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The Fifth Hour: The Day the Monitor Died · The Ben Maller Show

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Speaker 1: Kutbooms.
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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
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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
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Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow, it's clearinghouse of
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Speaker 2: hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
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Speaker 2: 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: Mallor and Danny G Radio. A Happy college Football Saturday. Well,
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Speaker 1: I'll be watching some college football this afternoon. Danny G
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Speaker 1: Radio will hopefully join me on the Sunday podcast, but
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Speaker 1: you're stuck with just me, your friend Ben here on
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Speaker 1: the Fifth Hour for the first time in the month
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Speaker 1: of November. It is the first day of November, and
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Speaker 1: if you live in a place, which is most places
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Speaker 1: where the time changes tonight on the overnight, there will
1:04
Speaker 1: be the time change, so we have that to look
1:06
Speaker 1: forward to, which means we like this, right, this is
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Speaker 1: the one we like because you get an extra hour
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Speaker 1: of sleep and all that, which is kind of cool.
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Speaker 1: On this edition of the Fifth Hour Podcast with Me
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Speaker 1: and Danny g who is producing this. We have Men
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Speaker 1: in Black, Santa Anita, and the Mallard Pie, and we're
1:26
Speaker 1: combined all of these things together and we are going
1:29
Speaker 1: to make a delicious, thick Chicago style pizza. Which I
1:34
Speaker 1: have pointed out in the past to Tree in Chicago
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Speaker 1: and your Femi and some of those other guys. I
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Speaker 1: always thought, well, who wants to eat the pizza with
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Speaker 1: the tomato sauce on top? And then I had it
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Speaker 1: and I said, oh my god, this is one of
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Speaker 1: the greatest things I've ever had. Let's get right to it.
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Speaker 1: So again, Men in Black, Santa Anita, Malard Pie, we start.
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Speaker 1: Let's not waste any time. Do not waste the get
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Speaker 1: to the point. Please don't bury the lead, my man.
1:56
Speaker 1: So we must address the snuffleopagus in the room, our lead.
2:02
Speaker 1: On the Fifth Hour podcast from Toronto, we saw it
2:06
Speaker 1: last night. Well, people were trigger treating and living their lives.
2:10
Speaker 1: The Boys in Blue woke up from hibernation just in
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Speaker 1: time to set up what is going to be an
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Speaker 1: epic sports day today Game seven. And I'm now already annoyed.
2:24
Speaker 1: It's been so often the last couple of years we've
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Speaker 1: heard the expression the greatest two words in sports. I've
2:31
Speaker 1: heard it so much now I'm starting to hate it.
2:33
Speaker 1: And I used to say it all the time, and
2:35
Speaker 1: I mean everywhere, like, oh, the greatest two words. Okay,
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Speaker 1: I get it. It's good, it's gonna be fun, and
2:39
Speaker 1: it is on. I don't geet going in Toronto. I'm
2:45
Speaker 1: getting a lot of messages from Dodger people saying, well,
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Speaker 1: you were ripping them. You didn't think they were gonna win.
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Speaker 1: I never said they didn't think they were going to
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Speaker 1: win Game six. They had a huge pitching advantage with
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Speaker 1: Yamamoto on the mound. But the curtain call for the
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five baseball season, and somehow, somehow, the Dodgers,
3:04
Speaker 1: who have looked like they didn't know how to play
3:08
Speaker 1: baseball in this World Series, are still standing right there,
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Speaker 1: barely barely. They needed Yamamoto to throw another gem just
3:16
Speaker 1: to stay alive. Stay alive. The Bejee's and Mookie Bets.
3:21
Speaker 1: Finally I got several emails. I tried to tell you,
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Speaker 1: you shouldn't have been mean to Mookie Betts. What's wrong
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Speaker 1: with you?
3:27
Speaker 2: I know.
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Speaker 1: Mookie Bets finally earned his per diem congratulations. First time
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Speaker 1: he's shown up all World Series two massive runs, batted
3:36
Speaker 1: in two, Ribby's stop the presses. Oh my god, Mookie Betts,
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Speaker 1: who's got one of those forever contracts contributing in the
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Speaker 1: World Series. And I am convinced that many of you
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Speaker 1: who listened to the Overnight So I don't know how
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Speaker 1: many these people listen to the podcast. I have no idea.
3:53
Speaker 1: I know the radio shows its own entity. I feel
3:56
Speaker 1: like if you listen to this fifth hour podcast, we're
3:58
Speaker 1: at a higher level because you're going out of your
4:01
Speaker 1: way to find the content. Some people just happen to
4:04
Speaker 1: listen because it's on when they're at work or whatever,
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Speaker 1: working into the factory. So I have a nightly talk show.
