Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Roadside Rip Van Maller

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The Fifth Hour: Roadside Rip Van Maller · The Ben Maller Show

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  Speaker 1: Kaboom if you thought four hours a day 1200 minutes
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a week was enough think again he's the last remnants
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  Speaker 1: of the old republic a sole bastion of fairness he
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  Speaker 1: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
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  Speaker 1: rich pill poppers in the penthouse wow the clearinghouse of
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  Speaker 1: hot takes break free for something special the fifth hour
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  Speaker 1: with ben maller starts right.
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  Speaker 2: Now In the air everywhere. The fifth hour with me,
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  Speaker 2: Ben Maller, and you.
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  Speaker 3: We are together through the magic of audio content on
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  Speaker 3: this 26th day of September. Happy Saturday, the 269th.
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  Speaker 2: Day of the year.
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  Speaker 3: And on this pod, we've got organic farming and not
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  Speaker 3: having a gimmick became his gimmick.
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  Speaker 2: We'll get to that.
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  Speaker 3: However, we begin with this, back by popular demand, or
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  Speaker 3: because nobody has successfully filed an injunction with the court.
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  Speaker 2: It is a.
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  Speaker 3: Saturday Pod Life of Malheur classic, the Malheur Travelog. Now,
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  Speaker 3: you may or may not know that this past weekend,
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  Speaker 3: in addition to putting together three original podcasts, yours truly
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  Speaker 3: actually left.
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  Speaker 2: the civilized world.
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  Speaker 3: I traveled around California in search of, as the late,
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  Speaker 3: great Huell Hauser used to say.
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  Speaker 2: California's gold. And California does still have gold. You just
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  Speaker 2: have to drive over a bunch.
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  Speaker 3: Of potholes and poorly maintained roads to find it. Now,
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  Speaker 3: I have many issues with the state of California, the
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  Speaker 3: Golden State.
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  Speaker 2: I have aired many of them on this podcast over
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  Speaker 2: the years.
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  Speaker 3: I have given snarky comments on the radio show, things
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  Speaker 3: like handing out our taxpayer money like Halloween candy for
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  Speaker 3: people to become rich that don't actually use the money
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  Speaker 3: for what it's supposed to go to. Apparently, nobody can
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  Speaker 3: locate enough asphalt to fix the highway system.
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  Speaker 2: You're driving along thinking.
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  Speaker 3: Where exactly did my tax dollars go and all that
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  Speaker 3: that these other idiots voted for to fix the roads?
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  Speaker 3: And then, as John Madden would have said, boom, whop, bang,
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  Speaker 3: and doink, your suspension files.
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  Speaker 2: A workers' comp claim, and you are in California.
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  Speaker 3: But for all of the nonsense, there are many places...
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  Speaker 3: Within the walls of California, the borders of California that
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  Speaker 3: provide an amazing variety from the desert to the sea, mountains,
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  Speaker 3: giant trees, farms, cities, homeless encampments, outdoor drug dens, $ 7
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  Speaker 3: a gallon gas, and the.
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  Speaker 2: Orange juice costs about as much. We have everything, the good,
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  Speaker 2: the bad, and the ugly.
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  Speaker 3: So my wife and I made our semi-annual pilgrimage.
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  Speaker 2: From the woods to the woods. We live in the Northwoods,
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  Speaker 2: but we're talking about the real woods.
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  Speaker 3: We packed up the Mallarmobile last Friday and finished up
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  Speaker 3: the pod. And I had slept only a few hours,
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  Speaker 3: which normally does not bother me. because my internal clock
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  Speaker 3: was apparently manufactured somewhere in Pyongyang, North Korea.
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  Speaker 2: So my plan was to drive the entire way. A
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  Speaker 2: couple of reasons.
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  Speaker 3: I don't mind driving, and I really do mind the
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  Speaker 3: way my wife drives. So that plan lasted.
