Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Benny Traveling Man

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The Fifth Hour: Benny Traveling Man · The Ben Maller Show

0:01
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:06
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
0:13
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
0:16
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to clearing House
0:20
Speaker 2: of hot takes, break free for something Special. The Fifth
0:23
Speaker 2: Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now.
0:31
Speaker 3: Eat the air Everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
0:37
Speaker 3: Mahler and you.
0:38
Speaker 1: We are together again through the power of the pod
0:43
Speaker 1: on this the Friday episode. Although keep in mind, based
0:47
Speaker 1: on the analytics, you know, I love my analytics. You
0:51
Speaker 1: people listen to this at all different times. A lot
0:55
Speaker 1: of you do not even listen the day we do
0:57
Speaker 1: the podcast. That's the magic of the podcast. It's a
0:59
Speaker 1: bit you can listen whenever you want. However, just for
1:02
Speaker 1: the record, it is duly noted that this podcast is
1:08
Speaker 1: available here on this fourteenth day of August. It's early
1:12
Speaker 1: on a Friday, the two hundred and twenty sixth day
1:15
Speaker 1: of the year, which means, according to Malarmath and my
1:18
Speaker 1: computer like brain, there are one hundred and thirty nine
1:21
Speaker 1: days to go in the year, and this the podcast
1:27
Speaker 1: that is pretty random, not very sporty. Very rarely is
1:31
Speaker 1: this podcast sporty. So let's jump in the hot tub
1:35
Speaker 1: time machine and go back back, back, back, back back back.
1:39
Speaker 1: So there I was. The other day. I was sitting
1:44
Speaker 1: in the Malar Mansion. I was not here in the
1:46
Speaker 1: remote podcast studio at the Malor Mansion. I was in
1:50
Speaker 1: another room. It was Friday afternoon, and I was contemplating
1:55
Speaker 1: the utter existential dread that is having to Phil not one,
2:01
Speaker 1: not two, but three weekend podcasts. Now. At that point
2:04
Speaker 1: I had already done one, but I had other podcasts
2:07
Speaker 1: to do. Now, if you have listened at all over
2:10
Speaker 1: the years, you know I'm not exactly Evilknieval. Like nobody
2:15
Speaker 1: is listening to this, Like you're not listening to this
2:19
Speaker 1: to watch me, you know, middle aged guy, you know
2:23
Speaker 1: gas bag launch a Harley Davidson over sixteen school buses
2:29
Speaker 1: and some fountains in Las Vegas. You're not doing that. Now.
2:33
Speaker 1: If I tried that, my spine would instantly disintegrate into
2:38
Speaker 1: the fine bone powder that you can buy on the
2:42
Speaker 1: internet on the dark Web. And the last thing that
2:45
Speaker 1: my wife needs is to spend her weekend scraping up
2:48
Speaker 1: her husband off the pavement somewhere in San Bernardino. Don't
2:52
Speaker 1: need that, don't need it. So no, my brave athletic
2:57
Speaker 1: feats typically involve sitting in the driver's seat for hours
3:02
Speaker 1: and hours and hours, probably destroying my prostate, and aggressively
3:07
Speaker 1: consuming caffeine pills until my heart beats like a panicked hummingbird.
3:14
Speaker 1: Pretty much, because as I have often said over the years,
3:19
Speaker 1: life is all about the stories you pick up along
3:22
Speaker 1: the way. It's all about that, right, And in order
3:24
Speaker 1: to do that, you actually have to occasionally leave your house,
3:27
Speaker 1: even if you would rather stay at your house. So
3:30
Speaker 1: in my case, it's about doing it for the plot.
3:36
Speaker 1: And by plot I mean having something, anything, literally anything
3:41
Speaker 1: to talk about into a microphone so I don't get
3:44
Speaker 1: replaced by an AI bot named chat sports Bro from
3:49
Speaker 1: barstool or whatever. You know. You know that's coming. They'll
3:52
Speaker 1: be Chat sports Bro AI right around the corner. And
3:57
Speaker 1: when that happens, it's all over all right. So this
4:01
Speaker 1: brings me back to last Friday, a week ago. The
4:05
Speaker 1: decision was made, The executive decision had been made. We
4:09
Speaker 1: were leaving the People's Republic of California. Now, I know
4:14
Speaker 1: what you're probably thinking. Oh, Ben, come on, you've got
4:17
Speaker 1: perfect weather, you live in the mall or mansion. You're
4:20
Speaker 1: in southern California. Why would you ever leave? Well, I
4:25
Speaker 1: can do a different podcast on that. I'll tell you why.
4:29
Speaker 1: Three hundred in this case, three hundred and fifty miles away,
4:32
Speaker 1: give or take, across the vast desert wasteland sat the
4:40
Speaker 1: Holy Land, the mecca of MULTII pump refueling, the north
4:46
Speaker 1: Star of convenience stores, BUCkies Tea. Yes, the beaver, the
4:54
Speaker 1: giant cartoon, red hat wearing rodent. My pal Bucky has
5:00
Speaker 1: somehow built this empire larger than most small European nations
5:06
Speaker 1: simply by offering cheap gas, clean toilets, and smoked meats.
