Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Robin Hood Maller

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The Fifth Hour: Robin Hood Maller · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
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 sol 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.
0:18
Speaker 1: Wow.
0:18
Speaker 2: It's the clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
0:22
Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now in.
0:29
Speaker 3: The air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler
0:34
Speaker 3: and you.
0:35
Speaker 1: We are reunited in the audio sweatshop.
0:38
Speaker 3: Here. It is Saturday, the sixth day of June. The
0:42
Speaker 3: content does not stop. It is National Yo Yo Day today,
0:48
Speaker 3: which is apparently a thing. And when I was a kid,
0:53
Speaker 3: we did have the yo yo, and that's because we
0:56
Speaker 3: didn't have the video games. We had our Cade video games,
1:01
Speaker 3: we didn't have iPhones, so we had.
1:03
Speaker 1: The yo yo. And I was pretty good.
1:06
Speaker 3: I was pretty good by the way the yoyo originated,
1:09
Speaker 3: they say in five hundred BC in China. And I
1:14
Speaker 3: would argue that my ability to walk the dog was
1:19
Speaker 3: on par with anyone in my era. Back in the
1:23
Speaker 3: day rock the baby. I was really good rocking the baby,
1:26
Speaker 3: so it's National Yo Yo Day today. I wonder how
1:28
Speaker 3: many people under the age of like thirty five, no
1:31
Speaker 3: what a yo yo is. There is actually a National
1:35
Speaker 3: yo Yo Museum which is in Chico, California.
1:41
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go out to Chico.
1:43
Speaker 3: You can see the National Yo Yo Museum, which I'm
1:46
Speaker 3: told has the world's largest yo yo, which weighs two
1:49
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty six pounds and is displayed at the
1:53
Speaker 3: National Yo Yo Museum, assuming that is still open, and
1:58
Speaker 3: the yo yo is in the Hall of Fame, the
2:00
Speaker 3: National Toy Hall of Fame, which is in Rochester, New York,
2:04
Speaker 3: home of Felexus, America's favorite drag queen caller, and way
2:08
Speaker 3: back in nineteen ninety nine, the yo yo a Hall
2:11
Speaker 3: of Famer.
2:13
Speaker 1: Very exciting.
2:13
Speaker 3: On this podcast, we have Mortal Combat, Not what You
2:17
Speaker 3: Think and Butterflies. We begin though this being the Saturday podcast,
2:22
Speaker 3: it's all about the life of Malar. It used to
2:25
Speaker 3: be about the life of Danny g but he quit
2:27
Speaker 3: the podcast, so it's about the life of Malar.
2:29
Speaker 1: Now.
2:29
Speaker 3: People hear that, they hear that and as well the
2:34
Speaker 3: life of Malar and you assume it's some kind of
2:37
Speaker 3: rock and roll existence if you don't listen to the podcast.
2:39
Speaker 3: If you're new to the podcast, welcome. We're here every Friday.
2:44
Speaker 3: This is Saturday, and then tomorrow we'll have one for
2:47
Speaker 3: the mailbag on Sunday. And so if you listen to
2:50
Speaker 3: the radio show, you think, well, it must be some
2:52
Speaker 3: kind of rock and roll type situation, you know, sex, drugs,
2:55
Speaker 3: backstage passes, and I'm here to disappoint you.
2:59
Speaker 1: I hate to disappoint you.
3:01
Speaker 3: My life is mostly the industrial complex of sports takes,
3:06
Speaker 3: chicken fingers and cuddling with my beloved English bulldog named Moxie,
3:12
Speaker 3: who spends most of her waking hours farting and looking
3:17
Speaker 3: disappointed in what I'm doing. And frankly, that's a much
3:23
Speaker 3: better life anyway. So last weekend we'll taking the hot
3:26
Speaker 3: top time machine. Last weekend was a celebration my nephew,
3:31
Speaker 3: little fella named Jude, like Hey Jude, the old Beatles
3:36
Speaker 3: song turned seven years old. Now seven is the perfect age.
3:41
Speaker 3: And if you've heard me blabbing over the years, you
3:43
Speaker 3: know that I've always believed that somewhere between seven and
3:48
Speaker 3: twelve years old is the golden era of human existence.
3:53
Speaker 3: Everything is exciting and new, and it's stuff you're actually
3:57
Speaker 3: gonna remember. You know, you have memories from before them,
4:00
Speaker 3: you know they're kind of vague and in the back
4:02
Speaker 3: of your head.
4:03
Speaker 1: You get to about seven eight.
4:04
Speaker 3: I think nine is really where it kicks in for
4:08
Speaker 3: most people. But seven there's stuff I remember from that age,
4:12
Speaker 3: and every day feels important. A trip to go get
4:15
Speaker 3: ice cream feels like a national holiday. You're not worried
4:18
Speaker 3: about your cholesterol, you don't care about taxes, you're not
4:22
Speaker 3: worried about the parking politicians, whether your left knee makes
4:26
Speaker 3: noises every time you stand up, or your right knee,
4:30
Speaker 3: or your elbows barking. And then as you get older,
4:34
Speaker 3: every experience becomes a comparison.
4:36
Speaker 1: To how happy you were when you were seven.
