Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: King of Cool

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The Fifth Hour: King of Cool · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Cutbooms.
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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 soul fashion of fairness. He
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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 to 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 3: In the air everywhere The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
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Speaker 3: Mahler and Danny g Radio as we hang out together
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Speaker 3: on this weird Saturday.
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Speaker 1: So we made it through two days of the NCAA
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Speaker 1: tournament and we're not at the sweet sixteen. We're not
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Speaker 1: until the sweet sixteen until after the game's on Sunday,
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Speaker 1: So we have this weird number. Nobody brags about being
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Speaker 1: in this part of the NCAA tournament. But anyway, on
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Speaker 1: the on this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, which
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Speaker 1: is the eightieth day of the we're recording this early
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Speaker 1: on March twenty first. It is the eightieth day of
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Speaker 1: the year and there are two hundred and eighty five
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Speaker 1: days remaining until the end of twenty twenty six. On
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Speaker 1: this podcast, we have the King of Cool, a podcast
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Speaker 1: exclusive story and brotherly love, but not about the Eagles,
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Speaker 1: and we will get to all of that and will
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Speaker 1: begin with this. I'm pretty confident that by listening to
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Speaker 1: this podcast and the radio show during the week, we
1:41
Speaker 1: cover a lot of territory, a lot of it is
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Speaker 1: sports related. We go off the beaten path, we go
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Speaker 1: off the beaten path. You know a little bit about me.
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Speaker 1: You know that I don't really get into the whole
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Speaker 1: karaoke thing, and that is where this tale begins. I
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Speaker 1: did not plan on going to karaoke, and I would
2:03
Speaker 1: argue that nobody plans on going to karaoke. Karaoke is
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Speaker 1: something that happens to you. It's kind of like you're
2:12
Speaker 1: driving and you get a flat tire. When I was
2:15
Speaker 1: going to the twenty seventeen World Series, Dodgers and the Astros,
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Speaker 1: they would become the cheating Astros. They didn't realize at
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Speaker 1: the time they were cheating. I was on my way
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Speaker 1: to Dodger Stadium. It was a blistering hot day and
2:29
Speaker 1: pop kerfluy that got a flat tire. So I was
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Speaker 1: late to Game one of the World Series, which would
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Speaker 1: be the most talked about World Series of my career,
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Speaker 1: so like it just happened. I didn't plan on the
2:43
Speaker 1: tire popping, it it happened. It's kind of like when
2:45
Speaker 1: you go to Trader Joe's, and depending on where you
2:49
Speaker 1: check out, you get the person at Trader Joe's who
2:53
Speaker 1: wants to micro analyze and my favorite is give opinions
2:58
Speaker 1: on your groceries. And it's like, I'll go in there
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Speaker 1: sometimes I'll buy some pizza dough, some Marinera sauce, and
3:06
Speaker 1: some mozzarella cheese. And the girl who checks out my like,
3:11
Speaker 1: she's a woman, I don't know, she's younger than me.
3:13
Speaker 1: So the woman that checks out my groceries will say, oh,
3:16
Speaker 1: you haven't pizza night, Yeah, thank you, inspector. Gadget go
3:21
Speaker 1: go gadget. Yes. So anyway, I bring this up again,
3:24
Speaker 1: not not mister karaoke. However, my friend Shane was in town.
3:30
Speaker 1: Now he lives in Dallas and I see him once
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Speaker 1: a year, you know, once a year. So now now
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Speaker 1: Shane is my longest tenured friend. And as you get
3:44
Speaker 1: older in life, there is a thinning of the herd.
3:50
Speaker 1: You have all these friends, and I didn't have a
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Speaker 1: lot of friends anyway, at any point but you have
3:54
Speaker 1: you have friends in elementary school, fe in junior high
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Speaker 1: and high school, and then as you get through life,
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Speaker 1: everything kind of fades away. We've done stories on this
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Speaker 1: podcast how there's really only a few people that are
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Speaker 1: close friends and a lot of like fake friends that
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Speaker 1: aren't really your friends but are in the zone. Not
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Speaker 1: only anyway, So friend, I say, and this is somebody
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Speaker 1: that knows we hung out together as kids, and I
4:22
Speaker 1: know his mom, and I know the whole story, and
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Speaker 1: he knows he knew my parents. And so Shane is
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Speaker 1: my longest ten year friend. We met when I was
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Speaker 1: nine years old, not as angry a Bill used to
4:36
Speaker 1: say a nine year old girl. I was nine years old,
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Speaker 1: which means that he knew me. Shane knew me before
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Speaker 1: I had anything resembling any kind of resume. I was
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Speaker 1: nine years old, a career or even a fully formed personality.
