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The Fifth Hour: Piggly Wiggly Problems · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kutbooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
0:12
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
0:15
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
0:19
Speaker 2: hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
0:23
Speaker 2: with Ben Maller starts right now.
0:29
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
0:33
Speaker 1: Maler and Danny g Radio. The final day of the
0:37
Speaker 1: month of January. We will flip the calendar on Sunday
0:42
Speaker 1: to February first, and a week from tomorrow it is
0:45
Speaker 1: odd Super Bowl sixty. Now try not to talk too
0:49
Speaker 1: much sports on this podcast. It's the Fifth Hour Parties.
0:52
Speaker 1: By the way, Danny not with us again. Hopefully he'll
0:54
Speaker 1: be with us tomorrow. I don't know. But anyway, so
0:57
Speaker 1: today there's a lot of story to caught my attention.
1:00
Speaker 1: I didn't do the show overnight obviously, because that was
1:04
Speaker 1: the day we were done. We did the podcast yesterday.
1:07
Speaker 1: There's some decent stuff in the NFL that you just
1:10
Speaker 1: roll your eyes at. For example, Todd munkin the monk Man,
1:15
Speaker 1: the coach of the Cleveland Browns now who is just
1:19
Speaker 1: hired this week, who claimed that the Baltimore Ravens tried
1:23
Speaker 1: to draft Shouldher Sanders, like he was trying to suck
1:26
Speaker 1: up to Shudhur Sanders. I don't know if you saw
1:27
Speaker 1: this or not, tried to suck up to him, and
1:30
Speaker 1: then he claimed that they tried to draft him. Shudhur
1:35
Speaker 1: Sanders was drafted in the middle actually closer to the
1:38
Speaker 1: end of the draft, Like when were they planning on
1:41
Speaker 1: drafting him? He was the one hundred and forty fourth
1:43
Speaker 1: overall pick in the fifth round the draft's only seven rounds,
1:49
Speaker 1: Like were they well six rounds? Like what are they
1:51
Speaker 1: waiting for they got? I mean, it's ridiculous. So I
1:55
Speaker 1: saw that that was amusing and I got a lot
1:58
Speaker 1: of him. But by the way, this podcast, we're gonna
1:59
Speaker 1: have not a mensa and hum baby, not a mensa
2:03
Speaker 1: and humbaby baby. So I got several emails people upset
2:06
Speaker 1: that I was not on the show last night, which
2:09
Speaker 1: always I'm always surprised by this because it's not that
2:13
Speaker 1: they wanted to hear the show. They just wanted to
2:14
Speaker 1: hear a monologue about the Vikings. So based on the feedback,
2:19
Speaker 1: I'm going to do an emergency mal monologue right now
2:22
Speaker 1: here on the Fifth Hour podcast because a number of
2:25
Speaker 1: my brothers and sisters that live in the great state
2:27
Speaker 1: of Minnesota in the Greater Minneapolis area were upset because
2:31
Speaker 1: the Vikings did something that was very bizarre for late January.
2:36
Speaker 1: I haven't you heard about it? Or maybe not, perhaps
2:39
Speaker 1: you were not paying attention. So the Vikings handed a
2:42
Speaker 1: box to their GM, Quazy adopha mensa. They said, all right, crazy, here,
2:48
Speaker 1: I want you to have this box. What's in the box?
2:49
Speaker 1: All right? So we opened the box and there was
2:52
Speaker 1: there was something pink in there and it appeared to
2:54
Speaker 1: be a slip. So he was given a pink slip.
2:57
Speaker 1: That's right. The Vikings they whacked their general manager as
3:03
Speaker 1: he spent the week scouting college players for the upcoming
3:06
Speaker 1: NFL Draft. And the coaching carousel is about done, right
3:11
Speaker 1: about done. The Raiders and the Cardinals were the last
3:15
Speaker 1: couple of teams. The Raiders have their choice. They're just
3:17
Speaker 1: waiting for Seattle to be eliminated in the Super Bowl
3:20
Speaker 1: in the higher of their coach. But anyway, so the
3:22
Speaker 1: Vikings got rid of this guy Quasya doo fa men's
3:26
Speaker 1: of the GM. He's gone booted, kicked out, showing the
3:29
Speaker 1: door however you want to say it. And as the
3:33
Speaker 1: only one apparently that has my brain plugged in, you
3:35
Speaker 1: demand a Mallard monologue, And of course I'm still a
3:39
Speaker 1: little foggy here. I will try to explain what happened
3:44
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. I have a theory on this. I have
3:46
Speaker 1: a theory on what happened with the Minnesota football team.
3:49
Speaker 1: So it's a good jumping off point. Let us discuss
3:51
Speaker 1: the question why. We'll get to the why. Why did
3:56
Speaker 1: the Vikings randomly poll as the GM quasy Dolpha mensa.
4:02
Speaker 1: And this is just a week before a little over
4:04
Speaker 1: a week before the Super Bowl and a long time
4:06
Speaker 1: after the season ended, right pretty much a month after
4:09
Speaker 1: the season ended. So I've got peer one, Pigley Wiggly,
4:14
Speaker 1: and we'll put those together on the mini malle monologue.
