Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Benny Buckets

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Benny Buckets · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kabbooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
0:12
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
0:15
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
0:18
Speaker 1: Wow.
0:18
Speaker 2: It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
0:22
Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
0:29
Speaker 1: Need the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
0:35
Speaker 1: Mahler and you united through weekend audio content with one goal,
0:42
Speaker 1: one goal and one goal only for time spent listening
0:46
Speaker 1: on the podcast. That's we Well, we need the downloads.
0:49
Speaker 1: You've already downloaded it. You're actually listening to the show,
0:53
Speaker 1: which is a step in the right direction, so we
0:55
Speaker 1: thank you for that. It is the two hundred and
0:59
Speaker 1: nineteen day of the year. Today did the overnight show,
1:03
Speaker 1: took a little pause, then came back here into the
1:06
Speaker 1: remote podcast studio. There are one hundred and forty six
1:11
Speaker 1: days left. I believe this is the thirty second day
1:14
Speaker 1: of the year. We have on this podcast Benny Buckets
1:17
Speaker 1: and a amazing factoid about Plymouth Rock that I have
1:24
Speaker 1: never heard of and I want it to be true.
1:27
Speaker 1: I want it to be true. And we will tell
1:31
Speaker 1: you this podcast is going to be wicked bad. It's
1:34
Speaker 1: going to be wicked bad. We begin though with this.
1:39
Speaker 1: So some call it synchronicity or foreshadowing, or maybe the
1:46
Speaker 1: universe just has a very odd sense of humor. It
1:50
Speaker 1: all started right here on the Fifth Hour podcast, a
1:54
Speaker 1: recent episode our p one JT. The Wingman, rode into
2:00
Speaker 1: the mail bag, which he does on a regular basis,
2:04
Speaker 1: and it was just harmless question that takes up a
2:08
Speaker 1: couple of minutes of airtime on the pod and then
2:11
Speaker 1: disappears into the audio ether. And the question was and
2:15
Speaker 1: I forget exactly what he said, but it was something like,
2:18
Speaker 1: have you ever fallen down a set of stairs? I
2:20
Speaker 1: believe that was a question that was asked, And if
2:24
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, my knee jerk reaction was no. That
2:29
Speaker 1: was my default answer. I figured the answer had to
2:32
Speaker 1: be no. I don't have a dramatic staircase. Even when
2:37
Speaker 1: I was growing up, I didn't have any real crazy staircase.
2:40
Speaker 1: I'm not tumbling down the steps while carrying groceries. I'm
2:44
Speaker 1: not recreating a silent movie. Nothing came to mind until
2:50
Speaker 1: I was cruising for a bruisin in the Malamobile, and
2:55
Speaker 1: somewhere in the dusty archives, in the very back right
2:59
Speaker 1: part of my brain buried beneath decades of sports takes,
3:05
Speaker 1: drive through menus bad baseball trivia, who am I and
3:12
Speaker 1: all of that, the memory resurfaced and said, here I am,
3:18
Speaker 1: And so once I opened that door, I'm sure you've
3:21
Speaker 1: had the same thing happen to you. Once you open
3:24
Speaker 1: that door, another one is kicked off the hinges, because
3:29
Speaker 1: apparently my life has been one long audition for the
3:34
Speaker 1: three stooges. And the reason I did not recall this
3:40
Speaker 1: is because it did not happen at the house I
3:45
Speaker 1: was living in. So long before I became the legend
3:48
Speaker 1: of moneyball Maller, before overnight Radio, before the mal or Militia,
3:55
Speaker 1: before I became an expert in watching sports while sitting
4:00
Speaker 1: she's laying horizontally on a sofa, I was known simply
4:05
Speaker 1: as B. B. Benny Buckets. That's right, Benny Buckets, youth
4:10
Speaker 1: basketball legend. Now I understand history can become exaggerated. I've
4:16
Speaker 1: been told that every person that fishes catches a larger
4:20
Speaker 1: fish twenty years later, than they caught when they originally
4:23
Speaker 1: caught the fish. Every little leaguer remembers almost making the
4:26
Speaker 1: major leagues. Memory has a really good public relations department,
4:32
Speaker 1: an excellent borderline, excellent public relations department. The Shaggy Dog story.