4:40
Speaker 3: Like my little guy here, Jude, my nephew, was asked
4:45
Speaker 3: by us, like what do you want for your birthday
4:48
Speaker 3: from your uncle and your aunt? And turns out it
4:52
Speaker 3: was not a toy. Shockingly, it was not a video game.
4:56
Speaker 3: It was not mountains of stuff. He wanted to spend
5:01
Speaker 3: time with the family at an amusement park. Now we
5:05
Speaker 3: did get gifts and all that, you want to go
5:07
Speaker 3: to the amusement park, we could not attend his birthday party.
5:11
Speaker 3: Not that we don't love going to seven year old
5:13
Speaker 3: birthday parties, but we couldn't make it. So He's like,
5:15
Speaker 3: let's come to the amusement park. I want to spend
5:16
Speaker 3: time with the family. And how sweet is that?
5:19
Speaker 1: Now?
5:19
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, adults, us grown ups, spend thousands of dollars on
5:25
Speaker 3: therapy and all kinds of crap to try to recreate
5:28
Speaker 3: the feeling that this little fella is going through right
5:33
Speaker 3: now now. The chosen destination was Knots Berry Farm in
5:38
Speaker 3: southern California and Buena Park, not Disneyland. Not Disneyland, We're
5:43
Speaker 3: talking about Knots. Think of Disneyland like the Beatles Knots
5:48
Speaker 3: if you're.
5:48
Speaker 1: Not from southern California.
5:49
Speaker 3: Knots is a really good garage band that still has
5:54
Speaker 3: loyal fans, except they're getting older. And Disneyland and Knots
5:59
Speaker 3: are seven miles apart geographically if you put the maps
6:03
Speaker 3: app on your phone, seven miles. However, they might as
6:07
Speaker 3: well be about seven galaxies apart in terms of cultural impact,
6:12
Speaker 3: if you.
6:12
Speaker 1: Know what I'm saying.
6:14
Speaker 3: So before we went, we did any what any responsible
6:17
Speaker 3: adult would do, reconnaissance opposition research. I had not been
6:22
Speaker 3: an Osbury farm and sometime we approached this trip the
6:25
Speaker 3: same way Sean McVay would prepare for a playoff game.
6:29
Speaker 1: We wanted numbers.
6:30
Speaker 3: We looked at the analytics, the cost of parking, how
6:33
Speaker 3: much is food, potential, financial land mines that we need
6:37
Speaker 3: to know about, And so we did our research, looked
6:40
Speaker 3: at the prices, questioned whether or not it would have
6:43
Speaker 3: just been better to buy the aisle of toys at
6:46
Speaker 3: the toy shop for the kid, and swallowed my tongue
6:51
Speaker 3: almost The tickets, the food, the parking, everything looked like
6:55
Speaker 3: it had been priced by someone who had recently suffered
6:58
Speaker 3: some kind of traumatic head injury. Now, fortunately, my sister
7:02
Speaker 3: in law had season passes to nots she goes all
7:05
Speaker 3: the time, and so as a result, they allow you
7:09
Speaker 3: to get some discount tickets for.
7:11
Speaker 1: Friends to come. Which was not a small victory. This
7:15
Speaker 1: was a huge victory.
7:17
Speaker 3: So then I looked at the parking, and then I
7:20
Speaker 3: looked again, and I wait, wait a minute, forty dollars
7:23
Speaker 3: forty dollars the park to leave your car sitting motionless
7:29
Speaker 3: on asphalt, Like what are you the Bellagio in Vegas?
7:33
Speaker 1: Like that's Vegas price? Forty dollars the park. Are you
7:36
Speaker 1: kidding me?
7:37
Speaker 3: Oh? You Dodger Stadium parking lots have become the greatest
7:42
Speaker 3: scam in America. And if you really want to make
7:46
Speaker 3: a lot of money and not have much liability, open
7:51
Speaker 3: up a parking lot near a stadium amusement park. This
7:56
Speaker 3: happened to be the actual parking lot at the amusement park.
8:00
Speaker 1: What a hustle.
8:02
Speaker 3: At least when you buy a steak, which is also
8:05
Speaker 3: often a ripoff, somebody has to cook it. They have
8:09
Speaker 3: to cook a side dish often. And parking is literally
8:12
Speaker 3: paying money so your vehicle can take a cat nap.
8:18
Speaker 1: That's it.
8:19
Speaker 3: And so my wife then reached out to her aunt
8:23
Speaker 3: Teresa there who was already planning on joining the gaggle
8:29
Speaker 3: at Knots Berry Farm, and she offered free parking.
8:31
Speaker 1: She has a pass and she had parking on there.
8:33
Speaker 3: And just like that, forty dollars saved the ant, becoming
8:38
Speaker 3: the MVP before we even entered the gates. It's those
8:41
Speaker 3: little small victories. So then my wife discovered the Knots
8:46
Speaker 3: Premium Dining Plan, which I didn't even know was a thing.
8:51
Speaker 1: What is that?
8:53
Speaker 3: So forty five dollars which is a lot, a little
8:55
Speaker 3: more than parking, and what does that get you?
8:58
Speaker 1: Gets you?
