Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: I Saw The Sign

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The Fifth Hour: I Saw The Sign · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kaboobs.
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
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Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
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Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to clearing House
0:19
Speaker 2: of hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth
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Speaker 2: Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
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Speaker 1: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me Ben
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Speaker 1: Mahler a brand new episode today. Here we are. Now,
0:39
Speaker 1: before we get into this, some of you sent me emails.
0:44
Speaker 1: I assume the people that sent these emails were not
0:46
Speaker 1: actually consumers of this podcast, so I'm likely wasting my time.
0:50
Speaker 1: But a few of you said, hey, where are you?
0:53
Speaker 1: I obviously was not at my watch post last night.
0:56
Speaker 1: I had some things I had to take care of,
0:57
Speaker 1: so h more on that at a time. However, I
1:02
Speaker 1: am able to do the podcast because unlike the radio show,
1:04
Speaker 1: where you have to be there at the exact time
1:07
Speaker 1: and you have to show up and talk for four hours,
1:10
Speaker 1: a podcast is different. It's just freer. You're a free
1:16
Speaker 1: bird when you do in a podcast. It is the
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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifth day of the year. Today there
1:20
Speaker 1: are one hundred and sixty days to go. It is
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Speaker 1: National Drive Through Day today. Celebrate appropriately. Is it true
1:30
Speaker 1: that the drive through window has been around for almost
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Speaker 1: one hundred years? The first ever drive through was not
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Speaker 1: for a restaurant, you know what. It was for a
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Speaker 1: bank in Syracuse, New York City Center Bank in Syracuse,
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Speaker 1: New York in nineteen twenty eight the first drive through
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Speaker 1: windows service. And then there was another bank in Saint Louis,
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Speaker 1: Missouri that also offered a similar service. A few years later,
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Speaker 1: and the first restaurant to provide a drive through was
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Speaker 1: a restaurant en Route sixty six in Springfield, Missouri, Red's
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Speaker 1: Giant hamburg I wonder what they sold. And the legend is,
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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven they began with the drive through,
2:22
Speaker 1: and then shortly after that In and Out that's what
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Speaker 1: a Hamburger is all about. They began drive through service.
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Speaker 1: That is, the longest surviving restaurant to offer a drive
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Speaker 1: through was In and Out Burger, and then eventually everyone
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Speaker 1: else obviously does it now. McDonald's did not open their
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Speaker 1: first drive through restaurant until nineteen seventy five. Of course,
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Speaker 1: now now many people are too lazy to go to
2:51
Speaker 1: the drive through. I mean when the drive through open,
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Speaker 1: it was like, oh my god, this is amazing. You
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Speaker 1: can you don't have to get out of your car.
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Speaker 1: You go and you order and they give you the
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Speaker 1: food and you pay for it in your car. And
3:00
Speaker 1: it was the most amazing thing people have gotten. Lazier
3:04
Speaker 1: was that, well, no, I need food delivered to me. Well, no,
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Speaker 1: you just go pick it up it. You don't have
3:08
Speaker 1: to get out of the car. No, no, no, I
3:09
Speaker 1: want my food delivered. But you gotta pay extra for
3:10
Speaker 1: that and all that. But that's American culture. That's it.
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Speaker 1: It is also National Tequila Day today, so celebrate appropriately.
3:19
Speaker 1: As you may know if you're a tequila drinker, it
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Speaker 1: is made from the sap, the distilled sap of the
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Speaker 1: succulent blue agave plant. However, I'm told that it's a
3:32
Speaker 1: very specific version of the blue agave plant. It's not
3:37
Speaker 1: all of them and the tequila. If you look at
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Speaker 1: the history, as early as one hundred and fifty BC,
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Speaker 1: the ancient Aztecs consumed an ancestor of tequila. Now it
3:50
Speaker 1: was introduced to America at the World's Fair in Chicago
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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three, during Prohibition, smugglers brought in the
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Speaker 1: tequila to the United States from Mexico, and so that
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Speaker 1: was the birth of modern tequila in America. So you
4:09
Speaker 1: could say, yes, I like my plants, I like my vegetables.
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Speaker 1: It's a plant based drink. I like my blue agave plant.
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Speaker 1: I like my potatoes, if you you know what I mean.
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Speaker 1: For the vodka and all that. The word tequila comes
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Speaker 1: from an ancient word which means place of tribute, place
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Speaker 1: of tribute. And the cost of tequila is well, it
4:34
Speaker 1: depends why you look at it. It can be high
4:37
Speaker 1: because you have to have patients. The plant matures in
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Speaker 1: eight to twelve years, so you got to wait around
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Speaker 1: a decade or so to get yourself some tequila. The
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Speaker 1: most expensive bottle ever was made by Tequila Lay. It's
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Speaker 1: sold for two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. It
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Speaker 1: is also tell an old joke day today. So I'm
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Speaker 1: going to attempt to tell an old joke. Let's see here,
5:02
Speaker 1: why did the vacuum cleaner quit? You don't know why
5:07
Speaker 1: did the vacuum cleaner quit? He quit because the job sucked.