4:38
Speaker 1: Things just get crazier and crazier. But I was good
4:43
Speaker 1: at least. That's the story that I'm going to share
4:45
Speaker 1: with you. That's the story that's in my head. I'm
4:49
Speaker 1: sticking with it now. I am so old. How old
4:52
Speaker 1: are you? I'm so old that if you go back
4:55
Speaker 1: in time when I was ten years old, there was
4:58
Speaker 1: no such thing as a a basketball it didn't swallow
5:03
Speaker 1: childhood's whole. There were no elite travel teams. There was
5:07
Speaker 1: no twelve year olds with sponsorship deals, no mixtapes, no
5:12
Speaker 1: recruiting rankings, there was no Internet. I played in what
5:17
Speaker 1: I called the ff f F that's four f's. I
5:21
Speaker 1: think I might have said more than that, but ff
5:24
Speaker 1: Basketball League. That means four free fast food, which meant
5:29
Speaker 1: if we played well or team one, we got pizza,
5:32
Speaker 1: possibly burgers and fries, normally pizza, and every once in
5:36
Speaker 1: a while coupon to get a nice yogurt would come
5:40
Speaker 1: in my way. Life was simpler. Life was simpler. Our
5:44
Speaker 1: league got invited as a ten year old to play
5:47
Speaker 1: on the floor of the Fabulous Forum after a Laker
5:52
Speaker 1: game in the hood in Inglewood and up to no good.
5:57
Speaker 1: So for a ten year old kid in southern California
6:02
Speaker 1: during the Showtime era, it's like winning the lottery ticket.
6:06
Speaker 1: Now you had Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdulgiable. I still remember
6:09
Speaker 1: seeing the skyhook as a kid. Looking up, it looked
6:13
Speaker 1: like Kareem had I've talked about this on the Pacaste before,
6:16
Speaker 1: but it looked like he had scraped the roof of
6:20
Speaker 1: the Forum. Big game, James Worthy, Byron Scott, pat Riley's hair.
6:24
Speaker 1: This was basketball heaven right. Now. Here's the funny thing.
6:28
Speaker 1: Even back then, I was not a Laker historian. I
6:34
Speaker 1: wasn't a Laker hater when I was ten years old.
6:36
Speaker 1: I hadn't dealt with a PR person that caused me
6:39
Speaker 1: to hate the Lakers the rest of my life. But
6:42
Speaker 1: I wasn't a Laker hater at that point. I did
6:45
Speaker 1: like Chick Hearn. I did like Chick Hearn. I was
6:48
Speaker 1: mostly Switzerland. I was mostly Switzerland, completely neutral, but neutral.
6:54
Speaker 1: Kids still appreciate a chance to go to an NBA game,
6:58
Speaker 1: and this was like a big deal, especially when you're
7:01
Speaker 1: ten years old. The problem our seats were somewhere right
7:05
Speaker 1: near the pearly gates. In fact, if they had oxygen
7:09
Speaker 1: masks dangling down from the ceiling, I would not have complained.
7:14
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone in that section as I remember
7:16
Speaker 1: that would have complained. It would have been a great
7:19
Speaker 1: add on item. And I've never been a fan of
7:22
Speaker 1: heights from when I was little to now, and being
7:27
Speaker 1: a tall guy somewhere around six five six six, if
7:30
Speaker 1: I stand up straight with good poster, eventually it became
7:34
Speaker 1: an occupational hazard. Right you fall down and you got
7:37
Speaker 1: a lot not the ways to go. Now, people assume
7:41
Speaker 1: the position. While you're tall, you must like heights. You're tall, No, no,
7:46
Speaker 1: not my thing, not my thing. And the bigger they are,
7:51
Speaker 1: the taller they are, the harder they fall. So I'm
7:53
Speaker 1: sitting there the entire game and I'm looking down and
7:57
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh boy, this is pretty high up. And
8:01
Speaker 1: then the start of the fourth quarter of the coach
8:03
Speaker 1: came over and said, listen, kids, about five minutes remaining
8:08
Speaker 1: time to come down. About the five minute mark, we
8:11
Speaker 1: need to head towards the tunnel near the Lakers becual
8:14
Speaker 1: they were playing the Golden State Warriors. I believe Sleepy
8:17
Speaker 1: Floyd was on the Warriors. So apparently the forum people
8:20
Speaker 1: that worked there wanted us ready as soon as the
8:24
Speaker 1: final buzzer sounded. Er Go I translated that. Even as
8:29
Speaker 1: a young person, I said, well, it's f them kids.
