Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: White Whale

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: White Whale · The Ben Maller Show

0:02
Speaker 1: If you thought four hours a day, 1,200 minutes a
0:05
Speaker 1: week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of
0:09
Speaker 1: the old republic, a sole bastion of fairness. He treats
0:12
Speaker 1: crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the rich
0:15
Speaker 1: pill poppers in the penthouse.
0:18
Speaker 2: Wow.
0:18
Speaker 1: The clearinghouse of hot takes break free for something special.
0:22
Speaker 1: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
0:28
Speaker 2: In the air everywhere, the Fifth Hour with me, Ben Maller. Well,
0:35
Speaker 2: you kind of already knew that. And here we are
0:37
Speaker 2: yet again, another glorious day in the magic audio box,
0:43
Speaker 2: otherwise known as the Fifth Hour Podcast. It is Sunday,
0:46
Speaker 2: the 30th day of August, or as we like to say,
0:49
Speaker 2: the morning after another legendary Maller meet and greet. So
0:53
Speaker 2: I received a subliminal message from from my P1 who
0:59
Speaker 2: no longer listens live. He sold out our friend Terry
1:03
Speaker 2: in England, who has been on the mailbag podcast. And
1:07
Speaker 2: Terry said, Ben, I know you want to spend the
1:10
Speaker 2: entire hour on this podcast, breaking down what it was
1:15
Speaker 2: like at the stakeout bar and grill for the big
1:18
Speaker 2: Mallor meet and greet that took place on Saturday. However,
1:23
Speaker 2: Terry reminded me through this subliminal message. He said, Ben,
1:27
Speaker 2: I need you. I need you to stay calm. I
1:32
Speaker 2: want you to hold off on giving a knee-jerk recap.
1:38
Speaker 2: We need you to stay still and wait. Wait till
1:45
Speaker 2: next week. So in honor of the wishes of Terry
1:48
Speaker 2: in England, just to be totally transparent here, we are
1:51
Speaker 2: going to wait. And then on Friday's podcast, we will
1:56
Speaker 2: connect the dots. We will piece together the puzzle. And
2:01
Speaker 2: these things are always puzzles. There were things that were
2:04
Speaker 2: supposed to happen yesterday that didn't happen. There were things
2:07
Speaker 2: that we didn't expect to happen that did happen. And
2:11
Speaker 2: so we'll get to the bottom of all that. We'll
2:14
Speaker 2: figure it out. I'm going to think about exactly what
2:18
Speaker 2: happened and how I want to share that with you.
2:22
Speaker 2: And so that'll take place. On the Friday podcast. On
2:24
Speaker 2: this edition, we've got the white whale and GPS betrayal.
2:33
Speaker 2: That's right. I know. That's too much pod. That's way
2:37
Speaker 2: too much pod. Well, we're going to begin with this.
2:43
Speaker 2: And I know it is a Debbie Downer. That's a
2:47
Speaker 2: phrase that doesn't get used much anymore. The Debbie Downer phrase.
2:50
Speaker 2: I'll be the killjoy. Yeah, whatever you want to say there.
2:55
Speaker 2: Bleak Benny. Yeah, Bad News Benny. Sourdough Sam. All those things.
3:02
Speaker 2: All those things. No mailbag today. Now, the reason we're
3:05
Speaker 2: not doing a mailbag is because it's a travel weekend.
3:09
Speaker 2: Viva Las Vegas. And pretty much anybody I wanted to
3:13
Speaker 2: get on the mailbag who could get on the mailbag...
3:17
Speaker 2: meaning they don't have their Obama phone and they have
3:19
Speaker 2: a real phone, was either at the meet and greet
3:21
Speaker 2: or not available. So no mailbag today. I know it's
3:24
Speaker 2: a bummer. I know you're disappointed, right? And you're probably
3:29
Speaker 2: slouching your shoulders right now and you've got pouty lips
3:32
Speaker 2: and you're crossing your arms and all those things. It
3:34
Speaker 2: will return, barring some kind of plot twist, it will
3:38
Speaker 2: return on the next weekend of the pod. So A
3:43
Speaker 2: week from today, which will be our first Sunday in September,
3:49
Speaker 2: we will have the mailbag. So plan ahead. You can
3:52
Speaker 2: email me at any point today, tomorrow, whenever for the mailbag,
3:58
Speaker 2: and we'll use it on next week's edition. So if
4:00
Speaker 2: you did send a message this past week, and I
4:02
Speaker 2: know we got a few, actually one of them I'm
4:05
Speaker 2: going to use, just kind of hold off on that
4:07
Speaker 2: and send again, and we'll do the mailbag next week. Now,
4:11
Speaker 2: I mentioned I didn't want to share one correspondence that
4:14
Speaker 2: I received this week that was head and shoulders above
4:17
Speaker 2: the rest. Either that or I just happened to accidentally
4:20
Speaker 2: click it open. It is involving our search for El Dorado.