5:12
Speaker 1: That's why. All right, that's not bad. That's a good
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Speaker 1: dad joke. Sawid dad joke? How about this one? Why
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Speaker 1: did the comedian bomb at the laundromat? But his jokes
5:24
Speaker 1: came out all washed up? Yeah? Today is also the
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Speaker 1: day that Elvis Presley died of a heart attack, supposedly
5:33
Speaker 1: sitting on his toilet in nineteen seventy seven, although there
5:38
Speaker 1: were rumors that Elvis was working at a Jack in
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Speaker 1: the box restaurant for a while. Now, on to the
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Speaker 1: meat of the matter, and the meat of the matter
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Speaker 1: on this podcast, I must go in depth. Ace of
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Speaker 1: Bass said, I saw the sign. Well, I saw the sign.
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Speaker 1: And not a metaphorical sign, not a spiritual sign, not
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Speaker 1: one of those motivational posters with an eagle soaring over
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Speaker 1: a mountain telling you to believe. No, an actual sign.
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Speaker 1: And it might be the greatest workplace sign I have
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Speaker 1: ever encountered in my years and years of slaving away
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Speaker 1: over hot microphones. So this is another one of those
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Speaker 1: stories that proves life is infinitely more entertaining than most
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Speaker 1: of the sporting events that we watch. You don't have
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Speaker 1: to make anything up. You simply have to wander around
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Speaker 1: long enough until reality decides to put on a red
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Speaker 1: foam clown nose and some funny shoes. So the other
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Speaker 1: day I made one of my weekly pilgrimages back to
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Speaker 1: the Mothership in the Oaks, Sherman Oaks, the Premier Network's
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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia building, the Palace, the Fortress, the place where thousands
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Speaker 1: and thousands of hours of hot air have been pumped
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Speaker 1: across America to the great Unwashed. And I made the
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Speaker 1: long drive from the North Woods, where I spend most
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Speaker 1: of my life these days, you know, at home doing
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Speaker 1: my thing, arguing with imaginary people and trying to convince
7:10
Speaker 1: myself that my dog Moxie actually enjoys listening to marginal
7:14
Speaker 1: sports takes overnight. Now the building sits. If you've ever
7:18
Speaker 1: been to the Fox Sports Radio building, moving Man and
7:21
Speaker 1: Mike the Leprechaun have The building sits at Ventura Boulevard
7:26
Speaker 1: and Sepulvi. That's some pretty big real estate in La
7:29
Speaker 1: Kitty corner from the Cheesecake Factory, because why not. And
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Speaker 1: the iconic Sherman Oaks Galleria legend been in a bunch
7:38
Speaker 1: of movies. The tallest skyscraper, if you want to call
7:42
Speaker 1: that's not really a skyscraper, the tallest building in the
7:45
Speaker 1: San Fernando Value. You cannot miss it. Whether you're on
7:47
Speaker 1: the one oh one or the four h five, you
7:50
Speaker 1: cannot miss it. So, judging by the traffic in La Though,
7:55
Speaker 1: plenty of people apparently try to miss it. So I
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Speaker 1: pulled into the build the gigantic parking garage that goes
8:03
Speaker 1: up to the heavens. Gigantic doesn't really do it justice.
8:06
Speaker 1: It's one of those garages where you park your car
8:10
Speaker 1: and if you go there during the day, you forget
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Speaker 1: where you park your car and you begin questioning every
8:15
Speaker 1: decision you've ever made. Now I found a spot close
8:19
Speaker 1: because I was there at night, and when you're there
8:20
Speaker 1: at night there's not that many people around. You get
8:22
Speaker 1: good parking. That was victory. You know, it's La Bingo
8:26
Speaker 1: and you get good parking. So then came my favorite
8:29
Speaker 1: part of entering the building, and that is the parade
8:33
Speaker 1: from the hot yoga studio. Every single time, a study
8:37
Speaker 1: stream of middle aged men and women, not attractive emerging
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Speaker 1: from the studio looking like they had just escaped asana
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Speaker 1: during a prison break, dripping, glowing, covered in towels, and yeah,
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Speaker 1: sweating from places I didn't even know could sweat. And
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Speaker 1: I don't know if hot yoga makes you healthier. I've
8:59
Speaker 1: never done it. I don't know. I don't know why
9:04
Speaker 1: you get addicted to it. I does know. I do
9:06
Speaker 1: know it makes your your clothes surrender. So I walked
9:10
Speaker 1: past them, and I stopped to say hello to my
9:12
Speaker 1: buddy James. Who is James? James is the security guard
9:15
Speaker 1: the building. Used to work the overnight shift. Now he
9:17
Speaker 1: works in the night shift. So I see him as
9:18
Speaker 1: he's ending his night and I'm beginning my overnight. He's
9:22
Speaker 1: been there for well over a decade, I think fifteen
9:25
Speaker 1: years or so. Now one of those guys who permanently
9:29
Speaker 1: has a smile. Now I'm not that guy. He's that guy.
9:33
Speaker 1: Do you have anyone in your life that's that guy?
9:34
Speaker 1: Are you that person? Yeah? So if you know people
9:38
Speaker 1: like that, it's great. Nothing bothers them. The world could
9:42
Speaker 1: literally be ending, and my man, the security guard, James
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Speaker 1: would shrug and say, well, that's unfortunate. He loves comic books.
