Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Outrage Economy

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Outrage Economy · 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. Wow, it's a clearinghouse
0:19
Speaker 2: of hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth
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Speaker 2: Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now.
0:29
Speaker 3: In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
0:35
Speaker 3: Mahler and you. It is either the first day of
0:37
Speaker 3: August or the thirty second day of July. Happy Saturday
0:41
Speaker 3: to you and whatever you end up doing today, you're
0:44
Speaker 3: having a better day than Tony Romo, who just wanted
0:48
Speaker 3: to see his grandmama. He's babushka and then all of
0:52
Speaker 3: a sudden, now he's suspended from CBS. You see that
0:54
Speaker 3: story that we would have a full Mallar monologue on
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Speaker 3: that Romo out well for now and JJ Watt the
1:02
Speaker 3: Magic Carpet ride next to Jim Natz there on CBS.
1:06
Speaker 3: My god, all right, on this edition of the fifth
1:10
Speaker 3: Hour of the Saturday Special. Your irrelevant the moment people
1:15
Speaker 3: stop arguing about you and technological Bermuda Triangle.
1:22
Speaker 1: We'll get to those and more. It is the two
1:24
Speaker 1: hundred and thirteenth day of the year.
1:26
Speaker 3: I am told that means there are one hundred and
1:29
Speaker 3: fifty two days left in the year twenty twenty six.
1:34
Speaker 3: It is disc golf Day today. I have never played
1:38
Speaker 3: disc golf. I do remember years ago it became somewhat trendy,
1:43
Speaker 3: kind of like pickleball, that kind of thing. I read
1:47
Speaker 3: that they were over six thousand official disc golf courses
1:51
Speaker 3: in the United States. That seems like a lot, because
1:54
Speaker 3: I don't know anyone that plays disc golf.
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Speaker 1: Six thousand that can't be right.
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Speaker 3: And do you really need your own disc golf course
2:02
Speaker 3: to play disc golf?
2:05
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. It's mustard Day today.
2:08
Speaker 3: The first Saturday of the month, which is today, is
2:11
Speaker 3: mustard Day. I learned that yellow mustard is not actually
2:17
Speaker 3: naturally bright yellow. That the color, that vibrant yellow color
2:21
Speaker 3: that you see when you go out to a restaurant
2:24
Speaker 3: or you have your mustard and your fridge, It comes
2:27
Speaker 3: from the turmeric and it's not the mustard seed itself.
2:33
Speaker 3: And if you enjoy mustard, you better think our friend
2:38
Speaker 3: Nico and all his brothers and sisters.
2:40
Speaker 1: There, Oh, Cada.
2:43
Speaker 3: Canada grows more mustard than anywhere else in the world.
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Speaker 3: The Canadian prairies, which I've not been to, the prairie
2:50
Speaker 3: provinces of Canada, produce the majority of the entire global
2:55
Speaker 3: supply of mustard. Now, the good news is there's no
3:00
Speaker 3: countries trying to take out mustard. Like no one's got
3:03
Speaker 3: their nukes pointed at mustard to mess up the global economy,
3:08
Speaker 3: and no one said, wow, we don't have mustard. I
3:10
Speaker 3: can't go on with my life. And like most things,
3:13
Speaker 3: I've talked about garlic a lot because I love garlic,
3:16
Speaker 3: and I've done rants and rives, I've done whole podcasts
3:18
Speaker 3: on garlic and My love Affair with God. Mustard, much
3:22
Speaker 3: like garlic, was once used as medicine the ancient Greeks
3:25
Speaker 3: and the Romans back in the day. They were just
3:30
Speaker 3: called Greeks and Romans. They weren't called ancient when they
3:32
Speaker 3: were there, and they believed you could treat everything from
3:37
Speaker 3: a toothache out by tooth to a snake bite and
3:42
Speaker 3: you'd be fine. You just take a little mustard. Now
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Speaker 3: I don't believe that at all. I do believe that
3:48
Speaker 3: garlic does have healing powers. I believe that National clown
3:53
Speaker 3: Day is today.
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Speaker 1: It is estimated there are over ten thousand clowns and
3:58
Speaker 1: organized clown groups at over twenty thousand clowns worldwide.
4:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they're more than that. Just don't be
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Speaker 3: the guy that takes the people in your basement.
4:08
Speaker 1: And you know, you know.
4:09
Speaker 3: It's pinball Day today, pinball Day today. A lot of
4:13
Speaker 3: holidays today, it's pinball Day today. The first coin operated,
4:17
Speaker 3: commercially successful pinball machine was named Baffleball in nineteen thirty one.
4:23
Speaker 3: Nineteen thirty one, so the pinball machine is not even
4:26
Speaker 3: the modern pinball machine is not even one hundred years old.
4:30
Speaker 3: And I love my favorite pinball thing. And I learned
4:34
Speaker 3: this years ago my family in New York that back
4:39
Speaker 3: in the I don't know how long ago it was,
4:42
Speaker 3: you'd have to just look it up yourself there. But
4:44
Speaker 3: the pinball machine was actually contraband in New York.
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Speaker 1: And this goes back many, many many years.
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Speaker 3: But New York City outlawed pinball machines because of organized crime,
4:59
Speaker 3: and they claim that people were gambling on the pinball games.
5:03
Speaker 3: And then once New York City banned pinball as horrific.
5:08
Speaker 3: A lot of other cities also pinball was illegal. Thin
5:12
Speaker 3: think about that pinball. Pinball was illegal and it was
5:17
Speaker 3: years and then in the nineteen I think it was
5:19
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies the game that somebody went to
5:24
Speaker 3: court and was able to overturn it and all that,
5:26
Speaker 3: so it came back. But anyway, pinball. So if you're
5:29
Speaker 3: you've got kids and they're playing pinball.