4:26
Speaker 2: What does that mean? For many years, many, many years now,
4:31
Speaker 2: we have been on a quest, an audio quest, to
4:34
Speaker 2: find what I maintain is the greatest Jerry Jones drop
4:39
Speaker 2: of all time. Now, Jerry has been on microphones and
4:44
Speaker 2: in front of cameras since before I got into radio.
4:48
Speaker 2: I was like in high school when Jerry Jones got
4:51
Speaker 2: the Cowboys. So my entire career, I've always had the
4:54
Speaker 2: crutch of Jerry Jones saying goofy things, doing goofy things. Yet,
5:02
Speaker 2: as I have chronicled this.
5:05
Speaker 2: Since back when I started in radio and the Cowboys
5:06
Speaker 2: were actually winning Super Bowls, believe it or not, I
5:10
Speaker 2: know it's shocking. The greatest single drop of all time
5:15
Speaker 2: is Jerry talking about a mosquito, specifically circumcising a mosquito. Now,
5:22
Speaker 2: Jerry has his own collection of drops that I believe
5:25
Speaker 2: can rival the Beatles song catalog, which is considered the
5:32
Speaker 2: creme de la creme Am I right on that? I'm
5:35
Speaker 2: not a music guy. I don't have the music gene.
5:37
Speaker 2: I remember reading a story about the Beatles song catalog
5:41
Speaker 2: and how amazing that was. And a bunch of different
5:43
Speaker 2: people had stakes in it. Michael Jackson at one point
5:48
Speaker 2: owned part of the Beatles song catalog, if not all
5:51
Speaker 2: of it. The holy grail, though, of a music library...
5:55
Speaker 2: circumcising a mosquito that includes, let's go back and look
5:58
Speaker 2: at some of the hits here. This is not a list.
6:00
Speaker 2: This is not, it's not, it's a big board. Jerry
6:04
Speaker 2: Jones music library of drops that includes platinum songs. Like
6:09
Speaker 2: I want me some glory hole, which we play a lot.
6:13
Speaker 2: When the Cowboys were in last place about a decade
6:17
Speaker 2: ago or so, Jerry Jones gave the famous quote that
6:20
Speaker 2: he was lower than a crippled cricket's ass, which is outstanding. Outstanding, right?
6:25
Speaker 2: All these country slang terms that Jerry Jones uses. He
6:30
Speaker 2: gave a dropout. He said, I'm looking up on my back,
6:32
Speaker 2: when the Cowboys were not doing well, looking up on
6:34
Speaker 2: my back, and all I see is ass. I want
6:38
Speaker 2: a different perspective. That's what he said. Back in 2020,
6:44
Speaker 2: there was some chatter about Dez Bryant playing and coming
6:47
Speaker 2: back and all that. And Jerry Jones said, I've been
6:50
Speaker 2: thinking about it in the shower. And all of those
6:53
Speaker 2: are great, and there's a bunch of other drops that
6:55
Speaker 2: Jerry's given us over the years. However, I maintain the
7:00
Speaker 2: circumcising the mosquito quote is the white whale. It's been
7:04
Speaker 2: pursued by many, but never caught again. We did have it.
7:09
Speaker 2: We had the drop circumcising the mosquito, and somehow it vanished.
7:16
Speaker 2: And we've never been able to catch it again. And yes,
7:20
Speaker 2: those words actually did escape the mouth of the Dallas
7:23
Speaker 2: Cowboys owner. We're not making that up. This is not
7:26
Speaker 2: some kind of fever dream. It's not urban legend. And
7:31
Speaker 2: it apparently happened a decade ago, almost exactly a decade ago,
7:36
Speaker 2: September of 2016. during Jerry's appearance on the radio in Dallas.
7:43
Speaker 2: He was doing sports radio there while discussing on his
7:46
Speaker 2: weekly radio show. He does two shows a week. He
7:49
Speaker 2: was discussing Tony Romo's roster status in September of 2016,
7:55
Speaker 2: and he was yapping away and going on a lot.
8:00
Speaker 2: Contemporary reports, if you go back into the Wayback Machine,
8:05
Speaker 2: confirm that this happened. But where did the actual audio go?
8:11
Speaker 2: Scrubbed from the interwebs, vanished. And so that's the part
8:16
Speaker 2: of the story where we welcome in the mailbag. Now,
8:19
Speaker 2: this is not an official mailbag. This is a one-off mailbag.