4:53
Speaker 1: Back then, my biggest credential in fourth grade was I
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Speaker 1: occasionally could wallop a kickball. So I was decent at
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Speaker 1: kickball because of my size, and in Shane's mind, even
5:09
Speaker 1: though we are both now middle aged dudes, that is
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Speaker 1: still pretty much where things stand. And while I certainly
5:17
Speaker 1: don't consider myself famous. I do nighttime radio. I have
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Speaker 1: allegedly built a decent career. I was lucky enough to
5:25
Speaker 1: work at NBC a couple of times, had a TV
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Speaker 1: show for a couple of years. I've done national radio
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Speaker 1: at Fox for twenty five plus years now, side gigs
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Speaker 1: at big radio stations in Boston at WEI, the iconic Wei.
5:39
Speaker 1: I did some fill in guest work at KJR and
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Speaker 1: Seattle and the Fan in Denver. So I've done some
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Speaker 1: pretty cool things and other stuff that I haven't brought up,
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Speaker 1: but if you crunch the numbers, I've actually spent more
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Speaker 1: time talking into microphones than most people spend sleeping. And
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Speaker 1: yet here is my longest tenured friend who could not
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Speaker 1: care less. And I'm telling you I could show up
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Speaker 1: wearing a jacket with all kinds of media credentials and
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Speaker 1: all kinds of radio stuff and TV stuff, and he
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Speaker 1: would say, Hey, remember that kid from elementary school, Donnie,
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Speaker 1: who was on that one TV show. That's his guy.
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Speaker 1: He loves Donnie. That's Donnie because he was a star
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Speaker 1: as a kid. There was a kid in our elementary
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Speaker 1: school that ended up on soap operas and made some
6:34
Speaker 1: like kind of low budget movies and other TV shows,
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Speaker 1: and that's his guy, not me. Some random child actor
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Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty seven or whatever it was, has more
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Speaker 1: cachet in his universe than anything I've done as at all.
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Speaker 1: And part of the reason is he does not have
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Speaker 1: the sports team. Shane does not have the sports team.
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Speaker 1: He does not believe in sports. He lives in a
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Speaker 1: place that is sports crazy, the great Dallas area with
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Speaker 1: the cowboy how about them cowboys and all that, and
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Speaker 1: yet it doesn't matter to him. He's not part of
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Speaker 1: that world. He's not have the sports geen, and as
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Speaker 1: a result, it's not great for me. Now, my wife
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Speaker 1: says that this is actually good for me. She disagrees,
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Speaker 1: it says keeps me grounded. And my response, my rebuttal,
7:22
Speaker 1: is I think it keeps me slightly annoyed. And then
7:27
Speaker 1: we look at that and say, well, in fairness, typically
7:31
Speaker 1: when I'm annoyed, that's where good stuff happens. You don't
7:35
Speaker 1: want a happy talk show host. You do not want
7:37
Speaker 1: a happy talk shows And that's why I want to
7:39
Speaker 1: thank my bosses for making sure they don't spoil me
7:41
Speaker 1: with the riches of some of these daytime guys. So
7:45
Speaker 1: I become spoiled. They're keeping me grounded. That's it they're
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Speaker 1: keeping that's the ticket. They're keep me grounded. So I
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Speaker 1: got back to the story. So Shane, my buddy, he
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Speaker 1: comes to visit. He loves karaoke, not in a casual way,
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Speaker 1: not in and this could be fun kind of way.
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Speaker 1: Shane has worked. I'm telling you this guy has a
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Speaker 1: government job, but on the side he has worked a
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Speaker 1: side hustle for years as an Elvis impersonator. Not an
8:15
Speaker 1: occasional thing, this is a legitimate, authentic thing. He owns
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Speaker 1: the Elvis jumpsuit, powder blue, He's got the wig, the sunglasses.
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Speaker 1: He has been to Graceland multiple times. In fact, I'm
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Speaker 1: pretty confident that if Elvis had a homeowners association, Shane
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Speaker 1: would be on the board, filing complaints about improper hip
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Speaker 1: movements and all that. So naturally he's in town for
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Speaker 1: one night. He stayed at the Malor mansion in the
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Speaker 1: guest room. We go to the karaoke bar. Now, the
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Speaker 1: bar we picked was a dive bar, and I don't
8:54
Speaker 1: mean a trendy dive. We are talking about a place
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Speaker 1: where the bars stools look like they've seen a thing
9:01
Speaker 1: or two bad things. We later found out that this
9:07
Speaker 1: dive bar had been on a reality show called Bar Rescue,
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Speaker 1: which I had seen every once in a while. I
9:14
Speaker 1: didn't really pay much attention to it. And you think
9:18
Speaker 1: about it, that is less a badge of honor and
9:21
Speaker 1: more like being featured on a medical show for having
9:24
Speaker 1: a really unusual rash or popping up on doctor pimple
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Speaker 1: Popper because you have some weird thing growing on the
9:33
Speaker 1: side of your head, the what you might call it. Nonetheless,
9:38
Speaker 1: we were there. My wife tried to order some food.
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Speaker 1: She was hungry, she had the munchies. She sees this
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Speaker 1: incredible menu on the wall, burgers, all these trendy appetizers,
9:51
Speaker 1: which she's more into, all kinds of things that looked
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Speaker 1: for her suspiciously edible at a dive bar. So she
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Speaker 1: goes up to ordering food and the bartender comes over
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Speaker 1: and said, listen, we don't serve any of that. And
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Speaker 1: my wife's like, excuse me, you have a menu right here.