8:58
Speaker 3: According to the website, one meal every ninety minutes, one
9:04
Speaker 3: drink every fifteen minutes soft drink, Coca Cola products. The
9:09
Speaker 3: moment I heard that, something awakened inside me. All right,
9:14
Speaker 3: So I'm like, ohkay, So I get a meal every
9:16
Speaker 3: ninety minutes at select venues in knots. I can get
9:20
Speaker 3: a drink every fifteen minutes. I'm not really interested in
9:24
Speaker 3: roller coasters anymore. I don't fit in the good ones
9:26
Speaker 3: and the small ones. I don't want to go on
9:28
Speaker 3: that I do fit in. I wasn't interested in the
9:31
Speaker 3: entertainment options. I wasn't even interested in celebrating the birthday.
9:36
Speaker 3: Not that I don't like birthdays. I just I was like, fine,
9:39
Speaker 3: I had found my mission, my game, if you will,
9:44
Speaker 3: my purpose for this day, the dining plan, and I
9:49
Speaker 3: were now engaged in Mortal Kombat. This is a spin
9:54
Speaker 3: off of the Mortal Kombat. You know this the Mortal
9:57
Speaker 3: Kombat that is the adult vers not the arcade version
10:02
Speaker 3: and not Spurry Farm. Thought they were gonna pull a fast.
10:07
Speaker 1: One on me.
10:08
Speaker 3: Oh you're not gonna You're not gonna eat that much food.
10:10
Speaker 3: You're not gonna get your money's worth on this. You
10:12
Speaker 3: know we're gonna say this forty five dollars thing. You'll
10:14
Speaker 3: eat a couple of meals, You'll be busy, You're not
10:16
Speaker 3: gonna pay attention.
10:18
Speaker 1: They were wrong, they were very wrong. They had accidentally
10:22
Speaker 1: created a competition. And I'm a competitor, all right.
10:25
Speaker 3: I've got the fighting spirit and I was going to
10:28
Speaker 3: beat the system. I immediately deployed advanced technology in order
10:34
Speaker 3: to take down not Sperry Farm.
10:37
Speaker 1: What would that be? My Apple Watch? Now?
10:41
Speaker 3: Unlike the cheating assholes, there are no rules against the
10:45
Speaker 3: Apple Watch. No one at security when I came through
10:47
Speaker 3: the metal detectors to enter not Sperry Farm asked me
10:51
Speaker 3: about my Apple Watch.
10:52
Speaker 1: It is perfectly legal.
10:54
Speaker 3: It is not contraband like the buzzer that certain members
10:58
Speaker 3: of the astros.
10:59
Speaker 1: It is believed.
11:01
Speaker 3: So I remember the deal was every ninety minutes I
11:04
Speaker 3: get a new meal. So I set my timer on
11:09
Speaker 3: my trusty Apple Watch. Every ninety minutes it buzzed. That
11:16
Speaker 3: was a direct line in my stomach. Time to eat
11:18
Speaker 3: gummy now not unlike a casino slot machine telling a
11:23
Speaker 3: degenerate gambler to keep pulling the lever.
11:25
Speaker 1: No, no, no, this was no gambling. It was acquiring pizza
11:30
Speaker 1: or whatever.
11:31
Speaker 3: So the watch became my personal trainer, an important tool
11:36
Speaker 3: to beat the man. Except instead of counting steps, I
11:40
Speaker 3: counted opportunities to consume food.
11:42
Speaker 1: I also got a lot of steps. Every alert felt important.
11:46
Speaker 3: It's like congratulations, you have unlocked a higher level and
11:50
Speaker 3: another meal on this game spin off of Mortal Kombat.
11:55
Speaker 1: And I wasn't writing attractions. I was harvesting value.
12:00
Speaker 3: I was enjoying getting one that you getting something over
12:05
Speaker 3: the man.
12:05
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the food itself, well, let me describe the food.
12:10
Speaker 3: The pizza tasted exactly like I remember at elementary school
12:14
Speaker 3: in the cafeteria. You know that pizza get in the cafeteria.
12:17
Speaker 3: In my case, it was from like nineteen eighty seven.
12:20
Speaker 3: And I'm not telling you he was similar. I'm telling
12:22
Speaker 3: you exactly the same as as nineteen eighty seven cafeteria,
12:27
Speaker 3: elementary school pizza. Somewhere there's a lunch lady named Doris
12:31
Speaker 3: who is smiling if she's still alive, like, ah, that's
12:34
Speaker 3: my pizza pretzel, very proud of itself. And I would
12:39
Speaker 3: be too for as much as they charged for the pretzel.
12:41
Speaker 3: The popcorn, which is one of the cheapest foods to make,
12:45
Speaker 3: was covered in butter and smiling at a cost of
12:50
Speaker 3: nine dollars for popcorn. The lemonade, which I'm happy to
12:55
Speaker 3: report no fruit was harmed in the making of the lemonade.
12:59
Speaker 1: It appeared to be based on.
13:00
Speaker 3: The taste, assembled in a laboratory somewhere, no actual fruit
13:06
Speaker 3: participated in its creation. Knots has this blueberry drink, which
13:10
Speaker 3: it was okay, but it tasted to me like it
13:13
Speaker 3: was a chemistry experiment. I'm not judging unless I am.