4:12
Speaker 1: The job requires me to give opinions about what's going
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Speaker 1: on in sports. I know this is gonna be very
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Speaker 1: difficult for you and on a daily basis. My job
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Speaker 1: is not to lick the toes of the people I
4:25
Speaker 1: talk about. That is not the job. The job is
4:27
Speaker 1: to be critical, all right. If you want to lick
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Speaker 1: their toes and knock yourself out, that's not really what
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Speaker 1: I'm into. So Mookie Bets got it done. Good for him.
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Speaker 1: This is the malor tough love effect. We talked about
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Speaker 1: this often. You take the haymaker, you throw some body
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Speaker 1: blows body blow, body blow, body blow right at the athlete.
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Speaker 1: In this case, Mookie Bets. You rip them on the
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Speaker 1: radio show, you call them out and boof. He remembers,
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Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm Mookie Bets. And the guy was
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Speaker 1: betting a buck thirty in the World Series and you
5:00
Speaker 1: tell of you idiots wanted me to come out of
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Speaker 1: here and just kiss his ass, like what is wrong
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Speaker 1: with you? And he looked like he was swinging an
5:09
Speaker 1: imaginary bat. He wasn't even a broomstick, an imaginary bat.
5:14
Speaker 1: And then the game last night ending in epic fashion
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Speaker 1: the Blue Jays. It looked like it was gonna be
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Speaker 1: a total melt down here at the end. Dodgers had
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Speaker 1: a two run lead, Blue Jays had a golden opportunity,
5:24
Speaker 1: the bases were packed, and it all went away on
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Speaker 1: three pitches thanks to a very crafty double play by
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Speaker 1: kik A and all those Blue Jay fans who were
5:36
Speaker 1: wearing their powder blue hopping, hopping up and down, all excited,
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Speaker 1: and the game ends, and it was it was great.
5:43
Speaker 1: So here's what's on the line tonight. If the Dodgers
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Speaker 1: win Game seven. They do exactly what they were supposed
5:50
Speaker 1: to do. Congratulations, you did what you were supposed to
5:53
Speaker 1: do when you showed up the spring training. This roster,
5:56
Speaker 1: and again, I like the Dodgers. You shouldn't say this
5:59
Speaker 1: means I'm just being honest. This roster is a collection
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Speaker 1: of baseball mercenaries, pampered, coddled, insulated from real life reality.
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Speaker 1: And all of that gets justified if they win, win
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Speaker 1: the championship, the hunk a medal. That's all you gotta do.
6:19
Speaker 1: They were built for this moment. You don't spend a
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Speaker 1: billion dollars on payroll in the span of like a year.
6:27
Speaker 1: You don't install Japanese style toilets to come in second place.
6:31
Speaker 1: And don't forget two private jets. Two private jet adds
6:35
Speaker 1: some jabbroni who's a fanboy in the media, and he
6:39
Speaker 1: was getting upset. He's, oh, you shouldn't use the word coddle.
6:43
Speaker 1: Every single Dodger player is coddled. They're the only professional
6:47
Speaker 1: sports team. You think about the industrial complex of professional sports,
6:50
Speaker 1: with all the Major League Baseball teams, the Pro Football,
6:54
Speaker 1: the NBA, the NHL, all the industrial complex of sports,
6:58
Speaker 1: the Dodgers are the only team to have two private
7:01
Speaker 1: jets when they travel, one for the players, one for
7:04
Speaker 1: the peasants. This isn't the sandblot. This is not a
7:08
Speaker 1: feel good, pull yourself up from the bootstraps type story.
7:12
Speaker 1: This is baseball's version of the TV show Dynasty or Secession. Right.
7:16
Speaker 1: It's all about the money, the image, the ego, all
7:18
Speaker 1: that stuff. You've got a bunch of guys and they're talented.
7:21
Speaker 1: Good for them. They're making a lot of money. But
7:22
Speaker 1: let's not pretend this is some kind of upstart baseball team.
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Speaker 1: They're ridiculously rich. And I know if they win the
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Speaker 1: World Series, they're gonna talk about all the adversity that
7:31
Speaker 1: they overcame. It's gonna make me want to puke in
7:33
Speaker 1: my mouth. And they get paid to play a kids game. Great, wonderful,
7:36
Speaker 1: Good for you. The stakes are high. The stakes are
7:39
Speaker 1: high mainly because of the fear factor. Mainly because of
7:42
Speaker 1: the old show that Joe Rogan was on. Fear Factor.
7:44
Speaker 1: Don't screw this up. Do not screw this up. If
7:47
Speaker 1: the Dodgers lose this game tonight, oh boy, they're not
7:51
Speaker 1: just getting second place, They're getting mocked into oblivion. Tight
7:56
Speaker 1: Tukis syndrome is in play here. You can feel it.