5:13
Speaker 1: That's all you need. Now, I am no stranger to
5:17
Speaker 1: the beaver. Me and the beaver are tight. I popped
5:21
Speaker 1: my BUCkies cherry in South Carolina. I think it was
5:25
Speaker 1: at the I believe it was the Columbia location if
5:27
Speaker 1: I remember correctly. They only have one in South Carolina.
5:31
Speaker 1: So I was at that one. I was visiting my
5:32
Speaker 1: niece over in Charleston. We drove all the way across
5:35
Speaker 1: South Carolina and went to the BUCkies. And a few
5:38
Speaker 1: months back, during a Mallard meet and greet we did
5:42
Speaker 1: in Newport, Kentucky, right across from Cincinnati. Right after we
5:46
Speaker 1: had devoured delicious strongs brick ovened pizza from the pizzaia there,
5:52
Speaker 1: we ended up taking a midnight ride on a midnight
5:57
Speaker 1: ride to Dayton, Ohio to pay homage to the Beaver.
6:01
Speaker 1: So we've been there a couple of times now. That
6:03
Speaker 1: grand excursion included Absolute Sports Radio Legends, Royalty in the
6:09
Speaker 1: Malard Militia, Robbie the Mariner fan who's pretty much part
6:12
Speaker 1: of this podcast now, Queen Roxanne, Tommy in Atlanta can't
6:17
Speaker 1: close the deal, Neil and his son Corbin, And that
6:22
Speaker 1: was the night we all went to the Reds game.
6:24
Speaker 1: We ate ice cream. Tommy fled to his hotel because
6:28
Speaker 1: he had an early flight. Neil and Corbin also had
6:30
Speaker 1: to bail. However, the three amigos, that's right, Queen Roxanne,
6:34
Speaker 1: you're one of the amigos. The rest of us all
6:36
Speaker 1: made the pilgrimage over to BUCkies and it was one
6:39
Speaker 1: of the greatest nights I've done a lot of these
6:43
Speaker 1: meet and Greece. That was so much fun to hang
6:45
Speaker 1: out and you just have a great time. And it
6:48
Speaker 1: was a whirlwind trip. I was only in that area
6:51
Speaker 1: for like a day and a few hours, and it
6:54
Speaker 1: was it was just a lot of fun. So when
6:57
Speaker 1: the itch returned last week, I didn't just load up
7:01
Speaker 1: the rental malormobile with my wife, because we did run
7:04
Speaker 1: a car. My wife, the nine to one to one dispatcher,
7:07
Speaker 1: who voluntarily agreed to this madness. No no, we expanded
7:12
Speaker 1: the roster. We had an expansion draft, and we invited
7:16
Speaker 1: two of her work besties, Jen and Ashley, and suddenly
7:22
Speaker 1: my rented suv was not just a car. No no, no,
7:26
Speaker 1: no no, it was the official Malard party bus. We
7:30
Speaker 1: did not have the lighting we needed, and we also
7:34
Speaker 1: needed one of those balls rolling around, but everything else
7:38
Speaker 1: we had. So we drove out originally to a secret
7:41
Speaker 1: location in the San Gabriel Valley to load up. Now
7:43
Speaker 1: my wife, knowing that this was going to be the
7:46
Speaker 1: Mallard party bus and her friends were going to be there.
7:49
Speaker 1: She brought enough snacks to survive nuclear fallout, so we
7:53
Speaker 1: were good. If there was some kind of nuclear situation,
7:56
Speaker 1: we were good. So I took the wheel. I was
7:59
Speaker 1: at the dry as always destination, Good Year, Arizona. We
8:04
Speaker 1: left at four thirty in the afternoon. Let me get
8:09
Speaker 1: the pause button right here, so let that thing sink
8:13
Speaker 1: into your skull here, all right, So four thirty in
8:18
Speaker 1: the afternoon on a Friday in the Greater Los Angeles area.
8:22
Speaker 1: On the global pyramid of horrible life decisions, departing LA
8:27
Speaker 1: at peak rush hour ranks right between investing your entire
8:32
Speaker 1: life savings on beanie babies and petting a wild badger
8:39
Speaker 1: somewhere in that world. So we were immediately swallowed whole
8:43
Speaker 1: by a sea of red tail lights. As far as
8:46
Speaker 1: you could possibly look, there were red tail lights, bumper
8:50
Speaker 1: to bumper to bumper to bumper, creeping along at four
8:53
Speaker 1: miles per hour while the sun beat down on the
8:58
Speaker 1: pavement like a giant, angry heat lamp. We were in
9:02
Speaker 1: a sauna. We were in a sauna. And and look,
9:06
Speaker 1: I don't really mind driving long distances. I do that
9:10
Speaker 1: quite a bit. But I gotta be awake, right, gotta
9:16
Speaker 1: be awake. And you put me on a clear highway
9:20
Speaker 1: and give me a stretch of asphalt, and I'm okay,
9:23
Speaker 1: I'm fine. I don't know that I'm happy about it.