8:32
Speaker 1: Get the kids in, get them out efficiency, even in
8:36
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. So I stand up, coach said, stand up,
8:41
Speaker 1: come down. Five minute mark. I began shimmying sideways past
8:45
Speaker 1: everyone in the row. Excuse me, sorry, pardon me, pardon
8:50
Speaker 1: my interruption. I finally reached the aisle and then I
8:55
Speaker 1: see the stairs. Now I recall walking up. It's much
9:00
Speaker 1: different walking down than up. Very steep, ridiculously steep, like
9:05
Speaker 1: it should be part of some reality show. No handrails,
9:08
Speaker 1: worth mentioning, nothing comforting, just old fashioned gravity. Sitting there
9:15
Speaker 1: with a giant cheshire Cat grin, smiling from ear to ear.
9:20
Speaker 1: So I start walking carefully. I say, well, the grown
9:23
Speaker 1: ups are doing this, This can't be that bad. I'm
9:26
Speaker 1: being careful. Raised by a Jewish mother, I'm being very careful.
9:30
Speaker 1: And then something happened that still defies explanation. Momentum not
9:38
Speaker 1: Uncle Mo momentum, not Ozzie momentum, real momentum. Now people
9:42
Speaker 1: think momentum exists in sporting events. There's a word for
9:45
Speaker 1: those people, dumb, dumb wrong. Momentum is something you would
9:50
Speaker 1: see in the physics class. And also if you happen
9:55
Speaker 1: to try to travel downstairs, and if you could have
9:58
Speaker 1: seen a frightened, chubby, ten year old Benny, and you
10:03
Speaker 1: would have said, well, that's what that is is momentum.
10:06
Speaker 1: So my feet sped up, and then they sped up again,
10:10
Speaker 1: and again and again and again. I wasn't walking anymore.
10:15
Speaker 1: At this point, I was testing the time space continuum.
10:20
Speaker 1: I was accelerating. Every single step, made the next step faster.
10:27
Speaker 1: My brain was screaming, slowed down. My legs had already
10:31
Speaker 1: entered the witness protection program. There was nothing to grab,
10:35
Speaker 1: nothing to stop me. Do you understand I was, at
10:38
Speaker 1: this point a human bob sled. Except this was not
10:42
Speaker 1: some kind of regulated Olympic course. No. No, I had
10:45
Speaker 1: become Benny the bob sled, And by the time I
10:49
Speaker 1: got down to where there was a way to stop,
10:52
Speaker 1: I didn't stop. I crashed directly in the back of
10:57
Speaker 1: a middle age couple. As I recall, they could have
11:00
Speaker 1: been older than that, they may have been younger. They
11:02
Speaker 1: looked middle aged, perfect strangers. Boom, just level them now.
11:08
Speaker 1: They did not seemingly appreciate meeting Benny the bobsled. This
11:14
Speaker 1: did not go well. They didn't ask for an autograph.
11:17
Speaker 1: There was no applause. They did not ask for a photo.
11:20
Speaker 1: They asked where my parents were. Now, looking back, I'm
11:23
Speaker 1: amazed they did not get injured. I'm amazed, right, I'm
11:28
Speaker 1: also surprised they didn't send me back upstairs for another
11:30
Speaker 1: attempt on the bobs led course that I believe was
11:33
Speaker 1: my signature falling down the stairs story all right, that
11:38
Speaker 1: was my story. And again I'd forgotten about this and
11:41
Speaker 1: it wasn't my house, and that's probably why. So I
11:43
Speaker 1: thought that was the end or you know. Of course,
11:46
Speaker 1: life has a funny way of changing that, so we
11:49
Speaker 1: fast forward back to the current times. I'm obviously older,
11:52
Speaker 1: apparently wiser, unless I'm not that is questionable, and I'm
11:56
Speaker 1: doing exactly what I always do before the overnight show,
12:01
Speaker 1: laying on the sofa. I think it was a Red
12:03
Speaker 1: Sox game on this night. I don't even remember who
12:05
Speaker 1: they were playing. Laptop open. I'm putting the bullet points
12:10
Speaker 1: together for that night's Malard monologues. Ice water sitting nearby.
12:14
Speaker 1: Everything is perfectly arranged, just the way I need it,
12:17
Speaker 1: just the way I want it. Helping me, of course,
12:20
Speaker 1: is my associate producer of the Ben mal Show does
12:23
Speaker 1: not get enough airtime during the week. That would be
12:26
Speaker 1: none other than who Moxie, now associate producer, is rather generous.