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  Speaker 2: Right up until the first big thingamajig of traffic. I
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  Speaker 2: started getting sleepy.
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  Speaker 3: Which I'm told is generally frowned upon when operating a
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  Speaker 3: two-ton motor vehicle. They do not want you to be sleepy.
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  Speaker 3: So I did the grown-up thing. I turned things over
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  Speaker 3: to my wife. I actually slept for about 20 minutes
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  Speaker 3: in the passenger seat. I don't typically nap, ever. I'm
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  Speaker 3: a four- to five-hour night or day, I sleep during
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  Speaker 3: the day, sleep guy. So if I'm sleeping in a
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  Speaker 3: moving car while somebody else is driving.
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  Speaker 2: Understand that my.
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  Speaker 3: Body has basically pulled the emergency brake. So I sat
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  Speaker 3: for like 20 minutes, and then we changed, and I
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  Speaker 3: got back in the car. In the driver's seat. I
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  Speaker 3: was in the car the whole time. I didn't sit
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  Speaker 3: on the hood of the car or the roof of
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  Speaker 3: the car. Destination Visalia. So Friday was just a travel
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  Speaker 3: day driving around California. My wife found a boutique hotel
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  Speaker 3: she absolutely adores called the Darling Hotel. How perfect is that? Now,
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  Speaker 3: we had stayed there in the past. It's the former
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  Speaker 3: Tulare County Courthouse Annex, which is a really fancy way
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  Speaker 3: of saying It's a old rundown courthouse that was renovated
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  Speaker 3: with millions of dollars into this beautiful hotel right in
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  Speaker 3: downtown Visalia.
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  Speaker 2: It is legitimately impressive.
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  Speaker 3: It's considered, I'm told, an iconic landmark, assuming Visalia's Chamber
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  Speaker 3: of Commerce has a iconic landmark committee. Now, outside the hotel, however,
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  Speaker 3: things got a little more complicated. You see, Visalia is
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  Speaker 3: classic Central Valley, California.
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  Speaker 2: This is from the area that my man Eddie Garcia
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  Speaker 2: is from.
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  Speaker 3: He's from that part of the country. It's farming country.
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  Speaker 3: And when I say farming country, I'm talking Orange Grove
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  Speaker 3: after Orange Grove after Orange Grove. Agriculture is everywhere. Depending
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  Speaker 3: on which direction the wind is blowing, you occasionally, as
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  Speaker 3: an add-on item, get a complimentary aromatherapy session courtesy of
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  Speaker 3: a nearby cow fertilizer dump that is now in the
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  Speaker 3: air everywhere. That smell brought back memories. You see, my
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  Speaker 3: childhood smell... is cow shit. It just is. I grew
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  Speaker 3: up in Orange County in a place called Irvine when
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  Speaker 3: Irvine actually had orange groves. It was a planned community,
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  Speaker 3: but when I was there, they just had a lot
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  Speaker 3: of farming growing up. And as a kid, it was
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  Speaker 3: great fun. You could wander into these orange groves and
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  Speaker 3: completely lose track of time and where you were. which
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  Speaker 3: was somewhat scary in the age we didn't have cell
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  Speaker 3: phones and we had to be back when the streetlights
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  Speaker 3: turned on. And I was a mama's boy, so it
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  Speaker 3: was a little dicey. It was also fantastic, of course. Occasionally,
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  Speaker 3: as I've told before on this podcast, you'd encounter some
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  Speaker 3: Marines from the— I was living between two air bases,
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  Speaker 3: El Toro and Tustin Airbases. They're both closed. They closed
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  Speaker 3: them back in the 90s. But when I was growing up.
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  Speaker 2: They were there.
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  Speaker 3: And hiding among the trees would be these Marines from
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  Speaker 3: these two bases drinking, smoking things that were not approved,
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  Speaker 3: I believe, by the Department of Defense. Nothing quite says
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  Speaker 3: organic childhood innocence there. like playing hide-and-seek and stumbling across
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  Speaker 3: not one, not two, but three Marines conducting an unauthorized
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  Speaker 3: pharmaceutical convention and testing liquor, the strength of liquor as well.