13:18
Speaker 3: I was more focused on scoring points. I was worried
13:21
Speaker 3: about scoring points.
13:23
Speaker 1: That was my mission.
13:24
Speaker 3: By the end of the day, let's go to the
13:28
Speaker 3: stat line, let's go to the Kompu box.
13:30
Speaker 1: Stats not bad. I started out with a.
13:34
Speaker 3: Barbecue sandwich which was on a scale of one to
13:36
Speaker 3: ten minus three.
13:40
Speaker 1: That was nineteen dollars and a bag of chips.
13:43
Speaker 3: I had a I mentioned the pizza combo, which is
13:47
Speaker 3: now I paid nineteen dollars for this.
13:49
Speaker 1: Not a full pizza.
13:51
Speaker 3: It was one slice of nineteen eighty seven cafeteria pizza,
13:55
Speaker 3: as Doris would approve, two breadsticks and that's it. Not
14:01
Speaker 3: a full pizza, just one slice, two bread six That
14:03
Speaker 3: was nineteen dollars, which is I believe a felony. The
14:07
Speaker 3: pretzel was ten dollars. That's why it was smiling mentioned
14:11
Speaker 3: the popcorn nine dollars. Now, the beverages were five fifty each,
14:16
Speaker 3: and that's very important if you're keeping score as you're
14:19
Speaker 3: listening here, five fifty per drink. And I had not one,
14:24
Speaker 3: not two, not three, not four, not five, not six,
14:26
Speaker 3: not seven, not eight, not nine. Actually I did have nine,
14:29
Speaker 3: nine beverages at five dollars and fifty cents, So I
14:35
Speaker 3: could have had more.
14:37
Speaker 1: I could have had more. Now, keep in mind these
14:39
Speaker 1: were not all for me.
14:41
Speaker 3: They were not all for me that I distributed to
14:47
Speaker 3: the group. Think of me as a robin Hood, if
14:50
Speaker 3: you will, very similar to robin Hood, and so I
14:54
Speaker 3: would get the drinks, and if I didn't need one,
14:58
Speaker 3: I would.
15:00
Speaker 1: Hook up a family member.
15:02
Speaker 3: Think about like Robinhood, if Robinhood specialized in artificially flavored beverages.
15:07
Speaker 3: The final tally, let's go to the scoreboard right now,
15:10
Speaker 3: and the scoreboard reads one hundred and sixty five dollars
15:14
Speaker 3: and fifty cents worth of food based on the inflation
15:19
Speaker 3: of the pricing at kno Sbury Farm.
15:21
Speaker 1: That's food and drink all in. I spent forty five
15:25
Speaker 1: dollars on.
15:26
Speaker 3: The food pass, which means, if my malord math is correct,
15:30
Speaker 3: I made a profit of sixty one dollars and fifty cents,
15:34
Speaker 3: which is a return on investment of roughly one hundred
15:37
Speaker 3: and thirty six percent. And Warren Buffett doesn't put those
15:42
Speaker 3: numbers up. Nobody, even Bernie Madoff, didn't put those kind
15:45
Speaker 3: of numbers up for one glorious day, not.
15:49
Speaker 1: A radio blow hard, none on this day. I was
15:52
Speaker 1: a hedge fund manager.
15:54
Speaker 3: The entire experience fascinated me because amusement parks have perfected
16:01
Speaker 3: this unique economic model. They charge you to get in,
16:05
Speaker 3: like the ticket is. It's not free to get in,
16:08
Speaker 3: that's discounted. That gets in, and then the real games
16:12
Speaker 3: begin because once you're inside, you become a captive audience.
16:16
Speaker 1: It's similar to what.
16:17
Speaker 3: They've done in professional sports and college sports. You suddenly
16:20
Speaker 3: start making decisions you would never make anywhere else. Who
16:23
Speaker 3: in their right mind would be like, let me get
16:25
Speaker 3: a small lemonade for five dollars and fifty cents that
16:31
Speaker 3: it has no lemon in it?
16:33
Speaker 1: Sure? Why not?
16:34
Speaker 3: How about a nineteen dollars slice of nineteen eighty seven
16:37
Speaker 3: cafeteria pizza made by Doris? Why not a fifty dollars
16:43
Speaker 3: stuff Boysenberry who says, no, make it make sense now?
16:48
Speaker 3: Outside the gates, these prices would trigger some kind of
16:53
Speaker 3: congressional hearing. Inside the gates, everyone just kind of nods,
16:58
Speaker 3: keeps on walking. Okay, I'll get that ten dollar pretzel.
17:02
Speaker 1: Now. I did wander into the Knots gift.
17:04
Speaker 3: Shop by mistake, and I.
17:06
Speaker 1: Am not making this up.
17:07
Speaker 3: I saw what appeared to be a tiny stuffed berry.
17:11
Speaker 3: It was kind of a thing of grapes or boison berries.
17:15
Speaker 3: I didn't even know what it was. It was purple,
17:17
Speaker 3: and it was about the size of your hand.
17:21
Speaker 1: They were charging fifty.
17:23
Speaker 3: Bucks fifty The thing was not alive, that it was
17:27
Speaker 3: not breathing, It didn't do any tricks, It was not
17:30
Speaker 3: trained by a professional. It was a stuffed berry. Fifty dollars.