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Speaker 1: Why would you have a menu if you don't actually
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Speaker 1: serve the items on the menu, And the bartender says, well,
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Speaker 1: that was just the TV show was here. That was
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Speaker 1: just for the TV show. So they have this is
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Speaker 1: such a dive bar. They have a menu. The highlight
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Speaker 1: of the dive bar was being on this bar rescue show.
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Speaker 1: They have a fictional menu. The menu, I guess was
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Speaker 1: just for the show that a couple of days, and
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Speaker 1: the menu has better representation than I do. So we
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Speaker 1: sit down now. Shane is absolutely thrilled because we got
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Speaker 1: there early, and he told me, as an expert of
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Speaker 1: the karaoke war that he's been in over his life,
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Speaker 1: the battlefield when you do karaoke. He has reminded me
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Speaker 1: that you have to get there early because you got
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Speaker 1: your name in, because it's very competitive. As a lot
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Speaker 1: of people love karaoke. You want to get yet first
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Speaker 1: song in and settle in. It's kind of like in
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Speaker 1: basketball you want to take that first shot, or in
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Speaker 1: baseball you will swing the bat right there, get that
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Speaker 1: blood flowing and all that stuff. So he puts his
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Speaker 1: name in. I'm doing what I always do in uncomfortable
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Speaker 1: social situations. I observe. I'm silently. I've got commentary in
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Speaker 1: my head. I'm not speaking. This is what I do.
11:29
Speaker 1: I do psychobabble in my head. It's my cardio. I've
11:34
Speaker 1: learned because I've done this in the in the past
11:36
Speaker 1: we've gone out, I've likely talked about it on this podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm sure Lucky Tony will let me know. I occasionally
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Speaker 1: will get dragged to a karaoke event, and karaoke is
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Speaker 1: its own little universe. The microphone is the most confident
11:52
Speaker 1: thing in the room. It's like, give me your worst,
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Speaker 1: you're broken, your can't hold a two crowd. I can
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Speaker 1: handle it. The songbook is a trap. It lures people
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Speaker 1: in with these false promises. Sure you can sing adele Hello,
12:12
Speaker 1: why not let's ruin everyone's evening together? Who says no?
12:19
Speaker 1: So people get up there with a level of confidence
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Speaker 1: that is it's so crazy, it's almost inspiring. You feel
12:27
Speaker 1: me on that, you know what I'm saying. If it
12:30
Speaker 1: weren't so completely disconnected from reality, A guy who struggles
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Speaker 1: to order a drink suddenly is performing like he's headlining
12:40
Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden, the Mecca, And I'm sitting there thinking,
12:46
Speaker 1: I talk into a microphone professionally for four hours a day.
12:50
Speaker 1: On the weekend, I do one hour on the podcast,
12:53
Speaker 1: but the radio shows four hours a night. No one
12:56
Speaker 1: should talk four hours in a row like that. And
12:58
Speaker 1: yet if you handed me that karaoke microphone, I would
13:05
Speaker 1: have flop sweat, would immediately forget my own name. Even
13:10
Speaker 1: though most of the people in the bar don't pay attention,
13:14
Speaker 1: they're living their lives. They occasionally check out what's going on.
13:19
Speaker 1: They're not hanging on every lyric and every line in
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Speaker 1: the song. Now for Shane, he thinks everyone is paying
13:26
Speaker 1: attention here, so he's in heaven and he gets up
13:29
Speaker 1: there and does Elvis and nails it, absolutely nails it.
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Speaker 1: He's got the hip movements, he's committed to it. He
13:39
Speaker 1: knows all the words. He doesn't even need the teleprompter thing.
13:42
Speaker 1: I'm a jig and there may have been a pelvic
13:48
Speaker 1: situation that went a little too far. I'm still trying
13:50
Speaker 1: to process that. And then we see him, excuse me,
13:57
Speaker 1: then we see him. Who you ask, I will tell
14:01
Speaker 1: you Jean Claude, Who on God's Green Earth is John Claude,
14:09
Speaker 1: Not John Claude van Dam, John Claude, not his real name,
14:16
Speaker 1: which is always a red flag in a room like this.
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Speaker 1: He's an average sized, older guy of Indian descent. Not
14:26
Speaker 1: that it matters. I just want to paint the picture
14:29
Speaker 1: for you what I saw. So if you see an
14:33
Speaker 1: average guy, kind of older, of from the Indian culture,
14:41
Speaker 1: and I'm going to say he's in his mid sixties.
14:42
Speaker 1: He could have been in his early seventies. Guy was
14:45
Speaker 1: completely disheveled, the kind of person that looked like he
14:50
Speaker 1: got into a fight with life, and life did not
14:56
Speaker 1: even break a sweat. Body blow, body blow, body blow.