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  Speaker 3: So the Orange Groves were nostalgic. Parts of downtown Visalia...
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  Speaker 3: Let's just say less nostalgic. There were dollar generals here, there,
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  Speaker 3: and everywhere, rundown buildings, enough characters wandering around that you'd
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  Speaker 3: expect the casting director from Breaking Bad to show up
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  Speaker 3: and say, here I am, boys. At one point, we
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  Speaker 3: saw a guy down on his knees, like the song,
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  Speaker 3: look at that bum over there.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know what he was doing.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe he was praying. It wasn't working if he was praying.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe looking for some change.
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  Speaker 2: Or a needle. I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: Tempting to communicate directly with the pavement. Hey, pavement, how
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  Speaker 3: you doing? There was definitely a strong aroma of sweat
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  Speaker 3: and urine floating around Visalia.
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  Speaker 2: Certain blocks that we walked down. And you know you're
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  Speaker 2: not exactly in Beverly Hills. You're not in Mayberry.
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  Speaker 3: When seemingly every restaurant window advertises what this is always
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  Speaker 3: a dead weight, dead weight that things are not going
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  Speaker 3: great in your town. When every just about every restaurant
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  Speaker 3: has EBT accepted here. Give me the poor, the broke,
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  Speaker 3: the disgusted and the busted right here. So we mostly
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  Speaker 3: stayed at our hotel, The Darling. It was like a bubble.
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  Speaker 3: Beautiful place, as I said. And then came Saturday morning.
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  Speaker 3: We got in somewhat late on Friday. And then Saturday morning,
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  Speaker 3: my wife decided that we needed a wake-up call at
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  Speaker 3: 8 a.m.
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  Speaker 2: 8 in the morning. Now, as you know, I work
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  Speaker 2: the graveyard shift. 8 a.m. to me is what 2 a.m.
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  Speaker 2: is to you normal people. Nothing good happens at 8 a.m. Nothing.
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  Speaker 3: That's my take, and I'm going to die on that
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  Speaker 3: take mountain. Apparently there was a free breakfast that we got,
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  Speaker 3: which tells us the hotel, tells me the hotel was
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  Speaker 3: very expensive. If they're offering you a free breakfast, and
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  Speaker 3: not this crappy continental breakfast with the pancakes and the
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  Speaker 3: cereal boxes.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, no. A real breakfast. then okay. And it
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  Speaker 2: was free, which you know it's not free.
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  Speaker 3: It's, hey, we're charging you a lot for the room,
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  Speaker 3: so we're going to toss in the breakfast and we're
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  Speaker 3: going to make it seem like you're getting a deal,
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  Speaker 3: realizing a certain percentage of people will not even bother
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  Speaker 3: getting up to eat the breakfast. We were the two
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  Speaker 3: knuckleheads who did get up to eat the breakfast. And
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  Speaker 3: I will say, a free breakfast, again, not free, we
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  Speaker 3: paid for it and all that, somehow made this seem
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  Speaker 3: more acceptable. I had a delicious brisket breakfast burrito. I
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  Speaker 3: don't normally eat breakfast burritos, but this was really good.
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  Speaker 3: It's hard to screw up a brisket breakfast burrito. So
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  Speaker 3: after that, we then made the long winding drive to
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  Speaker 3: Sequoia National Park. It's roughly an hour plus with traffic
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  Speaker 3: from Visalia. to the entrance of Sequoia National Park. And
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  Speaker 3: once you get up there, you realize why you made
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  Speaker 3: the trip. The Sequoias are spectacular. A cathedral of giants,
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  Speaker 3: nature's skyscrapers. I am a sucker for a big city.
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  Speaker 3: And it's like going to a big city, but it's
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  Speaker 3: not built by man. It's built by whoever planted those trees.