17:36
Speaker 3: I expected it to help come home and take out
17:39
Speaker 3: the trash and do the dishes and clean up a
17:42
Speaker 3: little bit. And the stuff berry looked very arrogant, like
17:47
Speaker 3: it knew that somebody was eventually going to buy it,
17:53
Speaker 3: and it just had to wait. Some cute little girl
17:55
Speaker 3: was going to go in there with no concept of money,
17:59
Speaker 3: and she would use her cute little girl skills the
18:01
Speaker 3: skullduggery on her daddy or her uncle or her mom or.
18:06
Speaker 1: Whoever her aunt to.
18:10
Speaker 3: Get that stuffed animal, and that dad or whoever would
18:13
Speaker 3: buy that for.
18:14
Speaker 1: His little baby. So you know that happened. It happens
18:17
Speaker 1: all the time. That's why they do it.
18:18
Speaker 3: That's the brilliance of amusement park pricing. Everything is overpriced,
18:25
Speaker 3: and it somehow people seem to walk around very happy.
18:29
Speaker 3: They leave with smiles. Maybe that's because the real product
18:33
Speaker 3: is not the food or the rides or the fifty
18:37
Speaker 3: dollars stuffed animals, it's the memories. And if that's true,
18:42
Speaker 3: my little guy, my nephew Jude, got exactly what he wanted.
18:46
Speaker 1: He spent the entire day with family.
18:49
Speaker 3: The entire day with family, Nobody was staring at phones
18:52
Speaker 3: at least eighty percent of the time, nobody.
18:54
Speaker 1: Was worried about work.
18:57
Speaker 3: Everyone was laughing and for a few hours, actually it
19:00
Speaker 3: was a long day.
19:02
Speaker 1: Adults got to feel like they were seven years old again.
19:05
Speaker 1: Right now.
19:05
Speaker 3: As for me, I left with a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
19:11
Speaker 1: Not because of the rides. I didn't.
19:13
Speaker 3: I went on a feel, but not because of the
19:15
Speaker 3: birthday thing, not because of the memories Nana.
19:18
Speaker 1: Although I did take some photos.
19:20
Speaker 3: That's why we had the old word thing that we
19:23
Speaker 3: did yesterday, which was cheese, Say cheese when you take
19:26
Speaker 3: a photo, because we handed the phone to people and
19:28
Speaker 3: they were like, hey, all right, I'm gonna take a photo.
19:31
Speaker 1: Say cheese. So anyway, I left not.
19:35
Speaker 3: With this sense of accomplishment, because somewhere deep inside my
19:39
Speaker 3: neurotic brain, I was convinced I.
19:42
Speaker 1: Had beaten the system that.
19:45
Speaker 3: Knots very farm thought they were gonna pull the fast
19:47
Speaker 3: one on me. They wanted my money, and I took
19:50
Speaker 3: their dining plan. I squeezed every frickin penny, every nickel
19:54
Speaker 3: out of it, and I walked away feeling like.
19:56
Speaker 1: I had won the Super Bowl.
19:58
Speaker 3: MVP Park most likely made millions of dollars that weekend.
20:05
Speaker 1: Yet in my head, I was the hero. I was
20:09
Speaker 1: the victor. And that's really.
20:11
Speaker 3: Often what adulthood is like, right, convincing yourself that you've
20:18
Speaker 3: won tiny, meaningless battles while your Apple watch reminds you
20:23
Speaker 3: it's time for another slice of pizza and a ten
20:27
Speaker 3: dollars pretzel and all that. All right, I did want
20:31
Speaker 3: to mention, before you know we're moving on here on
20:33
Speaker 3: the podcast, I did want to mention that the big event,
20:36
Speaker 3: other than Ferk Dog having his account blocked, the other
20:40
Speaker 3: big event would be the butterflies.
20:44
Speaker 1: That happened this week on the show. So it's time
20:47
Speaker 1: to look back.
20:47
Speaker 3: As mentioned in a previous episode, last weekend, we talked
20:51
Speaker 3: about what was going to happen. We were supposed to
20:53
Speaker 3: have this on Monday into Tuesday, and then the la
20:56
Speaker 3: Rams traded for Miles Garrett, so that left everything up.
21:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, so listen, time flies when you're having.
21:04
Speaker 3: Fun, or when you're getting older and all that stuff,
21:06
Speaker 3: or when you're spending way too much time looking for
21:10
Speaker 3: a plastic lottery hopper. That just chunks of your life
21:15
Speaker 3: disappear without explanation.
21:17
Speaker 1: So the NFL book them as you know, returned.
21:19
Speaker 3: Although it was supposed to happen as I said, Monday
21:21
Speaker 3: and Tuesday, it happened Tuesday and Wednesday.
21:23
Speaker 1: It returned to the Ben Malor.
21:24
Speaker 3: Show, and the most shocking part wasn't the game itself,
21:27
Speaker 3: which is great.
21:29
Speaker 1: It wasn't the callers.