15:01
Speaker 1: If exhaustion were a skill set, this guy would be
15:07
Speaker 1: a Hall of Famer. It just looked like the world
15:09
Speaker 1: had beating him down, you know what I'm saying, Completely
15:12
Speaker 1: frazzled the whole thing. So I'm looking at this and
15:16
Speaker 1: I got my wife on my right, I got Shane
15:19
Speaker 1: is sitting across from me. Now, one thing about Shane
15:21
Speaker 1: is he doesn't care about anyone else. He's such a
15:25
Speaker 1: karaoke diva. He's only worried about his next song. So
15:29
Speaker 1: he performs his karaoke elva song, immediately goes over to
15:33
Speaker 1: the DJ okay, here's my next song. He comes and
15:36
Speaker 1: sits down and he's playing on his phone. He's posting
15:40
Speaker 1: stuff on Facebook or whatever, and he's completely oblivious, obtuse
15:45
Speaker 1: to what's going on. So this guy, Jean Clode gets
15:49
Speaker 1: up there and again he's just older guy, disheveled, looked
15:54
Speaker 1: like life had taken all the joy out of him.
15:57
Speaker 1: He gets up there and he's singing a Dean Martin tune,
16:01
Speaker 1: and I braced myself because the DJs are now here
16:04
Speaker 1: to perform Dean Martin blah blah blah blah blah Jehan Claude.
16:10
Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh boy, here we go, Here we go.
16:12
Speaker 1: This is the full dive bar experience. Because karaoke has
16:16
Speaker 1: trained me the few times I've been to expect disappointment.
16:20
Speaker 1: I am emotionally prepared for one of the great train
16:24
Speaker 1: wrecks of humanity. I'm talking about now, forget Trader, how
16:27
Speaker 1: about a thirty five car pile up in a fog bank.
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Speaker 1: And then Jean Claude starts singing again, not his real name.
16:38
Speaker 1: Suddenly I am not prepared for anything. I was waylaid
16:45
Speaker 1: because this man in the rumpeled clothes just an invisible person,
16:54
Speaker 1: like a background actor in life. He's not Jean Claude.
16:59
Speaker 1: He is Dean F and Martin. Not an impression, not
17:03
Speaker 1: a joke. He sounded like Dean Martin had wandered in
17:07
Speaker 1: to this bar from the other side, took a wrong turn,
17:11
Speaker 1: crossed the pearly gates and decided to stay. The King
17:15
Speaker 1: of Cool was in my presence. The room changed. Mentioned
17:19
Speaker 1: people were not really paying attention, and they all started listening,
17:24
Speaker 1: and conversations stopped. Even the bartenders pause, which I assume
17:28
Speaker 1: violates some kind of workplace policy, and they were excited,
17:32
Speaker 1: and Jean Claude finishes, the bar wasn't that busy. The
17:37
Speaker 1: people were in there, go nuts talking real applause, not polite,
17:41
Speaker 1: good effort, way to go, genuine applause, and John Claude
17:46
Speaker 1: sits down like nothing happened, grabs his beer and that's it,
17:52
Speaker 1: still looking completely torn to bits. About thirty minutes later,
17:57
Speaker 1: Jean Claude said, I'm back, And now he's decided, I'm
18:03
Speaker 1: no longer Dean Martin, the King of Cool. I'm Sinatra,
18:06
Speaker 1: Old Blue Eyes. And again he dotted the eye perfection, smooth, controlled, effortless.
18:15
Speaker 1: He has become now Frank Sinatra in a place that
18:20
Speaker 1: can't even serve its own menu because it was just
18:23
Speaker 1: for a TV show and it's fake. And now I'm
18:27
Speaker 1: doing what I always do. I'm overthinking. I'm overthinking this.
18:29
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, I just saw this guy
18:31
Speaker 1: do Don Martin or Don Martin, that's one of my
18:33
Speaker 1: positis Dean Martin and then Sinatra, I'm like, why is
18:39
Speaker 1: this guy here? Is this the Twilight Zone? Is this
18:43
Speaker 1: some kind of portal this guy came through and we're
18:46
Speaker 1: going to be shocked. Why isn't this guy performing somewhere
18:50
Speaker 1: where people actually pay money for this? This is worthy
18:53
Speaker 1: of money. He should at the very least be on
18:56
Speaker 1: a cruise ship somewhere, or doing weddings or bar mitzvahs
19:00
Speaker 1: where with a functioning kitchen? And why, oh why is
19:05
Speaker 1: John Claude sitting here with this level of talent at
19:10
Speaker 1: a dive bar sandwich between a guy murdering a bon
19:14
Speaker 1: Jovi tune and my friend dressed as Elvis. It kind
19:18
Speaker 1: of reminds me that Ted Williams, so I think the
19:20
Speaker 1: name was Ted Williams. Remember the story of the guy
19:21
Speaker 1: in Ohio with the Golden voice who was homeless and
19:24
Speaker 1: America fell in love with him. It's a great story.