12:34
Speaker 1: She's actually, if you don't know, if you're new to
12:36
Speaker 1: the podcast, an English bulldog her primary job description. We
12:41
Speaker 1: hired her because of this. She's advanced at snoring and farting,
12:47
Speaker 1: so anything with ng snorting and farting and also snoring
12:56
Speaker 1: all of that, so secondarily respond possibility. You know, she's
13:02
Speaker 1: always kind of looks disappointed, you know, she's really good
13:06
Speaker 1: at snoring and farting and all that stuff. So so
13:09
Speaker 1: Moxie almost never moves. If you ever come over to
13:13
Speaker 1: the Malor mansion, you're not invited. But if you ever
13:16
Speaker 1: come over there, she just doesn't move. Hours will pass,
13:20
Speaker 1: sometimes entire geological eras will pass, and she simply exists.
13:27
Speaker 1: Moxie is advanced furniture that somehow has a heartbeat. Not
13:33
Speaker 1: a strong heartbeat, but heartbeat. And then this is all
13:37
Speaker 1: going on. She stands up to do a little stretchy stretching,
13:40
Speaker 1: you know, do the old stretch, the legs, the back legs. Okay,
13:45
Speaker 1: so this happens. I leaped off my lap, or she
13:50
Speaker 1: leaped off my lap. I was laying there. I was
13:52
Speaker 1: the thing she was laying on. She leaped off my
13:55
Speaker 1: lap and right off the sofa and onto the floor.
13:59
Speaker 1: One step, another step. She then turned right, went up
14:03
Speaker 1: another step towards the kitchen, and immediately every alarm bell
14:09
Speaker 1: inside my head started going off. Because Moxie is many,
14:14
Speaker 1: many thinks Moxy is loyal, She is lazy, a bit stubborn, beautiful,
14:21
Speaker 1: but above all, she is a creature of habit. She
14:25
Speaker 1: is and very stubborn creature of habit. When Moxie gets
14:30
Speaker 1: up after lying down for eight, nine, ten, eleven, who
14:35
Speaker 1: the hell knows hours, nature calls immediately, no committee meeting,
14:41
Speaker 1: no delay, no warning label, no ifs ands or butts.
14:47
Speaker 1: If I don't intercept her quickly, the kitchen becomes the
14:52
Speaker 1: great Lake Moxie again. And I don't want that. We've
14:55
Speaker 1: talked about that in previous episodes of this podcast to
14:57
Speaker 1: fifth hour. I don't want that. So I've learned this lesson,
15:02
Speaker 1: as you know, several times too many times. So what
15:06
Speaker 1: do you think I did well? I overreacted. I sprung
15:09
Speaker 1: into action after Moxie had jumped off me, off the sofa,
15:13
Speaker 1: took a couple of steps, made a right turn, and
15:16
Speaker 1: so I said, you know, I got to take care
15:18
Speaker 1: of this. And at least that's again how I remember it.
15:21
Speaker 1: In my mind, I had become a combination of a
15:25
Speaker 1: little bit of Usain Bolt, Navy Seal, Batman, I'm not
15:32
Speaker 1: sure about Spider Man, definitely Batman. Reality probably looked more
15:36
Speaker 1: like it was me being a refrigerator trying to outrun
15:40
Speaker 1: another refrigerator. Still I moved, I did laptop, put down safely, water,
15:48
Speaker 1: moved out of harm's way. These are grown up decisions.
15:52
Speaker 1: These are excellent grown up decisions, strong fundamentals. It was good,
15:56
Speaker 1: and so then I stood up and I took off.
16:01
Speaker 1: The mission was simple. Beat Moxie to where she's about
16:05
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom in the kitchen, cut her
16:07
Speaker 1: off of the pass, cut her off of the pass,
16:10
Speaker 1: and escort her outside to take care of business. Everybody wins,
16:17
Speaker 1: except I forgot one tiny detail physics again. Now I
16:23
Speaker 1: was barefoot, barefoot, Benny. The floor was smooth, nice and
16:29
Speaker 1: smooth tile. And I approached the right hand turn like
16:33
Speaker 1: I was qualifying at the Daytona five hundred. Did I
16:37
Speaker 1: slow down? Hell? No? I accelerated because apparently it turns
16:43
Speaker 1: out and I didn't realize this. My internal GPS was
16:45
Speaker 1: programmed this day by the Wiley coyote, and as I
16:49
Speaker 1: attempted to make the turn, my brain turn my feet
16:55
Speaker 1: said x nay on the turn a, I ain't going
17:00
Speaker 1: so that moment, since my feet decided to vote no,
17:05
Speaker 1: they entered into the transfer portal. Time immediately slowed down,
17:09
Speaker 1: not metaphorically, it actually slowed down. It did. I became Zoom,
17:14
Speaker 1: not Zoom Zoom. I became Zoom, the DC Comics super
17:18
Speaker 1: villain who's able to manipulate time itself. Everything around me
17:23
Speaker 1: became slow motion. Every fraction of a second felt like
17:29
Speaker 1: a minute. The wall became bigger, closer, larger, and there
17:36
Speaker 1: was absolutely nothing I could do. My body had become
17:41
Speaker 1: a curling stone. I was merely a passenger on this
17:45
Speaker 1: runaway freight train. The wall, it turned out, and I
17:49
Speaker 1: did not realize this when I made the decision to
17:52
Speaker 1: get up the wall. Had decided that listen, this is
17:57
Speaker 1: a destination. You need to come visit me and kabboom
18:01
Speaker 1: kerfflewey curplunk crash bang wallap boom goes to dynamite. I
18:08
Speaker 1: don't know how many of the phrases I can use.