4:17
Speaker 1: We're gonna make white chocolate Macadamian nut cookies. White chocolate
4:22
Speaker 1: Macadamian nut cookies. What we're gonna make so a the
4:26
Speaker 1: answer is why to why? The answer to why, it's
4:30
Speaker 1: very simple to an Oukham's Razors situation. The simplest answer
4:33
Speaker 1: is the easiest answer and the right answer, because ownership panicked.
4:39
Speaker 1: They panicked. Now, I'm not saying that Quzy adolpha mensa.
4:43
Speaker 1: The GM there, this guy was doing a good job.
4:45
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I'm saying the normal protocol is,
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Speaker 1: if you're gonna get rid of the GM, you do
4:49
Speaker 1: it in the regular season. Late in the regular season,
4:52
Speaker 1: you do it right after the last game. Therefore, you
4:56
Speaker 1: have your choice of who you want to bring in
4:59
Speaker 1: as the next A bunch of gms have been hired,
5:02
Speaker 1: and the music's pretty much done on the game of
5:05
Speaker 1: musical charity. So the theory is the owner the will
5:09
Speaker 1: family there in Minnesota, they panic full stop. And this
5:12
Speaker 1: is not some kind of mystery novel. You do not
5:16
Speaker 1: even need to activate the MiB, the Mather Investigative Bureau.
5:20
Speaker 1: This is fear with a pulse. Minnesota's ownership group has
5:25
Speaker 1: been diagnosed here with a bad case of sd DS.
5:30
Speaker 1: All right, what is that? What is sd DS? That
5:33
Speaker 1: is Sam Donald's derangement syndrome. Is what it is? Sam
5:38
Speaker 1: Donald arrangementercentro. To rephrase this, the internet was howling at
5:44
Speaker 1: the moon. The purple people. Eater's crowd turned into a
5:49
Speaker 1: barber shop quartet, and they were humming the chili's jingle,
5:54
Speaker 1: I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back,
5:57
Speaker 1: baby back. That's where they were humming, I want my
5:59
Speaker 1: baby back, baby back, baby back. Instead of ribs, they
6:03
Speaker 1: wanted their quarterback and ownership blinked. That's it, period, Stop,
6:09
Speaker 1: it's what. Now. Seattle is in the super Bowl. I
6:12
Speaker 1: did see their supposedly for sale after the Super Bowl.
6:15
Speaker 1: So if you want to put a couple of shekels together,
6:17
Speaker 1: we can buy the Seahawks. But anyway, how great would
6:19
Speaker 1: that be? How upset would no Stridinus be and JJ
6:23
Speaker 1: and Httin and crying Craig and blind emmet the Seahawk
6:26
Speaker 1: fan if I just went down and bought the Seahawks.
6:29
Speaker 1: Of course that could happen. If I went on a
6:32
Speaker 1: cross country bank robbery spree for the next fifty years,
6:35
Speaker 1: I could come up with enough money. Like the Chiefs
6:38
Speaker 1: superfan is currently locked up in the Gray Bar Hotel. Anyway,
6:42
Speaker 1: so Seattle's in the Super Bowl. Suddenly the Vikings think
6:45
Speaker 1: they let the one go, the one that got Away's
6:49
Speaker 1: slip right through their fingers, which is absurd on just
6:54
Speaker 1: about every level. It's absurd. Here's why. If you think
6:57
Speaker 1: Sam Darnold is the reason that the Seattle Seahawks are
7:01
Speaker 1: in the super Bowl, you don't know ball. You don't
7:06
Speaker 1: You're incriminating yourself. That is not analysis, That is just superstition.
7:12
Speaker 1: Have you not been paying attention? That's like lighting candles
7:17
Speaker 1: and blaming the furniture, Like, what are you doing? Dumping
7:19
Speaker 1: the general manage Again, this guy didn't do a great job. Fine,
7:22
Speaker 1: I get it. He didn't really do well. The draft
7:24
Speaker 1: has not been good. But getting rid of the GM
7:27
Speaker 1: was a sacrifice to the angry mob with the pitchforks
7:32
Speaker 1: and the torches and all that. Someone had to be
7:36
Speaker 1: tossed into the volcano, the metaphorical volcano, so the noise
7:40
Speaker 1: would stop and the football gods. More importantly, these social
7:45
Speaker 1: media matrix people demand it a pound of flesh, and
7:49
Speaker 1: it just happened. The short straw was taken by the
7:52
Speaker 1: GM there quasi adolpha mensa. He was the guy, the
7:56
Speaker 1: GM there who took it. He was convenient haunted by
8:00
Speaker 1: things that go bumpity bump in the night, like talk radio,
8:04
Speaker 1: social media, the echo chamber, Watch out for the echo chamber.
8:09
Speaker 1: Now what about Peer one. I'm not talking about Peer
8:12
Speaker 1: one imports. I'm talking about Peer one exports. That's the
8:15
Speaker 1: issue here right out. You go see you later if
8:19
Speaker 1: you act like an adult on this one. And I
8:23
Speaker 1: have an unpopular opinion, but I'm gonna stick to my opinion.
8:25
Speaker 1: I'm gonna die on this take on this mountain. So
8:28
Speaker 1: letting Sam Donald walk was not the problem. It was not.