8:23
Speaker 2: I just happened to see this and open it up.
8:26
Speaker 2: Enter our P1 Quang, who claims to be listening faithfully
8:31
Speaker 2: to us from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. That's what he says. Now,
8:35
Speaker 2: Quang went above and beyond the call of duty, and
8:39
Speaker 2: he has joined the unofficial MBI movement, as Alf and
8:43
Speaker 2: Fergdog and Malapropguy know, the Malheur Bureau of Investigations. This
8:49
Speaker 2: is not to be confused with the FBI. This is
8:52
Speaker 2: the Malheur Bureau of Investigations. And our keystone cop, Detective Quang,
8:58
Speaker 2: identified the exact date through his He found what radio
9:03
Speaker 2: station it happened on. He found the exact subject matter
9:07
Speaker 2: that we were looking for. And then, like any good
9:10
Speaker 2: member of the Malheur Bureau of Investigations, he reached out
9:14
Speaker 2: to the representation from that radio station. He contacted, found
9:19
Speaker 2: the email for the boss of the radio station, and
9:22
Speaker 2: requested the archived audio. Quang's just a listener. And he
9:30
Speaker 2: got it. Stonewalled. Little Stonewall Jackson is what he got.
9:36
Speaker 2: No mosquito for you. The station reached out to him.
9:41
Speaker 2: Very nice email. Short email. And announced they would not
9:45
Speaker 2: fulfill the request for said audio. Now, Quang later sent
9:50
Speaker 2: us a message apologizing for coming up empty. And I
9:54
Speaker 2: was trying to think, why would you apologize? Quang, you
9:57
Speaker 2: have nothing to apologize for. You did more impressive investigative
10:03
Speaker 2: work on the circumcised mosquito caper than Woodward and Bernstein.
10:09
Speaker 2: This is investigative journalism. You're going to be eligible for
10:12
Speaker 2: a Pulitzer Prize, even though you didn't actually win it.
10:14
Speaker 2: If that podcast guy who spent months and months and
10:18
Speaker 2: months talking about Kawhi Leonard won a Pulitzer Prize, why
10:21
Speaker 2: can't Quang from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, win a Pulitzer
10:26
Speaker 2: Prize for this work? So you did go above and
10:28
Speaker 2: beyond the call of duty for the Malheur militia. And unfortunately...
10:33
Speaker 2: We don't have any money to give you. We have
10:37
Speaker 2: no budget, so sorry, we can't do that. Since you
10:41
Speaker 2: went above and beyond the call of duty, therefore, by
10:43
Speaker 2: the completely imaginary authority vested in me by the Malheur Militia,
10:49
Speaker 2: I am proud to announce as your leader, the oligarch, Quang,
10:55
Speaker 2: you have received an unofficial imaginary Malheur Militia puffy sticker.
11:00
Speaker 2: That's right. Congratulations. Scratch and sniff. Yeah. Wear it with pride.
11:09
Speaker 2: Wear it with pride. I actually had a guy message me.
11:14
Speaker 2: This is one of the listeners a couple years ago.
11:17
Speaker 2: I don't even know if I talked about this on
11:18
Speaker 2: the podcast. Every once in a while, I'll mention puffy
11:20
Speaker 2: stickers because when I was a kid in school, the
11:25
Speaker 2: kids loved it, especially the girls. They loved those puffy stickers.
11:28
Speaker 2: It was a big deal, the scratch and sniff things.
11:31
Speaker 2: Although I don't think you, I don't remember Puffy Scratch
11:33
Speaker 2: and Sniff. I think that might have been a creation
11:35
Speaker 2: in my mind. Anyway, so somebody reached out and said,
11:37
Speaker 2: why don't we make some Malheur Militia Puffy stickers? And
11:41
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, you know, I'm in. And then
11:46
Speaker 2: it went nowhere, as most of these things do, when
11:48
Speaker 2: people reach out and say, I got t-shirts, I got hats,
11:50
Speaker 2: I got coffee mugs, I got koozies, keychains. And so
11:55
Speaker 2: I get all excited and I'm like, oh, this is
11:57
Speaker 2: gonna be great. We're gonna have a Malheur store, Malheur merch,
11:59
Speaker 2: and then Suddenly the emails stop coming back to me
12:03
Speaker 2: and it just goes away. That would be cool to
12:05
Speaker 2: have like a really nice, and you could do it now,
12:08
Speaker 2: this cartoon Malheur Militia puffy sticker thing. That would be great. Anyway, Quang,
12:14
Speaker 2: in my head, I'm giving you a Malheur Militia puffy sticker,
12:17
Speaker 2: scratch and sniff. Wear it with pride. I'm sure it's
12:21
Speaker 2: going to be a chick magnet. It's kind of like
12:22
Speaker 2: going to a park with a puppy. Everyone runs over
12:26
Speaker 2: to you and says, oh, let me see the puppy. Whee!