5:30
Speaker 1: Say you know that was illegal. You're a rebel.
5:33
Speaker 3: That was an illegal game in New York City. You're
5:35
Speaker 3: you're going off the reservation, is what you're doing. It's
5:38
Speaker 3: also sand Castle Day today, so celebrate the first Saturday
5:42
Speaker 3: of the month of August is sand Castle Day. And
5:45
Speaker 3: why you need a day for sand Castle's I don't know.
5:48
Speaker 3: I didn't see the fact that I thought was cool
5:50
Speaker 3: that sand. The reason stands sand if I could talk
5:53
Speaker 3: that way. Sand sticks to your skin when you're at
5:57
Speaker 3: the beach is because it holds onto water, and we're
6:01
Speaker 3: made out of a lot of water, and so your skin,
6:05
Speaker 3: you know, in my skin, we all sweat, and then
6:08
Speaker 3: that creates enough moisture, even though we don't feel it
6:10
Speaker 3: per se, but it creates enough moisture where the sand
6:15
Speaker 3: it just clings to you.
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Speaker 1: That's what it does. There you go, and there are
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Speaker 1: a bunch of different colored sands. You've got the white sand,
6:24
Speaker 1: the tan sand, which is the most popular, the pink sand,
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Speaker 1: and the black sand. So there you go. That's it
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Speaker 1: on sand.
6:31
Speaker 3: Now onto the program. Actually, before we get to the
6:33
Speaker 3: meat of the matter, I did want to thank you.
6:35
Speaker 3: Well maybe not you, but I got a bunch of messages.
6:38
Speaker 3: I haven't been able to write back to everybody. A
6:40
Speaker 3: lot of you reached out, which is very kind. You know,
6:43
Speaker 3: I have a couple of brothers. I'm the middle child.
6:45
Speaker 3: My older brother lives in New York. My younger brother
6:47
Speaker 3: lives in Wisconsin, in Appleton, Wisconsin, and he's doing fine,
6:53
Speaker 3: which is good because I had no clue why people
6:56
Speaker 3: were suddenly very concerned about my brother.
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Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm getting messages. I'm like, what
7:00
Speaker 1: do you do? The first matches I got from him
7:04
Speaker 1: we're okay, we're okay. And my reaction was, I figured
7:09
Speaker 1: you were okay. What happened? And it turns out.
7:13
Speaker 3: About I don't know how many miles from me, ay
7:16
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred miles from me. I was completely oblivious that Appleton,
7:21
Speaker 3: Wisconsin had been hit by an e F three tornado.
7:27
Speaker 3: Now you might be surprised to learn that I do
7:29
Speaker 3: not exactly spend my free time tracking the Fox Citi's
7:34
Speaker 3: weather forecast.
7:36
Speaker 1: I don't.
7:36
Speaker 3: I will check in the winter time, I admit it.
7:39
Speaker 3: I like to have fun when it's seventy five degrees
7:42
Speaker 3: in LA and I rip all the Wokesters and then
7:45
Speaker 3: I look at the forecast in Appleton and it's like
7:47
Speaker 3: minus seven with snow flurries all week.
7:51
Speaker 1: I'll look at.
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Speaker 3: That and I'll say, well, you know, the Wokesters aren't
7:53
Speaker 3: so bad this week because it's you know, the weather's
7:55
Speaker 3: better here and all that stuff. But if Appleton pops
7:59
Speaker 3: up into the news, I assume that somebody must have
8:02
Speaker 3: invented like a new kind of cheese dish, or they
8:06
Speaker 3: got another blizzard and not the kind from Dairy Queen
8:09
Speaker 3: that we were promoting this week on the radio show. Instead,
8:12
Speaker 3: this tornado I was reading about it. It had winds between
8:17
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty six and one hundred and sixty
8:19
Speaker 3: five miles per hour. And this is the part that
8:23
Speaker 3: is crazy to me. It's stayed on the ground for
8:24
Speaker 3: more than twenty minutes. Now, I live in earthquake country.
8:27
Speaker 3: I've lived through some big earthquakes. Most earthquakes are just
8:30
Speaker 3: about thirty seconds or less, not much more than that,
8:34
Speaker 3: usually a lot less than that, very small. You hear
8:37
Speaker 3: them coming the earthquake, you can hear the noise from
8:39
Speaker 3: a distance, and then you obviously in the earthquake, and
8:42
Speaker 3: then you can kind of hear it after the post
8:43
Speaker 3: mortem on the earthquake. This thing went on for more
8:45
Speaker 3: than twenty minutes around Appleton and the suburbs and then
8:49
Speaker 3: vanished over Lake Winnebego. And I imagine like somebody was
8:52
Speaker 3: out there fishing on Lake Winnebego and then all of
8:54
Speaker 3: a sudden, today, you know, here you go left a
8:58
Speaker 3: twelve mile trail of destruction. Thousands of homes and businesses
9:05
Speaker 3: were torn up, trees uprooted. There were some photos of
9:09
Speaker 3: roofs being ripped off. Power lines went down. More than
9:12
Speaker 3: thirty thousand people lost electricity. My brother, he did send
9:17
Speaker 3: me a bunch of photos. Let's just say he got
9:19
Speaker 3: free tree trimming. And what was the name of the gardener, Well,
9:23
Speaker 3: that would be Mother Nature. Mother Nature was the name
9:25
Speaker 3: of the gardener, and Mother Nature didn't charge, just ripped
9:28
Speaker 3: up a bunch of trees. His neighbor's trees got it
9:30
Speaker 3: worse than him.
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Speaker 1: It was pretty nasty in terms of the damage to
9:34
Speaker 1: the neighborhood.