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  Speaker 3: It feels like Jurassic Park. You feel very small. It's
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  Speaker 3: Jurassic Park, except you're reasonably confident that nothing is going
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  Speaker 3: to kill you in the moment. And these trees have
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  Speaker 3: seen a thing or two because they've.
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  Speaker 2: Lived longer than any of us. These trees have been
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  Speaker 2: standing there for thousands of years. There's trees there that
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  Speaker 2: they estimate are 2,000 to 2,500, 3,000 years old. Just
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  Speaker 2: process how long that is. a generation's 20 years, a
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  Speaker 2: generation's 20 years, so you can do the math on that.
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  Speaker 3: You think about it, and civilizations came and went, wars
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  Speaker 3: were fought, empires collapsed, the jets went through 47 different quarterbacks,
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  Speaker 3: and these trees just stood there. It's like going to
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  Speaker 3: a museum. It's Earth's living history right there. The giant
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  Speaker 3: forest is the star of the show.
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  Speaker 2: It never disappoints.
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  Speaker 3: We drove through Sequoia and Kings Canyon, the two conjoined
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  Speaker 3: national parks, including areas that were scarred by recent wildfires,
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  Speaker 3: yet somehow these trees survive and regenerate. Now, meanwhile, my
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: cell phone does not regenerate. My cell phone loses one
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  Speaker 3: bar and immediately gives up on life. There was essentially
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: no T-Mobile service.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Nothing. Squadouche. Bupkis. You are off the grid, which my
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  Speaker 2: wife loved, because I'm always checking my phone to see
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  Speaker 2: what's going on in sports and what I might be
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: talking about when I get back to behind the microphones
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  Speaker 2: on the overnight show. Now, when you're off the grid...
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  Speaker 2: You try not to think about all the things that
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: would go bad and all the things that could go
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: bad when you're off the grid. If the car breaks down,
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  Speaker 2: you're cooked.
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  Speaker 3: If there's a medical emergency, good luck, pal.
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  Speaker 2: You're on your own.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Your health care provider is now Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: And the altitude is no joke. Denver loves to brag
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: about being the mile-high city. They have the number of
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: feet that they're in the sky there on the jerseys,
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  Speaker 3: the Nuggets uniforms.
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  Speaker 2: That's how much they love it.
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  Speaker 3: Now, parts of Sequoia are over 7,000 feet up in
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  Speaker 3: the heavens. That is roughly 1.3 miles, if I'm correct
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  Speaker 3: on that.
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  Speaker 2: I believe I am. That's a lot. That's a lot.
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  Speaker 2: So Denver, miles great. Good luck to you. However... Triple
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  Speaker 2: A compared to Sequoia.
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  Speaker 3: Now, the star attraction was the giant forest, as we said,
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  Speaker 3: but we also made our way to Hume Lake. Beautiful, peaceful,
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  Speaker 3: picture perfect. They have a lot of camps.
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  Speaker 2: Kids come up there, religious camps and whatnot. The God
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  Speaker 2: Squad was there.
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  Speaker 3: And what culinary masterpiece did I bring to complement this
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  Speaker 3: magnificent Bob Ross painting, this natural setting?
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  Speaker 2: I brought Jersey Mike's.
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  Speaker 3: Now, we were going to go to a local sandwich
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: shop in Visalia, and I would have rather gone to
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: a local sandwich shop in Visalia. Unfortunately, they weren't open
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: serving hoagies when we needed hoagies. So therefore, we could
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: not go to the mom and pop shop.
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  Speaker 2: So we were debating.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: We had Subway and we had Jersey Mike's. And you
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: always go Jersey Mike's. You always go Jersey Mike's when
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: your choice is Jersey Mike's and Subway. So I got
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: a turkey sandwich, got a little extra meat, bag of chips,
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: thousands of years of geological history surrounding me, and I'm
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: sitting on a little bench overlooking Lake Hume, sitting there
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: peeling paper off a turkey hero.