9:25
Speaker 1: I'm okay. But traffic. See, that's the thing. Traffic. Traffic
9:32
Speaker 1: is a machete to my soul. It destroys me. My
9:37
Speaker 1: whole attitude changes, right, you know. I know my hair
9:44
Speaker 1: started giving up years ago, But sitting in traffic for
9:48
Speaker 1: a couple of hours just gives me more time to
9:51
Speaker 1: contemplate all of my shortcomings in life. Now, to survive,
9:56
Speaker 1: I executed the malar maneuver, the protocol of utter desperation.
10:02
Speaker 1: I was popping caffeine pills, washing those down with massive
10:07
Speaker 1: iced Starbuck teas purchased by my long suffering wife, and
10:13
Speaker 1: stared blankly into the middle distance with this red glow
10:18
Speaker 1: from the tail edge. Now, if you've never driven from
10:23
Speaker 1: LA to Phoenix or vice versa, most of you don't
10:28
Speaker 1: live in that area, I understand, So let me try
10:31
Speaker 1: to explain it. So, the route to Phoenix from Los
10:34
Speaker 1: Angeles is really not complex, really not complex. It is
10:39
Speaker 1: not scenic. It's you jump on Interstate ten, the Eye ten,
10:44
Speaker 1: and it is a straight shot, straight line. You leave
10:47
Speaker 1: the city, you go out past Palm Springs that area,
10:53
Speaker 1: and then you just keep going and going and going.
10:58
Speaker 1: It's the energized Bundy of highways. There really are no turns.
11:04
Speaker 1: There are no real bends on the road. There is
11:09
Speaker 1: only the vast, empty, soul crushing expanse of the desert,
11:15
Speaker 1: the desert Southwest that goes on and on and on. Now, naturally,
11:19
Speaker 1: because we were pumping our bodies full of ice drinks,
11:23
Speaker 1: you know, different teas and lemonade and water and various
11:27
Speaker 1: non alcohol liquids, our bladders began a furious movement to unionize.
11:35
Speaker 1: Every forty five minutes or so, it was time to
11:39
Speaker 1: pull off off the road. So one of our pit
11:42
Speaker 1: stops occurred. I want to share this when with you
11:44
Speaker 1: because it's kind of cool and I'd not been to
11:47
Speaker 1: this place before. So we were driving. We got through
11:49
Speaker 1: Palm Desert and there was this desolate gas station, kind
11:55
Speaker 1: of a gas station village. Really. It was on the
11:57
Speaker 1: outskirts of Palm Desert near Joshua Tree National Park where
12:02
Speaker 1: people go to look at the stars, the real stars,
12:05
Speaker 1: not those fake Hollywood stars. Because the reason you go
12:08
Speaker 1: there to Joshua Tree is there is not a single
12:13
Speaker 1: piece of civilized infrastructure for at least fifty miles. Like
12:20
Speaker 1: we talk about the boondocks, the dusty Winnemucker Road. This
12:24
Speaker 1: is where it is. So you get off the freeway,
12:27
Speaker 1: you make a left crossback over the overpass, and there
12:31
Speaker 1: it is. There's a mobile gas station, a mom and
12:36
Speaker 1: pop Mexican restaurant, and a handful of what appears to
12:40
Speaker 1: be mostly deserted storefronts. That mobile station is it. That's all.
12:47
Speaker 1: That is the absolute edge of the earth in terms
12:51
Speaker 1: of human beings until you get way down the road. Now,
12:55
Speaker 1: beyond that point there are no tow trucks, there are
12:59
Speaker 1: no canics, there are no human souls. There is only see, say,
13:07
Speaker 1: sixty miles. The sign said no services for sixty miles,
13:11
Speaker 1: sixty continuous miles of barren, sun bleached desert where the
13:17
Speaker 1: ambient temperature is hovering around a very mellow one hundred
13:23
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. So if your fan belt snaps and you
13:30
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about calling Triple A because there's
13:33
Speaker 1: no cell service, you just accept your new reality as
13:37
Speaker 1: a sun baked mummy. If only they could put a
13:40
Speaker 1: pyramid out there and you could toss your body into
13:43
Speaker 1: the pyramid. So eventually we rolled into blythe California. Have
13:47
Speaker 1: you ever been to blythe You have not okay, Blythe
13:51
Speaker 1: is what we call the final frontier. Before you cross
13:55
Speaker 1: into the promised Land, the free state of Arizona. You
13:58
Speaker 1: cross the Coloradeido River, that is the border there. You
14:03
Speaker 1: step over the state line into Arizona, and a miracle occurs,
14:07
Speaker 1: a modern miracle occurs, an absolute, undeniable, biblical miracle. The
14:13
Speaker 1: price of gasoline drops by a dollar fifty a gallon.