8:33
Speaker 1: If you look at what Sam Donald did this year
8:35
Speaker 1: in Seattle, I'm reasonable. Don't shake your head, no, no,
8:39
Speaker 1: don't shake your head. No. I'm a reasonable observer. Sam
8:42
Speaker 1: Donald was by Sam Donald, measuring him by Sam Donald.
8:46
Speaker 1: He was solid. He wasn't spectacular. This was not one
8:50
Speaker 1: of the great performances. He wasn't as good as Matthew
8:54
Speaker 1: Stafford or Drake may or someone like that. He wasn't
8:58
Speaker 1: And to circle back to our friend Roberto the bus
9:02
Speaker 1: driver using bus driver lingo, Sam Donald was not the
9:06
Speaker 1: bus driver for the Seahawks. He was a bus writer.
9:10
Speaker 1: He was the one paying the fare in the back
9:12
Speaker 1: of the bus. The numbers are right there. He had
9:15
Speaker 1: fourteen interceptions, near the bottom of the league second half
9:19
Speaker 1: of the season. It was the ninety nine, meaning nine
9:23
Speaker 1: picks and nine touchdowns. That is a coin flip. And
9:26
Speaker 1: it's got a drinking problem. And the trend line matters.
9:30
Speaker 1: It does matter, Sam Donald. For all these people up
9:32
Speaker 1: in arms, Oh my god, his touchdowns year to year,
9:36
Speaker 1: if you go side by side from Minnesota Seattle, his
9:39
Speaker 1: touchdowns were down almost thirty percent from his season starting
9:45
Speaker 1: in the Twin Cities. The interceptions were up. Inconsistency still
9:51
Speaker 1: ravages Sam Donald. It's like a rash that goes away
9:55
Speaker 1: and comes back. You know, It's like you have a
9:57
Speaker 1: gluten allergy and it comes back. This is who he is,
10:02
Speaker 1: Sam Donald. Will win a bunch of games for you
10:04
Speaker 1: in a month or two and then go out and
10:07
Speaker 1: in the Super Bowl a week from him tomorrow, he'll
10:10
Speaker 1: ride the vombit comment. That's it, So spare me the
10:13
Speaker 1: pearl clutching right the GM in this case, Uh, you know,
10:18
Speaker 1: this guy gets absolutely vaporized. Bye bye, Adolpha Mansa get
10:24
Speaker 1: out of here. So he gets vaporized. He's out. He's
10:28
Speaker 1: the guy to take the hit on this. And I
10:31
Speaker 1: guess again this happens that that's how this works. Fine,
10:37
Speaker 1: but it wasn't accountability. It was appeasement. This was made
10:41
Speaker 1: for appeasement. Ownership heard the cacophony of shaky wisdom, mistook
10:49
Speaker 1: mistook that for wisdom, that just the noise and all that,
10:52
Speaker 1: And so they confused the pressure the banging on pots
10:58
Speaker 1: and pans as legitimate proof. And now they've gotten neither right,
11:02
Speaker 1: poltergeist peer pressure. When you don't know where the noise
11:07
Speaker 1: is coming from, what do you do? You start breaking
11:09
Speaker 1: your own stuff? Like I think the noise is coming
11:13
Speaker 1: from the sofa. Let me pull all the cushions off
11:16
Speaker 1: the sofa and I'm gonna start fuxing around with it.
11:19
Speaker 1: Now I think it's coming from the dishwasher, So why
11:22
Speaker 1: don't I take everything out of the dishwasher, all the
11:25
Speaker 1: trays and all that, and I'm gonna take my screwdriver
11:27
Speaker 1: and kind of go around now, Okay, Page two. So
11:31
Speaker 1: the other question on this story, and I'll be brief.
11:35
Speaker 1: This is a mini Mallor monologue, and there's some other
11:37
Speaker 1: things I want to talk about the question that I
11:40
Speaker 1: had on my mind. Though, if Sam Donald's departure, we
11:43
Speaker 1: can all agree knowledgeable people wasn't the main issue for
11:46
Speaker 1: the Vikings. What was meaning that that was not the crime.
11:54
Speaker 1: That's like jaywalking. They took a guy that had been
11:58
Speaker 1: a big spicy meat ball of Pooh and he played
12:02
Speaker 1: one year, played Okay, fell apart at the end. You
12:05
Speaker 1: let him go. That's fine. The real issue I think
12:11
Speaker 1: we can agree is that they put in the grocery
12:14
Speaker 1: cart afterwards, meaning these are pigly wiggly problems. What is
12:21
Speaker 1: a pigly wiggly problem or the Pickli Wiggily is a
12:24
Speaker 1: great Southern grocery chain which is by far the greatest
12:28
Speaker 1: named store for shopping for food I've ever come across
12:32
Speaker 1: in my time on this planet, the Pigley Wiggily. But
12:35
Speaker 1: I'm getting to a picky wiggly problem is picking groceries.
12:40
Speaker 1: That's what this is. That's what all of this is.
12:44
Speaker 1: The Vikings did not starve. They didn't become improverished because
12:48
Speaker 1: Sam Donald left. They starved because they bought the wrong meat.