9:50
Speaker 1: He wrote a comic book. He loves movies. He worked
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Speaker 1: security at Disney years ago. Now he guards radio people.
9:58
Speaker 1: He guards radio people, which honestly is probably more dangerous emotionally,
10:04
Speaker 1: so whenever I see him, he's always smiling. He's always saying, hey,
10:07
Speaker 1: you look great. You know, I want to make some
10:09
Speaker 1: reference to a Marvel movie. So we started talking. James
10:13
Speaker 1: informed me he is done with the Golden State. He
10:17
Speaker 1: wants out now. I did not ask him this. He
10:20
Speaker 1: just offered this out of the blue. He and I
10:23
Speaker 1: asked him, how's it going. You've been here forever. He said, yeah,
10:25
Speaker 1: well he's I went out of California. I'm done, So
10:28
Speaker 1: stick a fork in him. His dream is to move
10:30
Speaker 1: back to Illinois for cost of living. Unfortunately, that's part
10:35
Speaker 1: of a problem. Illinois is, I guess, located in another
10:39
Speaker 1: planet when you look at U haul pricing. So James
10:44
Speaker 1: was explaining that renting a truck leaving California costs dramatically
10:47
Speaker 1: more than renting a truck coming back, and that as
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Speaker 1: evidence of the lack of juice for California, meaning people
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Speaker 1: are more likely to try to get out than go
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Speaker 1: back in. So, supplying to man, if everyone wants out,
11:03
Speaker 1: nobody wants to haul the furniture back, And he said
11:07
Speaker 1: that the moving truck alone was so expensive on his
11:10
Speaker 1: meager salary that he'd probably have to sell pretty much
11:14
Speaker 1: everything and just go with one bag of clothes and
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Speaker 1: that's it. A magic Your sofa loses, not because it's uncomfortable,
11:23
Speaker 1: it's good sofa, but because geography is expensive. That's California
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Speaker 1: in a nutshell. Furniture doesn't retire, it gets salary capped.
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Speaker 1: We laughed, We laughed. He's not a sports guy. He's not,
11:36
Speaker 1: but we laughed. What else are you gonna do in
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Speaker 1: that situation? Now, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
11:43
Speaker 1: So then I headed inside through the courtyard, same routine
11:47
Speaker 1: every trip, use the key card, walk into the Fox
11:50
Speaker 1: Sports radio entrance. You see the old Steve Harvey studio,
11:55
Speaker 1: his production team there. He rarely, rarely pops up. I
11:59
Speaker 1: haven't seen him in years. Hard to blame him. If
12:02
Speaker 1: I owned multiple mansions in Atlanta, Dubai, Texas wherever, I'd
12:09
Speaker 1: probably broadcast from my swimming pool or a hammock all
12:14
Speaker 1: the time. So good for Steve. He's rich, he's good,
12:17
Speaker 1: he's talented, and he can do whatever the hell he wants.
12:21
Speaker 1: Then it's off to the powder room. That's what HGTV
12:25
Speaker 1: people called it, and I've watched a lot of HGTV
12:29
Speaker 1: since I got married. The powder room I've always wanted
12:31
Speaker 1: to use the powder room regularly. It makes you sound
12:36
Speaker 1: more sophisticated when you say powder room rather than toilet
12:40
Speaker 1: or bathroom, like someone who drinks sparkling water because he
12:44
Speaker 1: enjoys it instead of because that's all that's left, you know,
12:48
Speaker 1: ice water. Whatever. So I walked past the production studios
12:53
Speaker 1: with my cup of water, walked past one of the
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Speaker 1: engineering rooms, past the main studio, made a left, a
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Speaker 1: right hallway left again, verr to the left, past the
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Speaker 1: original Fox Sports radio studio, pasted another studio, past what
13:11
Speaker 1: used to be Nicky six radio setup. He had a
13:14
Speaker 1: radio show. Yep, that Nicky six Motley Crue. The whole thing.
13:18
Speaker 1: Every hallway in that building has a ghost everyone. Some
13:23
Speaker 1: are famous, some still owe money. Straight ahead sits a
13:28
Speaker 1: vintage vending machine. Now there's a little side hallway and
13:31
Speaker 1: a back exit. That is where Henry Hill famously banged
13:36
Speaker 1: on the door and said, let me in. I'm Henry
13:38
Speaker 1: EFN Hill, and I want to be on the radio.
13:41
Speaker 1: The vending machine straight out of the nineties. Straight out
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Speaker 1: of the nineties, i'd say early nineties, probably accepts payments
13:47
Speaker 1: and beanie babies. The chips cost approximately the GDP of
13:53
Speaker 1: a small island nation. The candy bars have likely survived
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Speaker 1: at least three or four presidential administrations. I am convinced
14:02
Speaker 1: there is a bag of cool ranch to ritos in
14:04
Speaker 1: there that has been sitting in slot B seven since
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Speaker 1: the early days of the Clinton administration when Monica Lewinsky
14:14
Speaker 1: was working her magic on Bill. Now. Eventually I did
14:18
Speaker 1: reach my destination because just to the left of that
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Speaker 1: vending machine was my sanctuary, the original ump date studio
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Speaker 1: of the Fox Sports Radio. My little hideaway, hidden away
14:30
Speaker 1: from everyone else, an introverts dream, quiet, peaceful, off the
14:35
Speaker 1: beaten path. Nobody bothers me, nobody bothers me. It's pretty
14:41
Speaker 1: It's pretty rare that you have a place like this
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Speaker 1: in a massive radio building. Now, that is, by the way,
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Speaker 1: the room where I started my Fox Sports Radio career. Well,
14:51
Speaker 1: actually it was upstairs outside of a few months in
14:53
Speaker 1: the Michael Reagan studio, the late great son of President
14:56
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan and Nancy. Back then I was I got
15:00
Speaker 1: hired as an update anchor and weekend host. I started
15:03
Speaker 1: out just doing updates. I was trained by the great
15:05
Speaker 1: Andrew Siciliano, now the voice of the Cleveland Browns every
15:08
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, scores, highlights, breaking news, breaking news. You learn quickly.