12:29
Speaker 2: The puppy! Unfortunately, the Jerry Jones mosquito remains uncircumcised and
12:35
Speaker 2: I believe is hanging out with Sasquatch and a lizard person.
12:41
Speaker 2: So I don't know what they're doing. They're playing some
12:44
Speaker 2: card games. Meanwhile, to a story that has never before
12:50
Speaker 2: been told on this podcast... A guy that we almost
12:54
Speaker 2: had on, Ron Popeil. We had him booked. I was
12:58
Speaker 2: in the pod studio recording, ready to go. We had
13:01
Speaker 2: a time set up for Ron Popeil. And right before
13:05
Speaker 2: the interview, I got a message from his publicist saying,
13:07
Speaker 2: Ron has decided not to do the interview and apologize.
13:12
Speaker 2: And that was it. We never got him on. But
13:14
Speaker 2: Ron Popeil once promised us, every man, woman, and child,
13:19
Speaker 2: the smooth talking certainty of an infomercial messiah saying the
13:25
Speaker 2: words that were simple, one, two, three, four, five words
13:30
Speaker 2: that have stood the test of time long after Ron
13:33
Speaker 2: has left this mortal coil. Set it and forget it.
13:37
Speaker 2: That was the promise by Ron Popeil, the late-night infomercial messiah.
13:43
Speaker 2: And he just said it simply, set it and forget it.
13:45
Speaker 2: And Ron was talking about rotisserie chickens. But humanity, lazy,
13:54
Speaker 2: perpetually distracted, and desperate for shortcuts, decided to apply this
13:59
Speaker 2: grand philosophy to everyday life, including basic navigation. Now, I
14:06
Speaker 2: am so old. How old are you? I'm so old.
14:09
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, we'd go on road trips.
14:12
Speaker 2: to Arizona or Nevada or Northern California. And I remember
14:15
Speaker 2: going with my mom to the auto club to get
14:19
Speaker 2: the maps. Cause they would, as an auto club member,
14:21
Speaker 2: they would give you maps. And so this was always
14:24
Speaker 2: a big thing. And then we had the plan exactly
14:26
Speaker 2: where we wanted to go. Had no idea what the
14:29
Speaker 2: traffic was like, what the quality of the road was like.
14:31
Speaker 2: We had these Thomas brother maps and that was it.
14:35
Speaker 2: We did our thing. And so that, that was our navigation. Well,
14:38
Speaker 2: navigation is, Now, you say, well, not so fast, my friends.
14:42
Speaker 2: There is a precise soul-crushing moment when a man realizes
14:47
Speaker 2: that modern satellite technology has not freed the mind. Merely,
14:53
Speaker 2: it has automated the capacity to embarrassing self-sabotage. Now, for me,
15:01
Speaker 2: that realization landed at 6.20 p.m. on a Friday, a
15:08
Speaker 2: Not this past Friday because I was in Vegas, but
15:10
Speaker 2: the previous Friday. It just happened. And I found myself
15:15
Speaker 2: idling in a silent suburban cul-de-sac that smelled like lawn fertilizer.
15:22
Speaker 2: Why would anyone put lawn fertilizer down at night? It
15:25
Speaker 2: was six. The sun was still out. 620. There I
15:29
Speaker 2: was smelling fertilizer in a cul-de-sac instead of a glorious
15:35
Speaker 2: mountain of hot pastrami. Yeah. Yeah. So first a little backstory,
15:42
Speaker 2: roughly once every quarter or once every month, I guess
15:48
Speaker 2: every four months would be the, is it four months?
15:50
Speaker 2: What's the, there's 12.
15:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:52
Speaker 2: They said, they said there'd be no math, but every
15:54
Speaker 2: quarter of the year, And if you're using the liberal
15:58
Speaker 2: arts calendar, I meet up with one of my radio
16:02
Speaker 2: homeboys from back in the day who has been on
16:05
Speaker 2: this podcast in the past, Lee Klein. Lee DeKlein. Who
16:10
Speaker 2: the hell is Lee Klein? Now, Lee Klein is a
16:15
Speaker 2: acquired taste, a certified broadcasting legend from a golden era
16:21
Speaker 2: of gasbaggery. Now, we worked together. I've known Lee since
16:24
Speaker 2: I went to Saddleback College, and I used to sneak
16:27
Speaker 2: into Clipper Games at the L.A. Sports Arena. One of
16:31
Speaker 2: the first people I befriended was Lee Klein. And Lee
16:35
Speaker 2: had worked in Philadelphia radio. He lived in Jersey, grew
16:39
Speaker 2: up in Jersey. We worked together at the old AM
16:43
Speaker 2: 1150 in L.A., Extra Sports 1150, L.A. Sports Radio and
16:49
Speaker 2: all that. He was the Clipper post-game talk show host,
16:54
Speaker 2: and I'd hang out with him after Clipper games there
16:57
Speaker 2: as he did his talk show. He worked at the mighty,
17:00
Speaker 2: powerful AM640 KFI, more stimulating talk radio, back when radio
17:05
Speaker 2: hosts were allowed to scream into a microphone without much
17:10
Speaker 2: of a delay button or the corporate sensitivity coach in
17:14
Speaker 2: the control room. Move along now, move along. So he
17:19
Speaker 2: has long since retired from the radio game and lives
17:24
Speaker 2: a quiet life as the elder statesman of radio. And
17:30
Speaker 2: I love seeing Lee. We talk about the same stories
17:32
Speaker 2: we've talked about for 30 years. And it just is
17:36
Speaker 2: just wonderful. It's just like eating your mama's cooking, you know,
17:40
Speaker 2: going back home after you've moved out and you go back,
17:42
Speaker 2: you get that home cooked meal. And you think, well,
17:44
Speaker 2: that's pretty good. Well, it's just boxed mac and cheese
17:47
Speaker 2: and frozen fish sticks. But it's what I remember. It's nostalgia. Now,
17:52
Speaker 2: because Lee was celebrating another milestone birthday and his annual
17:58
Speaker 2: trip around the sun had shown up, I decided to
18:02
Speaker 2: treat him to a birthday supper. Now, Lee and I
18:06
Speaker 2: live in different galaxies these days. I reside in the
18:11
Speaker 2: sprawling madness of the northern flank of Southern California's North Woods,
18:18
Speaker 2: while he dwells down in the South Bay, looking out
18:22
Speaker 2: at the mighty blue Pacific Ocean. Now, naturally, when you
18:26
Speaker 2: have a situation like this, you need a neutral zone
18:32
Speaker 2: to touch down. a geopolitical Mason-Dixon line midway between the
18:39
Speaker 2: South Bay and the Northwoods. There's some call it the L.A.
18:44
Speaker 2: Orange County barrier. So you enter into the chat now
18:48
Speaker 2: the quintessential Jewish deli nestled roughly midway from the Northwoods
18:54
Speaker 2: to the destination. This establishment is the temple of cholesterol.
19:00
Speaker 2: They serve matzo ball soup. And I don't want to
19:04
Speaker 2: exaggerate this. It's the size of a bowling ball. They've
19:09
Speaker 2: got pastrami fries that should require a signed medical waiver
19:15
Speaker 2: from a doctor. And you got the corned beef, of course,
19:20
Speaker 2: the classic Jewish deli corned beef. You've got the pastrami.
19:24
Speaker 2: The corned beef is so thick that you need jaw
19:27
Speaker 2: rehinging surgery following that first bite. And the bakery... Ooh
19:34
Speaker 2: la la, the bakery here. It features cream puffs, black
19:38
Speaker 2: and white cookies. Every deli has to have black and
19:40
Speaker 2: white cookies or they're not a real deli. And again,
19:43
Speaker 2: I don't want to make this too dramatic, but I
19:46
Speaker 2: counted the amount of cookies because we were waiting for
19:49
Speaker 2: a table. and they have roughly 468 distinct varieties of
19:55
Speaker 2: butter laden pastries. They've got the cookies with the sprinkles,
20:01
Speaker 2: the whole thing. I love the cream puff. I love
20:04
Speaker 2: the cream puff. I like to bake my own cookies.
20:06
Speaker 2: The cream puffs I don't make. Amazing. And all of
20:10
Speaker 2: this designed to make your cardiologist weep and just pound
20:17
Speaker 2: the table and knock the avocado toast off the plate
20:20
Speaker 2: and that whole thing. So it is my designated schmoozing
20:23
Speaker 2: sanctuary whenever I need to swap lies with old airwave veterans.