18:10
Speaker 1: This was a direct hit headfirst, like a Benny Bowling
18:14
Speaker 1: ball finding the pocket, only instead of knocking over the pins,
18:20
Speaker 1: I found the drywall right there next to the stairs.
18:25
Speaker 1: And now here's where the story becomes slightly more interesting
18:29
Speaker 1: and expensive. So my very tall you know who headfirst
18:35
Speaker 1: into the drywall on the side of the stairs, and
18:40
Speaker 1: that was not a good thing, not a good thing there.
18:44
Speaker 1: And so the part where it becomes more expensive, I
18:48
Speaker 1: happen to be wearing my glasses. It turns out prescription
18:53
Speaker 1: eyeglasses and walls have a very complicated, toxic relationship, mostly
19:00
Speaker 1: because walls always win, always win. The lenses survived miraculously.
19:07
Speaker 1: The frame you know, not so much. You know, the
19:13
Speaker 1: left temple bent sideways. It was a piece of modern art,
19:17
Speaker 1: the left temple. The glass is now sat on my
19:20
Speaker 1: face at approximately a forty five degree angle. Spoiler alert,
19:25
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. They're not supposed to do that. They're not
19:29
Speaker 1: supposed to do that, So I look like Picasso. If
19:33
Speaker 1: Picasso had become an optometrist and my head slightly dinged
19:39
Speaker 1: my pride, well, that was in the injury tent. The
19:42
Speaker 1: good news is nobody saw it. In fact, if I
19:45
Speaker 1: hadn't talked about this, nobody would have known. I'm sharing
19:48
Speaker 1: this with you. I was alone, There was no witness.
19:52
Speaker 1: There was no ring camera, no security footage, no viral video.
19:56
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if Moxie saw because she
19:59
Speaker 1: was busy doing her thing. If a grown man crashes
20:02
Speaker 1: into a wall and nobody is around, did it really happen? Yes, Unfortunately,
20:08
Speaker 1: if you have a podcast, it did happen. It also
20:10
Speaker 1: happened because my glasses reminded me every single day. I
20:14
Speaker 1: attempted what I called meat ball surgery, the official medical
20:19
Speaker 1: procedure where someone with absolutely no qualifications bends expensive eyewear
20:25
Speaker 1: back into place using optimism and really bad judgment. Now
20:31
Speaker 1: did I do a perfect job. No. I got close
20:34
Speaker 1: close enough that when I went out to the grocery store,
20:37
Speaker 1: people could not tell that I had the glasses all mangled. Unfortunately,
20:42
Speaker 1: it turns out that my eyeballs could tell everything looked
20:46
Speaker 1: just a little crooked, just enough, the kind of just
20:49
Speaker 1: enough that slowly gives you my grand headaches because your
20:53
Speaker 1: eyes haven't adjusted to the new shape of your glasses.
20:57
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was not not good, not good at all.
21:02
Speaker 1: For several days I walked around thinking, well, maybe my
21:05
Speaker 1: brain has shifted because I got a concussion. Eventually I surrendered.
21:11
Speaker 1: We went to the eye doctor. Five minute adjustment problem solved.
21:15
Speaker 1: Turns out professionals occasionally know what the f they're doing.
21:20
Speaker 1: Who knew? Who knew? So that brings us back full circle.
21:26
Speaker 1: Brings us back full circle to JT. The Wingman. His
21:30
Speaker 1: innocent little question somehow unlocked a memory from all those
21:36
Speaker 1: years ago, only for me to immediately create a brand
21:39
Speaker 1: new version, as I've just told you a few days ago.
