Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Toronto Poetry, No Apple Pie Sky

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The Fifth Hour: Toronto Poetry, No Apple Pie Sky · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kubbooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
0:12
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
0:15
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
0:19
Speaker 2: hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
0:23
Speaker 2: with Ben Mahller starts right now.
0:28
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere.
0:32
Speaker 3: The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g
0:36
Speaker 3: Radio on location from Lost Wages, Nevada. After doing the
0:42
Speaker 3: overnight show from the world famous iHeart Media Building, which
0:47
Speaker 3: is now part of the Fremont Street Experience, we go
0:51
Speaker 3: into the podcast studio. I'm here in Vegas for a
0:55
Speaker 3: special meet and greet with the boys from Minnesota. More
0:59
Speaker 3: on that coming later on, but right now we worry
1:05
Speaker 3: about today's podcast. We also celebrate National Kangaroo Awareness Day,
1:11
Speaker 3: another one of those dopey holidays, which got me down
1:15
Speaker 3: a kangaroo.
1:16
Speaker 1: Hole, if that's even a thing.
1:18
Speaker 3: Ossi Waz and Ozzi Momentum and all the other guys
1:22
Speaker 3: that have been part of the show over the years.
1:24
Speaker 1: So I fell down this path of fun.
1:29
Speaker 3: Facts about kangaroos, I didn't find too much. I did
1:33
Speaker 3: find that around thirty million years ago the kangaroo's ancestors
1:38
Speaker 3: arrived in the Australian rainforest. I love how they have
1:41
Speaker 3: these rough dates around thirty million years ago. And the
1:45
Speaker 3: people that study this stuff for a living they say
1:49
Speaker 3: that the possum likely developed, or the kangaroo rather developed
1:54
Speaker 3: from a possum like animal that lived in trees.
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Speaker 1: And eventually made their way to the ground.
2:00
Speaker 3: You know how the theory is that human beings were
2:04
Speaker 3: in the ocean, came out of the ocean, or did
2:06
Speaker 3: we come out of the ocean?
2:07
Speaker 1: Who knows?
2:08
Speaker 3: Anyway, the kangaroo species so it's been in development for
2:13
Speaker 3: a long long time.
2:16
Speaker 1: And my favorite fun fact about.
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Speaker 3: Kangaroos I got from Ozzie Waz who informed me he
2:22
Speaker 3: lives out in the remote part of Australia, not in
2:26
Speaker 3: one of the big cities like Perth or Sydney, and
2:29
Speaker 3: he informed me that out there the kangaroo will instead
2:35
Speaker 3: of running away from lights or freezing, the kangaroos will
2:38
Speaker 3: run towards his car, which I'm still laughing at.
2:45
Speaker 1: The photos.
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Speaker 3: He sent me a couple of years back when his
2:47
Speaker 3: car was attacked by a kangaroo and really messed it up,
2:50
Speaker 3: like punching the car.
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Speaker 1: I also learned that.
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Speaker 3: Skippy was the first big star kangaroo. Skippy the bush Kangaroo,
3:01
Speaker 3: I'm not making that up, made her television debut in
3:04
Speaker 3: an Australian children's TV series called Skippy, and that was
3:09
Speaker 3: one of the first big stars. That was in the
3:11
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties when the kangaroo became mainstream, or at least
3:16
Speaker 3: became a star on TV. So on this podcast we
3:20
Speaker 3: go down memory lane and jazz hands. But let's not
3:25
Speaker 3: bear the lead, my man, all right, we won't bear
3:27
Speaker 3: the lead. Tonight it is on like Donkey Gong. I
3:31
Speaker 3: will be watching from a sportsbook somewhere in Los Wages, Nevada,
3:36
Speaker 3: the first chapter of what could be a seven part
3:40
Speaker 3: mini series, the twenty twenty five World Series Game number one,
3:46
Speaker 3: and I got to I've never been to Toronto. The
3:49
Speaker 3: Dodgers and Blue Jays tonight in that fine city. I
3:52
Speaker 3: have thought about Toronto. I have flirted with the idea
3:55
Speaker 3: of going to Toronto. I even done a little radio
4:00
Speaker 3: in Toronto, but I have never actually been physically in Toronto.