12:54
Speaker 1: They did. Where's the beef? Well, what't Eddy? This is
12:59
Speaker 1: shopping malpre practice. That's the issue. And for those of
13:02
Speaker 1: you that are a little slow because it's the weekend
13:05
Speaker 1: and you're in the back of the room there and
13:07
Speaker 1: you're wearing your noise canceling headphones, letting Sam Donold walk
13:12
Speaker 1: was fine. We would have done the same thing. The
13:15
Speaker 1: mistake is this. You thought you were buying Kobe beef
13:21
Speaker 1: and you came home, you took the bag, you took
13:25
Speaker 1: the beef out of the bag, and you said, where's
13:28
Speaker 1: the beef? And there was no Kobe beef. It was
13:31
Speaker 1: mince meat pie a Frankenstein food. You wanted Kobe beef,
13:37
Speaker 1: you got mince meat, the apples, the dried fruit, the
13:39
Speaker 1: almond paste, the booze, nothing that actually fills you up,
13:43
Speaker 1: and nothing you look forward eating. No one's ever woken
13:46
Speaker 1: up and said, I really want some of that that
13:48
Speaker 1: mince meat today. That would really make me happy. I
13:51
Speaker 1: really want that. No one ever says that. And the
13:53
Speaker 1: butcher who made the call was crazy. This guy at
13:57
Speaker 1: Dolphamenza the GM there, he looked at the display case
14:01
Speaker 1: and said, that's the one right there, premium, I'd like that.
14:05
Speaker 1: He pointed at it, and then he took it and
14:08
Speaker 1: they put some plastic grap on it, and then he
14:10
Speaker 1: put it in his back. Wrong label, wrong cut, wrong century,
14:15
Speaker 1: check the receipt. The Vikings hitched their purple wagon to
14:20
Speaker 1: JJ McCarthy, a Michigan man, a Michigan man who should
14:26
Speaker 1: have stayed at Michigan and coached at Michigan. Three years
14:30
Speaker 1: into his NFL. I remember first year he redshirted because
14:33
Speaker 1: he was hurt. Second year, this past year he played.
14:36
Speaker 1: And here we are sitting after two years and where
14:41
Speaker 1: are we at? So year three is upcoming and he
14:46
Speaker 1: is still the UI guy. Soft center, need refrigeration and
14:50
Speaker 1: not ready to serve. Will give you a massive case
14:55
Speaker 1: of die die diarrhea. That is not a franchise quarterback.
15:00
Speaker 1: That is a dessert you leave out for too long,
15:03
Speaker 1: is what that is. And when you take a step back,
15:06
Speaker 1: it does fit the Vikings mindset. My entire life has
15:11
Speaker 1: been good enough is good enough? Now I have no
15:14
Speaker 1: skin in the game. We got a lot of friends
15:15
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. You guys have been great. You love the show.
15:17
Speaker 1: I had a wonderful time at the Mermaid when we
15:21
Speaker 1: got together with Eke and Roseville, Minnesota and hollering James
15:26
Speaker 1: and all the al all the all the guys and
15:30
Speaker 1: those where all the good delis are all you guys
15:33
Speaker 1: that showed. It was wonderful. And again thanks to our
15:36
Speaker 1: friend spin Cycle Regina for making that happen. So the
15:40
Speaker 1: Vikings franchises like, well, they're never really that bad. They're
15:45
Speaker 1: just never consistently that good. It's not excellence, it's not domination.
15:49
Speaker 1: It's just adequate. It's if the government was a football team,
15:56
Speaker 1: they'd be the Minnesota Vikings. It's government work football. It
15:59
Speaker 1: meets the minimal's standard. It passes inspection. And I go
16:05
Speaker 1: back to that word adequate because I feel like that's
16:09
Speaker 1: that's the word, you know. Don't go above and beyond
16:11
Speaker 1: the call of duty. Just do the bare minimum. Nothing inspiring,
16:17
Speaker 1: nothing bold, just a shrug with shoulder pads. And it
16:21
Speaker 1: is a cultural thing, right the Twin Cities. They love
16:25
Speaker 1: play Minnesota and Ice. Right, Minnesota and Ice. One of
16:28
Speaker 1: the most amazing things I've be into was it's actually
16:33
Speaker 1: in Vegas, but it was four in the morning during
16:37
Speaker 1: the NFL regular season, and the in the Morning show
16:43
Speaker 1: from Kfan was there broadcasting at four in the morning,
16:47
Speaker 1: or I think they started then, might have been earlier.
16:50
Speaker 1: So I walk in. They invited me to come hang
16:52
Speaker 1: out with them. I walk in and it was insane.
16:58
Speaker 1: It was bonkers. There's meat, sauce and all the boys
17:01
Speaker 1: on the stage and there were hundreds of people at
17:04
Speaker 1: four in the morning. All Minnesotans who were there to
17:07
Speaker 1: watch the morning show was it was great. So it
17:11
Speaker 1: was very nice. Right, you don't want to offend anyone,
17:13
Speaker 1: you know, swing too hard. If you don't swing too hard,
17:16
Speaker 1: you don't miss big. You don't just line up and
17:20
Speaker 1: you clap a little bit and hope the other team
17:22
Speaker 1: screws up first. And that's that and just how you
17:26
Speaker 1: end up with a marinate of mediocrity. But you have optimism.