15:16
Speaker 1: You also learn not to inhale during a satellite delay.
15:21
Speaker 1: To this day, I still finished preparing the show in
15:26
Speaker 1: that room. All these years. It's my room. It's my
15:29
Speaker 1: happy place, or at least that's what I tell myself.
15:33
Speaker 1: Except on this day I was stonewalled. I couldn't get in.
15:38
Speaker 1: The hallway looked like a crime scene. There was that
15:40
Speaker 1: yellow caution tape everywhere, not just casually hanging. No, no, no,
15:45
Speaker 1: this thing had been wrapped like somebody had discovered the
15:49
Speaker 1: body of Jimmy Hoffa. And there was also this industrial fan.
15:54
Speaker 1: The industrial fan doesn't even begin to describe it. This
15:57
Speaker 1: fan was Jin Norman. Now, I do not want to exaggerate,
16:03
Speaker 1: I do not want to exaggerate, But if Alaska got
16:09
Speaker 1: overtaken by global warming and they needed air conditioning, this
16:12
Speaker 1: was the fan. Okay, this was the fan. And sitting
16:15
Speaker 1: next to this fan was a sign. I saw the sign.
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Speaker 1: Not just any sign, the greatest sign ever. Now I
16:23
Speaker 1: can't read you every single word verbatim because I'd like
16:27
Speaker 1: to continue collecting paychecks from the company. There are limits.
16:30
Speaker 1: I hope you understand I enjoy employment. However, I can
16:34
Speaker 1: share ninety nine percent of it. It began innocently enough,
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Speaker 1: do not close the door. Five words, do not close
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Speaker 1: the door, which seems pretty reasonable. We've all seen signs
16:45
Speaker 1: like that. Then whoever wrote this letter took a hard
16:48
Speaker 1: left turn into Michael Bay territory. He wrote, if the
16:55
Speaker 1: five hundred pounds of batteries overheat, and I said, wait
16:59
Speaker 1: a minute, five hundred pounds batteries, what exactly are we storing? Back? There?
17:07
Speaker 1: Is this a nuclear facility? A flashlight for Godzilla? What
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Speaker 1: is going on? And then sign continues, you will burn
17:20
Speaker 1: our workplace to the ground. You know what that is? Kids, escalation,
17:24
Speaker 1: immediate escalation, no warm up, no transition straight to apocalypse.
17:30
Speaker 1: But you know how it goes. Wait, there's more, and possibly,
17:35
Speaker 1: the quote continues, you will burn our workplace to the
17:38
Speaker 1: ground and possibly cause a massive explosion. All right, possibly possibly.
17:45
Speaker 1: Now that's comforting. Maybe maybe we'll explode, Maybe we won't.
17:51
Speaker 1: It's a fifty to fifty proposition. So message continues, and
17:55
Speaker 1: possibly cause a massive explosion taking out the parking garage.
18:00
Speaker 1: Oh that's excellent. Now my malamobile is involved. Then the
18:05
Speaker 1: masterpiece that line from taking out the parking garage three
18:11
Speaker 1: words and my office and my office. This guy's worried
18:18
Speaker 1: about his office. Not in danger, every man, woman and
18:23
Speaker 1: child within four block radius. No, no, no, no, no,
18:27
Speaker 1: destroy years of equipment, No, my office, not that now
18:32
Speaker 1: my office. That made me laugh harder than anything I've
18:36
Speaker 1: seen in some time. It was perfect. The world can burn,
18:41
Speaker 1: baby burn, the garage can collapse. But let's let's think
18:45
Speaker 1: about I guess I'll call him Carl. That's not his name.
18:48
Speaker 1: Let's think about Carl's desk priorities. Then the closing sentence,
18:54
Speaker 1: which was pure poetry. The closing sentence to this masterpiece,
19:01
Speaker 1: call me if for some reason you feel so compelled
19:05
Speaker 1: so I can talk you off the ledge. Outstanding, Bravo,
19:11
Speaker 1: Absolutely great. It's equal parts engineering, memo, therapy session. There's
19:16
Speaker 1: a bit of a hostage negotiation and a disaster movie trailer.