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Speaker 1: Every guy and the Dodger dugout, gripping the bat like
8:03
Speaker 1: it's a live grenade. And the ghost of playoff flops
8:08
Speaker 1: of years gone by. And I'm going back to the
8:11
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen season when the Astros cheated, twenty eighteen, when
8:17
Speaker 1: they stumbled against the Red Sox, the ghosts of twenty
8:19
Speaker 1: twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, they're all back. Ohokie, Now,
8:28
Speaker 1: I know we've already gotten through the whole Halloween thing
8:31
Speaker 1: that was yesterday. It's still Halloween weekend, even though it's
8:34
Speaker 1: now in November. The postseason choke jobs are what I'm
8:37
Speaker 1: all about, all right, We've seen it. We've seen it.
8:40
Speaker 1: It makes for great talk radio. And the Dodgers gotta
8:43
Speaker 1: be careful. I gotta avoid that, right the panic swings.
8:46
Speaker 1: Dodgers certainly capable of a bullpen meltdown. That's the beauty
8:51
Speaker 1: of postseason baseball and Game seven. None of it here's
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Speaker 1: the only thing. None of it. None of it matters.
8:56
Speaker 1: The stats don't matter, the salary doesn't matter, the home
9:01
Speaker 1: field advantage doesn't matter. The fans screaming. Doesn't matter. The spreadsheets,
9:07
Speaker 1: the algorithms, the spin rates, the exit velocity, it doesn't matter.
9:11
Speaker 1: It's all irrelevant. It's the men in black moment. You
9:15
Speaker 1: zap the memory stick, You zap the memory stick. All
9:18
Speaker 1: that matters is this game, this night. That's it. Everything
9:22
Speaker 1: else goes out the door. All of it is subterfuge,
9:25
Speaker 1: all of it. It's all about tonight. And I love it.
9:28
Speaker 1: I love it, I love it. I love it. Now
9:30
Speaker 1: the matchup, at least at the start, we have sho
9:33
Speaker 1: Hey Otani versus Max Schurzer. It doesn't get more cinematic
9:39
Speaker 1: than this. You've got the former Dodger Shuzer, God's gift
9:43
Speaker 1: to baseball show Hey Otani, and Otani's gonna give you
9:47
Speaker 1: what two or three innings tops, and then it's going
9:50
Speaker 1: to be the conga line. The Dodgers will be calling
9:53
Speaker 1: in a bunch of arsonists from the bullpen, and we'll
9:58
Speaker 1: see how this goes here. Dave Roberts and the Nerds
10:00
Speaker 1: planned to use what seven to eight guys by the
10:03
Speaker 1: fifth inning. That's usually how this goes. It's gonna look
10:05
Speaker 1: like an airport runway out there with all the bullpen traffic.
10:09
Speaker 1: Now Scherzer, who screwed the Dodgers over against the Atlanta
10:13
Speaker 1: Braves when he was briefly a Dodger that was in
10:17
Speaker 1: I believe was one if I remember correctly, when Schuzer
10:20
Speaker 1: was supposed to pitch Game six and then tapped out,
10:23
Speaker 1: then blamed Dave Roberts. The Dodgers baby to him. They
10:26
Speaker 1: coddled him too, and he still babied him. Said he
10:28
Speaker 1: wasn't ready to pitch Game six, and so if they
10:30
Speaker 1: lost it, he said, maybe I'll pitch Game seven. It
10:32
Speaker 1: didn't work out. You know, Schurzer's got those crazy eyes.
10:35
Speaker 1: He's got the glowing they're already going the different colors,
10:40
Speaker 1: like he's walking out there as a volcano human volcano.
10:43
Speaker 1: And the way I look at it in the Mallard
10:45
Speaker 1: crystal Ball as a distant relative of Nostra donnis noster
10:49
Speaker 1: demus and a friend of Nostra damas or vice versa.
10:52
Speaker 1: It's early in the morning. Listen, he's either throwing no
10:56
Speaker 1: hit ball or giving up six runs by the third inning.
10:59
Speaker 1: There's really know in between. That's what my late cousin
11:03
Speaker 1: Nos deemus noster Thomas would say. I don't know about
11:06
Speaker 1: Nostra deems regardless, Make no mistake, this is a legacy game.
11:11
Speaker 1: The Dodgers win, and they get the dynasty with the
11:15
Speaker 1: capital D. Back to back champs. Baby, They'll sell all
11:18
Speaker 1: the merch, they erase, all the noise, all the flops,
11:22
Speaker 1: Mookie Bets sucking for one hundred games this season, Blake
11:26
Speaker 1: Snell being coddled, taking three months off, Tyler Glass now
11:30
Speaker 1: also being away and not being available, and that Max
11:32
Speaker 1: Munsey getting hurt going away. All this stuff and all
11:36
Speaker 1: the overpaid channer goes away. Now, if you lose, these
11:41
Speaker 1: guys will be treated like vermin. Vermin, just a collection
11:45
Speaker 1: of rich, loud ballplayers who are irrelevant and frauds underachievers.