19:28
Speaker 1: We love the idea that greatness is hiding in plain sight,
19:32
Speaker 1: and isn't that pretty much every every other movie back
19:38
Speaker 1: in the day. It was like this person who's down
19:40
Speaker 1: on their luck, they got nothing, going on, they're just
19:44
Speaker 1: a loser, and then all of a sudden, hocus pocus, abracadabra, presto,
19:51
Speaker 1: overnight celebrity. Really it's again. This is what it felt like.
19:58
Speaker 1: What we don't love is that that it usually stays
20:02
Speaker 1: there right that the you know, the person that's really
20:07
Speaker 1: talented doesn't get found and all that kind of what
20:10
Speaker 1: it felt like. It felt like a little bit of
20:12
Speaker 1: a glitch. There's a moment there where something really crazy
20:17
Speaker 1: happened right in a dive bar on stage, and this
20:24
Speaker 1: person showed up and the place that doesn't deserve it,
20:27
Speaker 1: performed just beautifully and then disappeared. Now we did get
20:34
Speaker 1: an encore. However, I'm pretty sure that I'll never see
20:39
Speaker 1: that guy again. And he has no idea who I am,
20:42
Speaker 1: no agent, This guy had no agent, no future booking
20:47
Speaker 1: at a bar. It was such a great performance. I
20:50
Speaker 1: thought this guy might be doing some makeup. And this
20:53
Speaker 1: is part of a different reality show where the famous
20:57
Speaker 1: story go back to Elvis, where Elvis pressed he entered
21:01
Speaker 1: an Elvis impersonators contest look alike contest and lost that
21:08
Speaker 1: they said he didn't look enough like Elvis, even though
21:10
Speaker 1: he was actually Elvis. And there's other examples of that
21:13
Speaker 1: where celebrities have done that. And so I was like,
21:15
Speaker 1: is this guy do I not know some kind of
21:17
Speaker 1: Bollywood celebrity or something like this guy might be part
21:20
Speaker 1: of I don't know, I've no idea whoever. That guy was,
21:23
Speaker 1: What a what a night? He blew me away? Blew
21:27
Speaker 1: me away? You know, and just another name on a
21:32
Speaker 1: karaoke list for some random DJ. And here I am
21:36
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking I've spent my entire career talking into
21:39
Speaker 1: a microphone and this random JABBRONI just walked in this
21:45
Speaker 1: as Tony Bruno was says, strapper walks into a dive
21:49
Speaker 1: bar and did it better than anything I've said into
21:51
Speaker 1: a microphone. Twice the microphone knew it too. On the
21:56
Speaker 1: way out, I swear, I swear that microphone was looking
21:59
Speaker 1: at like you hear me, You hear me, you hear
22:02
Speaker 1: what just happened with me? That's what I've been trying
22:05
Speaker 1: to tell you. Sound like that guy? Okay, Meanwhile, my
22:11
Speaker 1: life of Malarre, It's Saturday Life of Malor. My younger brother,
22:15
Speaker 1: as you may or may not, may or may I
22:17
Speaker 1: know my younger brother hoorah, he lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.
22:23
Speaker 1: I've only been there once. We had a Mallard meet
22:25
Speaker 1: and greet. Few people showed up. Smaller event in Appleton.
22:29
Speaker 1: I got ripped because it was in a Mexican restaurant.
22:31
Speaker 1: My brother happened to know the person that owned the
22:33
Speaker 1: Mexican restaurant. So my brother lives in Appleton, Wisconsin. Which
22:37
Speaker 1: is a place you moved to. If you're not from there,
22:39
Speaker 1: I get If you're from there, I get it. You
22:41
Speaker 1: move there only after losing a bet with yourself. And
22:45
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about a big bet. Not tattoo your
22:48
Speaker 1: face or as my radio friend back in the day
22:51
Speaker 1: in Boston Mikey Adams, tattoo on your ass. This is
22:55
Speaker 1: more like I bet I can handle winter, which is
22:59
Speaker 1: the kind of optimism that should come with a warning
23:02
Speaker 1: label and possibly a safety helmet. No disrespect. It's a
23:07
Speaker 1: nice place. I had a good time visiting there. Lake
23:10
Speaker 1: Winnebago is pretty cool. They have a costco. Appleton's the
23:15
Speaker 1: big city. It's the big city compared to green Bay.
23:19
Speaker 1: The NFL teams that come to green Bay stay in Appleton.
23:23
Speaker 1: It's just not a nice weather place. Every man, woman
23:28
Speaker 1: and child can't agree Appleton, for those keeping score at home,
23:33
Speaker 1: just got twenty seven and a half inches of snow
23:40
Speaker 1: in a single weekend. Let me repeat that for those
23:43
Speaker 1: of you who are doing the honeydew list and not
23:45
Speaker 1: paying attention. Appleton, Wisconsin got twenty seven and a half
23:49
Speaker 1: inches of snow in a single weekend. That is not weather.
23:52
Speaker 1: That's according to the weather station in Green Bay. That
23:55
Speaker 1: is not whether that is a cry for some kind
23:57
Speaker 1: of support. They had to shut down on the schools.