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  Speaker 2: Is what I'm doing. Welcome to America.
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  Speaker 3: Now, eventually, the sun went down, and it was time
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  Speaker 3: to begin the long drive back towards Los Angeles. And eventually,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: we would get to the Northwoods. Now, there was one problem.
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  Speaker 3: Yet again, guess who was exhausted? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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  Speaker 3: You win absolutely nothing and a trip to nowhere.
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  Speaker 2: So I was exhausted. That 8 a.m. wake-up call for
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: the brisket breakfast burrito.
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  Speaker 3: Had done damage to me and had collected its debt.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: So somewhere in the middle of Central California... In between
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  Speaker 3: Sequoia National Park and the big highway, the big city
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  Speaker 3: that was next to it, I pulled the Malheur Mobile
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  Speaker 3: off the road and went bye-bye, sleepy time, sleepy time.
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  Speaker 2: And took another nap. Two naps in one weekend.
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  Speaker 3: At this point, I am basically going to have to
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: call myself Rip Van Maller.
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  Speaker 2: You can call me that, Rip Van Maller. That's right.
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  Speaker 3: But I wasn't fit for another six-plus-hour drive. Unlike my
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: radio career, I actually recognized the warning signs, and I
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: made sure to correct that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And so I was fine. I think I slept for
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: about 30 minutes, about 30 minutes. So driving through California's breadbasket,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: which is anything like from Bakersfield all the way up
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: through central California until you get to the Bay Area.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So you drive through the breadbasket of California, and you're
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: doing it late at night, and it does have a
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: really good perk.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: There's a really cool perk that you get when you
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: drive through the California breadbasket through the desert. and it's
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: an advantage that I took full advantage of, and it
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: really works only if you're a man of a certain age.
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  Speaker 2: There are bathrooms everywhere.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Technically, there aren't bathrooms anywhere, but there are fields everywhere.
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  Speaker 2: Same difference, right? Same difference. When the bladder alarm sounds... Ding, ding, ding.
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  Speaker 3: I pulled over and made a modest agricultural contribution.
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  Speaker 2: Consider this organic farming.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Benny's Organic Farming, Doc Mike approved, mellow yellow. I helped
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: fertilize California. And that is my way of giving back
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: to the taxpayers in California.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: You saved a little bit of money. You didn't need
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: to have it. And so I took care of it
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: for you. You're welcome.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: So we finally, by the time we stopped a few
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: times to get Starbucks and other crap that we shouldn't
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: have gotten, we finally rolled home around midnight, which is
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: just enough time to unwind for a couple of hours
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: before I had to get back up and watch NFL
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: games from morning till night. Because apparently my idea of
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: relaxation is replacing six hours behind the steering wheel with
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: 12 hours of watching football.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: But it's worth it because I'm getting paid for it.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So again, you had the giant trees, you had the mountains,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: you had Hume Lake, the orange groves, the manure, PU,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the naps, the roadside, agricultural donations, fertilizing the area.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: California makes me crazy. Makes me crazy. It empties my wallet.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: It destroys joy with some of the bull crap they're doing.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: And yet, it's moments like this. I'm like, well, that's great.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: You turn the corner, you see a tree, and there
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: you go, standing right up there, a tree from 2,000
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: years ago. And suddenly, it's like, okay, there are some
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: good things about California.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: If you can overlook the quality of life, and you
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: can overlook all these other things, at least until you
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: hit the next... pothole.