11:52
Speaker 1: And you win, you're the twenty twenties version of the
11:55
Speaker 1: nineties Yankees, with Jeter and Bernie Williams and Paul O'Neill
11:58
Speaker 1: and all those guys. You're more like the nineties Mets,
12:03
Speaker 1: minus the fun, minus the fun. Now tonight not about
12:08
Speaker 1: the long changel and launch angle. It's not about that,
12:11
Speaker 1: although you'll probably hear a bunch about it. It's about Moxie.
12:16
Speaker 1: Not my dog Moxie, the actual Moxie guts Ma Chiesmo.
12:20
Speaker 1: It's about who tightens up, who chokes, and who shows
12:23
Speaker 1: up and everything else again, all of it, it doesn't matter.
12:27
Speaker 1: It's at first one to have the league get to
12:29
Speaker 1: twenty seven outs. So buckle up, Buccaroo Game seven and
12:34
Speaker 1: you can see off in the distance there on the horizon,
12:36
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong's barrel is rolling and somebody, somebody's going down
12:42
Speaker 1: that ladder. Now turning the page on that. We assume
12:45
Speaker 1: you heard the news by now from the NFL. You
12:49
Speaker 1: just knew someone was getting tossed overboard being excommunicated from
12:54
Speaker 1: the Miami side of things. After the Ravens took the
12:57
Speaker 1: Dolphins to the woodshed and the Dolphins got waxed, humiliated
13:00
Speaker 1: pants in their own house, and less than twenty four
13:05
Speaker 1: hours later, Boom goes to the Dynamite Chris Greer. Chris Greer,
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Speaker 1: the GM they said, mutually parting ways. That's bull crap.
13:16
Speaker 1: That's a polite way of saying. We asked him to leave,
13:20
Speaker 1: and he said, okay, So we've agreed. We're changing the locks.
13:24
Speaker 1: Nobody leaves those jobs. We're changing the locks, the gate codes.
13:27
Speaker 1: Changing your past key won't work to get in the
13:30
Speaker 1: parking garage. You're cooked. Now. The timing on this is
13:34
Speaker 1: why I'm not saying it's a wrong move. I would
13:36
Speaker 1: make the move too. I would have gotten rid of
13:37
Speaker 1: this guy a long time ago. The timing is wild, though.
13:41
Speaker 1: If you look at your NFL textbook, you don't normally
13:44
Speaker 1: fire the GM the week of the trade deadline. That's
13:48
Speaker 1: like deciding to replace the chef in the middle of
13:52
Speaker 1: the dinner rush and everyone in the kitchen is screaming
13:55
Speaker 1: the soup's on fire. Over to the left, over to
13:57
Speaker 1: the right, the main or d just quit. He's upset.
14:00
Speaker 1: He wants to go do a podcast or something. And
14:02
Speaker 1: you look at the Dolphins wide angle lens. This is
14:06
Speaker 1: a country club operation. Everybody wears those white polos. They
14:11
Speaker 1: talk about the analytics side of things, and nobody wants
14:15
Speaker 1: to get their hands dirty. They don't. It's been that
14:18
Speaker 1: way for years. They're dysfunction. I said it on the
14:22
Speaker 1: monologue I did the other night during the week after
14:24
Speaker 1: the game. I was like, the Dolphins are the Jets
14:28
Speaker 1: and the Browns with palm trees and better weather. It's dysfunction.
14:33
Speaker 1: It's like a membership perk, the dysfunction. They've got tea
14:36
Speaker 1: times and Tiki drinks. Well, the roster just rots in
14:41
Speaker 1: the South Beach sun. And they're not really running so
14:44
Speaker 1: much an NFL franchise. It's like they're running the South
14:47
Speaker 1: Florida resort. Welcome to Dolphin Bay Club. Please tip your
14:52
Speaker 1: quarterback on the way out. Now, speaking of the quarterback,
14:56
Speaker 1: can you and I have a conversation here? Is it
14:58
Speaker 1: fair to say that Tua all of this upheaval is
15:03
Speaker 1: about to a tongue of b looa, isn't it? I
15:06
Speaker 1: see you nine in your head over there. They went
15:08
Speaker 1: all in on him, They said, this is our guy,
15:13
Speaker 1: this is our guy. It's kind of like going to
15:15
Speaker 1: Santa Nita and betting all of your paycheck on a horse,
15:22
Speaker 1: of course, and the horse was the wrong horse. You
15:26
Speaker 1: bet on the wrong horse. The horse came to the
15:29
Speaker 1: track and wanted to have a snack, not winning any races. Instead,
15:35
Speaker 1: Let's get a lower mid tier plotter, no stallion at quarterback.
15:39
Speaker 1: And Tua's not a bust. He is a functional, lower
15:43
Speaker 1: level second tier quarterback. He's not a savior. Tua is
15:48
Speaker 1: a wall, a beige wall. You don't hate a beige wall.