20:30
Speaker 2: who remember when podcasting was a speech impediment. What do
20:34
Speaker 2: you do, a podcast? What are you, a loser? You're
20:36
Speaker 2: a podcaster. Now I not only have the radio show,
20:39
Speaker 2: I do the podcast. So we had agreed to an
20:42
Speaker 2: early bird dinner. Now I consider early bird anything before
20:46
Speaker 2: 8 o'clock. Now this happened to be at 6.30 on
20:51
Speaker 2: a Friday. Yeah, this was specifically arranged to accommodate My
20:57
Speaker 2: friend Lee, he wanted to meet and drive with the
21:00
Speaker 2: sun up and all that stuff. And I was like,
21:03
Speaker 2: all right, you know, fine. You know, you want to
21:06
Speaker 2: do it? You know, his night vision is not the
21:09
Speaker 2: greatest and all that. Kind of like my patience for
21:14
Speaker 2: some certain things in society, technology, certain things about technology
21:17
Speaker 2: and all that. So I was like, all right. So
21:19
Speaker 2: the plan, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The execution, capital D, disaster.
21:26
Speaker 2: I fell straight into autopilot mode. Has this ever happened
21:30
Speaker 2: to you? Have you ever had this happen? It doesn't
21:33
Speaker 2: really happen very much to me. So I climbed into
21:35
Speaker 2: the Mallarmobile. I fired up the old GPS, typed in
21:39
Speaker 2: the name of the deli, and I hit go. Well,
21:45
Speaker 2: here's the kicker. So I know the restaurant. I go
21:48
Speaker 2: here quite a bit. In fact, I've been to the
21:51
Speaker 2: restaurant probably three times the last month. because there's family
21:56
Speaker 2: that lives in that area, I could drive there blindfolded
21:59
Speaker 2: while holding an ice water in my lap. I know
22:02
Speaker 2: the turns, the landmarks, the exact pothole near the freeway
22:08
Speaker 2: off-ramp that I get off of. Yet, out of pure
22:11
Speaker 2: unadulterated habit, I deferred to that glowing rectangle mountain mounted, right?
22:19
Speaker 2: It wasn't on my dashboard. It was kind of in
22:20
Speaker 2: the middle console. I put my phone in the middle
22:23
Speaker 2: console there. And It just was right there, and that
22:28
Speaker 2: was it. And I put the pedal to the metal.
22:30
Speaker 2: I merged into the gridlock, soul-crushing Southern California traffic. That
22:35
Speaker 2: is a Friday evening at rush hour. And I blindly
22:40
Speaker 2: followed the digital voice of a woman with a British accent.
22:47
Speaker 2: And I held on, and that was it. And I
22:50
Speaker 2: think this... woman on the traffic Google Maps thing has
22:56
Speaker 2: a personal grudge against me. Now, to my credit, I
23:00
Speaker 2: made fantastic time. I killed it. I don't know how
23:04
Speaker 2: I made it so quickly, at least at the time
23:07
Speaker 2: I didn't know how quickly or how I was going
23:09
Speaker 2: to make it so quickly. So I crawled through the
23:10
Speaker 2: traffic jam with the stoic patience of a man who
23:15
Speaker 2: knows a warm plate of smoked meats is waits for
23:20
Speaker 2: him at the finish line. I knew if I just
23:22
Speaker 2: get to the restaurant, I've got big pastrami fries. I
23:26
Speaker 2: got the matzo ball soup. I'm ready to go. So
23:29
Speaker 2: I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving,
23:32
Speaker 2: I'm driving. And I ended up arriving about 10 minutes early.
23:37
Speaker 2: And I'm patting myself on the back, right? I'm like,
23:39
Speaker 2: this is great. This is great. Now, Lee Klein, the
23:42
Speaker 2: OG Prince of Darkness, had already reached out to me.
23:45
Speaker 2: He got there before I did. So I was like,
23:47
Speaker 2: all right, well, I'm here early, too. This is great.
23:49
Speaker 2: Party on, my man. So I text him from the
23:53
Speaker 2: parking situation. I thought I was about to turn into
23:56
Speaker 2: the parking situation. I text him. I said, hey, I'm
23:59
Speaker 2: pulling up. Grab us a table. I'll be in in
24:01
Speaker 2: like five minutes. So I follow the GPS. It said
24:05
Speaker 2: you'll be arriving soon. Your destination's coming up on the right.
24:09
Speaker 2: So then I went down and I made the turn,
24:11
Speaker 2: the final turn. Actually, I think it was a left turn.
24:13
Speaker 2: I said right, but I think it was left turn.