14:20
Speaker 1: Ta da. Yeah, same land, same air, same gasoline. But suddenly,
14:27
Speaker 1: because you crossed an invisible man made line on a map,
14:31
Speaker 1: the price plunges. In California, I was going to Costco.
14:36
Speaker 1: I filled up before we left. It was five dollars
14:38
Speaker 1: and twenty cents five twenty at Costco. That's a deal
14:43
Speaker 1: in LA. And it was three seventy nine, which I
14:48
Speaker 1: still think is a little high across the Arizona border.
14:53
Speaker 1: It is a stark, painful reminder of how the Golden
14:56
Speaker 1: State loves to gouge with taxes the people of their
15:01
Speaker 1: state there, and they love, the politicians love to reach
15:04
Speaker 1: into your back pocket and extract every single cent you
15:08
Speaker 1: own in taxes, not that they actually spend the money properly,
15:12
Speaker 1: because you might not have as big a problem with it. No, no, no, no,
15:17
Speaker 1: it's a disease. They're addicted to that. Anyway, I can
15:20
Speaker 1: do that rant another time. So you would have to
15:23
Speaker 1: be an absolute, unmitigated knucklehead, a Mama luke, a person
15:28
Speaker 1: of truly staggering foolishness to buy gas on the California
15:33
Speaker 1: side of blythe you drive three hundred feet over a
15:37
Speaker 1: bridge and you save what forty bucks on a fill
15:41
Speaker 1: up and laugh all the way to the bank. So
15:44
Speaker 1: once you're in Arizona, the void resumes. Hours of driving
15:49
Speaker 1: through Native American land. There's even one part that has
15:53
Speaker 1: its own time zone separate from Arizona, and so there's
15:57
Speaker 1: nothing in sight unless you're like Actus and all that stuff.
16:02
Speaker 1: Just nothing going on. Now. I will give the Grand
16:06
Speaker 1: Canyon state credit. Arizona gets its truck stops right. In California,
16:12
Speaker 1: truck stops often look like the set of a post
16:17
Speaker 1: apocalyptic horror film. Most of the time they're closed, that's
16:22
Speaker 1: the first problem. Most of the time they're closed, and
16:24
Speaker 1: when they're open, they're dilapidated. They smell like a mix
16:27
Speaker 1: of old cottage cheese, cabbage, urine feces, and broken dreams,
16:34
Speaker 1: and you feel like you need some kind of protective
16:39
Speaker 1: hazmat suit and a shot of penicillin. And I'm allergic
16:44
Speaker 1: to penicillin. Right when you walk in and walk out.
16:48
Speaker 1: Now in Arizona, the truck stops are pristine. Several of
16:52
Speaker 1: them were air conditioned, spotless. I would think you would
16:56
Speaker 1: need air conditioning because even at night, the temperature on
16:59
Speaker 1: the highway was topping way over one hundred late at night,
17:04
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten in some places, and surrounded by
17:09
Speaker 1: towering cacti and surreal dry lightning storm. We saw off
17:15
Speaker 1: on the horizon on the right side, ripping across the
17:18
Speaker 1: black sky, and we didn't see any rain. It was
17:21
Speaker 1: not a single drop of rain, which is seemingly pretty
17:24
Speaker 1: weird doodle bug weather. It's no wonder. UFOs love flying
17:32
Speaker 1: around Arizona. The lizard people, the reptilians can't get enough.
17:37
Speaker 1: If I were a reptilian alien, I would check out
17:40
Speaker 1: the lightning show also and slither around the desert. So finally,
17:46
Speaker 1: at roughly midnight, at roughly midnight, we saw it on
17:53
Speaker 1: the horizon, the glowing heavenly halo. There it was the
17:59
Speaker 1: Holy Land, the Mecca BUCkies, good Year, Arizona. You could
18:06
Speaker 1: practically hear the choir of angels singing Hellllelujah, Hellelujah as
18:12
Speaker 1: we pulled into the parking lot and the banks and
18:16
Speaker 1: banks of gas stations. But the night was about to
18:21
Speaker 1: get even better. Yeah, the late night was about to
18:25
Speaker 1: get better. I had pulled off a logistical coup. I
18:29
Speaker 1: was able to convince my Curmudgeonty, former radio partner, an
18:34
Speaker 1: original dues paying member of the Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association,
18:40
Speaker 1: the one and only Turk Stevens to meet us there. Now,
18:46
Speaker 1: this goes way back over twenty years back in the
18:50
Speaker 1: early days of Fox Sports Radio. Turk and I were
18:53
Speaker 1: a couple of young lads who were fired up to
18:56
Speaker 1: do network radio, and Turk was often my sidekick in
19:00
Speaker 1: those days. He was one of the original keepers of
19:03
Speaker 1: the coin during the legendary Ben Versus the Coin segment
19:08
Speaker 1: that we used to do. We had a million names
19:11
Speaker 1: names back in the day before we settled on Benny
19:13
Speaker 1: versus the Penny. Back then it was man versus Metal. Now.