17:31
Speaker 1: So the foundation was already cracked, and you don't again,
17:35
Speaker 1: you don't blame the grocery store for what you cook.
17:37
Speaker 1: You blame the person that did the shopping and cook
17:40
Speaker 1: the meal. And right now the kitchen smells smells like leftovers,
17:45
Speaker 1: I would say. So the kill shot would be the
17:48
Speaker 1: story that came out this week, which was likely leaked
17:51
Speaker 1: more likely than not by a dosa mensa dopha mensa.
17:54
Speaker 1: The GM there the former GM that the Vikings were
17:57
Speaker 1: looking at the quarterback duo of Anthony Richardson and Mac Jones,
18:04
Speaker 1: which is like, well, wait a minute, what do you
18:06
Speaker 1: do We have our guy, you said he was our guy.
18:08
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
18:08
Speaker 3: Meanwhile turning the page, Hum baby humbaby now I am
18:14
Speaker 3: about to do something on this fifth hour podcast in
18:18
Speaker 3: Polite Society that earns you side eye.
18:22
Speaker 2: And a.
18:25
Speaker 1: Sigh and a question. Who hurts you? Right? Who hurts you?
18:32
Speaker 1: You want to take a guess what I'm talking about here.
18:34
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a riddle. I see Alf knows.
18:37
Speaker 1: Alf knows when I say a homebaby, Alf knows right away.
18:40
Speaker 1: I don't know about Ferg Dog. I don't know about
18:41
Speaker 1: Ferg Dog. Not sure about him. So reveal answers, Reveal answers.
18:49
Speaker 1: I am standing, and I'm clapping for lawyers who goofed.
18:57
Speaker 1: I've got to know now, I'm not talking about these
18:58
Speaker 1: billboard lawyers. I would venture I guess that there is
19:03
Speaker 1: no one, no one who lives in a city that
19:07
Speaker 1: has more billboard lawyers than Los Angeles. I'm just pointing
19:10
Speaker 1: that out. So, but I am clapping for these attorneys.
19:13
Speaker 1: And I know lawyers are usually the people that you
19:16
Speaker 1: tolerate the way you tolerate a long rain delay when
19:18
Speaker 1: you're at a baseball game. It's annoying, it's inevitable because
19:21
Speaker 1: you looked at the weather app and somehow it's still
19:25
Speaker 1: expensive because you're buying food and all that. But on
19:27
Speaker 1: this one. I want to give these these lawyers the
19:30
Speaker 1: full Rocky Balboa montage, and let me explain why if
19:34
Speaker 1: the allegations are true, the San Francisco Giants, that's a
19:39
Speaker 1: baseball team, not a good one, did not just sell tickets.
19:42
Speaker 1: They sold the illusion of a price and then hit
19:46
Speaker 1: fans with the old razzle dazzle at the finish line.
19:50
Speaker 1: So if you know what I'm talking about, you might,
19:53
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not, maybe not. So I saw this,
19:56
Speaker 1: so I was going to do a monologue about it
19:57
Speaker 1: during the week, and I didn't get to it because
20:00
Speaker 1: of some other football stuff, and I figured we had
20:02
Speaker 1: a little time here on a Saturdays, so I did
20:03
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. It's a passionate topic of
20:07
Speaker 1: conversation for me, So I will spare you all of
20:11
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty, right I will just I understand when
20:16
Speaker 1: when when you hear me say, hey, I like you
20:18
Speaker 1: know these these lawyers, the reason is because they're fighting
20:23
Speaker 1: back against the up charging everyone. As far as the
20:28
Speaker 1: everyone does it thing, which some people everyone's doing it,
20:30
Speaker 1: don't care. That's not a defense, by the way, that
20:33
Speaker 1: is a confession. With better poster. It's like the cheating assstros.
20:39
Speaker 1: I just call them assholes. We're on the podcast. They're
20:41
Speaker 1: cheating assholes from Houston, right. So those guys that their
20:46
Speaker 1: fan base, if you want to call them that. They're like,
20:48
Speaker 1: oh no, I've in the terrible and all those guys
20:50
Speaker 1: are like, oh yeah, yeah, Well everyone was doing it.
20:52
Speaker 1: Everyone was doing it. Okay. Well again, it's like getting
20:55
Speaker 1: pulled over for speeding and say, well, the officers, how
20:58
Speaker 1: fast were you going? Well, officer, I was going ninety
21:00
Speaker 1: nine miles. Well, you know the speed limit here is
21:02
Speaker 1: like sixty five. You can't go ninety nine. Well I
21:04
Speaker 1: know that, sir, but I was actually going the flow
21:07
Speaker 1: of traffic. Everyone was going to the same speed. So
21:09
Speaker 1: what are you doing? But they still give you a ticket,
21:11
Speaker 1: They give you an expensive ticket. But here's the basic
21:14
Speaker 1: setup of this skullduggery, and it's a proposed class action suit.