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Speaker 3: Power lines were down. My brother was without power for
9:39
Speaker 3: three days this week. He did not have a generator.
9:41
Speaker 3: That's what happens when you're from California and you moved
9:43
Speaker 3: to Wisconsin. He will be buying a generator. He was
9:47
Speaker 3: just sweating it out. Not that it gets that hot
9:49
Speaker 3: in Appleton, but when you're used to ten degrees, it's hot.
9:52
Speaker 3: So he was just sweating it out the old fashioned way. Now,
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Speaker 3: the amazing part is, and this is great, no one died.
9:58
Speaker 3: That's awesome from what I read, no fatalities considering twenty
10:03
Speaker 3: minutes on the ground EF three tornado. That's the math
10:08
Speaker 3: isn't really math, And I mean, that's that's impossible.
10:12
Speaker 1: And I guess they have a system.
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Speaker 3: My brother was saying, they have a warning system. They
10:15
Speaker 3: send out like a text thing and.
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Speaker 1: All kinds of different things to warn people when the
10:21
Speaker 1: weather gets really, really nasty. So you get that all right.
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Speaker 3: Now to the outrage economy, the outrage economy, So we
10:29
Speaker 3: are happy to report on this fifth hour podcast, a
10:33
Speaker 3: must listen for legends like the one and only No Stradinis.
10:40
Speaker 3: He loves this, he's been on the podcast. So we
10:44
Speaker 3: are happy to report that we remain one of the
10:47
Speaker 3: last places where sports radio still embraces the lost art
10:51
Speaker 3: of the fire brand. Now, I didn't plan on being
10:54
Speaker 3: a fire brand. I don't even consider myself a fire brand.
10:57
Speaker 3: I don't go into these monologues thinking, wow, let's see
11:00
Speaker 3: what I can do today to be a firebran. No,
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Speaker 3: and so not the fake, manufactured outrage that is assembled
11:08
Speaker 3: by those corporate brainstorming sessions.
11:11
Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is the.
11:13
Speaker 3: Old fashioned spark plug, the on air human mosquito, apparently
11:18
Speaker 3: agent provocateur, and the job description begins and ends with
11:23
Speaker 3: one simple mission, get people to listen. Now, how do
11:28
Speaker 3: people listen? There's many different ways. A lot of people
11:30
Speaker 3: listen live to the Overnight show. We have truck drivers
11:33
Speaker 3: and factory workers and cops and robbers who love that,
11:37
Speaker 3: and people with insomnia, old dudes that are just trying
11:40
Speaker 3: to get through.
11:41
Speaker 1: The night and you know, have that going on and
11:43
Speaker 1: medical problems, so we have all that.
11:45
Speaker 3: So you're just trying to get people listen. Then you
11:46
Speaker 3: have people to listen to the podcast like this on demand.
11:49
Speaker 3: And then there's people that get little bite sized pieces
11:53
Speaker 3: of the show, little bite sized pieces.
11:56
Speaker 1: And that's the social media world. And so that's essentially.
11:59
Speaker 3: What talk radio is right now is getting people to react.
12:02
Speaker 3: It's in the DNA. And so this week we had
12:04
Speaker 3: a very good week. Business is Booming. Mission accomplished twice
12:08
Speaker 3: this week, not once, but twice. This week, the show
12:10
Speaker 3: tripped into the social media algorithm, the buy one, get
12:15
Speaker 3: one free, double your pleasure, double your outrage. Now, I
12:18
Speaker 3: generally avoid social media during the daylight hours. I use
12:22
Speaker 3: it as a tool for the show. It's a funhouse
12:25
Speaker 3: of mirrors and a lot of clowns, a lot of clowns,
12:30
Speaker 3: a lot of clowns.
12:31
Speaker 1: And so I'll occasionally make a quick dry I call
12:34
Speaker 1: it drive by.
12:35
Speaker 3: I call a drive by where I'll go on social
12:37
Speaker 3: media for like a minute and just quickly check out
12:40
Speaker 3: a few things and then get out of there and
12:43
Speaker 3: I'm preparing get back to preparing for the Mala monologues.
12:46
Speaker 1: These bullet points don't write themselves.
12:48
Speaker 3: So this week's entertainment came courtesy of Philadelphia Fanboys and
12:57
Speaker 3: what's called Raider Nation.
12:59
Speaker 1: Whatever's left of nation? Yeah, so two loyal constituentcies who
13:04
Speaker 1: forever I can't thank you enough. You are always.
13:09
Speaker 3: Prepared to sprint into battle to defend your damsels in
13:15
Speaker 3: distress because of laundry.
13:17
Speaker 1: Now we'll start in Philadelphia.
13:19
Speaker 3: The Philadelphia brigade erupted because I suggested, I got to
13:24
Speaker 3: check with Fats on this. I suggested that the Lebron
13:27
Speaker 3: James experiment isn't going to transform the seventy six ers
13:32
Speaker 3: into basketball royalty.
13:35
Speaker 1: How drya mahlor.
13:36
Speaker 3: Apparently questioning a forty something meter superstar now qualifies as blasphemy.
13:44
Speaker 1: Now.
13:44
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, in Nevada, Raider Nation rushed to defend selecting quarterback
13:50
Speaker 3: Fernando Mendoza with the first overall pick, even though at
13:55
Speaker 3: the moment he can't beat out the football equivalent of
13:58
Speaker 3: a museum exhibit, Kirk Cousins, whose NFL expiration date appears
14:04
Speaker 3: to have arrived several seasons ago, and yet the Raiders
14:08
Speaker 3: signed him. The responses were magnificent. Now, not thoughtful and
14:14
Speaker 3: not original and not per se pervasive or anything like that.