19:16
Speaker 1: He retired from the grind of sports talk radio several
19:21
Speaker 1: years back, and for many many years he has been
19:24
Speaker 1: an esteemed pe teacher and he has lived in the
19:28
Speaker 1: Greater Phoenix area for a while. Now. Now I had
19:31
Speaker 1: not seen him in some time. So here I was.
19:36
Speaker 1: I pulled up. I dropped the girls off to run
19:39
Speaker 1: into the store. I said, go ahead, I'll get gas.
19:43
Speaker 1: Get gas right now here I go. So I pulled up.
19:46
Speaker 1: I think it was pump number forty seven, pump number
19:50
Speaker 1: forty seven out of roughly four thousand pumps at BUCkies
19:55
Speaker 1: in goodyear Arizona. So there I am la la la
19:58
Speaker 1: la la la la la la la la la, filling
20:00
Speaker 1: up the malamobile with that glorious cheap Arizona fuel. And
20:06
Speaker 1: that's when Turk walked up. Now I invited him. I
20:10
Speaker 1: didn't tell him where I was going to be. Apparently
20:12
Speaker 1: I stand out like a sore thumb. So Turk found me,
20:15
Speaker 1: and it was like no time had passed. Now I
20:18
Speaker 1: don't bel I don't buy all that chemistry mumbo jumbo
20:23
Speaker 1: with sports teams and all that. However, Turk and I
20:27
Speaker 1: we just clicked. We just get each other. Boom boom boom,
20:32
Speaker 1: right back into the groove, finishing our thoughts on sports takes,
20:37
Speaker 1: cracking jokes about radio instantly connecting the brotherhood the bond.
20:44
Speaker 1: And let me tell you something. After being trapped in
20:47
Speaker 1: a metal box for roughly seven hours or whatever it
20:52
Speaker 1: took to get there, with three lovely women chatting NonStop
20:56
Speaker 1: at high volume, I desperately needed to hit, you know,
21:01
Speaker 1: somewhere I could find a little bit of testosterone to
21:04
Speaker 1: mix into the night. And I needed a fellow middle
21:08
Speaker 1: aged or older guy to stand near a gas pump
21:11
Speaker 1: and complain about the Mets bullpen and just nod silently
21:17
Speaker 1: and say, yep, so I led Turk inside. I was
21:20
Speaker 1: the shepherd. I was the sherpa. I led Turk inside.
21:23
Speaker 1: Now I am a seasoned, battle hardened BUCkies veteran. I'm
21:29
Speaker 1: not some rookie. I know the protocol. However, Turk, my
21:33
Speaker 1: man Turk, God bless him, had never set foot inside
21:38
Speaker 1: one of these establishments. He was completely, utterly thunderstruck by
21:43
Speaker 1: what he walked into. Now, keep in mind, on this
21:46
Speaker 1: particular night, there were tons of Dodger fans. There are
21:51
Speaker 1: a lot of Dodgers. Dodgers were playing in Phoenix against
21:55
Speaker 1: the Diamondbacks last week, and so a bunch of people
21:58
Speaker 1: made the trip the caravan to Arizona, and on their
22:02
Speaker 1: way out, they were stopping by BUCkies to buy all
22:04
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff, and so back to Turk. So Turk
22:08
Speaker 1: walked through those automatic sliding doors and stopped dead in
22:13
Speaker 1: his tracks, staring at what could only have been a
22:19
Speaker 1: mind blowing scene. Like he probably thought he had just
22:22
Speaker 1: been teleported to an alien planet where the local deity
22:27
Speaker 1: is a giant beaver. It is a real life Wallyworld
22:31
Speaker 1: from National Lampoons a vacation but with brisket. A wally
22:37
Speaker 1: World with brisket? Does it get any better than that?
22:40
Speaker 1: And oh the Brisket. I marched straight to the Center Island.
22:45
Speaker 1: They have a couple of center islands and BUCkies. They
22:48
Speaker 1: have the Nut Island, and they have the Fudge Island
22:51
Speaker 1: that's kind of mixed together, and then they have the Brisket.
22:54
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would rather move there than any
22:57
Speaker 1: of the Hawaiian islands. Brisket Island. Who doesn't want to
23:00
Speaker 1: live on Brisket Island? Yeah, that is the prized item,
23:05
Speaker 1: A hot Texas brisket sandwich. I grabbed some fresh meat,
23:10
Speaker 1: warm roasted nuts. I snatched a bag of BUCkies homemade
23:16
Speaker 1: potato chips. Now, meanwhile, my wife and her friends, Ashley
23:21
Speaker 1: and Jen, the ladies went completely feral. They grabbed grocery carts.
23:27
Speaker 1: That's right, BUCkies has grocery carts inside a gas station.
23:31
Speaker 1: Began filling them with staggering amounts of BUCkies merch. You
23:37
Speaker 1: got t shirts, you got hats, stuffed animals, onesies, you
23:41
Speaker 1: name it, home decor whatever I mean. I didn't even
23:43
Speaker 1: keep track of everything. It was like watching a supermarket sweep.
