud soup. I'm not all salt,
I'm not no stock. I'm slow cook Stew is what
(17:52):
I am? Slow cook stew. That is me, That is me?
And yes, is he mellow at time? Yeah he is.
He's mellow now, his inflections don't spike like a heart
monitor in a horror movie. And there's a level of
confidence that he's still able to call a great game
and he doesn't have to go up and all that stuff.
(18:14):
And when you've seen everything, you don't flinch at a
screen pass. You don't. And as an added bonus, and
I must full disclosure talk about this as an added
bonus personal bias alert, as I have something in common
with al Michaels. We shared dietary habits. The most famous
(18:34):
quirk of the life of al Michaels, who famously said
that he never has eaten a vegetable ever. He said, quote,
man does not need vegetables to survive. Quotes quote That
is not a diet, That is a philosophy, that is
a life goal. Meat, potatoes and destiny. And I believe
(18:57):
in the cause. I believe, I stand and in lockstep.
I stand in lockstep with al Michaels. I do, I
just say, And so tonight, when al Michaels opens his
mouth and the game begins, al Michaels and Herbie understand
(19:18):
what you're hearing. I understand. You're not just hearing Packers
versus Bears, dumb bears, the Green Packers and the Rgo Bears,
the monstrous of Midway, the trees hells. Make sure when
you come down, stop at the Cheese Castle and Kenosha
on your way down from Green Bay. What you're hearing
is greatness, continuity, history. You're hearing history. You're hearing a
(19:44):
living archive who still loves what he does and does
what he loves the craft, right that. Yeah, is it nostalgia?
Of course it is for me part of it. You know,
growing up, I was a little nine year old kid.
I wanted to be on the radio. I want to
be on TV. And there was al Michael's calling him
Monday night game with you know, I'm trying to think
who he was with at that time. It was Frank Gifford,
(20:07):
or might have even been before that he was. I
remember watching al Michael's doing a Monday night baseball game
before before time, and it was him, And how would
co sell? It's just great? And so he still does
it and he meets his own standards, not your standards,
and Amazon's okay with it, and Jim Harball would say,
(20:28):
who's got it better than us? And again, how lucky
are we? So I urge you to enjoy it while
you can't. Is this is getting eighty two? You're eighty two?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
You know?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah? That many more games to call, you know, because someday,
and sooner than later, the booth will be quieter. They'll
get some hot shot hipster broadcaster in there, and the
pauses are going to be gone, and you'll realize what
you know hemy once in a while. It'd be nice
if you just hit the pause button. That'd be pretty cool.
(21:01):
I meanwhile, turning the page. Let's workshop. I'm gonna continue
the anti vegetable movement that Al Michaels gave that famous quote,
one of the great quotes of all time. Man does
not need vegetables to survive, and Al is the proof
of that. He said, well, you don't need your vegetable.
I remember my mom, If you don't need your vegetables,
you're not gonna grow tall. You're not You're bah blah
(21:21):
blah blah b Well, mom, Al Michaels is eighty gonna
be eighty two and seems perfectly fine. That's a good run.
He's on bonus time, right. He's in the average life
like seventy five, I think, or something like the average
mail is to about seventy five. So Al's on bonus time.
He's on bonus time. Good for him. Now, I got
to tell you, I'm still traumatized by the little rascals.
(21:44):
I used to watch reruns when I was a kid.
That character Alfalfa, they say, the father of all foods.
Alfalfa for me, it was nightmare fuel. For me. It
was nightmare fuel. It was, And so I said, we're
going to workshop this anti vegetable movement. Let's think of
this like politics. You know, you have people fighting team red,
team blue. There's very few bipartisan issues. And I understand
(22:07):
there's already a Green Party. I know there's a Green Party,
but this is the New Green Party, all right, n GP,
the New Green Party. Did you write that down? Yeah?
N g e New Green Party. And al Michaels is
(22:29):
part of our party. Puka Nakool of the Rams and yours.
Truly we are all big anti veggie people. Now imagine
if you will, that for this little exercise, little workshop,
I am the campaign manager some pillars of our movement
against the industrialized agriculture in America, Big Aggie, we'll call
(22:53):
it big Aggie, big Farm. I can't say pharma because
that's that's pharmaceudals. So our slogans here, what would they be?
I'm the campaign Meager Vegetable lives matter, stand up, speak out,
stop the slaughter of salad, to stop it, stop it.
(23:13):
This election season, I want you to join the anti
veggie movement because every carot deserves a future, every broccoli
deserves a childhood and every legome deserves liberty. Dropped the mic.
(23:33):
How about this? For too long? Big salad has controlled
the narrative. For too long. Humans have marched into grocery
stores like zombies, with reckless abandon ripping innocent greens from
their homes, tearing families of asparagus apart, and sentencing helpless
zucchinis to life on a cutting board. No more, no more,
(24:00):
put us stop this right now. And I urge you.