24:15
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. So this was the moment of truth,
24:18
Speaker 2: the moment where I should have pulled into the bustling
24:21
Speaker 2: parking lot, smelling of rye bread and pickles, and not
24:27
Speaker 2: that I like the smell of pickles. And that turned
24:30
Speaker 2: out to be a false alarm. Instead, I ended up
24:34
Speaker 2: at the cul-de-sac of shame. I found myself in a
24:38
Speaker 2: quiet suburban neighborhood, a standard residential neighborhood, and There was
24:43
Speaker 2: no pastrami for miles, no latkes, no bagels with lox
24:47
Speaker 2: and cream cheese, not a single black and white cookie
24:49
Speaker 2: within a five-mile radius, just a sunburned street, the smell
24:54
Speaker 2: of fertilizer. And the gardeners had clearly been there. There
24:58
Speaker 2: was a parked Honda Civic and a guy that looked
25:03
Speaker 2: like he may be named Gary, but I'm not sure.
25:05
Speaker 2: I didn't talk to him. And he was out in
25:08
Speaker 2: front watering his hydrangeas. And he had a visor on.
25:12
Speaker 2: which was okay. The sun was still up. It wasn't
25:15
Speaker 2: that bright at that time. So I had experienced an
25:19
Speaker 2: unforced error of the technical nature, a total glitch in
25:24
Speaker 2: the autopilot, or more accurately, a massive brain fart on
25:29
Speaker 2: my part. Brain fart on my part. I had typed
25:33
Speaker 2: in the right name to the deli, but apparently blindly
25:38
Speaker 2: selected an alternative location. which I'm not sure how this happened,
25:42
Speaker 2: because I didn't end up at a deli. And I
25:45
Speaker 2: didn't end up at any location that remotely had the
25:51
Speaker 2: name of said deli. And I was on the opposite
25:56
Speaker 2: side of town. So I sat there in the cul-de-sac
26:00
Speaker 2: at the curb. The engine was idling. I was staring
26:04
Speaker 2: at my phone in absolute disbelief. I was convinced that
26:09
Speaker 2: I had punched in the correct address. And I don't
26:13
Speaker 2: know what happened. Everything seemed fine. It was kind of
26:17
Speaker 2: the same way I usually go. And I was like,
26:21
Speaker 2: all right, well, I got to go to the place.
26:22
Speaker 2: So I typed in the right address or the right
26:25
Speaker 2: name of the restaurant, the deli. And I, you know,
26:28
Speaker 2: the old refresh thing. And I updated the route. And boy,
26:34
Speaker 2: the news, your time to destination, your time of arrival
26:39
Speaker 2: will be 30 minutes away. Holy bat crap, Batman. This
26:44
Speaker 2: was certified, grade A, top tier, FML to infinity and beyond.
26:51
Speaker 2: It was an FML mall. So my expected destination, classic
26:55
Speaker 2: Jewish deli, I planned on being there at 620. The
26:59
Speaker 2: actual destination was, I think, a guy named Gary with
27:01
Speaker 2: a lot of fertilizer and a suburban cul-de-sac at 620.
27:05
Speaker 2: The distance penalty, 30 minutes of more traffic. And now
27:10
Speaker 2: came the hardest part of this entire ordeal, the call
27:14
Speaker 2: of shame. Not the walk of shame, the call of shame.
27:17
Speaker 2: So I had to phone my buddy Lee back, who
27:20
Speaker 2: was currently sitting alone at a table for two inside
27:24
Speaker 2: a jam-packed deli. And he was just sitting there at
27:28
Speaker 2: the table at the restaurant, probably fending off the waitstaff
27:32
Speaker 2: holding menus and saying, would you like anything, sir? And
27:36
Speaker 2: I had to inform him that The person he was
27:40
Speaker 2: meeting who said, get a table. I'll be there in
27:43
Speaker 2: five minutes. Well, now I was a half an hour away.
27:48
Speaker 2: So that meant you're going to be sitting there for
27:50
Speaker 2: 35 minutes. Yeah, because I didn't know how to operate
27:54
Speaker 2: the satellite-based navigation system correctly, apparently, or it malfunctioned. So
27:59
Speaker 2: I braced myself. Now, Lee's a bit of a surly guy.
28:03
Speaker 2: Curmudgeon would be the word that you could use to
28:05
Speaker 2: describe my friend Lee. And I was fully anticipating Lee Klein.
28:09
Speaker 2: reading me the Riot Act, delivering a classic old-school radio
28:13
Speaker 2: tirade about my incompetence. Instead, Lee was a good sport.
28:20
Speaker 2: He laughed. He told me not to worry. He had
28:22
Speaker 2: no idea what FML meant. And he had to order
28:27
Speaker 2: an appetizer. He had to have an appetizer, so that
28:30
Speaker 2: cost me some more money. All of this, frankly, made
28:33
Speaker 2: it so much worse. Because I was expecting a rant.
28:36
Speaker 2: Indifference is not what I had on my bingo card.
28:39
Speaker 2: And I feel like indifference is far more embarrassing than anger.