23:47
Speaker 1: The Bucky beaver nuggets very popular, except everyone of these
23:52
Speaker 1: items had a rodent's face stamped all over, right, all over.
23:59
Speaker 1: There's only one flaw in the BUCkies universe, one tragic,
24:04
Speaker 1: fatal design oversight. They do not believe in tables or chairs.
24:11
Speaker 1: They don't, right, So there is nowhere to sit. You
24:14
Speaker 1: buy all this food, there's nowhere to say. I guess
24:16
Speaker 1: they want you to take the food home. You're so,
24:18
Speaker 1: we were three hundred and fifty miles away. You're surrounded
24:21
Speaker 1: by fifty thousand square feet of hot food, fudge, roasted nuts,
24:28
Speaker 1: the beaver nuggets, all kinds of other snacks that I
24:31
Speaker 1: didn't even mention, and there is not a single chair
24:34
Speaker 1: in sight. So what do you do? Well? We did
24:39
Speaker 1: what any refined, cultured group of intellectuals would do. My wife,
24:45
Speaker 1: her friends, my guy Turk and I. We all gathered
24:50
Speaker 1: around the hood of the Rental Malamobile in the parking
24:53
Speaker 1: lot at By this time it was probably twelve thirty
24:58
Speaker 1: or almost one in the morning, hundred four degree Arizona
25:01
Speaker 1: night that late, and we were dining alfresco, dining alfresco
25:07
Speaker 1: on smoked brisket sandwiches and beaver chips and giant lemonade
25:13
Speaker 1: and just eating it off the scorched metal of a
25:17
Speaker 1: Rental Sedan suv. It was glorious. So after about an
25:21
Speaker 1: hour normally takes about twenty minutes to eat. After about
25:24
Speaker 1: an hour, we went and took photos with the Bucky
25:27
Speaker 1: statue out in front, bonded with Turk a little more,
25:31
Speaker 1: and we just we loved it, right, absolutely loved it.
25:35
Speaker 1: I bought my souvenir. I always get a location specific
25:39
Speaker 1: Bucky's T shirt. This one said Arizona. I actually got two,
25:42
Speaker 1: once at Arizona, once at Goodyear Arizona. That's my way
25:46
Speaker 1: of marking my territory. I have my South Carolina Bucky
25:48
Speaker 1: shirt and I have my shirt from our trip to
25:52
Speaker 1: Ohio to date, and so that is it. Went back
25:58
Speaker 1: used the Pristine bathroom one more time and hit the
26:01
Speaker 1: road and we piled back in the malormobile a little
26:05
Speaker 1: after one in the morning, and the ride back was
26:09
Speaker 1: a completely different vibe. The energy was not the same
26:14
Speaker 1: we had conquered. Reached the peak of the mountain, the
26:18
Speaker 1: volume dropped from a ten to a zero. The girls
26:21
Speaker 1: immediately passed out. There may or may not have been
26:25
Speaker 1: heavy snoring coming from the back seat. So I drove
26:29
Speaker 1: through the pitch black desert, only had to stop a
26:32
Speaker 1: couple of times, powered by sheer will power and the
26:36
Speaker 1: really the fear of missing the overnight show, and if
26:40
Speaker 1: I got somebody had to stop in the desert, might
26:43
Speaker 1: not make it back in time. So I limited my
26:45
Speaker 1: liquid intake on the return legs so we didn't have
26:50
Speaker 1: to make fifteen pit stops. I will tell you, and
26:54
Speaker 1: I'll pass this on a pro level malar life hack
26:57
Speaker 1: for late night desert driving. You can always if you're
26:59
Speaker 1: out in boondocks, just go outside. And the animals don't
27:03
Speaker 1: go to bathrooms. They they poop and pee out in
27:06
Speaker 1: the desert, so you could do that. If you need
27:08
Speaker 1: a clean restroom, find a casino or a hospital. Casinos
27:13
Speaker 1: are always open, and hospital lobbies have air conditioning and
27:18
Speaker 1: immaculate bathrooms, also hotels as well, So any of those casinos,
27:24
Speaker 1: hospitals or hotels, you're welcome. Sorry. We pulled back into
27:28
Speaker 1: southern California as the sun was peeking over the horizon,
27:33
Speaker 1: dropped off Chen and Ashley, my wife's friends, and finally
27:36
Speaker 1: walked back through the front door. It was a little
27:41
Speaker 1: after six in the morning, give or take there on Saturday.