I beg you to join the NGP, the New Green Party.
It's not bad, right, I mean, it can touch it
up a little bit. We'll clean that up and post. Now,
if I were to make a thirty second political ad,
as you know, I love my Live Reads, it's our
(24:23):
number one, our number two. So let's let's attempt this,
all right. I want you to let me know what
you think, and if this becomes a thing, we can start.
But again, the NGP, the New Green Party. So this
is a thirty second think of this like a political
ad election season, Vegetable Lives Matter vl M or whatever.
(24:49):
So it starts out in my head, and again this
is the cartoon bubble the top my head. So it
starts out with some somber piano music, and then there's
a slow zoom on a lonely carrot in a field,
and it's all by itself. It's all by itself. And
then the the commercial starts, and I'm just imagine I'm
(25:11):
the narrator. It's Ben Maler here to speak out against
the industrial complex of big veggie. For too long in
this country, innocent vegetables have suffered in silence, ripped from
their homes, chopped without mercy, tossed into salads without a
second thought. So at this point and paused the commercial.
(25:34):
It's a TV commercial, so we cut to black and
white footage of broccolia, a really beautiful piece of broccoli
trembling in the wind. Now we get back to the
narrator voice. I'm gonna be the narrator, but now I
gotta go. Let me do that. I got aho slur.
But now a movement rises, a movement that says no more,
(25:56):
a movement that believes every leafy green deserves the chance
to live a long, full, productive life in nature where
they belong, not on your dinner plate. So we then change,
because it's TV commercial, so we have the music really
starts to swell at this point, it's like, really, you know,
(26:18):
you know, it's a real sappy yeah. And then we'll
sell patriotism. We'll get the American flag. We'll have that light,
you know, lighting that American flag style lighting behind and
then an untouched it's all emotional here, untouched head of lettuce.
So so sappy music, just imagine that. And then you
(26:42):
got that lighting like it's on the American flag and
then behind the untouched head of lettuce. All right, let's
get back to the to the copy. So the narrative was,
join the anti vegetable movement, stand up for spinach, fight
for freedom of peas, protect the pod born. All right.
Then we pause again because it's TV commercials, so we
(27:03):
pause again, dramatic, dramatic pause. Vegetable lives matter because even
salads deserve justice. And then you fade fade to black,
and then you put on there paid for by the
New Green Party. All right, so yeah, we can dress
(27:24):
it up a little bit. That's just my idea, just
my idea for my campaign. I think we can all
get behind that. I think everyone will get behind that
and we will all be better off. And that is
the one thing we can all find appealing, because even
people that eat vegetables don't usually like they pretend likely
(27:46):
like vegetable. You know, I'm talking those people that are like, oh,
I like vegetable, I'm a vegetable person. I'm better than
you and all this stuff. I'm like, I don't think
you're I think you're just programmed, right, You're indoctrinated into that.
And that's the issue there, you and your little leafy
greens and all that stuff. I know, the smell of califlower,
(28:08):
you think that's good. You might want to grow to
the doctor. You look forward to eating a plate of
Brussels sprouts. I think you had some trauma as a child. Hey,
you think a sweet potato is as good as a
regular potato? Come on, now, there is an exception, and
I fully admit it, because every rule has an exception. Garlic.
Garlic is the exception. That's it. That's the only exception.
(28:33):
And I don't want to hear any complaints about that.
And technically they say garlic is the vegetable, but I
just believe that's because the garlic people. The garlic people
want garlic to be part of the vegetable community because
they think it's cool. They think it's cool. And we
all know that garlic is a crossover because it can
(28:54):
deter vampires from attacking. And who wants to be a
act by vampires? I don't know anybody wants to be
attacked by vampires. And so vampires exposed the garlic, uh,
you know what, they just they have terrible problems. It's
a big issue for them in the vampire community. And
(29:14):
and the other thing is it's it's a great vegetable.
And for those of us that are part of the
movement here against the just shoving vegetables down our throat,
the garlic again, we consider that a non vegetable. It's it's,
it's it's it's a little bit of this. It's like
a super thing, is what. And it's nature's antibiotic, right,
(29:38):
Garlic is nature's antibiotic, and so we we take that
as our own anyway, all right, we'll get out on that,
have a wonderful rest of your Saturday, and please enjoy
those NFL games Benny versus the pay Remember you gotta
binge watch Benny versus the Penny. And we will have
a mail bag for you, have a mail bag for you,
and we'll do that on obviously tomorrow on Sunday and
(30:02):
talk to you then Aloha. I think that Aloha right, yeah,
okay now bopulation
Host
Ben Maller
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