19:20
Speaker 1: He almost expected Morgan Freeman to narrate it, and in
19:24
Speaker 1: my head, Morgan Freeman did narrate this. In a world
19:28
Speaker 1: where one person closes one door, everything changes, this sign
19:34
Speaker 1: had everything. There was drama, o rama, there was fear,
19:37
Speaker 1: there was comedy, there was Lebron James Aaron Rodgers level
19:42
Speaker 1: passive aggression. It deserved an award, an Emmy or a
19:48
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize or something like that. I stood there reading
19:51
Speaker 1: it over and over again like it was Shakespeare, and
19:54
Speaker 1: my favorite part wasn't even the explosions. It was the confidence,
20:00
Speaker 1: like this certainty, the assumption that somebody, some radio knucklehead,
20:06
Speaker 1: is eventually going to see the giant industrial fan, the
20:09
Speaker 1: yellow caution tape, a warning about five hundred pounds of batteries,
20:13
Speaker 1: and still think, you know, this place needs a closed door, because,
20:18
Speaker 1: let's be honest, there's probably it Probably is someone in
20:22
Speaker 1: radio capable of doing exactly that, or not. The smartest
20:25
Speaker 1: bunch I've met us I know us. The engineer who
20:28
Speaker 1: wrote the sign is one of the smartest people I've
20:31
Speaker 1: ever worked with, an absolute wizard. You could hand this
20:35
Speaker 1: guy a flying saucer that you took out of area
20:39
Speaker 1: fifty one, and within twenty minutes he would have Bluetooth
20:44
Speaker 1: installed in the flying saucer. Radio engineers are different, There
20:50
Speaker 1: are different species. They speak fluent wire, They hear frequencies
20:55
Speaker 1: the rest of us cannot hear. They know where every
20:59
Speaker 1: effing cable goes.
21:00
Speaker 2: Now.
21:00
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, now we struggle plugging in the phone charger, and
21:05
Speaker 1: at the bottom he signed his name this guy, including
21:09
Speaker 1: his phone number. Apparently, if I ever have an emotional
21:12
Speaker 1: breakdown and need some help or accidentally trigger an industrial
21:17
Speaker 1: battery explosion, this guy's gonna talk me through it with
21:21
Speaker 1: some psychobabble. Good no, no. And you wonder what the
21:24
Speaker 1: thought process was that got him to write that letter.
21:28
Speaker 1: You really do so. As I record this podcast, the building,
21:33
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, still stands. The parking
21:35
Speaker 1: garage remains attached to the building. The studio has not exploded,
21:40
Speaker 1: batteries continue behaving themselves, the fan is still fanning, and
21:45
Speaker 1: the sign the sign lives forever I need. I needed
21:50
Speaker 1: to have a couple of minutes to process it the
21:53
Speaker 1: second time I saw it, and the third time I
21:55
Speaker 1: ended up finding another place to prepare for the show.
21:57
Speaker 1: I know you're very concerned about that. No big deal.
21:59
Speaker 1: Life goes on, although I am fairly certain every move
22:03
Speaker 1: I made that night was captured by approximately seven hundred
22:08
Speaker 1: security cameras. The building has more surveillance than the Pentagon
22:13
Speaker 1: Smile you're broadcasting. What struck me most was not the inconvenience.
22:19
Speaker 1: It was not the inconvenience. It was the personality, right.
22:24
Speaker 1: That's the thing here. Only a radio engineer could write
22:28
Speaker 1: something simultaneously terrifying and hysterical. Only someone who spends every
22:34
Speaker 1: day preventing disasters could casually describe the end of civilization
22:39
Speaker 1: before lunch. Now. I've worked at Foxworthstrita a long time.
22:43
Speaker 1: I was laid off for six months and twenty six days,
22:46
Speaker 1: longest seven months of my life. People came, people went
22:50
Speaker 1: formatch changed, executives changed, hosts changed. All that happened. The
22:56
Speaker 1: engineering staff, which is not technically under the Fox Sport
23:00
Speaker 1: Sports umbrella. They're part of the iHeart group. This engineer
23:04
Speaker 1: was through it all, like engineers survive everything. I call them.
23:09
Speaker 1: The cockroaches are broadcasting Nuclear Winner. They're not affected. They're
23:13
Speaker 1: still patching. They're still patching audio chords, meteor strike, no problem,
23:19
Speaker 1: checking the transmitter. Zombie apocalypse. Hold on, I'm rebooting the
23:22
Speaker 1: board right now. They're indestructible. They are. They don't have
23:26
Speaker 1: to worry about ratings, they don't have to worry about
23:29
Speaker 1: podcast downloads. Nobody's calling demanding they replace the engineer. Nobody
23:33
Speaker 1: blames the engineer because a guest picked against Jerry Jones's cowboys.
23:39
Speaker 1: They're always there, quietly making sure the circus continues and
23:44
Speaker 1: ma anyways, the unsung heroes of the business. Every industry
23:48
Speaker 1: has people like this, the people you never notice until
23:52
Speaker 1: something breaks, and when something goes snap, crackle, pop, they
23:56
Speaker 1: suddenly pop up out of nowhere, and they're the most
24:00
Speaker 1: important people in the building. And I walked away smiling.
24:04
Speaker 1: Not because I almost witnessed a battery power at Armageddon.
24:08
Speaker 1: Not because of that, Not because my office almost became charcoal,
24:11
Speaker 1: said the engineer. Not because I apparently work next to
24:15
Speaker 1: enough batteries to power a small civilization. I smiled because
24:20
Speaker 1: of the sign. Somebody took the time to write that.