4:05
Speaker 3: It's one of those cities that lives in the imagination
4:09
Speaker 3: in the back of my mind, kind of like a postcard.
4:13
Speaker 1: When I think of Toronto, having never been there, I
4:15
Speaker 1: think of a clean place.
4:16
Speaker 3: I think of a big metropolis, a big downtown.
4:19
Speaker 1: I think of polite people.
4:21
Speaker 3: It's vaguely exotic because it's a place where I would assume,
4:27
Speaker 3: just like the reputation of Canada, people apologize with Canadian
4:30
Speaker 3: nice right, apologize for cutting in line. And I look
4:35
Speaker 3: at the skyline there, and I love skylines. Of The
4:38
Speaker 3: skyline of Toronto is amazing. It looks like it was
4:40
Speaker 3: designed by someone with a passion for crisp lines. And
4:46
Speaker 3: I don't know about the zoning laws there, but it
4:48
Speaker 3: looks amazing when I've seen photos of it.
4:50
Speaker 1: Now.
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Speaker 3: I have been to Canada exactly twice. Once years ago,
4:55
Speaker 3: I went to Niagara Falls. I didn't plan on going
4:59
Speaker 3: to the Canadian side, but let's be hon it, it doesn't.
5:01
Speaker 1: Really count anyway. You go there.
5:04
Speaker 3: You go to Buffalo, and then the suburbs of Buffalo's
5:07
Speaker 3: Niagara Falls, and so you drive to Niagara Falls and
5:11
Speaker 3: there's a bridge. You can walk across the bridge. There's
5:13
Speaker 3: some customs people there and boom, welcome to Canada. You
5:17
Speaker 3: look at the falls from the other side. They look
5:20
Speaker 3: the same, and you buy some maple candy. You look
5:24
Speaker 3: at a bunch of Canadian flags, you play a few
5:26
Speaker 3: arcade games, and it feels like you've actually accomplished something
5:30
Speaker 3: culturally that's meaningful.
5:33
Speaker 1: And you know, but it's tourist Canada. It's visitor Canada.
5:38
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
5:39
Speaker 3: It's kind of like if you took someone from I
5:44
Speaker 3: don't know, from New Zealand and you put them in
5:46
Speaker 3: Times Square and said, well, this is New York.
5:50
Speaker 1: Well no, it's part of New York.
5:52
Speaker 3: You can go to Staten Island, you go to Queens,
5:54
Speaker 3: you go to Brooklyn, you can go depends where you are.
5:58
Speaker 3: It's like the La and the Man and the Elephant
6:02
Speaker 3: in that whole thing. But the other trip that I
6:04
Speaker 3: made was just this year we talked about it, to Vancouver,
6:08
Speaker 3: a city so beautiful it feels like it was cooked
6:12
Speaker 3: up in some like AI generation machine, by.
6:18
Speaker 1: Some really super computer.
6:21
Speaker 3: You got the mountains in Vancouver, you got the ocean,
6:24
Speaker 3: you got the trees, the skyline, all of them working
6:27
Speaker 3: together perfectly in harmony.
6:30
Speaker 1: It's like a.
6:32
Speaker 3: Jazz quartet that gives you a cacophony of beautiful sounds
6:37
Speaker 3: and doesn't miss a beat. Now, my comrade Nico, a
6:40
Speaker 3: friend of the show, a consumer of this podcast, practically
6:45
Speaker 3: rolled out the red carpet at the airport Vancouver, and
6:50
Speaker 3: Nico treated me like I was hosting the tonight show
6:52
Speaker 3: back when that mattered. Arrived Nico with a nice gift
6:56
Speaker 3: basket at the Sweet Vancouver Grizzlies hat and those cheese
7:01
Speaker 3: puff things that they have in Canada, which are ten
7:04
Speaker 3: times better than we have in America. I got some
7:07
Speaker 3: soccer swag out of it. Now we ate at every
7:11
Speaker 3: poutine joint within a ten mile radius of the hotel
7:17
Speaker 3: we stayed at in Vancouver. We started at the you know,
7:22
Speaker 3: we started at the local place, which was right around
7:24
Speaker 3: the corner, and we worked our way through some of
7:25
Speaker 3: the more exotic places. Went to Chinatown in Vancouver. We
7:28
Speaker 3: also stared at the skyline.