21:30
Speaker 3: It wasn't even the possibility of NFL players ending up
21:33
Speaker 3: in handcuffs from New England to Seattle. It was realizing
21:39
Speaker 3: the last time we played this ridiculous game was twenty
21:43
Speaker 3: twenty two, four years ago, back when the Wokesters in
21:48
Speaker 3: society canceled the fun. You can't have any fun? What's
21:52
Speaker 3: wrong with you? Where did the time go? Nobody knows.
21:56
Speaker 3: One minute you're talking about bringing back an old radio
21:59
Speaker 3: bit someday, and the next minute you're squinting at the
22:03
Speaker 3: calendar wondering how the hell it's already twenty twenty six.
22:07
Speaker 3: The world changed, right, The NFL changed sports radio. That's
22:11
Speaker 3: pretty much the same. Some of the callers have changed.
22:14
Speaker 3: That is definitely different the people that call the show.
22:17
Speaker 1: Some are the same.
22:19
Speaker 3: For example, hollering James appears to be operating on the
22:23
Speaker 3: exact same software update that he's been using since the
22:27
Speaker 3: Reagan administration, and thank goodness for that now. This year's
22:32
Speaker 3: edition to the NFL BOOKAM was historic because it featured
22:36
Speaker 3: something revolutionary. Wink Wink the hopper, Hop on, Hop off
22:43
Speaker 3: the hopper, the first ever NFL book I'm done on
22:46
Speaker 3: the Ben Mally radio show conducted with complete draft lottery integrity.
22:52
Speaker 3: No funny business, no backroom deals, no hanging chads.
22:57
Speaker 1: If you're old, you know what that is, no allegations
22:59
Speaker 1: of kre option.
23:00
Speaker 3: As the last bastion of truth in sports radio, we
23:05
Speaker 3: take these matters very seriously. We follow the Superman blueprint
23:09
Speaker 3: faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive,
23:13
Speaker 3: able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. And
23:17
Speaker 3: although these days, of course I'd settle for getting out
23:20
Speaker 3: of bed without making those weird noises. The hopper was
23:24
Speaker 3: essential because we normally do this right after years pass.
23:27
Speaker 3: We'd do this the NFL book and right after the
23:29
Speaker 3: super Bowl, and so we'd have a draft and we'd
23:32
Speaker 3: have the order and all that stuff. You could pick
23:33
Speaker 3: whoever you wanted. The hopper, though, was the secret sauce
23:37
Speaker 3: this week, the crown jewel. Now I'm going to take
23:41
Speaker 3: you behind the microphone here. I did not talk about
23:43
Speaker 3: this on the radio show. The only problem with the hopper,
23:48
Speaker 3: hop on, hop off the hopper was.
23:51
Speaker 1: We couldn't find it. Nobody knew where it was. Now
23:54
Speaker 1: we knew we had it. We had used it in
23:57
Speaker 1: years past.
23:57
Speaker 3: For parties to play bing go and whatnot, and at
24:01
Speaker 3: some point it vanished into a black hole. Now I
24:05
Speaker 3: asked my wife if she knew where the hopper was,
24:08
Speaker 3: and she said she thought she did.
24:12
Speaker 1: And whenever in my life, whenever.
24:13
Speaker 3: Somebody says they think they know where something is, that's genuinely.
24:18
Speaker 1: Code almost all the time for good luck pal.
24:22
Speaker 3: So what followed was a scavenger hunt, a treasure hunt,
24:26
Speaker 3: a game of Where's Waldough? Except Waldough was a medium
24:30
Speaker 3: sized plastic lottery machine, a hopper that you spin.
24:34
Speaker 1: And the balls come out.
24:36
Speaker 3: So we searched through closets, the garage, storage areas, places
24:41
Speaker 3: where forgotten old Christmas decorations and Hanukat decorations go to die. Now, eventually,
24:49
Speaker 3: after what felt like a long excavation we were doing searching.
24:56
Speaker 3: We were like searching for dinosaurs, if you will, we
24:59
Speaker 3: found it, buried the farthest corner of a very dark closet,
25:03
Speaker 3: behind random boxes of junk that should.
25:07
Speaker 1: Go right to the landfill.
25:09
Speaker 3: And it was a hellllelujah, helllelujah, momut. The hopper had
25:14
Speaker 3: been rediscovered, and it feels so good. Indiana Jones never
25:19
Speaker 3: looked happier finding the arc of the Covenant than we
25:22
Speaker 3: did finding the Hopper. I should say I did so
25:25
Speaker 3: without the Hopper. The NFL book them is just people
25:30
Speaker 3: picking names, and that's fine. We did that for a
25:32
Speaker 3: long time with the Hopper. Now you've got theater, you've
25:36
Speaker 3: got drama, you've got suspense, chaos, the possibility of outrage,
25:43
Speaker 3: which is really what this is all about. Like, people
25:46
Speaker 3: love the NFL Book, em I am told based on
25:50
Speaker 3: listener feedback, they love it because it combines three of
25:53
Speaker 3: humanity's favorite things, hope, chaos, and wild conspiracy theory. The
26:01
Speaker 3: game itself is completely ridiculous, which might explain why the
26:05
Speaker 3: p ones can't get enough of it and got very
26:07
Speaker 3: upset when we'd stopped doing it for a couple of years.