21:42
Speaker 1: That is synchronicity or overshadowing. Synchronicity says unrelated events somehow
21:49
Speaker 1: feel connected, like a random person calling up talking about
21:52
Speaker 1: a town I had never heard of, and then happy
21:55
Speaker 1: to end up happing to end up visiting that time.
21:58
Speaker 1: All right, So that's it. Yet, Synchronicity and foreshadowing. Whatever
22:03
Speaker 1: label you choose. I apparently apparently am destined to lose
22:08
Speaker 1: arguments with gravity. As I talked about, gravity remains undefeated. Now.
22:12
Speaker 1: It doesn't care if you're ten years old inside the
22:16
Speaker 1: Fabulous Forum. It doesn't care if you're sprinting after an
22:20
Speaker 1: English bulldog named Moxie. All right, that doesn't matter. Gravity
22:25
Speaker 1: is the Bill Belichick of the natural world. No emotion,
22:32
Speaker 1: no excuses, just execution and a hot side piece girlfriend,
22:37
Speaker 1: because that's what Belichick has now. Looking back, my life
22:41
Speaker 1: occasionally resembles a lost script from The Three Stooges. I'm
22:47
Speaker 1: missing Mo. Nobody poked me in both eyes, right, I
22:50
Speaker 1: didn't get that, so I don't have MO. Nobody yelled
22:53
Speaker 1: why ya YadA? Ay, why ya YadA? And there was
22:57
Speaker 1: not a single yeah. There was none of that, But
23:01
Speaker 1: the spirit was there, the awkward timing, the overconfidence, the
23:05
Speaker 1: spectacular miscalculation, unnecessary collision. Check check check check, check check check.
23:11
Speaker 1: If Hollywood ever decides to remake slapstick comedy starring an
23:16
Speaker 1: oversized overnight sports radio host chasing an English bulldog away
23:21
Speaker 1: from an imaginary indoor lake, I've already done the legwork.
23:25
Speaker 1: I've done the stunt work. You don't need CGI, it's
23:28
Speaker 1: not required. Just give me some socks, smooth flooring, a wall,
23:36
Speaker 1: and Moxie. Actually, forget the socks. Bare feet are apparently
23:42
Speaker 1: very dangerous, and they're more than dangerous enough. And somewhere
23:46
Speaker 1: I have to believe, just between us, somewhere, I have
23:50
Speaker 1: to believe that the wall is still telling the other
23:53
Speaker 1: walls in the house about the night this overgrown kid
23:58
Speaker 1: named Benny buckets to outrun a bulldog, challenged physics and
24:04
Speaker 1: lost by a technical KNACKA the wall one, gravity one,
24:09
Speaker 1: the eye doctor one. Everyone won one, everyone won. Moxie,
24:15
Speaker 1: by the way, still got outside in time. She did
24:18
Speaker 1: not go to the bathroom. So this was a success mission,
24:22
Speaker 1: which means, in the strange arithmetic of life, this is
24:27
Speaker 1: mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. I simply paid for it with
24:32
Speaker 1: a headache, crooked glasses, and one more chapter in the continuing,
24:39
Speaker 1: never ending story, the Adventures of a man who somehow
24:43
Speaker 1: keeps proving that slapstick comedy didn't die with the Three Stooges.
24:47
Speaker 1: It just got older, heavier, and started hosting overnight sports radio.
24:53
Speaker 1: And that's that's it now. Meanwhile, today is the seventh
24:59
Speaker 1: day of August. It is International Beer Days. It's actually
25:03
Speaker 1: a bunch of holidays here, and we'll work our way
25:07
Speaker 1: through some of them because I love this. So it's
25:09
Speaker 1: International Beer Day, is it true. The world's oldest known
25:15
Speaker 1: written recipe, the oldest known written recipe for beer, not bread,
25:20
Speaker 1: but beer, the four thousand year old The four thousand
25:25
Speaker 1: year old recipe if you will, from ancient Mesopotonia, doubles
25:32
Speaker 1: as a brewing guide. Yeah. Archaeologists have found evidence of
25:37
Speaker 1: beer brewing dating back thirteen thousand years in what is
25:44
Speaker 1: now Israel, suggesting that fellow humans of previous generations may
25:51
Speaker 1: that's the word, may have brewed beer before farming became widespread.
25:57
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. The word brought maybe linked to
26:02
Speaker 1: bride ale, a special beer brewed for weddings to help
26:07
Speaker 1: pay for the celebration. So bride ale. There you go.