7:30
Speaker 1: Like we were.
7:30
Speaker 3: You'd never seen this before. It been to major cities,
7:34
Speaker 3: but it was great. We walked to some of the trails,
7:37
Speaker 3: didn't spend too much time. We wanted to spend more time.
7:39
Speaker 3: We wont be there for a weekend at Stanley Park,
7:42
Speaker 3: and I am telling you, hand to god, this park,
7:45
Speaker 3: Stanley Park makes Central Park looked like a sandbox behind
7:50
Speaker 3: a rest stop. And it was named after Lord Stanley. Yes,
7:53
Speaker 3: that Lord Stanley, the guy from the Stanley Cup. And Nico,
7:56
Speaker 3: who I'm convinced has a secret job with the Canadian
8:00
Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce, at least the British Columbia version.
8:05
Speaker 1: Now, when we got.
8:06
Speaker 3: Together in Vancouver and we had a meet and greet,
8:08
Speaker 3: a pretty good turnout considering and we've been on and
8:10
Speaker 3: off the radio there in Vancouver. So Nico, he insisted,
8:14
Speaker 3: he said, listen, Toronto's great, Like, maybe we'll get together
8:17
Speaker 3: in Toronto and we'll see a Maple Leafs game. I've
8:20
Speaker 3: heard a lot about the experience of going to a
8:23
Speaker 3: hockey game in Canon and going to Toronto, and specifically
8:27
Speaker 3: even they never win, you know, you love it and
8:31
Speaker 3: all this stuff. We want to have me experience that,
8:34
Speaker 3: and that would be great if it ever happens. I
8:36
Speaker 3: know his son is on the road to soccer stardom
8:39
Speaker 3: and he's living his dream and it's awesome.
8:41
Speaker 1: His great doting father and all that.
8:43
Speaker 3: Now, just for the record, I am not saying this
8:46
Speaker 3: about my love of Toronto because of the World Series Toronto.
8:50
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you he was on my list. I
8:51
Speaker 3: thought of it as I was coming in here to
8:53
Speaker 3: the remote podcast studio here in Vegas, and and my
8:59
Speaker 3: list of places I want to go isn't very long anymore,
9:02
Speaker 3: like I at least in the States. I mean, there's
9:04
Speaker 3: some other places. I haven't really been anywhere outside. I said, well, Canada,
9:08
Speaker 3: the States, I understand, North America. I'm staying outside North America.
9:12
Speaker 3: So the radio days part of this. So my relationship
9:16
Speaker 3: with Toronto is not geographic as I've laid out. It's
9:20
Speaker 3: broadcast back way back in a decade called the nineties,
9:24
Speaker 3: when I was a young lad, a West Coast radio stringer,
9:28
Speaker 3: just starting out, lugging a tape recorder in clubhouses and dugouts.
9:32
Speaker 3: I was a semi regular correspondent. And I believe the callers,
9:38
Speaker 3: and don't hold me to this, as I remember were CJ.
9:41
Speaker 3: Cl better known as Tom Looney, would say, by its
9:45
Speaker 3: gangster name, the fan five ninety and I would call in, well,
9:51
Speaker 3: they would call me.
9:52
Speaker 1: I didn't call them. They would call me first, say hey,
9:54
Speaker 1: can you come on at.
9:56
Speaker 3: Four o'clock our time, which is one o'clock your for
10:00
Speaker 3: a little hot West Coast baseball talk. And this was
10:03
Speaker 3: in a period of time the Athletics had some good
10:05
Speaker 3: teams and so I was never famous. I'm sure nobody
10:09
Speaker 3: in Toronto remembers me calling in. I was a young,
10:12
Speaker 3: young idiot and it was only for a few minutes.
10:14
Speaker 3: But in my head like I was a big star,
10:16
Speaker 3: and I was a star in Toronto radio. And I
10:19
Speaker 3: was a guy that even though I was on the phone,
10:21
Speaker 3: I was talking into microphones and I had opinions and
10:24
Speaker 3: they asked me my opinions on the Angels of the
10:26
Speaker 3: Mariners or whoever was going on, and the Dodgers, and it
10:30
Speaker 3: was cool.