15:54
Speaker 1: You don't. You don't form a really strong opinion about
15:57
Speaker 1: a beige wall. You don't certainly post anything on social
16:00
Speaker 1: media about a beij wall, and it doesn't make your
16:03
Speaker 1: day any better. And now the bills have come due,
16:07
Speaker 1: not the Buffalo bills. They poured champagne on mediocrity in
16:12
Speaker 1: Miami for years and finally realize, at least for now,
16:14
Speaker 1: it's flat now. Some of you, some of you sent
16:19
Speaker 1: me a clip of a story that our former Fox
16:23
Speaker 1: Sports radio warning guy Steven A. Smith came out saying,
16:26
Speaker 1: oh brother, He says, oh brother gets fired first. I
16:29
Speaker 1: think that was his line. I think that I'm trying
16:32
Speaker 1: to remember it off the top of my head, implying
16:34
Speaker 1: that the race card was played from the bottom of
16:37
Speaker 1: the deck. Now, in the pantheon of bad takes, this
16:40
Speaker 1: has to be right near the top. The guy lasted
16:42
Speaker 1: ten freaking years as the GM in Miami. Ten years
16:45
Speaker 1: is the GM in Miami? How many coaches did he
16:48
Speaker 1: go through? And stephen A's take as well, this is
16:51
Speaker 1: like the playing the race card ten years. That's like
16:55
Speaker 1: dog years in NFL. I that's seventy years. That's a lifetime.
16:59
Speaker 1: And you had as many wins. I had as many
17:02
Speaker 1: wins as this guy had in the playoffs, zero Zippo squad,
17:05
Speaker 1: Doush Squad, Doush in Dolphin's years. He's Don Shula and
17:11
Speaker 1: the Mayflower combined. And you know what happens next. Now
17:15
Speaker 1: every team in the league starts calling Miami in the
17:18
Speaker 1: interim GM there, and it's like a yard seal, say, hey,
17:21
Speaker 1: what do you want for Jaden Wall Jalen Wadle? What
17:25
Speaker 1: can we get for him? I need a backup left tackle.
17:28
Speaker 1: Can I get half off on your offensive line? There
17:31
Speaker 1: is a nibble here, a nibble there, a nibble everywhere.
17:36
Speaker 1: The vultures are circling over the three oh five right now.
17:40
Speaker 1: Then you have Mike McDaniel twisting in the wind, twisting
17:45
Speaker 1: in the wind. The guy's updating his resume, recording voice
17:49
Speaker 1: demos for NPR coming up next on the Morning Espresso,
17:54
Speaker 1: Why your lante art says more about your feelings and
17:58
Speaker 1: your phone. Now, his next job's going to involve something
18:02
Speaker 1: with oat milk. I don't know exactly what. Maybe he'll
18:04
Speaker 1: be serving it, maybe he'll be talking about it. It
18:06
Speaker 1: will not involve Tyreek Hill for Mike McDaniel, who has
18:10
Speaker 1: been good for business, and I will be sad to
18:11
Speaker 1: see him go. He's goofy. He is in way over
18:16
Speaker 1: his head. He's not well spoken. He's a bit of
18:18
Speaker 1: a clown, which makes for great talk radio. Now, the
18:23
Speaker 1: other thing here, it's the same story every decade for
18:26
Speaker 1: the Dolphins. Like that. You have to be really old
18:28
Speaker 1: to remember when the Dolphins were good. The Dolphins are
18:31
Speaker 1: a luxury car that keeps breaking down because they're too
18:36
Speaker 1: busy polishing the hood to fix the engine. Hello, Miami
18:42
Speaker 1: is where talented players go to tan not to win.
18:48
Speaker 1: They need to borrow a case of suntan lotion from
18:51
Speaker 1: Mike to Leprechaun and just tan not to win. They're
18:55
Speaker 1: the four seasons of failure. Baby. They got great views
18:59
Speaker 1: and apps, terrible results. All right now, Danny, g's just
19:05
Speaker 1: give me this and he says, Beaniel, that's way too
19:06
Speaker 1: much sports. He said, you talked about the Dodgers and
19:09
Speaker 1: the Dolphins. Bad job by you put me in the
19:13
Speaker 1: off at all. That's right, Danny, It is a bad
19:17
Speaker 1: job by being So we're gonna turn the page here
19:18
Speaker 1: and I will I will go behind the scenes. As
19:20
Speaker 1: you know, the fifth hour, a lot of it is
19:22
Speaker 1: about stuff that is not sports related. I know this
19:25
Speaker 1: has been way too sporty. I apologize, so I'm going
19:27
Speaker 1: to make up for it. It's story time on the
19:30
Speaker 1: Ben Malor Podcast, a fifth hour podcast with Danny g
19:33
Speaker 1: It's story time. So I've talked about this in the past.
19:37
Speaker 1: Have you had those moments. We've all had those moments.