24:01
Speaker 1: Rhodes disappeared at one point. I'm pretty confident that my
24:05
Speaker 1: brother's house qualified as an igloo, and he was practicing
24:10
Speaker 1: the art of being an eskimo, and all of that
24:14
Speaker 1: meant that he made a little extra side money and
24:18
Speaker 1: probably lowered the property tax probably. Now. Meanwhile, here i am.
24:23
Speaker 1: I grew up in southern California. I'm in in the
24:26
Speaker 1: north Woods where we had a heat dome dome dome
24:33
Speaker 1: dome dome, heat dome, which sounds terrifying. As we know,
24:41
Speaker 1: the heat dome has been around for a long time,
24:43
Speaker 1: they just didn't call it that. As one of our
24:46
Speaker 1: longtime p one listeners who happens to live in Colorado
24:50
Speaker 1: and works for the National Weather Service, or I don't
24:52
Speaker 1: think it's the National Weather Service whatever. The big Weather
24:54
Speaker 1: Bureau is in the Rocky Mountain area. And she told me,
24:58
Speaker 1: she said a couple of years ago. She says, Ben,
25:01
Speaker 1: all of these weather terms, these scary weather terms like
25:07
Speaker 1: bomb cyclone and heat dome, are a product of people
25:13
Speaker 1: tuning out weather. Blame it on that. These the weather
25:18
Speaker 1: terms which were high pressure system, low pressure system, that
25:21
Speaker 1: kind of thing, jet stream, those things had to be
25:24
Speaker 1: replaced because people stop paying attention, and plus, in the
25:28
Speaker 1: age of social media, you got to get attention. So
25:31
Speaker 1: they came up with all these scary terms, terrifying heat dome.
25:37
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what a heat dome means. You run
25:40
Speaker 1: your air conditioning and then complain about the fact that
25:43
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to pay for said air conditioning. Temperatures
25:47
Speaker 1: hit one hundred degrees. My car dashboard said at one
25:49
Speaker 1: point one hundred and four, which I assume is accurate
25:55
Speaker 1: because it has no reason to lie to me. Why
25:58
Speaker 1: would my dashboard lie to me. Unlike people, dashboards do
26:02
Speaker 1: not exaggerate. It's just a mechanical thing, and that's it.
26:07
Speaker 1: The dew Hickey give spits out the temperature if anything,
26:12
Speaker 1: they under sell. If my dashboard says one hundred and four,
26:16
Speaker 1: probably feels like the surface of the sun with a
26:20
Speaker 1: side of regret. So naturally, my brother and I begin
26:24
Speaker 1: doing what brothers do. We exchange photo. He started this.
26:28
Speaker 1: I didn't start it, mom, he started it. So my
26:31
Speaker 1: brother sends me a picture of a snowbank which is
26:35
Speaker 1: taller than and I don't know to exaggerate here, was
26:38
Speaker 1: taller than a draft, maybe a golden retriever. So I
26:43
Speaker 1: send him a photo of my dashboard temperature. He sends
26:48
Speaker 1: me a driveway buried under what appears to be the
26:53
Speaker 1: entire winter inventory for our brothers and sisters in Canada,
26:58
Speaker 1: or possibly the planet from Turn of the Jedi. I
27:02
Speaker 1: send him now a picture of a car wash, because
27:07
Speaker 1: when it's one hundred and four degrees, washing your car
27:10
Speaker 1: feels less like maintenance and more like a nice trip
27:12
Speaker 1: to the day sbak. And so this is what passes
27:16
Speaker 1: as brotherly love in twenty twenty six, not not the
27:21
Speaker 1: Eagles version of brotherly love. It's not about who's doing better.
27:26
Speaker 1: It's really about who can complain more about who's doing worse.
27:30
Speaker 1: And you have to have in the age of the smartphone.
27:33
Speaker 1: You have to have photographic evidence, and just to be transparent.
27:38
Speaker 1: I think I'm losing because while one hundred and four
27:42
Speaker 1: degrees is uncomfortable, it doesn't require a shovel. You can't
27:46
Speaker 1: shovel away the heat. I can't say whether there's a
27:49
Speaker 1: heat dome. Why don't I move the heat dome. I'll
27:52
Speaker 1: move it over to Arizona because they're more used to it,
27:54
Speaker 1: or Utah or something like that.
27:56
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, no, no no no no no, no, no no, no.
28:00
Speaker 4: One hundred and four uncomfortable, all that stuff, no shovel needed.
28:04
Speaker 4: Nobody has ever said I need to dig myself out.
28:07
Speaker 4: It's really hot today. I gotta dig myself out the heat.
28:09
Speaker 4: Heat is passive aggressive. Snow will punch you in the face.
28:15
Speaker 4: It is confrontational. Snow shows up uninvited and demands manual labor.
28:22
Speaker 4: Seriously right, And a lot of you live in snow
28:25
Speaker 4: and you have to hire some neighborhood kid to get
28:29
Speaker 4: rid of the snow. You gotta do it yourself or
28:30
Speaker 4: find someone else will do it.