27:46
Speaker 1: And let us look now at the official compu box stats,
27:50
Speaker 1: or I guess these are the unofficial CompuBox stats for
27:53
Speaker 1: this Bucky's Mallard madness. Total time on the road, total
27:57
Speaker 1: time of the journey twelve hours. That's a let hours
28:00
Speaker 1: driving and one hour eating and shopping. Total distance covered
28:05
Speaker 1: over seven hundred miles. The brisket sandwich is consumed one
28:11
Speaker 1: for each of us, so that would be one two, three,
28:13
Speaker 1: four five brisket sandwiches. I had one bags of roasted
28:17
Speaker 1: nuts secured three BUCkies beaver nuggets. That would be two
28:23
Speaker 1: Starbucks runs. That would be also two as we said,
28:28
Speaker 1: a gas station stops what is it one two, three,
28:32
Speaker 1: four five six. That also includes one in and out
28:37
Speaker 1: a casino and we did not stop at the hospital,
28:42
Speaker 1: but the hotel was it ridiculous. I'm nodding my head. Yes,
28:47
Speaker 1: absolutely was it completely unnecessary to do this without a doubt.
28:53
Speaker 1: But I gotta tell you, these stupid spontaneous adventures add
28:58
Speaker 1: a little spark to light. You just have to do it.
29:02
Speaker 1: I learned that from my professor Nike. You gotta chase
29:07
Speaker 1: the stories. You'll be glad you lived, trust me, and
29:11
Speaker 1: the podcast will thank you later. Like right now, you're
29:14
Speaker 1: still listening here and I don't know how long I've yapped.
29:17
Speaker 1: I have no idea, and it's all about my trip
29:20
Speaker 1: to Arizona. Now time for some fun facts. That's right,
29:24
Speaker 1: fun facts. Let's see how many fun facts can I
29:27
Speaker 1: get in to? Three minutes? Three minutes of fun facts?
29:33
Speaker 1: Are you ready? We're on our way and go all right?
29:37
Speaker 1: Today is National Creamsicle Day. Yeah, National creamsicle Day. I
29:43
Speaker 1: recall in the past talking about this. The creamsicle is
29:47
Speaker 1: a mistake, all right, It's a mistake by a child.
29:51
Speaker 1: Say what? Yeah? The only reason the creamsicle exists as
29:55
Speaker 1: we know it is because of an eleven year old
29:57
Speaker 1: kid named Frank Frank Eperson who left a cup of
30:03
Speaker 1: soda outside overnight. This goes back to the early nineteen hundreds.
30:08
Speaker 1: It froze right, you left the soda outside, it froze
30:12
Speaker 1: around the stick and boom. That was the proto popsicle.
30:19
Speaker 1: That became the creamsicle. That was bored. That was born
30:22
Speaker 1: that day, and that was back in nineteen oh five.
30:25
Speaker 1: Now the creamsicle is part of the sickle family, the popsicle,
30:30
Speaker 1: the fudgsicle, the dreamsicle. I mean, there's a bunch of
30:34
Speaker 1: other ones. There's a bunch of them, and so they
30:37
Speaker 1: used different things and all that stuff, and Good Humor
30:42
Speaker 1: introduced the creamsicle on a widespread basis in the nineteen thirties,
30:47
Speaker 1: and they sold millions of these things from those iconic
30:51
Speaker 1: Good Humor trucks and by nineteen fifty two they were
30:55
Speaker 1: pushing seventeen point six million creamsicles a year. Everyone wanted
30:59
Speaker 1: to have. And it's got two layers. You know what
31:05
Speaker 1: a creamsicle is, So I don't need to go into that.
31:08
Speaker 1: The other fun facts about this. The popsicle, it's a
31:11
Speaker 1: water based fruit. The creamsicle must contain dairy with ten
31:17
Speaker 1: percent milk fat per FDA standards, and the production uses
31:23
Speaker 1: scraped surface freezers spinning at up to two hundred and
31:28
Speaker 1: twenty rpm and basically NASCAR. It's a NASCAR pit crew
31:34
Speaker 1: for the frozen treat And it's been around, as I said,
31:38
Speaker 1: since like the late nineteen thirties when good humor came around.
31:42
Speaker 1: It's one of the longest running frozen desserts in America.
31:46
Speaker 1: It's also National kool Aid Day today. Yes, kool Aid
31:50
Speaker 1: started as a liquid concentrate called fruit smack before somebody
31:56
Speaker 1: named Edwin Perkins figured out how to remove the water
32:00
Speaker 1: pump or the water rather and then ship it and
32:04
Speaker 1: pump it out to the people's what I was trying
32:05
Speaker 1: to say. It was invented in Hastings, Nebraska, and Nebraska
32:12
Speaker 1: years ago made kool aid the official soft drink of
32:17
Speaker 1: their state. And they in Hastings, Nebraska, they have a
32:21
Speaker 1: kool Aid Festival every August. So right around this time
32:26
Speaker 1: of the year, they got a kool Aid parade, watermelon
32:29
Speaker 1: seed spitting, kool aid, shrugging contest, all that stuff, all
32:34
Speaker 1: that stuff. And did you know the colors are so
32:39
Speaker 1: strong of the kool aid? How strong are they? They're
32:44
Speaker 1: used to dye hair and wool red forty in cherry.
32:50
Speaker 1: Kool Aid has a peak absorption at five hundred and
32:54
Speaker 1: three whatever that means. And so it all started. The
32:58
Speaker 1: mascot the kool Aid Man, first illustrated in the nineteen fifties.