24:24
Speaker 1: Not in a stiff corporate jargony way. There was no
24:27
Speaker 1: legal jargon there with personality. This had a little humor,
24:31
Speaker 1: with panic and a little flare. It reminded me that
24:35
Speaker 1: the top stories are usually hidden right in planesight. You
24:39
Speaker 1: don't need exotic vacations to French Polynesia, you don't need
24:45
Speaker 1: the celebrity encounters. Sometimes all you need is a hallway,
24:49
Speaker 1: a giant fan, five hundred pounds of batteries, and one
24:54
Speaker 1: unforgettable sign. Ace of base was right. I saw the sign.
24:59
Speaker 1: Unl like the song, I didn't open up my eyes.
25:03
Speaker 1: It simply made me laugh. Sometimes that's even better. Sometimes
25:09
Speaker 1: it's just even better now flipping the page. It's a
25:15
Speaker 1: small world, after all. It's a small world after all. Yeah,
25:19
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So there are people in this
25:22
Speaker 1: business that I'm in that do shout outs. I often
25:25
Speaker 1: mock them, I goof on them. I am not one
25:27
Speaker 1: of those people. Morning hosts do shout outs. They are
25:31
Speaker 1: beloved community figures with goofy jokes who somehow know everyone's birthday.
25:38
Speaker 1: They know the dog's birthday, the anniversary of the first
25:41
Speaker 1: time Steve from Seami Valley bought a Honda Accord, and
25:45
Speaker 1: how emotional that was. They read names off liss that's right,
25:50
Speaker 1: Terry in England list while inspirational music plays underneath. It's
25:56
Speaker 1: practically public service. So I'm not right. I'm the overnight guy.
26:01
Speaker 1: My social circle consists of people like hollering James Jed
26:06
Speaker 1: who fled, and Marcel in Brooklyn, and people who begin
26:11
Speaker 1: phone call saying hey remember me, Oh yeah, you're the
26:14
Speaker 1: remember me guy. It's a different ecosystem. So when I
26:18
Speaker 1: happened to mention a couple of former Fox Sports Radio
26:22
Speaker 1: co workers on a recent show. It wasn't intended as
26:26
Speaker 1: a tribute. It wasn't nostalgia. It certainly wasn't one of
26:31
Speaker 1: those Hallmark Channel movie moments where everyone gathers around a
26:34
Speaker 1: campfire roasting marshmallows and realizes friendship is the greatest gift
26:39
Speaker 1: of all. It wasn't that I was simply telling a story.
26:44
Speaker 1: I was simply telling a story. I added some lowry
26:46
Speaker 1: seasoning salt on the fries, that was it. And I
26:50
Speaker 1: was talking about walking past the old studio. In fact,
26:53
Speaker 1: I just mentioned a lot of that story the sign,
26:56
Speaker 1: and I was talking about that and mentioned kind of
26:59
Speaker 1: a weird, strange museum now, the old studio, where the
27:03
Speaker 1: exhibits are mostly classical microphones and unpaid parking tickets. And
27:09
Speaker 1: I casually mentioned Rich Horrera, who somehow escaped sports radio
27:14
Speaker 1: and reinvented himself as a political commentator. Then I mentioned
27:18
Speaker 1: Craig Sheman, another member of what we call the Fox
27:21
Speaker 1: Sports Radio Alumni Association. And that was it. A passing reference,
27:28
Speaker 1: a conversational situation, like the equivalent of saying, hey, I
27:32
Speaker 1: need OJ when you're driving past a grocery store. Now
27:36
Speaker 1: the next afternoon, my phone buzzed. The number was not
27:39
Speaker 1: in my phone. Now, normally, as you know, this means
27:42
Speaker 1: one of three things. It means either someone wants to
27:46
Speaker 1: sell me solar panels I'm good, someone is pretending to
27:51
Speaker 1: be the irs, Or someone is offering me an exciting
27:56
Speaker 1: investment opportunity involving crypto currency and rare earth metals. Wink wink,
28:03
Speaker 1: wink wink. All right, So the curiosity got the better
28:06
Speaker 1: of me, and against my proper judgment, which has been
28:11
Speaker 1: losing ground for years, i opened the message. Message began,
28:15
Speaker 1: Hey Ben, it was Craig. Craig Sheman, alive and well,
28:20
Speaker 1: living in God's waiting room there in Florida, in Naples, Florida,
28:25
Speaker 1: doing local radio. Now, I'd almost forgotten that people from
28:30
Speaker 1: radio continue existing when they leave the FSR compound. So
28:35
Speaker 1: we exchanged the usual pleasantries that men of our age
28:40
Speaker 1: exchanged after years of not speaking. Now nobody, nobody asked
28:45
Speaker 1: meaningful questions. In these conversations. We don't say, have you
28:49
Speaker 1: discovered happiness yet? No?
28:51
Speaker 2: No, no.
28:52
Speaker 1: Instead, it's house. Everything followed immediately by good, regardless of
28:57
Speaker 1: whether the other person is currently stranded on an ice
29:00
Speaker 1: somewhere in the Northern Atlantic. Now. Craig has been one
29:04
Speaker 1: of those radio nomads. He worked in Carolina, Houston, Florida
29:12
Speaker 1: Network Television, Big ten Podcast, which I think he still does.