21:18
Speaker 1: It's in federal court that says the giants advertised one
21:23
Speaker 1: price and then presto abreka dabra checkout. They added extra
21:30
Speaker 1: convenience and processing fees that were not disclosed up front,
21:38
Speaker 1: and what the lawsuit calls junk fees because that's what
21:40
Speaker 1: they are. If this is true, allegedly inflating totals for
21:44
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people that bought tickets to watch
21:47
Speaker 1: that bad baseball team. Now, the person named the plaintiff
21:51
Speaker 1: will call him Wand because that's his name. He claims
21:55
Speaker 1: that he bought two tickets that were advertised for ten
21:57
Speaker 1: dollars each, then watched the toll climb to twenty nine
22:01
Speaker 1: dollars after the fees all of a sudden appeared at checkout.
22:05
Speaker 1: That is not convenience in my world. That is what's
22:09
Speaker 1: known as a shakedown with a digital receipt. Congratulations, and
22:14
Speaker 1: the piece demissons. The masterpiece is because the Internet is
22:20
Speaker 1: basically a mall kiosk. That's all it is, right, the Internet.
22:24
Speaker 1: They want you to buy stuff or watch porn, that's it.
22:26
Speaker 1: And so there's a countdown clock on here. The suit
22:29
Speaker 1: alleges that this guy Wan was he felt pressure by
22:33
Speaker 1: a timer, limiting the time to review details, enter payment
22:38
Speaker 1: info and agree to terms. The classic but wait, there's
22:43
Speaker 1: more energy, except instead of a second set of steak knives,
22:48
Speaker 1: you get a third line item labeled because we can sucker,
22:53
Speaker 1: get that dumb money. Get that dumb money. Baby, you
22:57
Speaker 1: gotta do it all right, So get that dumb money anyway.
23:00
Speaker 1: So this is where my inner malar cynicism pops up.
23:06
Speaker 1: I put on the trench code, I hold the decoder ring.
23:09
Speaker 1: The whole trick is psychological. Now I've actually studied this
23:13
Speaker 1: over the years. I'm fascinated by the things that people
23:18
Speaker 1: do in business to sell products, and people end up
23:22
Speaker 1: buying things. They think it's their own decision, but they're
23:25
Speaker 1: actually swayed. It's fascinating. When I worked at WEI briefly
23:31
Speaker 1: in Boston, I did a couple of years fill in
23:34
Speaker 1: nighttime shows at WI. While working at Fox Sports Radio.
23:38
Speaker 1: One of the other talk show hosts also had a
23:40
Speaker 1: full time job. He was a lollipop salesman. Doesn't that
23:45
Speaker 1: sound like it's out of a nineteen nineties comedy? A
23:48
Speaker 1: guy traveling around as a lollipop salesman. And so I
23:51
Speaker 1: talked to him a couple of times about this, and
23:53
Speaker 1: he explained to me that the lollipop game, the way
23:56
Speaker 1: that it works, is that most of the people that
24:00
Speaker 1: buy lollipops didn't want to buy lollipops. They had no intention.
24:04
Speaker 1: They went into Target or Walmart or wherever. They didn't
24:08
Speaker 1: plan on getting any lollipops. However, it is strategic placement
24:15
Speaker 1: and they pay money. Was telling me, like, yeah, we've
24:18
Speaker 1: deals with all these big box stores and the grocery
24:20
Speaker 1: chains like Kroger, and we put the lollipops. We've done
24:24
Speaker 1: market research. We know exactly where to put the lollipops
24:27
Speaker 1: when the person's putting their groceries on the thing that
24:30
Speaker 1: where their eyeballs are, where they look, and then we
24:34
Speaker 1: know a certain percentage of those people are hungry and
24:37
Speaker 1: they like lollipops and they haven't had one in a
24:39
Speaker 1: long time, and so they'll buy the lollipop. And so
24:43
Speaker 1: that's that's why they do it. It's a psychological trick,
24:46
Speaker 1: and you're not in this case, you're not buying a
24:48
Speaker 1: ticket anymore. You're buying the sunk cost of fallacy. These
24:52
Speaker 1: sunk cost of fallacy. You see, once you've picked the seat,
24:56
Speaker 1: like on these websites or your phone, you pick the
24:57
Speaker 1: seat and you'll line the data up. You've already imagined
25:03
Speaker 1: having a soft pretzel, some garlic fries, that nice beer,
25:07
Speaker 1: the cold beer on the warm day. You text all
25:10
Speaker 1: your boys in the group chat. You've committed. You're emotionally there,
25:15
Speaker 1: you're primed to pay the nonsense fee just to avoid
25:19
Speaker 1: starting over. It's not commerce. It's a hostage negotiation with
25:23
Speaker 1: better fonts. And you know the playbook right, because it
25:26
Speaker 1: has not changed in the last almost fifty years, going
25:29
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen eighties in the infomercial era. It's
25:32
Speaker 1: just upgraded from call now to tap now, same flim
25:38
Speaker 1: flam houckerism. It's just a different screen now. The greatest
25:43
Speaker 1: hits on this are supplies are limited. Translation, panic is profitable.