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  Speaker 3: Until then, Sequoia, don't ever change. We'll be there again,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: hopefully next year, to visit Sequoia.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Now, turning the page, turning the page, and there's really.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: No good way to do this. We asked the question
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: of the esteemed panel. as our buddy from Manhattan likes
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: to say, how are you going to remember Lawrence Tantor? Now,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: as you may or may not.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Have heard the other day, I think it was Thursday's
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: episode of the show.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I mentioned that Lawrence Tantor had died at age 76,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: and somewhere in the Great Western Forum Club, the Forum Club,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: somewhere there in the actual Forum Club in the sky
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: where Jerry Buss is there. I assume somebody just committed
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: a traveling violation. Too many steps.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Perfection.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Now, I befriended Lawrence Tanter during my days as a
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: radio stringer, which remains one of the great plot twists
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: of my broadcasting career. I was and remain a card-carrying
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Laker hater. I overdose on schadenfreude when the Lakers are eliminated.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: I feel a little bit like the Boston hater, but
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: I'm just the Laker hater. And yet somehow I became
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: buds with the iconic Lakers public address announcer.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Who does that? How does that happen? Well, I'll tell
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: you how it happens. One word. Radio. Not best friends.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: I don't want to make this seem like me and
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: him were besties.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: We were not best friends.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Let's not turn this into some kind of cheesy Hallmark
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: movie filmed in Vermont. We weren't vacationing together. We weren't
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: exchanging Christmas pajamas.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: But we were friendly. We'd talk shop.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: We spoke the same language that people who've spent too
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: many hours inside radio stations understand. LT, as some of
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: his pals called him, occasionally even listened to the Ben
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Maler show. How crazy is that? He particularly enjoyed when
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: I would stir the pot. He appreciated the art of
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: pot stirring, which automatically made him A man of impeccable taste,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: this Lawrence Tantor. What an amazing mindset you have here.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: What a great knowledge.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: And he'd ask me about certain people that called the show.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: That's always the giveaway.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: If somebody says they listen, there's a lot of nonsense, especially.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: In a town like L.A., where everyone's fake and it's crazy.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: And now everyone's fake everywhere because of social media. invasive
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: species of Hollywood has now spread, I am told, all
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: over the country because there are people online on the
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: interweb who truly think, hey, I'm famous.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Well, no, you're not. On that app, you're famous, but
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: that's not real. And then they get upset and all that.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: So when you ask somebody, hey, what color do you
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: want to know about? And that tells you they listen.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: That tells you that they're legit. That tells you that
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: they're not bogus. And you like that.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: You want to hear that. It's just great. That's great.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: So that was that. Right. We spoke the same language,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: as I said, and you spend a lot of time
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: in these radio stations. And that's that.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: And so he'd ask me about callers and I'd tell
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: him and we'd trade stories. And radio people love hearing
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: about other radio people's.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Mishigas. We just do.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: It's like I imagine two zookeepers comparing like one had
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: a Tasmanian devil that escaped. The other had a Komodo dragon,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: and they're just exchanging notes. And so Lawrence Tanter understood
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: because he had been in the audio battlefield himself. His
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: broadcasting career began almost accidentally. In college, he spotted an ad.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: They had these things called ads back in the day
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: in the school newspaper that they were looking for announcers
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: for the campus radio station and eventually started hosting a
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: jazz show. Lawrence Tanter did, the old Laker play-by-play guy.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: He was the Laker PA guy. Get it right, dummy.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: And so there was that, right? There was that. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: we had this background. And so he was in college.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: He started.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: He answered an ad. And jazz was not just a
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: hobby for me. Lawrence Tanter, jazz was his oxygen. He
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: spent roughly four decades working around L.A.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Radio. Back in the heyday of L.A.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Radio, he worked at Stevie Wonder's KJLH, which is, yeah,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Stevie Wonder has a radio station.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: And he later would become the program director of KJAZZ 88.1.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Which is a college radio station, I believe, on the