29:18
Speaker 1: People in radio migrate the way birds do, except birds
29:22
Speaker 1: generally have a better retirement plan. They're taking care of
29:26
Speaker 1: a little better. So the conversation lasted only a few minutes,
29:29
Speaker 1: but after it ended, I found myself sitting there staring
29:33
Speaker 1: at the phone longer than seemed healthy. And as a reminder,
29:38
Speaker 1: listen radio has become my own personal episode of the
29:42
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone, specifically the episode where is Everybody? It's the
29:48
Speaker 1: episode where a man wakes up in an empty town.
29:50
Speaker 1: Everything is somewhat normal. The diners still has coffee cups,
29:56
Speaker 1: the barber shop still has chairs, the traffic lights still change.
30:02
Speaker 1: They're just no people. That's it. He's the only one.
30:05
Speaker 1: That's my career. I still walk into the same building.
30:09
Speaker 1: The elevator works if I need to take it. The
30:11
Speaker 1: security guard recognizes me as we've talked about. The vending
30:14
Speaker 1: machine continues refusing my dollar bills with this astounding consistency.
30:21
Speaker 1: But everyone I knew from the early days has now disappeared.
30:26
Speaker 1: They have vanished. It's not like they're in the mob
30:30
Speaker 1: witness protection program, just gone. They've moved on, different cities,
30:35
Speaker 1: different stations, different careers, different lives, cross the pearly gates,
30:39
Speaker 1: some going into that mortal coil, and that's it. Crossing over.
30:45
Speaker 1: Now every few years I realize I've become the oldest
30:49
Speaker 1: tree in the forest because someone points it out to me. Oh,
30:54
Speaker 1: you're still here. Oh you're still there. I can't believe it.
30:56
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you've been there a long time. Apparently
30:58
Speaker 1: I have. I'm the lasting member of the Fox Sports
31:02
Speaker 1: Radio expansion team, the last one back when we were
31:06
Speaker 1: a scrappy, little upstart network trying to convince America we existed.
31:10
Speaker 1: Children today, you church today. I have no appreciation for
31:13
Speaker 1: what that meant. Now. We were not competing with podcasts.
31:17
Speaker 1: They didn't exist when Fox Sports Radio started in any
31:19
Speaker 1: meaningful way. There was no TikTok personalities, YouTube people or
31:24
Speaker 1: any of that. We we didn't worry about it. They
31:29
Speaker 1: were all broadcasting from their guest bedrooms and all that.
31:32
Speaker 1: We didn't exist in that world. That will. We were
31:36
Speaker 1: going out and getting our teeth kicked in by sports
31:41
Speaker 1: fan Radio. The Pete Rose Show, one on one Sports
31:46
Speaker 1: with Papa Joe Chevalier, and the giant known as ESPN
31:50
Speaker 1: Radio with the equally giant fabulous sports pape. There was
31:53
Speaker 1: no certainty we would survive. It was a startup, the
31:57
Speaker 1: entire operation at the confidence level of a guy buying
31:59
Speaker 1: a lot of tickets while filing for bankruptcy paperwork. And
32:03
Speaker 1: yet everyone believed, or maybe nobody believed. Maybe we were
32:07
Speaker 1: simply too young and dumb and underpaid to understand the
32:12
Speaker 1: odds we didn't understand. Looking back, that may have been
32:17
Speaker 1: our greatest advantage. Ignorance is a magnificent business strategy. It
32:22
Speaker 1: also works well in sports. Over the decades, the staff
32:26
Speaker 1: at FSR has turned over so many times, how many times?
32:30
Speaker 1: So many times that I have stopped trying to count
32:33
Speaker 1: and remember names until someone has been at the company
32:35
Speaker 1: for at least five years. It's kind of like owning
32:37
Speaker 1: a goldfish. You become emotionally cautious. We've had boss after
32:44
Speaker 1: boss after boss. The office has been remodeled, studios have
32:49
Speaker 1: been rebuilt, rebuilt, We've moved down the hall. Technology has
32:53
Speaker 1: changed from stacks of cart machines and CDs to computers,
32:57
Speaker 1: sophisticated enough to crash three minutes before airtime. The kitchen
33:02
Speaker 1: somehow became worse even though it looks nice. The only
33:06
Speaker 1: constant has been me wandering into the building at odd
33:09
Speaker 1: hours carrying the same black laptop bag, wondering why my
33:15
Speaker 1: right knees suddenly make sounds that remind me of breakfast
33:19
Speaker 1: cereal and where my hair went. And sometimes I'll tell
33:24
Speaker 1: a story on this podcast about someone who worked here
33:28
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. Now, the younger employees, they are
33:33
Speaker 1: not real happy. They stare politely, a bit bemused by
33:37
Speaker 1: all that. The expression is identical to the one I
33:41
Speaker 1: had back many years ago, when my mother, may she
33:44
Speaker 1: rest in peace, would tell me about that cousin that
33:46
Speaker 1: I only met once and it was in nineteen eighty
33:49
Speaker 1: nine and it was very emotional. And so that's that's that.