19:39
Speaker 1: I've talked about them here on the show, in the
19:41
Speaker 1: moment when you are reminded, in this case, that tech
19:45
Speaker 1: can be a wreck, an absolute wreck. Now, I'm not
19:48
Speaker 1: a technophobe. I use tech all the time. I have
19:51
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch, i have an iPhone. I'm on my
19:53
Speaker 1: laptop all the time. I have many fancy gadgets. But
19:57
Speaker 1: every once in a while, when your fancy gadget and
20:00
Speaker 1: redundant systems, all those clever little conveniences of the modern
20:05
Speaker 1: world that we all share, they gang up on you
20:08
Speaker 1: at once. Now. I had mine the other morning, deep
20:13
Speaker 1: into the overnight show, in that strange half alive, half
20:17
Speaker 1: asleep time when many North American night owls are still awake.
20:23
Speaker 1: And then there's those people that are the early birds,
20:26
Speaker 1: not just the night owls, the early birds that get
20:28
Speaker 1: up early to get to work, and we do better.
20:31
Speaker 1: It's wow. I tell people all the time, We actually
20:33
Speaker 1: have more people listening the end of the show than
20:34
Speaker 1: we do the beginning because we were doing early morning drive,
20:37
Speaker 1: that five am Eastern hour. It is pumping, right, But
20:41
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, not everyone gets up early.
20:42
Speaker 1: Most people don't, and not everyone stays up all night.
20:45
Speaker 1: So the rest of the world's gone to bed. And
20:47
Speaker 1: there I am, my fat ass in the remote broadcast studio,
20:51
Speaker 1: the out post I call the Malor Mansion, and the
20:55
Speaker 1: lights were low, the microphone was red hot, slaving away
21:00
Speaker 1: over a red hot microphone. The bells, the whistles, the
21:03
Speaker 1: sound effects, the orchestra, a cacophony of sounds, the overnight absurdity,
21:09
Speaker 1: all that all ready to go. We were working, I
21:12
Speaker 1: mean we were working. The show was humming along, the
21:16
Speaker 1: last live radio show of the week, three hours in.
21:18
Speaker 1: Everything fine, not the greatest show, not the worst show.
21:22
Speaker 1: That's where you wanted, that sweet spot right in the middle,
21:24
Speaker 1: and then with about and I'm I didn't jog down
21:27
Speaker 1: the time. I was a little flustered, about thirty minutes
21:31
Speaker 1: to go before the finish line. I made a fatal error.
21:34
Speaker 1: Now at the time I did not realize it was
21:36
Speaker 1: a fatal er. What was my error. I reached for
21:40
Speaker 1: my drink. Now, to me, this is a rather benign act.
21:44
Speaker 1: There's nothing exotic here, no monster energy. There was no
21:47
Speaker 1: quadruple espresso from Starbucks, just ice water, like the rice
21:52
Speaker 1: cake of beverages, the dull, guilt free elixir of the
21:56
Speaker 1: somewhat health conscious gas bag man. And so as I
22:01
Speaker 1: set the drink down somewhere in what was a very
22:06
Speaker 1: simple thing to do, Fate stepped in. What are you
22:11
Speaker 1: talking about?
22:12
Speaker 2: Like?
22:12
Speaker 1: At that moment I put the drink down, I didn't
22:15
Speaker 1: slam it down. I didn't. It wasn't like I was
22:17
Speaker 1: trying to win a contest at the State Fair where
22:19
Speaker 1: you got to bring the hammer of God down. So
22:21
Speaker 1: I put the thing down, and the screen in front
22:23
Speaker 1: of me in the remote studio goes black, not dim,
22:27
Speaker 1: not flickering black. The monitor, the brains of my operation,
22:32
Speaker 1: the compass of the of the show. Prep you'll put
22:34
Speaker 1: everything up there. The bullet points had flat line, had
22:37
Speaker 1: flat line. Now there's no you can't call nine to
22:39
Speaker 1: one one because your monitor doesn't work. You can't. What
22:42
Speaker 1: do you do? So here I was staring into the abyss,
22:46
Speaker 1: and the abyss it turned out was HDMI static because
22:50
Speaker 1: I kind of pushed the thing a little bit. And
22:53
Speaker 1: now let me tell you something that there were two
22:54
Speaker 1: kinds of talk shows in the world. There's the Type A.
22:57
Speaker 1: The boy Scouts are broadcasting that copious amounts of preparation,
23:02
Speaker 1: like they're writing the Magna cartera right, and they live
23:06
Speaker 1: in the bullet points and preparation, and they over prepare,
23:12
Speaker 1: so instead of preparing for a four hour show, they're
23:15
Speaker 1: ready to do eight hours of talk radio. So that's
23:17
Speaker 1: the Type A. And then on the other side of
23:21
Speaker 1: the aisle you have the Type B. These are the
23:22
Speaker 1: wild cards, often ex jocks, offen x jocks, and they
23:25
Speaker 1: throw through the They kind of float through life on
23:30
Speaker 1: charisma and resume and you know, I was a jock,
23:34
Speaker 1: my opinion matters. And they often don't do any preparation. Uh,
23:38
Speaker 1: they just read maybe it's ESPN's website or whatever, it's
23:40
Speaker 1: on the homepage, and that's it. Unfortunately, and I blame
23:43
Speaker 1: my parents with this. I'm I'm the first kund I'm
23:45
Speaker 1: the Type A trapped in a Type B profession. And
23:49
Speaker 1: when the monitor went dark, I wasn't just flying blind.