26:12
Speaker 1: The world's oldest food law still in use is in Germany.
26:17
Speaker 1: It's the Beer Purity Law, introduced in fifteen sixteen, limiting
26:23
Speaker 1: beer integrate ingredients to water, barley, and hops. Apparently, yeast
26:31
Speaker 1: was not invented at that point, or wasn't actually invented.
26:37
Speaker 1: It was not understood if I could talk, that would help.
26:42
Speaker 1: Hops were not always the standard. Early beers were flavored
26:46
Speaker 1: with herbs, spices, flowers, tree bark. Then eventually hops became
26:55
Speaker 1: the thing, hoppity hop. And the amazing FACTOI from this
27:00
Speaker 1: little ditty. The amazing factor, which I want to believe
27:04
Speaker 1: is true. I don't have it confirmed, but I want
27:06
Speaker 1: to believe it's true, is that the Mayflower, which famously
27:12
Speaker 1: landed at Plymouth rock Well, it became the ship. It
27:19
Speaker 1: became the ship that did it because of alcohol or
27:23
Speaker 1: lack of alcohol. So the Mayflower landed at Plymouth because
27:28
Speaker 1: it was running low on beer and they didn't want
27:31
Speaker 1: to continue sailing without their beer, so they were supposed
27:34
Speaker 1: to go further. There's like, ah, screw it, We'll just
27:37
Speaker 1: go here. We'll just go here. The America's oldest operating
27:41
Speaker 1: brewery is in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. It started out in eighteen
27:46
Speaker 1: twenty nine. That's pretty cool. Now. Before Prohibition, the United
27:51
Speaker 1: States had more than four thousand breweries. It's a fair
27:55
Speaker 1: amount considering the country was much smaller. That number, though,
27:58
Speaker 1: fell below one by the late nineteen seventies, and then
28:03
Speaker 1: there was a document signed legalizing home brewing. In nineteen
28:07
Speaker 1: seventy eight by Jimmy Carter, then the president, and that
28:11
Speaker 1: led one thing to another and there you go. So
28:15
Speaker 1: during Prohibition, a bunch of those breweries they survived to
28:19
Speaker 1: pay their rent by making ice cream, soda, malt syrup,
28:24
Speaker 1: cheese or near beer. And you can take the other
28:29
Speaker 1: cheese out of the other market or the other refrigerator,
28:35
Speaker 1: and you know whatever, it's the whole thing's nuts because
28:38
Speaker 1: you need cheese with your beer. You need cheese with
28:40
Speaker 1: your beer. By the way, beer is the third most
28:45
Speaker 1: consumed beverage in the world. The ones that are consumed
28:49
Speaker 1: more obviously water and tea. So it goes water, tea,
28:54
Speaker 1: and then beer. Take that coffee, Take that coffee. It
28:58
Speaker 1: is National Lighthouse Stay today. Congratulations on that. The earliest
29:03
Speaker 1: known lighthouse was constructed in of all places, Egypt, around
29:08
Speaker 1: twenty six hundred BC. I believe that's a long time ago.
29:13
Speaker 1: There was a there are, rather, there are a variety
29:16
Speaker 1: of lighthouses. As we celebrate National Lighthouse Day. This is
29:21
Speaker 1: the right. Early lighthouses used open flames. Today's lighting sources
29:26
Speaker 1: include incandet lessened bulbs, electric lamps, LEDs and all that stuff.
29:32
Speaker 1: So there are estimated over eighteen thousand lighthouses worldwide, seven
29:38
Speaker 1: hundred of them are in the United States, and of
29:40
Speaker 1: those seven hundred, about sixty five of those are just
29:44
Speaker 1: along the coast of Maine. And if you live in
29:46
Speaker 1: that area, you're very lucky to see all of those
29:49
Speaker 1: beautiful lighthouses. I know when I went back a few
29:52
Speaker 1: months ago with Mike de Leprechahn and every me and
29:54
Speaker 1: the wife, we drove up and down I ninety five
29:57
Speaker 1: through Maine as far as we could get with the
30:00
Speaker 1: time we had, and we saw some of those lighthouses
30:04
Speaker 1: and just amazing, just absolutely great, so so so good.
30:10
Speaker 1: Now it is interesting to note that with GPS technology
30:14
Speaker 1: elon Musk satellite Wi Fi, that lighthouses are now obsolete.