28:31
Speaker 1: It's manual labor. Heat just kind of sits there. It's
28:36
Speaker 1: like a bad house guest, making everything slightly worse. The
28:40
Speaker 1: bugs come out. They're more bugs and critters and all that.
28:44
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. My brother chose this. Okay again, we
28:50
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in Wisconsin. We grew up in Calvino.
28:52
Speaker 1: I got one brother in New York. I got the
28:54
Speaker 1: other one Wisconsin. He moved to Appleton because it is cheap,
28:59
Speaker 1: and it is cheap in comparison to Los Angeles if
29:02
Speaker 1: you don't factor in the emotional cost of living inside
29:06
Speaker 1: a freaking snow globe for five months a year. Now.
29:10
Speaker 1: I chose to stay in southern California for my career.
29:14
Speaker 1: I had job offers and places like Oregon in Boston
29:18
Speaker 1: over the years. And whether it's because of my marriage
29:21
Speaker 1: or whether it's because of my gig at Fox I've had,
29:25
Speaker 1: I've always stayed. I've talked a lot about leaving someday.
29:29
Speaker 1: I probably will end up leaving. Just today's not today.
29:33
Speaker 1: Because I make my living in California. I could do
29:36
Speaker 1: it remotely. There's a lot of the hosts that do
29:38
Speaker 1: the through the shows elsewhere. It's expensive. LA is expensive.
29:43
Speaker 1: It does come with the benefit of rarely needing to
29:48
Speaker 1: know where your snowshovel is. Truth in broadcasting, I don't
29:53
Speaker 1: own a show a snow shovel. I do have a
29:55
Speaker 1: shovel which could pass as a snowshovel. It's not big enough,
29:59
Speaker 1: i'd I barely have any jackets. I have a few
30:02
Speaker 1: just for my travels to cold weather. I do have
30:04
Speaker 1: a sweatshirt a hoodie, and I treat that like I'm
30:08
Speaker 1: going out on some kind of Siberian expedition to look
30:13
Speaker 1: for the wooly mammoth. So really, this isn't a weather debate,
30:17
Speaker 1: is a lifestyle audit. My brother saves money, however, pays
30:24
Speaker 1: in snow. I spend money, and I pay in heat
30:29
Speaker 1: and also money, a lot of money. Everything's more expensive,
30:33
Speaker 1: not Hawaii expensive, but California expensive because we can need
30:37
Speaker 1: all these programs to help save the world, which is
30:39
Speaker 1: not getting saved by the taxpayers of California enough money
30:44
Speaker 1: that I occasionally wonder. I sit there and I look
30:49
Speaker 1: at how much is going out in taxes and all
30:51
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I wonder, could I just move to
30:55
Speaker 1: a place like Appleton, And then if I did, I
30:59
Speaker 1: would be able to I a house. The size and
31:01
Speaker 1: I don't want to exaggerate this either the size of
31:03
Speaker 1: a costco, a full super costco and then I could
31:07
Speaker 1: just spend the winner complaining indoors. Now, then my brother
31:13
Speaker 1: sends me. My younger brother sends me another photo. This
31:16
Speaker 1: one is just white, not even scenery, just white. It
31:22
Speaker 1: looks like someone erased the world twenty seven and a
31:27
Speaker 1: half inches of snow. And I think, yeah, you know,
31:31
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good here, I'm all right. Because here's
31:36
Speaker 1: what we don't want to admit. We don't actually want
31:39
Speaker 1: the other person's situation. We just want the right to
31:43
Speaker 1: bitch and complain about our own situation. Complaining is the
31:48
Speaker 1: national pastime. When done correctly, it is therapeutic. It also
31:56
Speaker 1: is something that can be a competitive sport if you
31:59
Speaker 1: want to to be where nobody wins, but everyone participates
32:03
Speaker 1: in all that. Now my brother complains about snow, I
32:05
Speaker 1: complain about heat. Somewhere between us is a perfect seventy
32:10
Speaker 1: two degree day complaining about nothing. Right's someone there in
32:15
Speaker 1: a seventy two degree This is perfect, And I don't
32:19
Speaker 1: know if I trust that person. Frankly, so we keep
32:22
Speaker 1: sending photos until we get bored with that. Not to
32:25
Speaker 1: change each other's minds, not to trade places, just to
32:28
Speaker 1: confirm that whatever we are, whatever we're doing wherever we
32:35
Speaker 1: happen to be, it could be worse. And that in
32:40
Speaker 1: its own mildly depressing way I find comforting. I do.