23:54
Speaker 1: I was naked. No notes, no rundowns, no cheat sheets,
24:00
Speaker 1: just a man a mic and the rising panic of
24:04
Speaker 1: realizing that my brain had become a floppy disc. Okay,
24:11
Speaker 1: And here's the thing about doing the job. And I've
24:15
Speaker 1: done it so long, it just blows me away how
24:17
Speaker 1: fast time has gone. I feel like I'm still just starting.
24:20
Speaker 1: But I've been here a long time, and for as
24:21
Speaker 1: long as I've done talk radio. At some point it
24:25
Speaker 1: just becomes muscle memory, right, And it's one of those
24:28
Speaker 1: things you do it so long you can fake it
24:30
Speaker 1: till you make it. And so I did what I
24:33
Speaker 1: guess the professionals do. I just pretended everything was fine,
24:38
Speaker 1: the show must go on, and blah blah blah blah
24:42
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. Not one listener had any
24:45
Speaker 1: clue that behind the scenes, I was in a full
24:48
Speaker 1: blown sweat lodge, that the remote studio had turned into
24:52
Speaker 1: a hot sauna, doing yoga anxiety sweat flop, sweat, stress, sweat,
24:58
Speaker 1: the Holy Trinity. Now keep it in mind, I was
25:01
Speaker 1: fiddling with chords. I tapped the back of the monitor.
25:05
Speaker 1: I give it the old Fonsi treatment. That's a dated reference. Nothing.
25:09
Speaker 1: The lights were on in the studio, but no one
25:12
Speaker 1: was home in HDMI land. So following the show, I
25:17
Speaker 1: made it through the last half hour or so of
25:19
Speaker 1: the show, and when the show finally ended, I did
25:22
Speaker 1: the old exhale like a man who had just survived
25:25
Speaker 1: a hostage situation. Then I had to do the post mortem.
25:28
Speaker 1: I do the autopsy, the cause of death. It turned
25:32
Speaker 1: out it was indeed one deceased HDMI cable. It had
25:36
Speaker 1: crossed the pearly gates into that digital heaven. There was
25:40
Speaker 1: no warning, there was no smoke, just gone, gone, gone,
25:44
Speaker 1: a humble little chord, the unsung hero of the modern age.
25:49
Speaker 1: It had connected my computer to the monitor through years
25:52
Speaker 1: of Mallard monologus, cheating scandals, gambling scandals or meltdowns about
26:00
Speaker 1: Dave Roberts yapping about the Jets and the Browns and this,
26:05
Speaker 1: that and the other thing, and it had done its
26:07
Speaker 1: duty with pride, with honor. It had stayed very quiet,
26:12
Speaker 1: and now it had moved on. And that, my friend,
26:15
Speaker 1: and you being a real p one by listening to
26:17
Speaker 1: this who listened to this podcast religiously, That is when
26:21
Speaker 1: I discovered a new law of being a mid middle
26:26
Speaker 1: aged broadcast guy. For every dead HDMI cable, there are
26:31
Speaker 1: just one and only one. You know, the replacement is
26:35
Speaker 1: buried somewhere in your house. So of course what did
26:39
Speaker 1: I do? I went on what I can only describe
26:42
Speaker 1: as a malar scavenger hunt. Now I know that your house.
26:46
Speaker 1: I don't know where you live. I don't, I mean,
26:48
Speaker 1: you don't know really where I live, and if you do,
26:50
Speaker 1: you're a stocker. But every household has that junk drawer,
26:54
Speaker 1: and it gets bigger and bigger the older you get.
26:56
Speaker 1: You know, the one where you good intentions go to die.
27:01
Speaker 1: You put the old remote in there, You put the
27:03
Speaker 1: old keys, the expired batteries, the triple A card from
27:07
Speaker 1: seven just in case, your old wallets. You put screws, screwdrivers.
27:13
Speaker 1: You have that lone Allen wrench from the thing you
27:18
Speaker 1: bought at Ikea. The bookshelf that you don't even own,
27:22
Speaker 1: the bookshelf you put that on offer up a couple
27:24
Speaker 1: of years ago. So I went through the I went
27:28
Speaker 1: through the junk drawers, you know, things that I just
27:31
Speaker 1: tossed aside, until finally, under a mass of mystery cables
27:35
Speaker 1: and old keys and all that crap and takeout menus,
27:39
Speaker 1: there was my ex caliber A backup HDMI cable likely
27:46
Speaker 1: installed in that drawer during the Obama administration, and still
27:52
Speaker 1: coiled neatly as if it was waiting for this day.