14:20
Speaker 3: They were wonderful. They were magnificent. I used the word magnificity.
14:23
Speaker 1: And so you had a mix of.
14:26
Speaker 3: Younger, middle aged, older, hot take hall I call them
14:29
Speaker 3: hot take hall monitors, the bleacher bosos, logo worshipers who
14:36
Speaker 3: treat the franchise logo like it's the family coat of arms.
14:42
Speaker 3: And so the Raiders, who I thought when I was
14:45
Speaker 3: a kid, they used to win all the time, and
14:46
Speaker 3: now I'm getting older and they have won any The
14:49
Speaker 3: Raiders haven't won a super Bowl since nineteen eighty three.
14:55
Speaker 3: Let's pause think about that for a second. That championship
14:59
Speaker 3: came when Ronald Reagan occupied the White House. Apple was
15:04
Speaker 3: just introducing the macintosh with this guy named Ridley Scott.
15:09
Speaker 3: That is very famous commercial in nineteen eighty four, the
15:15
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four super Bowl, which is, by the way,
15:18
Speaker 3: when the Raiders when the Super bowls after the eighty
15:20
Speaker 3: three season. The Internet wasn't a thing. Television was original
15:27
Speaker 3: episodes of Dynasty, Dallas, the A Team, Magnum Pi.
15:31
Speaker 1: These are good shows. Michael Jackson's Thriller dominated the record world.
15:36
Speaker 1: The music world. Line Old Richies Can't Slow Down was popular.
15:42
Speaker 1: In the car.
15:43
Speaker 3: Gallon of gas cost you a buck twenty one eggs
15:46
Speaker 3: were roughly a dollar a dozen milk barely topped two bucks.
15:51
Speaker 3: You could buy a pack of cigarettes. People love smoking
15:53
Speaker 3: in the eighties, and you could buy a pack of
15:56
Speaker 3: Marlboroughs for less than pocket change today. And I used
16:00
Speaker 3: to collect these Star Wars action figures, the Kenner Star
16:03
Speaker 3: Wars action figures. Well, that was expensive. That was ninety
16:07
Speaker 3: seven cents to get one of those. And all that
16:10
Speaker 3: happened the last time the Raiders were a champion. And
16:14
Speaker 3: yet in twenty twenty six, complete strangers are still willing
16:18
Speaker 3: to throw verbal punches defending the decisions made by a
16:22
Speaker 3: franchise whose last championship celebration.
16:27
Speaker 1: You have to look up.
16:28
Speaker 3: On the internet and there's the video, but it's barely color.
16:33
Speaker 3: It's like it's just wild and all this while the
16:36
Speaker 3: NEPO baby owner, who did nothing other than inherit the
16:41
Speaker 3: team because he won the genetic lottery, is at PF
16:44
Speaker 3: Chang's eating spicy noodles, while Tom Brady, the GM by
16:48
Speaker 3: proxy of the Raiders, is auditioning for the WWE. That's
16:54
Speaker 3: the Raiders, and I'm the bad guy. You can't make
16:57
Speaker 3: this stuff up. Sports fandom is fascinating. I was told
17:01
Speaker 3: this like the modern religion a lot of people aren't
17:03
Speaker 3: religious anymore, and they've turned their religious tendencies into sports
17:07
Speaker 3: like Philadelphia, of course, has long provided reliable material for
17:12
Speaker 3: those of us to do sports radio. This isn't my
17:15
Speaker 3: first dance with that algorithm. Like years ago. Years ago,
17:20
Speaker 3: I questioned whether Nick Foles was the answer. Later came
17:25
Speaker 3: skepticism over Jalen Hurts. Every time the digital torches came out,
17:31
Speaker 3: and Philly sports radio needs Howard Eskin, they need Angelo Cataldi.
17:37
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example that I'm gonna juxtapose the
17:40
Speaker 3: difference between.
17:41
Speaker 1: Today and just a few years ago.
17:44
Speaker 3: So a few years back I did a rant absolutely
17:48
Speaker 3: slaying Doc Rivers, Glenn doc Rivers, and instead of getting
17:53
Speaker 3: hate in Philadelphia, I got Angelo Cataldi, the greatest morning
17:58
Speaker 3: guy in Philadelphia's orts radio history, one of the goats
18:01
Speaker 3: of sports radio. Angelo's retired now, but I had his
18:04
Speaker 3: producer reach out to me to get me to come
18:07
Speaker 3: on the show to trash Doc Rivers, because that was
18:11
Speaker 3: what you did. That was the real Philadelphia. Now you
18:13
Speaker 3: got a bunch of soft people in Philadelphia. It's really
18:16
Speaker 3: sad that there's that many people, the interlopers, who are
18:20
Speaker 3: not the real Philadelphia. Fans, because the real Philadelphia fans
18:23
Speaker 3: would hold Lebron James accountable.
18:25
Speaker 1: And say, hey, wait a minute here, what are you doing.
18:28
Speaker 1: So I've been in the algorithm in Philadelphia over the
18:32
Speaker 1: years with Jalen Hurts and Nick Foles and Doc Rivers
18:35
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and I've reached the point where
18:38
Speaker 1: I assume half of what appears on social media isn't
18:41
Speaker 1: even human.
18:42
Speaker 3: I talk about the matrix with bots, sock puppet accounts,
18:45
Speaker 3: professional outrage consultants, all of those things. Most normal people
18:50
Speaker 3: I've noticed over the years have things like jobs. You've
18:53
Speaker 3: got a family, you've got responsibilities. You don't spend Tuesday
18:57
Speaker 3: afternoon composing twenty seven replies to someone you've never met
19:04
Speaker 3: over an opinion about a basketball player. And yet social
19:08
Speaker 3: media somehow finds an endless supply of volunteers. It's fascinating,
19:14
Speaker 3: and the funny part, they never seem to understand.