25:49
Speaker 1: You better get this or you're not gonna be able
25:51
Speaker 1: to get it. Only a few left at this price,
25:54
Speaker 1: meaning there's urgency because you never know the price this
26:00
Speaker 1: is going to go up. Assign numbers to customers. This
26:04
Speaker 1: is also a great trick that translation on that congratulations
26:07
Speaker 1: you've been promoted to special. Now you have to pay
26:10
Speaker 1: extra because there's someone behind you. And the countdown clock,
26:14
Speaker 1: which is just classic fomo fear of missing out on
26:18
Speaker 1: the product. The clock is ticking. It's like a James
26:22
Speaker 1: Bond movie. You got the sticks of dynamite. You gotta
26:25
Speaker 1: get this thing or else before the diamond dynamite blows up. Now,
26:30
Speaker 1: this is I ought to be clear. This is not
26:31
Speaker 1: just a San Francisco Giants thing. Although it is fun
26:33
Speaker 1: for me to take shots at the Giants as Jay
26:37
Speaker 1: Scoop and some others. No, they used to be a
26:39
Speaker 1: rival of the Dodgers. I think they've pretty much given
26:41
Speaker 1: up at this point. Dodgers are like secretariat compared to
26:44
Speaker 1: the Giants. But this lawsuit is framed as the third
26:47
Speaker 1: of its kind. It's aimed at Major League Baseball teams
26:52
Speaker 1: in and it's all come in the last couple of months.
26:55
Speaker 1: Similar allegations made against the Boston Red Sox and the
26:58
Speaker 1: Washington Nationals. In the Red Sox case, for example, they're
27:02
Speaker 1: alleging the lawsuit a typical seven dollars order fee, which
27:07
Speaker 1: raises the obvious question, how does clicking purchase cost seven
27:12
Speaker 1: dollars to process? Is? Seriously, what are you doing? Is
27:18
Speaker 1: one person single handly carrying the electrons across the Charles River.
27:23
Speaker 1: They're in Boston, what do they do? And then the
27:26
Speaker 1: Nationals lawsuit, which was filed in DC federal court, similarly
27:31
Speaker 1: claims years of junk fees cheating customers out of millions,
27:37
Speaker 1: cheating customers. It's not exactly subtle, of course, neither is
27:41
Speaker 1: the business model. So now the giants reportedly stopped charging
27:44
Speaker 1: these fees in July of twenty twenty four. They were
27:49
Speaker 1: forced to because at the time, the Biden administration put
27:52
Speaker 1: rules into as I understand it, to not allow these
27:56
Speaker 1: in certain cases. And there's also a law in California,
27:59
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of California, the communist state, that has
28:03
Speaker 1: a law there, law SB four seventy eight. I believe
28:07
Speaker 1: it is honest pricing or hidden fees law, and it's
28:11
Speaker 1: illegal for most businesses to advertise a price that does
28:15
Speaker 1: not include the required fees et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
28:20
Speaker 1: taxes and shipping and all that stuff. So that's in California.
28:23
Speaker 1: But let me do a little Benny the butcher here
28:27
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna trim the fat. So the stopping is nice,
28:33
Speaker 1: the refunding is nice, like they stop, but what about
28:37
Speaker 1: the refund The lawsuit says fans haven't been paid back
28:41
Speaker 1: for the years of alleged junk fees. And if you're
28:44
Speaker 1: a fan, that part that hits you right because it's
28:47
Speaker 1: the it's the sports equivalent hits you in the nuts
28:50
Speaker 1: of getting called for holding after the touchdown and the
28:53
Speaker 1: being told well, I don't worry. We stopped, we stopped holding.
28:56
Speaker 1: So we're good. So great, What does the points you
29:00
Speaker 1: took off the board? What happens to the points you
29:03
Speaker 1: took the board? Anything with the points you took off
29:04
Speaker 1: the board. No, you can't. You can't get those back.
29:06
Speaker 1: You took the points off the board. All right. So
29:08
Speaker 1: this is why again I am rooting for lawyers, legal haymakers.
29:12
Speaker 1: Body blows. Body blows. Not because I'm naive enough to
29:16
Speaker 1: think that every fee disappears forever, however, because somebody has
29:23
Speaker 1: to play watchdog while the rest of us suckers are
29:26
Speaker 1: just trying to buy a couple of seats. Or you
29:29
Speaker 1: should not need you should not need an accounting fee
29:33
Speaker 1: or degree. Rather, they shouldn't need an accounting degree and
29:36
Speaker 1: a blood pressure cuff to buy tickets to a ballgame.
29:40
Speaker 1: And junk fees are the same monster and little different costumes.
29:45
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. Once you hear about
29:48
Speaker 1: the trick, you can't unhear it. Once you see it,
29:51
Speaker 1: you can't unsee it. You start spotting it everywhere. It's
29:54
Speaker 1: like the mal Ard militia of sleeper self. For example,
29:58
Speaker 1: some of the ones that really get up my it
30:00
Speaker 1: took us. The resort fees. That fee is like mugging
30:04
Speaker 1: with mints on the pillow. A resort fee so you
30:06
Speaker 1: can get a newspaper which nobody reads, and access to
30:10
Speaker 1: the gym which nobody uses. How about airline family seating fees,
30:14
Speaker 1: which turns parenting into a pay per view event. That's
30:17
Speaker 1: always nice. I love the late payment fees that multiply
30:21
Speaker 1: like rabbits rabbit, what up rabbit in a carrot patch.