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: campus of Cal State Long Beach, if I'm not mistaken.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: So think about that resume.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: By night, this guy was announcing Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: By day, he was programming jazz. Now, some people have
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: side hustles driving Uber. Nothing wrong with that.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Lawrence had Miles Davis driving. That's pretty cool. He interviewed
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: more than.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: 500 recording artists, wrote liners, notes for albums, and narrated
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: video games. There was a wrestling thing that he did.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: He's voiced more than 6,000 commercials. And then there was
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: this little side gig with the historians, the Purple and Gold,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: 43 seasons. Mel Proctor was a broadcaster for the— the
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: teams we talked about earlier on yesterday's podcast.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And I'm crossing the streams here.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Lawrence Tanter was also a broadcaster and a play-by-play.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Guy and the whole thing.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: He did all that for like 40, I think it
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: was 43. Well, he was a Laker guy for 43 seasons.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: He was a Laker guy for 43 seasons. He did
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: more than 2,000 games, 14 NBA Finals. Four NBA All-Star games.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: All that.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: He started in the early 80s, 1982. Lawrence Santer started.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Magic Johnson was still young. James Worthy was a rookie.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: The Lakers were still a mom-and-pop shop compared to the
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: corporate aircraft carrier professional sports.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Thingamajig the world's become.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: The industrial complex of big sporty. Lawrence originally inquired about
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: becoming a backup PA announcer.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I read this whole story. It was crazy. The Lakers
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: gave him a one-day audition. They said, hey, let's see
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: what you can do. See what you can do, kid.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: And then they essentially said, okay, congratulations, kid.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: The microphone is yours. And he never gave up that microphone.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Well, he did actually briefly take a break for a
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: couple years in the 90s. But he came back, and
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: there was no PA announcer school. So Lawrence Tanter learned...
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: from advice he got from Chick Hearn, Chickie Baby, the
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: legend play-by-play guy. And so Chick Hearn supposedly told him
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: to be informative, precise, and describe things as though someone
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: who couldn't see the game was listening. So you're talking
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: to the blind. Like, I talk to Stevie Meatballs or
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Inca Terror. So Lawrence Tanter took that very seriously.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: He never became one of what is.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: modern for an arena announcer when I say modern the
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: type of announcer that will try to sell you monster
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: truck tickets while being chased by a brown bear and
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: he didn't need to scream did not need to scream
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: he was smooth jazz Lawrence Tantor while the rest of
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: the NBA gradually became heavy metal and polka He did jazz.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: And ironically, not having a gimmick became his gimmick.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Lawrence had his own proprietary blend, a traveling violation, too
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: many steps. That was it. Three words.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Today, they'd probably add lasers, a couple of smoke machines,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: a sponsored dance team, and a 45-second TikTok video explaining
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: the turnovers. So Lawrence Tanter just told you what happened.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: And then there was his signature call. The Laker girls.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: So the Knicks had Patrick Ewing at.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Madison Square Garden.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: But Lawrence Tanter's line, the Laker girls.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: And I'm butchering it. I can't do it like him.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: He's so good. That was his line. That was it.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Another favorite of mine came way before Laker games were played,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: like 35, 40 minutes before each game. Lawrence Tanter would
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: get on the microphone, the PA guy, and would announce
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: that the game is being broadcast back to the Valley
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: of the Sun with Al McCoy on TV. And they'd
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: name the radio station. It's also being broadcast back to
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: the Phoenix, Arizona market. And he named the TV station
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: and the whole thing.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: And that's how he did it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: And then he'd say, and the Lakers broadcast can be
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: heard with Chick Kern and Stu Lance across the vast
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Lakers broadcast network.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: The vast. I love that line. The vast. So much, though,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: that on the.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: Ben Maller show, the vast became our own little silent tribute.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: To LT. Same reason I occasionally use BOOM! Shakalaka as
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: a tip of the cap to my old pal, the
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: late great Trailblazers broadcaster, Brian Wheeler, who died not that
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: long ago.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: It's these little pieces of broadcasters you admire. They become
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: part of your broadcasting DNA. Now, Lawrence was taller than me.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: I'm on the tall side. He was like 6'7, 6'8,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: which meant the famous voice came out of a guy