19:18
Speaker 1: God bless them like these people.
19:21
Speaker 3: Most of them are window lickers who think they're punishing
19:25
Speaker 3: the person they dislike. It's the dogpile mentality, when the
19:31
Speaker 3: dogpile is the greatest thing you.
19:33
Speaker 1: Could possibly have. As a talk show host, they're actually
19:35
Speaker 1: working overtime to support the product. And this is what
19:40
Speaker 1: they'll never understand, because they're not that smart. Every angry
19:43
Speaker 1: reply is great. It fuels more replies. Every quote treat
19:49
Speaker 1: or X or whatever it's called, feeds the algorithm. Every insult, Well,
19:54
Speaker 1: that's why you're all at three of the morning from
19:57
Speaker 1: the crayon eaters generates another impression. So congratulations, and I
20:02
Speaker 1: want to thank both the Philadelphia fan and the Raider fan.
20:05
Speaker 1: You just became an unpaid member of the Malad Militia
20:08
Speaker 1: marketing department, the Ben Maler Show marketing department, helping put
20:11
Speaker 1: food on my table, money in my bank account. And
20:15
Speaker 1: may you forever be a Dingleberry.
20:18
Speaker 3: Howard Stern, we mentioned this a few times over the years,
20:22
Speaker 3: back when he was good, and actually he's like retired now,
20:25
Speaker 3: but back when he was good, Stern figured out, and
20:28
Speaker 3: the people in radio figured out decades ago, the famous
20:31
Speaker 3: Stern effect, which was not built on universal admiration. The
20:34
Speaker 3: people who hated Howard Stern often listened longer than the
20:38
Speaker 3: fans who really loved him because they desperately wanted to
20:42
Speaker 3: catch that next thing to be upset about. So outrage
20:45
Speaker 3: has always been a remarkably durable business model.
20:50
Speaker 1: Indifference is much worse.
20:51
Speaker 3: Being ignored is the only unforgivable sin on social media.
20:57
Speaker 3: You're irrelevant the moment people stop arguing about you when
21:02
Speaker 3: you're in this business. And now before anyone before you
21:06
Speaker 3: or anyone else accuses me of manufacturing controversy, you must
21:10
Speaker 3: understand the nuance. I am not sitting in a laboratory
21:14
Speaker 3: engineering ridiculous opinions simply to chase clicks. The main objective
21:19
Speaker 3: is to get people to listen to the live radio
21:21
Speaker 3: show and the podcast. These little bite sized pieces the
21:24
Speaker 3: company sends out.
21:25
Speaker 1: That's an add on item. That's an add on item.
21:28
Speaker 3: These takes come from years and years behind the microphone
21:33
Speaker 3: letting these things marinate. They're my own proprietary blend. Agree
21:37
Speaker 3: or disagree, that's the game. Thumbs up, thumbs down. The
21:41
Speaker 3: problem isn't disagreement. The problem is modern sports discourse.
21:47
Speaker 1: It's become logo worship.
21:51
Speaker 3: Lebron spent years being public enemy number one in Philadelphia.
21:55
Speaker 3: Then suddenly he goes into the changing room and he
21:59
Speaker 3: changed which is his outfit. And now some of the
22:02
Speaker 3: people who used to just destroy him are now polishing
22:08
Speaker 3: his resume because he wears the proper laundry. They're licking
22:12
Speaker 3: the toes, the green puss, they're sucking that out from
22:17
Speaker 3: under his toenails. A quarterback prospect in Vegas becomes immune
22:23
Speaker 3: from criticism the moment these people their favorite franchise draft him,
22:30
Speaker 3: an independent thought has become option. The jersey decides the opinion,
22:36
Speaker 3: the logo writes the script, and people simply memorize the lines.
22:42
Speaker 1: That's it. Like sports are supposed to encourage debate. Instead,
22:45
Speaker 1: we've created digital neighborhoods with gangs running around cybergons or
22:51
Speaker 1: disagreement is treated like.
22:52
Speaker 3: Vandalism, and you must believe in group think. So yes,
22:57
Speaker 3: after all these years, we continue being, as I said,
22:59
Speaker 3: a sparkplug, the undercover agent provocateur, because unlike so many
23:06
Speaker 3: of the younger lads and sports media, we're not asking
23:10
Speaker 3: for your approval.
23:11
Speaker 1: We're not. We're just asking for attention. That's it.
23:14
Speaker 3: Whatever that means. You love the take, that's great, man,
23:17
Speaker 3: You love my take. You hate the take, that's fine too.
23:20
Speaker 3: Make sure to quote them, make sure to take screenshots
23:23
Speaker 3: of them. Make sure to make all your same jokes
23:26
Speaker 3: you always make. Oh you're ugly, you're fat, your middle age,
23:29
Speaker 3: whatever you're old, you're a boomer.
23:30
Speaker 1: Or all that's I love it. I love all of it.
23:33
Speaker 3: Every insult is another dollar in my pocket. So make
23:38
Speaker 3: sure to send these things to your buddies while calling
23:41
Speaker 3: me every effing name in the book. And remember who's
23:45
Speaker 3: really getting paid in this interaction. The outrage is not
23:49
Speaker 3: costing me anything. It's costing you time, which is the
23:53
Speaker 3: most valuable thing that we have. You're wasting your time
23:56
Speaker 3: and it's giving me a little bit of money.