30:21
Speaker 1: They're not needed. You don't need a lighthouse because these
30:25
Speaker 1: boats have GPS. As we said, However, many still operate
30:29
Speaker 1: around the world, so there's still a lot of these
30:32
Speaker 1: things out there, a lot of these lighthouses. It is
30:36
Speaker 1: National Purple Hard Day. I have no fun facts, no
30:39
Speaker 1: fun facts about the purple heart, which is not really
30:42
Speaker 1: a fun thing. It is also Professional Speaker's Day. I
30:46
Speaker 1: had Professional Speakers Day and public Speaking which I'm not
30:52
Speaker 1: very fond of public speaking. Ranks is one of the
30:54
Speaker 1: most common fears. It out ranks fears like being afraid
31:00
Speaker 1: of heights or spiders and things like that. So the
31:04
Speaker 1: fear of public speaking is called gloss of phobia, from
31:08
Speaker 1: the Greek word for tongue and fear glossophobia. Okay. Ancient
31:14
Speaker 1: Greece treated public speaking as a vital life skill. Very
31:19
Speaker 1: important citizens were expected to speak in court and public assemblies,
31:26
Speaker 1: So there is that. And if you speak a little slower,
31:30
Speaker 1: generally it improves audience comprehension. So if that's your thing,
31:34
Speaker 1: slow it down, Slow it down. Many famous people have
31:39
Speaker 1: had stage fright, including the great Warren Buffett, who took
31:42
Speaker 1: a Dale Carnegie public speaking course because he didn't like
31:47
Speaker 1: speaking in front of groups and he had to do it.
31:50
Speaker 1: I remember when I was visiting Gettysburg on the East
31:54
Speaker 1: coast there and they told the story about the Gettysburgage
32:00
Speaker 1: rest with Abraham Lincoln. Is it true that Abraham Lincoln's
32:05
Speaker 1: iconic Gettysburg address lasted only about two minutes? Only about
32:11
Speaker 1: two minutes contained two hundred and seventy two words, proving
32:16
Speaker 1: that something memorable does not necessarily have to be long form. Now.
32:22
Speaker 1: The longest recorded speech in America was delivered by strom Thurman,
32:29
Speaker 1: a hard oh politician who spoke for twenty four hours
32:33
Speaker 1: at eighteen minutes during a Senate filibuster in nineteen fifty seven.
32:40
Speaker 1: Twenty four hours, eighteen minutes. My god, that is a ridonculous,
32:48
Speaker 1: ridonculous amount of time. It is water balloon Day today,
32:52
Speaker 1: Happy water balloon Day. Some people call water balloons water bombs.
32:59
Speaker 1: And yeah, now, Michael Faraday, I say that with a
33:03
Speaker 1: question mark. He is considered the father of the modern
33:08
Speaker 1: water balloon. What are you talking about, Malor on your
33:11
Speaker 1: little podcast? Now, listen to me. Michael Faraday invented modern
33:17
Speaker 1: latex balloons in eighteen twenty four. Can you believe balloons
33:22
Speaker 1: like that have been around since eighteen twenty four? That's
33:25
Speaker 1: mind blowing. He filled those balloons with hydrogen. Now, he
33:29
Speaker 1: was a scientist and he was doing some experiments with
33:32
Speaker 1: the said balloon and the first actual water balloon. It
33:39
Speaker 1: was a waterproof sock. It was a waterproof sock. And
33:44
Speaker 1: this guy Edgar who invented them in nineteen fifty he
33:49
Speaker 1: was looking for a waterproof sock to help avoid trench
33:52
Speaker 1: feet out. In about before latex balloons were invented, people
33:58
Speaker 1: did all kinds of crazy things for balloons. They inflated
34:02
Speaker 1: the balloon like a pig bladder. They use that as
34:07
Speaker 1: a balloon, and animal intestines and whatnot. There, So there
34:12
Speaker 1: you are. Now South Africa, India and a few other
34:16
Speaker 1: countries have banned water balloons, so if you're planning on
34:19
Speaker 1: going to South Africa India, in those places you cannot
34:24
Speaker 1: have a water balloon. So there it is wonderful, absolutely wonderful.
34:30
Speaker 1: On that note, have a great rest of your Friday.
34:33
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go snooze for a little bit and then
34:35
Speaker 1: have the rest of my day, which hasn't started yet
34:38
Speaker 1: because I haven't been to bed. Have a good one.
34:41
Speaker 1: And as Dick and Dan would say, bye bye bye bye,
34:47
Speaker 1: just like I sound just like the Dickster, don't I. Yeah,
34:50
Speaker 1: I'm glad your phone got fixed, Dick. Bye bye,