26:10
Speaker 3: As those who were locked in were on pins and needles,
26:14
Speaker 3: there were literally butterflies in their stomachs floating around their stomachs,
26:18
Speaker 3: and those of you that ladybugs had some lady blug
26:22
Speaker 3: ladybugs floating around as well. So every selection that was
26:28
Speaker 3: made carried a ripple of excitement. Each spin of the
26:31
Speaker 3: Mallard Hopper felt like the world's least important lottery drawing.
26:36
Speaker 3: Yet you couldn't tune out and somehow that made it
26:40
Speaker 3: even better. The last time we played the NFL book
26:43
Speaker 3: them back in the day, my old radio partner, my
26:47
Speaker 3: longtime comrade, Eddie Garcia was part of the festivities. Since then,
26:52
Speaker 3: let's just say that he's been excommunicated from the Church
26:56
Speaker 3: of the Ben Malor Show. We'll leave it there to
26:58
Speaker 3: avoid pissing off the cor being counters who made that decision.
27:02
Speaker 3: So doing Malor maath, which is often performed without a calculator,
27:08
Speaker 3: often involving the back of a napkin and a pen
27:12
Speaker 3: and just chicken scratch and occasionally without adult supervision, the
27:17
Speaker 3: setup was rather straightforward.
27:18
Speaker 1: So there's thirty two teams in the NFL.
27:21
Speaker 3: There are four participants, eight teams each, easy, pasy, simple,
27:28
Speaker 3: except it wasn't. Since Eddie was decommissioned. You had me,
27:32
Speaker 3: Ben Coop and Loraina. We didn't have a person in
27:39
Speaker 3: the fourth chair, so we needed somebody else and we
27:44
Speaker 3: were one chair.
27:45
Speaker 1: Short of a full deca chairs.
27:48
Speaker 3: So instead of solving the problem normally, we turned this
27:51
Speaker 3: into a bigger thing of a jig. We went to improv.
27:56
Speaker 3: We chose improv and that's usually our solution for everything.
28:00
Speaker 3: So introducing the guest picker. That's right, the guest picker.
28:05
Speaker 3: What what are you talking about?
28:07
Speaker 1: The guest picker? Let me explain, I mean, let me explain.
28:10
Speaker 3: The guest picker here for you. In case you're like
28:13
Speaker 3: I don't know what the I don't know what the
28:15
Speaker 3: guest picker is, I will explain it to you.
28:17
Speaker 1: So the guest picker.
28:19
Speaker 3: Every hour, every single hour, a different caller.
28:24
Speaker 1: Would come on, right, not American pickers. This is guest pickers.
28:28
Speaker 3: So every hour, a different member of the Mallet militia
28:30
Speaker 3: occupied the legendary edy chair and represented the people. It's
28:37
Speaker 3: all about the people, right, Democracy has never been more dangerous. Now,
28:42
Speaker 3: first up was hollering James that yeah, that's right. That
28:48
Speaker 3: that hollering James was the first guy out, and James
28:53
Speaker 3: remains one of the great audio experiences in broadcasting. I'm
28:58
Speaker 3: so lucky that James found Now. He still talks about
29:02
Speaker 3: that Mallard meet and greet at the Mermaid from several
29:05
Speaker 3: years back as if it were Woodstock or the moon
29:09
Speaker 3: landing or UFOs being announced to society, right, and so
29:14
Speaker 3: listening to James hollering James is always an adventure because
29:17
Speaker 3: you're you're never You're never entirely sure what's coming. You
29:24
Speaker 3: know what I mean, You're never entirely sure what's coming next.
29:28
Speaker 3: There was a story about Kirby Puckett from nineteen eighty
29:31
Speaker 3: seven that was probably in there a tangent about Tammy
29:34
Speaker 3: and Montana, a snore, a medical emergency. At one point
29:39
Speaker 3: he sounded like he was simultaneously breathing, wheezing, and farting.
29:45
Speaker 3: And I don't know if that's medically possible.
29:50
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
29:51
Speaker 3: Nevertheless, James found a way. He's an innovator. Our two
29:55
Speaker 3: we had Manuel in Guardina. Now, I've known Manuel as
29:58
Speaker 3: a radio friend since my local LA radio days in
30:01
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties. That is not a typo the nineteen nineties.
30:05
Speaker 3: The man has survived more sports radio battles than most
30:09
Speaker 3: military historians have studied. He's part of the mal Or militia.
30:13
Speaker 3: He's part of Jim Rome's jungle. He's basically Switzerland. Manuel
30:17
Speaker 3: and Guardina with the phone line, veteran caller, professional talk
30:21
Speaker 3: radio survivor. Was great to have Manuel and Guardina. Then
30:24
Speaker 3: an hour three came Andrew in Boston. Terrific energy, terrific enthusiasm, passion, Unfortunately,
30:33
Speaker 3: he had apparently just woken up. His allergies had organized
30:38
Speaker 3: a hostile takeover of his bodily functions. The poor guy
30:43
Speaker 3: was fighting mucus, flem gravity and fatigue and he powered through.