30:25
Speaker 1: You've got the overdraft fees that operate like a trapdoor.
30:29
Speaker 1: The living wage that one living wage restaurant surcharges. And
30:36
Speaker 1: I say this carefully and it should be addressed. You
30:40
Speaker 1: should pay a living wage, not by passing the buck
30:45
Speaker 1: with a line item that makes the customer feel like
30:48
Speaker 1: they're the bad guy. They're the villain. You've got termination
30:51
Speaker 1: fees for internet service. You've got to pay to break up.
30:54
Speaker 1: You've got out of network ATM fees because you're hungry
30:59
Speaker 1: and you're in the neighborhood and you need cash. Online
31:02
Speaker 1: convenience fees. That's my favorite oxymoron. It's right up there
31:06
Speaker 1: with jumbo shrimp. Shrimp not supposed to be jumbo anyway.
31:11
Speaker 1: A lot of times. These fees are just ways, obviously
31:13
Speaker 1: for companies to gouge you and I, and they do
31:17
Speaker 1: it in stealth bomber mode to get it, or they
31:20
Speaker 1: get an unfair advantage over competitors and all that. But
31:23
Speaker 1: here's the deal. That's just the playboy. I want to
31:26
Speaker 1: be too dramatic. That's how they do it. So advertise low.
31:28
Speaker 1: This is the oldest trick in the book. You advertise low.
31:31
Speaker 1: You hook the customer on the product and the price point.
31:34
Speaker 1: Then you fatten the built the last possible moment, when
31:38
Speaker 1: the person who's shopping's brain has already moved on from
31:42
Speaker 1: should I to fine, I'm doing it like that's the
31:46
Speaker 1: move there. That's the trick. Ration. And yes, I know
31:50
Speaker 1: that professional sports teams will argue that these fees fund operations, technology, staffing.
31:58
Speaker 1: You can insert any kind of corporate jargon you want,
32:01
Speaker 1: and that's what they're going to say, which is okay,
32:03
Speaker 1: that's I know they're gonna say that, But put it
32:05
Speaker 1: in the price. Just raise a second. I go to
32:08
Speaker 1: Vegas and they have all these these junk fees. Just
32:11
Speaker 1: raise the price of the rooms. That's what you want.
32:13
Speaker 1: Just raise the price and give me a flat fee,
32:16
Speaker 1: and that's they'll pay it if I want to go.
32:17
Speaker 1: If not, I'll go, say somewhere else. But don't lure
32:19
Speaker 1: me in like the Giants did with a ten dollars ticket.
32:23
Speaker 1: And then you do the math and you add on
32:25
Speaker 1: all these extra fees and all that, and two ten
32:28
Speaker 1: dollars tickets, you add nine dollars on. I'm already halfway
32:32
Speaker 1: down the water slide at that point. Because the thing
32:35
Speaker 1: about the fan, I would say, especially baseball fans more
32:40
Speaker 1: than some others, like you're loyal to a fall. There's
32:43
Speaker 1: nothing worse than a bad baseball team. You still go.
32:46
Speaker 1: You show up. People show up. Early in the season,
32:49
Speaker 1: weather's nasty, it's cold, it's rainy. It's cold and rainy.
32:52
Speaker 1: Late in the season, in the middle oftentimes it's like
32:55
Speaker 1: a frying pan and you're sitting out there melting and
32:58
Speaker 1: it's nightmare time. And people show up. Weather in San
33:03
Speaker 1: Francisco's wild. You got foggy days, foggy nights, and you
33:08
Speaker 1: go in your bullpen pukes all over itself. You still
33:11
Speaker 1: show up. You got a clown car for a lineup,
33:13
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You're there and you pay, and you watch,
33:17
Speaker 1: and you suffer and you celebrate it. And I think
33:19
Speaker 1: that all most fans ask for is maybe it's being
33:24
Speaker 1: old fashioned here, just being a knucklehead. Is that the
33:28
Speaker 1: number you see is the number you pay, and not
33:32
Speaker 1: but wait, there's more, and not time's almost up. Check
33:35
Speaker 1: out now, because that's not a ticketing experience. That is
33:40
Speaker 1: a mugging with a countdown clock. So you got that.
33:45
Speaker 1: There you go, all right. It is the Ben Malar
33:48
Speaker 1: Show on the weekends. We'll be back tomorrow with the
33:52
Speaker 1: Ben Maler Show. We'll have a new episode of that
33:55
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. We've got the Fifth Hour Tomorrow the mail Bag.
33:59
Speaker 1: On the fifth hour, we'll have Super Bowl week covers.
34:03
Speaker 1: I will be in San Francisco later in the week,
34:07
Speaker 1: so I look forward to that. But the Mailbag is tomorrow.
34:10
Speaker 1: Danny hopefully will join us. Have a wonderful rest of
34:13
Speaker 1: your Saturday, the last day of January twenty twenty six,
34:18
Speaker 1: and we'll catch you on the next Fifth Hour podcast. Aloha,
34:23
Speaker 1: my Felacia.