27:55
Speaker 1: It had been waiting, and here was its moment. It
27:58
Speaker 1: would once again be called into service. And I took
28:02
Speaker 1: that HDMI cable and I walked down about a hallway,
28:07
Speaker 1: and then I went up some stairs, and I went
28:09
Speaker 1: up some more stairs. I made a right turn, I
28:12
Speaker 1: made another right, went down a long hallway, and then
28:14
Speaker 1: I had a fork in the road. I could go
28:16
Speaker 1: to the right or the left. I went to the left,
28:18
Speaker 1: and I walked into the remote studio, and that thing
28:21
Speaker 1: was called into service. I plugged it in. The screen
28:25
Speaker 1: blinked to life. The static was gone, and just like that,
28:29
Speaker 1: the prodigital monitor had returned. The monitor was back, Baby,
28:35
Speaker 1: it was back. So the thing about spare tires and
28:37
Speaker 1: this was a spare HDMI cable. The thing about spirit
28:41
Speaker 1: tires and spare HDMI cables is that they're not solutions.
28:46
Speaker 1: They are a stoppage of the problem. There, stop gap bandage, whatever.
28:51
Speaker 1: There are symbols of survival, and this one, this one's
28:55
Speaker 1: already unborrowed time. So I'll make the pilgrimage at some point,
28:59
Speaker 1: maybe today, BEFO for the Dodger game. I'll go over
29:01
Speaker 1: to Best Buy, maybe today, Or I'll surrender to the
29:07
Speaker 1: algorithm overlords of Amazon and order a replacement. And when
29:12
Speaker 1: it arrives, I will coil the old one that saved
29:15
Speaker 1: me neatly and return it to the resting place of
29:19
Speaker 1: the junk drawer, to light dormant until inevitably, sometime in
29:23
Speaker 1: twenty forty, history will repeat itself and I will have
29:26
Speaker 1: a similar problem. Because that's how this goes. Technology giveth,
29:30
Speaker 1: technology taketh away. You can prepare, you can plan, you
29:35
Speaker 1: can organize and control every aspect of a network radio
29:39
Speaker 1: show until the cable goes bad in your remote studio
29:44
Speaker 1: and the screen goes black and you're left there talking
29:47
Speaker 1: into the void, faking confidence in the darkness. And that
29:53
Speaker 1: is when you realize the day the monitor died was
29:57
Speaker 1: not a tragedy. It was a test. And on that
30:02
Speaker 1: day that happened Halloween morning, just yesterday, in that lonely
30:07
Speaker 1: radio outpost at the Malor Mansion, the show, somehow, against
30:13
Speaker 1: all odds, did go on. It did yeah, And somewhere
30:17
Speaker 1: out there in the cosmos, the Great Don McLean is
30:22
Speaker 1: strumming a new version Don mcleans strumming a new version
30:27
Speaker 1: of American Pie. We're gonna call it Malarie Mallard Pie.
30:30
Speaker 1: The day the monitor died, I started singing HDMI, My My,
30:37
Speaker 1: Your life spans a lie, drove my show to the finish.
30:40
Speaker 1: Through my notes they went awry, good old boys and
30:44
Speaker 1: the mallein Militia cry. This will be the day that
30:47
Speaker 1: I fry. And that is bad, and only you heard
30:53
Speaker 1: it on this podcast. That's radio, one dead cable at
30:58
Speaker 1: a time. Have a great rest of your Saturday, enjoy
31:01
Speaker 1: all the college football. Be sitting on my ass. I
31:04
Speaker 1: have plans to do nothing other than watch sports all day.
31:07
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about it is I don't have
31:08
Speaker 1: to do a full radio show. We will have full
31:12
Speaker 1: Game seven coverage Danny g and I win, lose or
31:16
Speaker 1: that's those are the only options. Dodgers and Blue Jays
31:19
Speaker 1: that'll be exclusive, exclusive on the Fifth Hour podcast that
31:24
Speaker 1: will not be available on the radio show. It will
31:26
Speaker 1: all be about the World Series and we'll do some
31:29
Speaker 1: mailback questions as well. So have a great Saturday. Thank
31:33
Speaker 1: you for listening, and remember Benny Versus the Penny is
31:36
Speaker 1: available as well on the YouTube Benni Vspenny Benni Vspenny.
31:41
Speaker 1: You can check it out and we will catch you tomorrow. Aloha,
31:47
Speaker 1: our our our It was later skater Danny. Yeah, okay,
31:55
Speaker 1: Danny's telling me I need to say Asta pasta who. Yeah,
32:01
Speaker 1: that's the ticket. I was impressed by the size, but
32:04
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie Danny. That was a big cock Okay.
32:08
Speaker 1: By Felicious