28:43
Speaker 2: So have I ever had something like this happen? You know,
28:48
Speaker 2: there's odd things that happen. Otherwise, I guess I'd have
28:51
Speaker 2: nothing to talk about on this podcast. It just seems
28:54
Speaker 2: like these things are happening more and more. And we
28:57
Speaker 2: live in an era where we have delegated our basic
29:01
Speaker 2: human instincts to to algorithms programmed by 23-year-old wokesters in
29:08
Speaker 2: Cupertino who have never had to look at a paper
29:13
Speaker 2: Thomas guide in their lives, right? Never had to do it.
29:17
Speaker 2: And you think about the Native Americans, the Indians, and
29:20
Speaker 2: the early settlers and how they would determine where they
29:23
Speaker 2: were based on the location of the sun. And the
29:27
Speaker 2: moon and the stars. And here we are, if one
29:30
Speaker 2: thing goes wrong with the GPS, oh boy. So back
29:34
Speaker 2: in the day, if you wanted to go somewhere, you
29:37
Speaker 2: pulled out the giant, as we mentioned, unfolding. paper map
29:40
Speaker 2: that covered the entire windshield. You wrestled with it like
29:45
Speaker 2: a shark in a net. You traced your finger along
29:48
Speaker 2: the 101 freeway. You made a mental note of the exits.
29:52
Speaker 2: You remembered where you were going. If you missed a turn,
29:55
Speaker 2: it was your fault. You owned it. If you got lost,
29:58
Speaker 2: you went to a gas station. And you ask the
30:00
Speaker 2: person at the gas station. Now, you punch in three
30:04
Speaker 2: letters into a glass screen, shut off your prefrontal cortex,
30:11
Speaker 2: and follow a computerized voice off the edge of a
30:15
Speaker 2: metaphorical cliff. So we are so accustomed to outsourcing our
30:21
Speaker 2: brainpower that if GPS told us to drive directly into
30:26
Speaker 2: the Pacific Ocean, because it was actually a shortcut to
30:29
Speaker 2: get to Kauai, I'm pretty sure that half of Southern
30:34
Speaker 2: California would be bobbing in the surf in Santa Monica
30:40
Speaker 2: with their windshield wipers on. In fact, there are stories
30:43
Speaker 2: like this where people drive into pools and things like that. Now,
30:46
Speaker 2: if the satellites all stop working and suddenly we don't
30:50
Speaker 2: have GPS technology that works... Holy crap. What are people
30:55
Speaker 2: going to do? Could you imagine? You've never lived that life.
30:59
Speaker 2: At least I would kind of know what to do
31:00
Speaker 2: because I had the Thomas Guide thing and all that
31:03
Speaker 2: back in the day. Now, most people younger than me
31:08
Speaker 2: forget about it. The lesson here is as old as carpentry.
31:13
Speaker 2: You measure twice, you cut once. Or in the context
31:16
Speaker 2: of modern lazy adulthood, you type in the proper address,
31:19
Speaker 2: you double-check that, do the discount double-check, And make sure
31:24
Speaker 2: you're routing or routing yourself to the proper place. And
31:29
Speaker 2: you're not going to a cul-de-sac with fertilizer and the
31:36
Speaker 2: whole thing. So I obviously eventually made it to the deli.
31:39
Speaker 2: The pastrami was hot. The matzo ball soup was comforting.
31:44
Speaker 2: And the Prince of Darkness, my friend Lee, did not
31:46
Speaker 2: let me pay for the mistake with anything more than
31:52
Speaker 2: my remaining pride. But the next time I head out
31:57
Speaker 2: for a meal, which usually happens once every month or so,
32:01
Speaker 2: I am leaving the phone in the glove box, opening
32:04
Speaker 2: the window, and navigating strictly by the scent of mustard
32:10
Speaker 2: and cured beef. And I believe, and I think you'll agree,
32:13
Speaker 2: that is the only logical way forward. On that note,
32:18
Speaker 2: have a wonderful rest of your Sunday here, one of
32:21
Speaker 2: the final Sundays before the NFL is back. So enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.
32:30
Speaker 2: And so that's what we have. That's what we have
32:34
Speaker 2: to look forward to today is this podcast. And then
32:37
Speaker 2: tonight we have the Ben Maller Show returning all week.
32:41
Speaker 2: Fresh content, fresh content all week. Cannot wait. to give
32:47
Speaker 2: you the rundown on the Maller meet and greet, some stories.
32:50
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll tell some stories tonight and all that. Anyway,
32:53
Speaker 2: as Dick and Dayton would say, bye-bye, bye-bye.
32:56
Speaker 1: Bye, Felicia.