33:03
Speaker 1: It was inspired by a child smiley face on a
33:07
Speaker 1: frosted window. Yeah, isn't that great? There you go. What
33:13
Speaker 1: else do we have on kool aid? Let's see here
33:17
Speaker 1: kool aid in the kitchen. You can use kool aid
33:21
Speaker 1: to brine meats to the acidicity and sugar balance of
33:28
Speaker 1: kool aid. Now, one of the reasons it's so popular
33:31
Speaker 1: is during the Great Depression, that guy Perkins I told
33:35
Speaker 1: you about. I remember the guy we talked about here,
33:37
Speaker 1: Edwin Perkins. So this guy, during the Great Depression, trying
33:40
Speaker 1: to help people out, he slashed the price of kool
33:43
Speaker 1: aid from ten cents to five cents, and so it
33:46
Speaker 1: was affordable. So people couldn't wait to get the original
33:49
Speaker 1: six flavors of cherry, grape, lemonade, orange, raspberry, root beer.
33:54
Speaker 1: There you go. It is also Navajo Code Talker's Day,
33:59
Speaker 1: one of the great of US military history. One of
34:02
Speaker 1: the most amazing chapters. The Navajo code Talkers created the
34:07
Speaker 1: only unbroken code in modern warfare, and it was all
34:13
Speaker 1: done because of some random dude in the military named
34:18
Speaker 1: Philip Johnston. He was not a Navajo guy, non novo.
34:23
Speaker 1: He grew up though, on a reservation, and he pitched
34:28
Speaker 1: to his higher ups in the military the concept of
34:32
Speaker 1: the native language code, and that was eventually what helped
34:36
Speaker 1: win World War two. And they ended up starting out
34:42
Speaker 1: with just a couple couple people, and by the time
34:47
Speaker 1: they had finished, the program grew from you know, there
34:49
Speaker 1: were like twenty nine people or something. By the time
34:52
Speaker 1: they had finished, there was four hundred Navajo marines. And
34:55
Speaker 1: there's a lot of myths that the code talkers were
34:58
Speaker 1: so valuable that they were kept saying if they were
35:00
Speaker 1: not on the front lines. However, they did have to
35:03
Speaker 1: land on beaches under fire, including iwo Jima, where six
35:09
Speaker 1: talkers sent eight hundred plus messages in two days. They
35:12
Speaker 1: did not make a single error, not a single error
35:17
Speaker 1: as the as that goes. So anyway, those I think
35:21
Speaker 1: I went way over three minutes. You know, bad job
35:24
Speaker 1: by me. Foody fun. Time for some foody fun. It's
35:28
Speaker 1: foody fun, all right, here we go. Taco Bell has
35:33
Speaker 1: introduced some new products this week, the Taheen Taco, the
35:38
Speaker 1: Taheen Cheesy Gordita Crunch and the Taheen Pineapple strawberry Freeze.
35:44
Speaker 1: So it sounds like somebody over at Taco Bell's headquarters
35:47
Speaker 1: there in Irvine, California, said, why don't we just put
35:50
Speaker 1: tahen on everything? Okay, that's a good idea. Why not, Well,
35:57
Speaker 1: you want to save a couple bucks on a breakfast sandwich?
35:59
Speaker 1: McDonald offering a two dollars breakfast sandwich deal in its
36:03
Speaker 1: app that goes through October fourth. Dominoes has unveiled the
36:08
Speaker 1: new personal Detroit style pizza, and this is the first
36:13
Speaker 1: time in the sixty five year history of Dominoes that
36:19
Speaker 1: a pizza they are producing has what in its name? Dude,
36:31
Speaker 1: that would be the name of Dominoes. The Detroit Style
36:34
Speaker 1: personal pizza is known as the Domino, the Domino. Hey
36:39
Speaker 1: can I get that Domino? Why not? Red Robin recently
36:44
Speaker 1: put together a new dinner double feature for seventeen ninety nine.
36:49
Speaker 1: You can mix a match two half portions of their
36:52
Speaker 1: favorite entrees along with an appetizer or dessert of your choice.
36:58
Speaker 1: So there it is all right on that. No, we
37:00
Speaker 1: will get out of here. Have a great rest of
37:03
Speaker 1: your Friday. I will say, some of you guys in.
37:05
Speaker 1: You really have to let us know who's gonna be
37:07
Speaker 1: on the mailbag so we can craft our questions. I
37:12
Speaker 1: don't know. I have a big board of people. We've
37:15
Speaker 1: had Terry in England and no Stradinas and just Josh,
37:18
Speaker 1: and it really just depends on who gets back to
37:20
Speaker 1: me when I'm in my window to record the mailbag,
37:25
Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens. Just send your questions in
37:27
Speaker 1: and you'll be surprised what happens. Who knows. Have a
37:30
Speaker 1: great rest of your Friday and we will talk to
37:34
Speaker 1: you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Now, what does Dick and Dayton always say?
37:40
Speaker 1: Bye bye, bye bye