32:44
Speaker 1: I find it comforting, all right. One other thing today
32:49
Speaker 1: is National corn Dog Day. I wanted to mention that
32:53
Speaker 1: I should have mentioned that at the start. Bad job
32:55
Speaker 1: by me. Today, on this twenty first day of March,
32:58
Speaker 1: is National corn Dog Day. Now here's an interesting fun
33:02
Speaker 1: fact about the corn dog. As I wrap this up,
33:06
Speaker 1: but I'm not wrapping it up yet, So don't leave
33:09
Speaker 1: corn dogs, which is a staple of the carnival. You
33:13
Speaker 1: put a fried hot dog or some other sausage in
33:16
Speaker 1: there and you just go for it. However, I tried
33:21
Speaker 1: to figure out who invented the corn dog, the modern
33:26
Speaker 1: American corn dog, and that is where it is a
33:29
Speaker 1: slippery slope. You open Pandora's box, it gets tricky. There
33:34
Speaker 1: was a patent for the food invention that was issued
33:38
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, ninety seven years ago by someone
33:42
Speaker 1: named Stanley S. Jenkins of Buffalo, New York. How about
33:46
Speaker 1: that Buffalo. Now he's considered the inventor of the treat. However,
33:51
Speaker 1: it is interesting to note, as Vin Scully would say,
33:55
Speaker 1: The first documented appearance of the corn dog did not
33:59
Speaker 1: come until the nineteen forties, so there's a decade gap. Now,
34:03
Speaker 1: keep in mind the world was not plugged in. If
34:05
Speaker 1: you lived in Buffalo and someone else lived in Iowa,
34:10
Speaker 1: that's a different world. Unless you were able to get
34:12
Speaker 1: a newspaper, you wouldn't know what's going on. So I
34:16
Speaker 1: bring this up because the Pronto Pup Company, a go
34:21
Speaker 1: to concession supplier out of Portland, Oregon, claims that they
34:26
Speaker 1: are the inventor of the corn dog. They made the
34:30
Speaker 1: first skewered, deep fried and battered hot dog, which certainly
34:33
Speaker 1: sounds like a corn dog, and the founders, George George
34:39
Speaker 1: George and his wife, they got the idea after some
34:43
Speaker 1: buns were ruined during the rainy day back in the
34:48
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, and they sold the first Pronto Pups from
34:53
Speaker 1: their Fountain shop in nineteen forty one. But wait, there's
34:56
Speaker 1: a gentleman in Texas that says, hey, we're the ones
35:00
Speaker 1: that came up with the corn dog, and on and
35:04
Speaker 1: on and on it goes. So in terms of foody fun,
35:11
Speaker 1: hooray for food he fun. Hooray for food he fun.
35:14
Speaker 1: Because we all got to eat a couple of things
35:16
Speaker 1: real quick. Thank you, Ohiol. Carls Junior has launched if
35:20
Speaker 1: You're West of the Mississippi. Carls Junior has launched the
35:23
Speaker 1: new Western Bacon Chicken Sandwich, inspired by the iconic meat
35:28
Speaker 1: version of the Western Bacon cheeseburger, and that has begun.
35:33
Speaker 1: That began a couple of days ago, clocking in at
35:36
Speaker 1: eight hundred and forty calories. Why not. Pizza Hut has
35:41
Speaker 1: introduced the new Space Jam Triple Threat Box if You're
35:45
Speaker 1: into That, and Taco Bell make a run for the Border,
35:49
Speaker 1: New Crispy Chicken crunch Wrap Slider, and Cantina Chicken rolled Kaesadilla. Okay.
35:57
Speaker 1: Burger King of the New Marketing campaign has fired their mascot.
36:01
Speaker 1: They announced a new King saying you are the King.
36:06
Speaker 1: Speaking of Burger King. My favorite food story of the week,
36:09
Speaker 1: My favorite food story of the week. The office cafeteria
36:13
Speaker 1: at the Burger King corporate headquarters in Miami had to
36:17
Speaker 1: be shut down for health code violations. Hey yeah, how
36:23
Speaker 1: great is that? That sounds like it's right out of
36:26
Speaker 1: a nineteen nineties comedy, possibly even eighties comedy. Just wonderful,
36:32
Speaker 1: just fricking great, And in honor of Danny g we
36:37
Speaker 1: have an RBS story. Arby's has increased their prices since January,
36:43
Speaker 1: so a little over two months since the end of
36:46
Speaker 1: January by almost fifty percent on many of their sandwiches,
36:50
Speaker 1: almost fifty percent upcharge since January. Do the prices ever
36:57
Speaker 1: go down? Do they ever go down? I think we
37:02
Speaker 1: know the answer to that. Have a wonderful rest of
37:05
Speaker 1: your Saturday. We'll have the mail bag on Sunday. We
37:08
Speaker 1: look forward to that. So take care of some Enjoy
37:11
Speaker 1: the college basketball today, the good, the bad, and you
37:17
Speaker 1: know what, so I'll be checking it out. Am I
37:20
Speaker 1: gonna be sitting on my ass all day watching? No,
37:22
Speaker 1: I got stuff to do today, but I'll be watching
37:24
Speaker 1: on my phone. I'll be checking the scores and seeing
37:26
Speaker 1: how my bracket's doing and all that. Have a again,
37:30
Speaker 1: wonderful day. We'll catch you next time. And that was
37:32
Speaker 1: really pinpoint accuracy. Later, skater aasta pasta my felation