23:59
Speaker 1: You're throwing some shit goes into my bank account. You're
24:01
Speaker 1: the one donating your time and giving me money to
24:05
Speaker 1: promote the show. So thank you. I want to thank
24:07
Speaker 1: you for your service. God bless you. Now moving on
24:11
Speaker 1: to the Life of Malor. The Life of Malor on
24:15
Speaker 1: the Fifth Hour podcast. If you like this, click that
24:18
Speaker 1: thumbs up thing the five stars and boy, that would
24:22
Speaker 1: be great, and do a little review and tell a
24:24
Speaker 1: friend and if everyone, including you and the guy over
24:28
Speaker 1: across town there and the lady who doesn't want to
24:31
Speaker 1: admit she listens, if everyone just gets one other person
24:34
Speaker 1: to listen to this, we will double our audience and
24:37
Speaker 1: that would be pretty cool. So behind the microphone there
24:40
Speaker 1: are certain traditions we just talked about the sports take
24:45
Speaker 1: on the show. Every show starts each hour with a
24:47
Speaker 1: malam monologue. Very rarely does that not happen. So we
24:51
Speaker 1: start with a malam monologue.
24:53
Speaker 3: We then transition into angry callers, people convinced that officials
24:59
Speaker 3: are part of an international global conspiracy against them, and
25:04
Speaker 3: then we have the crazy callers, the characters like Hollering
25:09
Speaker 3: James and weed Man Hippie now born Billy Blanks.
25:14
Speaker 1: He lives in South.
25:15
Speaker 3: Foist from New York, one of the enduring characters on
25:19
Speaker 3: the show. One of the people who somehow someway became
25:23
Speaker 3: part of the furniture in the Mallad Militia if the
25:26
Speaker 3: furniture occasionally wandered off, forgot where the furniture lived, and
25:31
Speaker 3: came back smelling like a reggae festival. So it was
25:36
Speaker 3: his birthday week. Every Monday into Tuesday. Weed Man calls
25:40
Speaker 3: the show to solve all of the world's problems while
25:43
Speaker 3: simultaneously creating several new problems. And he's developed this strange
25:48
Speaker 3: role over the years where listeners ask him questions, he
25:51
Speaker 3: answers with a complete confidence, and somewhere in the middle
25:57
Speaker 3: he tells one of the same three stories he's been
26:00
Speaker 3: telling since George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. We're in
26:04
Speaker 3: the White House, back in the old days. There the
26:07
Speaker 3: details changed slightly each time, like folklore passed down through generations,
26:13
Speaker 3: except the generations are only about six weeks apart. For example,
26:19
Speaker 3: he continues to be perpetually stunned that there's a marijuana
26:24
Speaker 3: dispensary practically down the street from his apartment in Hollywood, Florida,
26:30
Speaker 3: And considering that this man has been arrested for marijuana
26:34
Speaker 3: possession more times than most people have renewed their driver's license.
26:39
Speaker 3: I suppose it's understandable to him in his world, walking
26:44
Speaker 3: past a legal weed shop is probably like al Capone
26:47
Speaker 3: discovering the irs now has a.
26:49
Speaker 1: Customer loyalty program? What is that?
26:52
Speaker 3: So I started thinking about what I could do for
26:54
Speaker 3: him on his birthday, and we had him on and
26:58
Speaker 3: I think a listener sent him some food that was great.
27:00
Speaker 3: During my long drive back to the north Woods, I
27:05
Speaker 3: punched his number into my phone. Sometimes I have to
27:08
Speaker 3: act like weed Man's mom and call him, Hey, weed Man.
27:10
Speaker 1: We've got the bit. You're in okay, I'll call up.
27:13
Speaker 3: I was awake, I was busy, so I of course
27:16
Speaker 3: block my caller ID beforehand because I've learned from experience.
27:21
Speaker 1: Talk Mike. Yeah, my buddy from.
27:24
Speaker 3: Chicago who's called me every year since. He said, Ben,
27:28
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be going to jail in Chicago. I don't
27:33
Speaker 3: know if I'll be able to get a hold of
27:34
Speaker 3: you after. Can I just have your number, I'm gonna
27:35
Speaker 3: call you one time. Sure, no problem, Doc. And it's
27:38
Speaker 3: been twenty years and he.
27:39
Speaker 1: Still calls me every week check saying, Hey, Ben, I'm
27:42
Speaker 1: in Tucson. I'm helping this lady that's got you know,
27:45
Speaker 1: so and so, giving her pineapple smoothie. Thanks Doc. Yeah.
27:50
Speaker 1: So eventually I give him a call.
27:54
Speaker 3: I call him on the way home there or whatever,
27:56
Speaker 3: doing his thing, and it's early in the morning and whatever. Fine,
28:02
Speaker 3: he's still wide awake, he answered, wished me a happy birthday.
28:05
Speaker 3: Then he says, Ben, I love you, and the boy
28:09
Speaker 3: that was sweet, surprisingly sweet, So of course I said,
28:13
Speaker 3: I love you weed man. You know not you know
28:17
Speaker 3: romance love a romance, not romance, bromance, you know, a
28:21
Speaker 3: couple of boys. He's been a great character on the show,
28:24
Speaker 3: like I said, So, then I asked the rather obvious question,
28:27
Speaker 3: not that I enjoy small talk.
28:28
Speaker 1: I said, listen, what are you doing today? Today's your birthday.
28:32
Speaker 1: Today's your birthday. He'sai, I don't know. I he didn't say.
28:37
Speaker 3: He didn't say going out, he didn't say seeing friends.
28:39
Speaker 3: He didn't say I'm gonna go celebrate, you gonna have
28:41
Speaker 3: a big cake. He just said, I don't know. It
28:44
Speaker 3: sounded less like uncertainty and more like a lifestyle choice. Now,
28:49
Speaker 3: knowing Billy the way I do, I figured there was
28:52
Speaker 3: a decent chance that he would spend the day watching
28:55
Speaker 3: forty year old Johnny Carson clips on YouTube while eating
28:59
Speaker 3: whatever food his guardian, Angel Purrito, not a burrito Purrito
29:04
Speaker 3: had delivered to his apartment.