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: who looked like he should have a good voice. He
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: was a Chicago kid, played basketball at a high level,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: was part of an Illinois.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: State championship team at Thornton High School.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: His love of basketball went all the way back to
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: childhood when his father took him out to see this
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: guy named Wilt Chamberlain for the Harlem Globetrotters.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I wonder if that works, by the way, with kids today.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: If you take a kid out to see the Savannah Bananas,
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: do they become fans of baseball? That's what Rob Manford
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: and baseball is banking on. Good luck, because what the
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Savannah Bananas do is not really anywhere related to baseball.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: It's a Broadway show with baseball as the delivery device. Anyway,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: so that was that. And Lawrence did become friends with
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In fact, I happened to run in in
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: the bowels of the arena at, what was that? Staples Center.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Early days of Staples Center. Kareem would be wandering around.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: They would have great conversations about jazz. Legit buddies, largely
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: because they were great jazz aficionados. And when Lawrence was
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: asked his most memorable Lakers game ever, he obviously said
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the Kobe Bryant 81-point game on a Sunday night against
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: the Toronto Raptors.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Hard to argue with that one. So I just.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Think about what his eyes saw courtside from the Showtime
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Lakers of the 80s with Kareem, Magic, Worthy, Kurt Rambis,
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: all those guys, Byron Scott, Michael Cooper. to the Shaq
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: and Kobe vintage. And he had to put up also
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: the dark ages. The dark ages of Lakers basketball with
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Smush Parker and all that. It was Kobe's championship team
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: without Shaq, with Gasol. LeBron came in there, the Luka era.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Players arrived as rookies, became superstars, got old, and disappeared.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Coaches have come and gone. Championship banners went up. Those
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: dusty old things. And the forum gave way to Staples Center,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: which gave way now to the crypt, which is appropriate
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: because it's in Skid Row with crypto.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Reno, whatever. Yeah. So name sounds like it's somebody's password.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: What's your password? It's crypto dot com arena. Oh, that's
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: your password. OK.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: And through all of that. The PA guy, Lawrence Tanter, remained.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Same chair, pretty much.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Same voice. Same cool.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: And he suffered a stroke back in March. We had
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: talked about in a previous podcast that he had retired
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: from game day announcing.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: And again, over 40 years. 40 years. Over 40 years.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: And he transitioned into what... They gave him some advisory board. Obviously,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: his health was still terrible. Otherwise, that wouldn't have happened.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: And How bad? Three months later, unfortunately, he's left this
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: mortal coil. I will remember the voice, obviously, of Lawrence Tantor.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I'll remember the radio guy more, the jazz guy.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: I'll selfishly, for my ego, remember a guy who enjoyed
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: hearing me stir the pot on his ride home and
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: wanted a scouting report on some of the zany people
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: that called this show.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I believe it was.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Genie in Medford, by the way. He wanted to know
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: more about Genie in Medford. We all wanted to know
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: more about Genie in Medford.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: What a legend. What a legend.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: And so here he is, a Laker lifer who somehow
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: tolerated a Laker hater.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So rest in peace, LT.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: They got themselves one hell of a PA announcer behind
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: the pearly gates there.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: So if St.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Peter, as some say, Takes too long getting through them. Listen,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: you know the call. Too many steps.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Too many steps. Rest in peace.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: On that note, we will put the baby to bed.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I hope you have a wonderful Saturday. Enjoy the college
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: football today. And I'll be partaking in that. And we'll
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: have the mailbag on Sunday. Do I know who's going
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: to be on the mailbag? No. Do I have an
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: idea who should be on the mailbag? Yes.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Do I have my big board of people to call
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: for the mailbag?
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Will I start at the top of that page
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: of numbers? Yes, I will.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Does that mean that the first person I call will
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: answer the phone?
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Hell no.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: We'll find out, though. You'll find out when I find
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: out who's on the mailbag. Anyway, have a great Saturday again.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: We'll talk to you next time. Thank you for supporting
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: this little fifth hour podcast thing.