30:49
Speaker 3: And that's commitment or stubbornness. The line between the two
30:52
Speaker 3: are often very blurry. And finally, an hour four we
30:56
Speaker 3: brought in Marcel in Brooklyn, the Goat, a multi time
31:02
Speaker 3: caller of the Year, the Bambino, the Babe Ruth of
31:05
Speaker 3: overnight sports radio. Marcel has somehow built a legendary radio
31:10
Speaker 3: career around food picks, television recommendations and saying things with
31:16
Speaker 3: absolute confidence whether they're right or not. He's feuded with
31:21
Speaker 3: Blind Scott, battled Mike the Loser con as he calls
31:25
Speaker 3: Mike the Leprechaun. He's tangled with the legendary Mike in
31:29
Speaker 3: New Hampshire. He's given us the classic drop Pascal see
31:33
Speaker 3: a com He's basically the Forrest Gump of the Ben
31:37
Speaker 3: Maler Show. Whenever something memorable happens, Marcel is somehow nearby.
31:43
Speaker 3: Now because of the Hopper, everything remained completely random. There
31:47
Speaker 3: were no accusations that were that were verified. There were
31:51
Speaker 3: some losers saying he was rigged. Trust me, there was
31:54
Speaker 3: no favoritism.
31:55
Speaker 1: There was no rigging. It was decided by the machine.
31:59
Speaker 3: Now I ended up with the Lrims, the Chargers, the Cowboys,
32:03
Speaker 3: the Giants, the Bills, the Ravens, the Dolphins, and the Jets,
32:07
Speaker 3: which means I either have a chance to win this
32:09
Speaker 3: thing or I'm holding the sports radio equivalent of a
32:13
Speaker 3: losing lottery ticket.
32:14
Speaker 1: Only time will tell.
32:16
Speaker 3: Now, if you want to see the other participants picks,
32:19
Speaker 3: you can go to the Facebook page at Ben Mahler
32:21
Speaker 3: Show and Instagram at Ben Mahler on Fox. That's Ben
32:27
Speaker 3: Maler Show on Facebook, Ben Maller on Fox on the gram.
32:31
Speaker 1: Now comes the waiting.
32:33
Speaker 3: And let's be very clear here, nobody on our show
32:37
Speaker 3: wants NFL players getting arrested. I want to be very
32:39
Speaker 3: clear on that. We don't want anyone to get arrested.
32:41
Speaker 3: That's not the point.
32:42
Speaker 1: The point is the game itself is so absurd.
32:47
Speaker 3: How absurd is it that we hope people mock it
32:50
Speaker 3: because nobody gets to visit the Gray Bar Hotel. You
32:54
Speaker 3: can ridicule us, laugh at us, laugh at the game.
32:57
Speaker 3: The fact that it's pointless is the point. It's exactly
33:02
Speaker 3: why it's entertaining.
33:04
Speaker 1: And so for the.
33:05
Speaker 3: Next roughly forty five days or so, NFL teams have
33:10
Speaker 3: downtime before training camp begins in late July, and historically speaking,
33:16
Speaker 3: that is when some players make some very poor decisions
33:20
Speaker 3: they'd like to get back. And the scoring system is
33:24
Speaker 3: rather simple. It's on the Facebook and Instagram page. For
33:28
Speaker 3: those of you that can't read or don't want to
33:31
Speaker 3: go ober in there look.
33:32
Speaker 1: Because you're too lazy. A misdemeanor arrest is one point
33:36
Speaker 1: one point. Felony arrest is three points.
33:39
Speaker 3: If that felony arrest leads to a suspension or a
33:43
Speaker 3: release which means you're fired, or a commissioner's natty list,
33:46
Speaker 3: you get five extra points. Now, coaches are big alcoholics
33:50
Speaker 3: and they do a lot of things to get themselves
33:52
Speaker 3: in trouble. So coach gets arrested, that's two points. Front
33:56
Speaker 3: office executive gets arrested. Your GM goes out on a
33:59
Speaker 3: bench and does a line of coke and gets the arrested.
34:03
Speaker 3: That's four points. It's fantasy football for the police blotter
34:07
Speaker 3: is what it is. And at the moment, the callers
34:10
Speaker 3: hold an early lead. We were just beginning this thanks
34:13
Speaker 3: to issues involving players connected to the Green Bay Packers
34:17
Speaker 3: and the forty nine ers. However, it is very early
34:23
Speaker 3: in the game, very early in the game. A lot
34:25
Speaker 3: can happen between now and training camp, and that's what
34:31
Speaker 3: makes the NFL book them special. It's pointless, it's ridiculous,
34:36
Speaker 3: it's unnecessary, it's probably indefensible, and yet somehow it's one
34:42
Speaker 3: of the more entertaining things we've ever done, which, now
34:46
Speaker 3: that I think about it, might also be the perfect
34:50
Speaker 3: description of sports radio itself. On that note, we will
34:55
Speaker 3: get out. We are going to have the mail bag
34:58
Speaker 3: for you tomorrow. Will Pepper in some fun with that.
35:01
Speaker 3: So we look forward to chatting you with you on
35:03
Speaker 3: the Sunday mail bag. I have a great rest of
35:07
Speaker 3: your Saturday. You know the drill, and we'll catch you
35:11
Speaker 3: next time. And again, just to quote the great Dick
35:13
Speaker 3: and Dayton, Bye bye, bye bye population