29:06
Speaker 1: By the way, Purito not a fan of mine. He's
29:07
Speaker 1: a Raider fan, and he's not happy with me. Right,
29:10
Speaker 1: I've upset my man Purrito.
29:11
Speaker 3: Anyway, So I had no idea exactly what weed man
29:15
Speaker 3: slash Billy was up to, and so I said, hey,
29:17
Speaker 3: why don't you go out and you'll get you leave
29:20
Speaker 3: you a little apartment there and make the birthday rounds,
29:23
Speaker 3: go collect all your free stuff for your birthday. And
29:28
Speaker 3: immediately at that point I flashed back to my early twenties.
29:32
Speaker 1: This is why I brought it up. So one birthday,
29:34
Speaker 1: and I don't remember how old I was, I was fatty, Benny.
29:37
Speaker 3: I was fatty, and I practically treated the birthday like
29:43
Speaker 3: a scavenger. And I drove all over southern California collecting
29:47
Speaker 3: complimentary fries, cookies, ice cream, slices of pie, doughnuts, drinks, muffins, pancakes,
29:56
Speaker 3: dessert stuff I didn't.
29:57
Speaker 1: Even really want or need. I just did it. Anything
30:01
Speaker 1: that came with the words happy birthday. I was in on.
30:06
Speaker 1: I was in on.
30:07
Speaker 3: It was less a birthday celebration and more of an
30:10
Speaker 3: organized heist through corporate America. The only thing missing was
30:15
Speaker 3: a getaway driver. Now, weed Man loved the idea. He
30:18
Speaker 3: loves things he doesn't have to pay for. He loves
30:21
Speaker 3: to beg for things he didn't have to beg for.
30:22
Speaker 1: This.
30:22
Speaker 3: He said, boy, oh that would be great, Ben. He said, oh, boy,
30:25
Speaker 3: that would be great Ben. Then he asked the question
30:28
Speaker 3: that doomed this entire operation, the question that would become
30:33
Speaker 3: the bane of my existence this week. He said, where
30:37
Speaker 3: should I go? Simple question? So I started listening places.
30:42
Speaker 3: I was like, how about Starbucks? And then we I
30:48
Speaker 3: was like, looking, we can't go to Star Wars needs
30:50
Speaker 3: an app? Ah McDonald's. Ah, you got to be part
30:52
Speaker 3: of that rewards program. How about Arby's. Arby's is desperate
30:55
Speaker 3: for people.
30:56
Speaker 1: Come on, now, you need an account Wendy's Wendy's, Nah,
31:00
Speaker 1: I said, download this. Well, definitely Denny's.
31:03
Speaker 3: I mean I got that breakfast thing at Denny's on
31:05
Speaker 3: my birthday.
31:06
Speaker 1: No, no, you got to register first. Every single FN
31:09
Speaker 1: restaurant that used to hand out a cookie or this
31:13
Speaker 1: or that or whatever.
31:16
Speaker 3: Simply because you showed up and showed your identification. Now
31:20
Speaker 3: they want paperwork now, of course, not actual paperwork, digital paperwork.
31:25
Speaker 3: Somewhere along the way, birthdays became less about celebrating and
31:29
Speaker 3: more about onboarding.
31:31
Speaker 1: It's about onboarding.
31:33
Speaker 3: You can't get a free cookie anymore without surrendering your
31:37
Speaker 3: email address, your phone number, birthday, zip code, favorite color,
31:40
Speaker 3: and what feels like a small vial of blood. Happy birthday?
31:46
Speaker 3: Now tell us your mother's maiden name, please? Well, what
31:49
Speaker 3: about your last four of your social No, yeah, I'm
31:51
Speaker 3: giving you that. Accept cookies except tracking, Accept eternal surveillance.
31:57
Speaker 1: That's the deal. Somewhere a muffin was waiting for weed
32:01
Speaker 1: Man behind forty seven pages of terms and conditions. He
32:05
Speaker 1: just wants a muffin, a blueberry muffin. Given the man hashbruns,
32:10
Speaker 1: he just wants hashbruns instead instead.
32:14
Speaker 3: Was like I was trying to negotiate a merger. Now
32:16
Speaker 3: there's an old saying, which is really not all that old.
32:19
Speaker 3: If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
32:23
Speaker 3: Like apparently the free brownie cost exactly one permanent marketing profile.
32:30
Speaker 3: I wasn't especially worried about Weedman's privacy. Nor is weed
32:34
Speaker 3: Man worried about his privacy. The man spent much of
32:36
Speaker 3: his adult life homeless and in and out of South
32:40
Speaker 3: Beach jail, Miami jail. He's not exactly protecting a Cayman
32:44
Speaker 3: Islands investment portfolio and crypto and trying to keep it
32:50
Speaker 3: from Nigerian princes in an email phishing scam. Of course,
32:55
Speaker 3: the great thing and we'll get to this in a minute,
32:56
Speaker 3: but weed Man doesn't have to worry about a phishing
32:58
Speaker 3: scam on his email. The real problem is weed Man
33:00
Speaker 3: exists in a technological Bermuda triangle. I'm telling you, the
33:04
Speaker 3: weed Man lives in a technological Bermuda triangles very odd.