33:53
Speaker 1: You just kind of listen the people I work with,
33:56
Speaker 1: they'll smile, they'll nod, pretend the information has content inside.
34:01
Speaker 1: They're thinking, Man, who's this Benny Boomer guy? And why
34:03
Speaker 1: is he talking about someone named Craig who apparently loved racquetball.
34:07
Speaker 1: I don't understand. I've become the connective tissue over the years,
34:12
Speaker 1: not because not because I'm particularly wise or important, mostly
34:19
Speaker 1: because I forgot to leave. I forgot to leave. There's
34:23
Speaker 1: something strangely comforting about being the last witness. I remember
34:29
Speaker 1: the AutoZone studios. I remember the cheap furniture of the
34:34
Speaker 1: Fox text line, the panic, the executives pretending not to panic,
34:39
Speaker 1: optimism that somehow overpowered the panic, The people who slept
34:43
Speaker 1: in production rooms because they only had a few hours
34:45
Speaker 1: between shifts and the network needed them. The host convinced
34:50
Speaker 1: this little sports network might actually matter someday, and against
34:55
Speaker 1: every reasonable prediction of doom and gloom, it did. Sports
34:59
Speaker 1: Fan Radio we went away. Fox Sports Radio grew up somehow,
35:04
Speaker 1: it became the premier sports radio network in America. The
35:07
Speaker 1: underdog became the establishment, which is odd because in my
35:12
Speaker 1: head it's still held together with duct tape, caffeine, gum,
35:18
Speaker 1: and blind faith. That is what is holding this back,
35:21
Speaker 1: or holding it together. I should say, every once in
35:23
Speaker 1: a while, someone from the original group reservices. I'll get
35:27
Speaker 1: like I did, the text or an email or a
35:29
Speaker 1: random phone call for a few minutes. It's kind of
35:32
Speaker 1: like finding another survivor after years alone, years alone on
35:37
Speaker 1: the island, you're still alive, Oh, so are you. Then
35:40
Speaker 1: everything returns to what it had been, separate corners of
35:45
Speaker 1: the country. Whether you're in Florida, Texas, Boston, the Northwest, Midwest,
35:50
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. And I head back into the overnight studio,
35:54
Speaker 1: where Marcel will inevitably call Holling, James will wander into
35:58
Speaker 1: the conversation, and blind Scott will be there as well,
36:02
Speaker 1: and another show begins just like that, and the red
36:07
Speaker 1: light flips on and on and on and on, and
36:11
Speaker 1: so you get the red light going on air. The
36:14
Speaker 1: building is mostly empty, the hallways are quiet now. Outside
36:18
Speaker 1: Los Angeles is mostly sleeping, as is the rest of
36:21
Speaker 1: the country. Inside, I sit in pretty much the same
36:25
Speaker 1: chair I've occupied for what feels like several geological eras,
36:29
Speaker 1: talking into a microphone, as if everyone else simply stepped
36:34
Speaker 1: out for a cup of coffee and will be back
36:37
Speaker 1: any minute. Now. Maybe that's the trick, right that, Maybe
36:39
Speaker 1: that's where it's at. They're not gone. Maybe I'm just
36:44
Speaker 1: the guy who never left. Maybe that's it. But then
36:48
Speaker 1: in your pipe and smoke it time not for the word,
36:50
Speaker 1: actually know it's a phrase of the week, the phrase
36:53
Speaker 1: of the week, Your phrase of the week, phrase of
36:58
Speaker 1: the week is dog eat dog world. That is the
37:01
Speaker 1: phrase of the week, and it means a ruthless, cutthroat
37:05
Speaker 1: environment where everyone else is looking out for themselves. However,
37:12
Speaker 1: the common mystery of this phrase is doggy dog world,
37:17
Speaker 1: all right, So the roots go back more than two
37:20
Speaker 1: thousand years for this phrase, dog eat dog world. A
37:23
Speaker 1: Roman scholar whose Latin phrase meant a dog does not
37:29
Speaker 1: eat a dog became the point of this. So that
37:34
Speaker 1: was the the deal on that, and the original phrase
37:39
Speaker 1: actually carried the opposite meeting today's expression, which which means, hey, listen,
37:45
Speaker 1: you know dogs, it's a dog eat dog world. It
37:50
Speaker 1: says dogs, even when they're hungry and at their worst,
37:54
Speaker 1: they're not going to eat their own kind, even though
37:56
Speaker 1: dogs famously will kill their own kind if they have to,
38:02
Speaker 1: and all that. But the phrase reminded reminded me of
38:06
Speaker 1: something that we've used on the show for some time.
38:10
Speaker 1: And they say the modern version appears to have emerged
38:15
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen hundreds, and that's where the modern
38:19
Speaker 1: interpretation began. So the history of dog eat dog World
38:24
Speaker 1: a reminder that language can change dramatically over time, even
38:30
Speaker 1: reverting a phrase and its original meaning and explains why
38:35
Speaker 1: the idiom is often misunderstood today. So there is that.
38:40
Speaker 1: We'll get out on that note, have a wonderful, glorious
38:44
Speaker 1: rest of your Friday. Will have fresh pods on Saturday
38:48
Speaker 1: and Sunday. Bye bye bye bye, see you later. Alligator. Yeah,
38:55
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, all of that stuff,