33:07
Speaker 3: He can somehow find a forty seven minute clip of
33:12
Speaker 3: Johnny Carson interviewing Don Rickles in nineteen eighty three and
33:16
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five that was uploaded by a man named
33:20
Speaker 3: Classic TV Guy sixty nine four twenty. But ask him
33:25
Speaker 3: to locate the forget password button, and suddenly we're searching
33:31
Speaker 3: for Atlantis, the lost city of Atlantis.
33:34
Speaker 1: And years ago I helped him create an email address.
33:37
Speaker 1: It became a bit on the show. Coop has done
33:39
Speaker 1: the same thing, and each and every time, within days,
33:44
Speaker 1: if not hours, the password disappears into whatever dimension missing
33:49
Speaker 1: socks occupy. He doesn't forget eventually.
33:54
Speaker 3: This is the beauty of weed man. He forgets immediately.
33:57
Speaker 3: Billy forgets immediately. It's almost performance art. He has smoked
34:01
Speaker 3: so much marijuana and God only knows what else. Over
34:05
Speaker 3: the decades that directions like up, down, left, right have
34:11
Speaker 3: become more philosophical concepts than practical instructions. The birthday plan
34:17
Speaker 3: slowly unraveled on this phone call. Every restaurant this blew
34:21
Speaker 3: me away. Literally, every restaurant required an app. Every app
34:25
Speaker 3: required an account, every account required an email, Every email
34:31
Speaker 3: required a password.
34:33
Speaker 1: It's like, what do we do it.
34:34
Speaker 3: Every password you got to you required actually being able
34:38
Speaker 3: to remember something, and that was.
34:39
Speaker 1: The fatal flaw. So for it seemed like three hours,
34:45
Speaker 1: it was probably fifteen minutes. I was genuinely befuddled.
34:51
Speaker 3: I believed I was organizing the greatest birthday buffet in
34:54
Speaker 3: South Florida and got a rude awakening.
34:57
Speaker 1: I was thunderstruck.
34:58
Speaker 3: Instead, I'd accident volunteered weed Man for a semester long
35:04
Speaker 3: introductory course in modern identification verification. So by the time
35:09
Speaker 3: we got to Arby's, I had mentioned, you know, like
35:14
Speaker 3: we Man, we're gonna find one, and then I just
35:16
Speaker 3: gave up. I just gave up, and I figured, if
35:19
Speaker 3: we sign you up for this, weed Man, you're gonna
35:22
Speaker 3: have to work at Arby's.
35:24
Speaker 1: You know.
35:24
Speaker 3: That's it. It's like, congratulations, weed Man. Before claiming your
35:28
Speaker 3: free roast beef sandwich or Philly cheese steak, you need
35:31
Speaker 3: to complete this three minute training module and attend a
35:35
Speaker 3: diversity awareness and seminar, and also pass a cyber security
35:40
Speaker 3: Level two clearance and we'll give you an annual performance review. Well, no,
35:45
Speaker 3: I just I just want to get a roast beef sandwich,
35:49
Speaker 3: maybe the Philly cheese steak. So somewhere an Arby's executive
35:53
Speaker 3: is looking at a spreadsheet saying, great news. We traded
35:56
Speaker 3: one free curly fry for eighteen years of location information
36:01
Speaker 3: on this person. And meanwhile, weed Man is still standing
36:05
Speaker 3: outside wondering if they validate the parking. Well, they don't
36:08
Speaker 3: charge for parking, weed Man, and you don't have a car.
36:11
Speaker 3: The whole thing felt backwards bizarro world like restaurants used
36:15
Speaker 3: to bribe you with dessert. Get an ice cream cone,
36:18
Speaker 3: come in, get a scoop ice cream. Now they recruit
36:21
Speaker 3: you into their digital cult.
36:23
Speaker 1: The cookie isn't free, it's merely the signing bonus to
36:26
Speaker 1: get you in. Now.
36:27
Speaker 3: Eventually Wendy's won't even ask for your email. They'll simply say,
36:32
Speaker 3: think about a frosty. A drone will appear outside your house.
36:37
Speaker 1: Now we noticed.
36:39
Speaker 3: We noticed that, you know, the the ice cream was
36:44
Speaker 3: not the saying that you got last time. We're wondering
36:48
Speaker 3: if you're okay, please please reply now weed Man is
36:54
Speaker 3: you know he's he literally does? I said Johnny Carson.
36:57
Speaker 3: He told me that he's been watching old episodes of
36:59
Speaker 3: Johnny Carson. I'm not that up like he's watching Tonight Show.
37:02
Speaker 3: I didn't know that was on there. There's old episodes
37:04
Speaker 3: of the Tonight Show back in the eighties and the seventies,
37:07
Speaker 3: and he'll be the only person in America too inept,
37:13
Speaker 3: incompetent with tech to be tracked. And he doesn't have
37:16
Speaker 3: to worry about the Nigerian princes and all that stuff
37:19
Speaker 3: for once in his life. His greatest weakness which in
37:24
Speaker 3: modern society not being able to being a technophobe. In
37:26
Speaker 3: modern society a Mennonite is not great, and that has
37:30
Speaker 3: now become his superpower. He's ready to join the Justice League.
37:34
Speaker 3: On that note, we are going to put the baby
37:36
Speaker 3: to bed. Have a great Saturday.
37:37
Speaker 1: Remember you're having a better Saturday than Tony Romos. He's
37:42
Speaker 1: apparently for now blown his eighteen million dollar a year
37:46
Speaker 1: gig over there at.
37:47
Speaker 3: CBS because of a golf trip gone bad. Anyway, I
37:51
Speaker 3: have a great rest of your day. We'll have the
37:53
Speaker 3: mail bag tomorrow and we'll talk to you then.
37:57
Speaker 1: Bye bye. That's what Dick and day Ayton would say.
38:00
Speaker 1: You don't want me to upset Dick. Bye bye.