10:30
Speaker 1: It was a fun thing.
10:31
Speaker 3: And whenever the Blue Jays would come through Anaheim, I
10:34
Speaker 3: would hustle down to the big A. I'd grab some
10:37
Speaker 3: quotes from players in that eraic guys like John al Larude,
10:41
Speaker 3: Roberto Alamar, Joe Carter. I snagged a bunch of sound
10:46
Speaker 3: from Cido Gaston.
10:47
Speaker 1: Who was a smooth operator.
10:49
Speaker 3: Cido Gaston and the Jays they didn't win in those years.
10:55
Speaker 3: This was just after their back to back championship appearances
11:00
Speaker 3: with the back in the early nineties. And then they
11:03
Speaker 3: had the work stoppage that canceled the World Series in
11:06
Speaker 3: ninety four, But the clubhouse had the faint smell of
11:10
Speaker 3: winning still, you know what I mean, Like they still
11:12
Speaker 3: had that aura, that afterglow from their success, and that
11:17
Speaker 3: does hang in the air even when the championship drives,
11:22
Speaker 3: because there's people that say, well, they have championship punigree
11:26
Speaker 3: as one of the quotes. Now, my friend and I
11:29
Speaker 3: have not kept up with him. He's in Chicago now
11:32
Speaker 3: named Chuck Swarsky. Chuck Swersky is the voice or was
11:37
Speaker 3: the voice of the Toronto Raptors back in that period
11:39
Speaker 3: of time, and he had a talk show on the
11:43
Speaker 3: radio in Toronto, and he would have me on as
11:46
Speaker 3: a correspondent on his show and when the Raptors would
11:50
Speaker 3: come into La And this actually continued up until COVID
11:53
Speaker 3: when I stopped going to games on a regular basis
11:56
Speaker 3: because of well you know why.
11:58
Speaker 1: But anyway, at that time we used.
11:59
Speaker 3: To it the same when he come up with the
12:00
Speaker 3: Bulls and he was in Toronto, and he was a original, unique, exciting,
12:08
Speaker 3: great rhythmic tones from Chuck Swirsky. And he's the guy
12:13
Speaker 3: who coined Vince sanity and I think he came up
12:17
Speaker 3: with Airic Canada also for Vince Carter, who was the
12:20
Speaker 3: big star of the Raptors at.
12:22
Speaker 1: That period of time.
12:23
Speaker 3: And if you've ever heard him broadcast a game on
12:25
Speaker 3: the radio, it is a treat, you know, when you know,
12:29
Speaker 3: you'd know he made a dunk sound like the moon landing.
12:34
Speaker 3: It was like the most exciting thing. And I even
12:37
Speaker 3: I have some friends in the Toronto area. One of
12:40
Speaker 3: them used to work at Fox Sports Radio, Canadian Mike
12:43
Speaker 3: Canadian Mike, who worked for our place, worked at TMZ
12:46
Speaker 3: for a while actually, and he's back in his home
12:49
Speaker 3: city of Toronto. Toronto's always been near my orbit, I
12:54
Speaker 3: just never quite touched down. Now there's more to the story,
12:58
Speaker 3: without dating myself too much, and this is all just
13:01
Speaker 3: things that are popping into my head with the World
13:03
Speaker 3: Series starting tonight in Toronto, and so without dating myself,
13:08
Speaker 3: even though the calendar already has done that for me.
13:11
Speaker 3: I am actually older than the Toronto Blue Jays, which
13:14
Speaker 3: is kind of scary. The Jays were born shortly after
13:18
Speaker 3: I was born. I was already around, I was a toddler.
13:20
Speaker 3: I was already scribbling box scores and notebooks. I was
13:23
Speaker 3: memorizing batting averages like they were the Holy Scripture, unless
13:28
Speaker 3: I was just pooping my bed. Unless I was just
13:30
Speaker 3: pooping my bed at that time. But back then, the
13:32
Speaker 3: Blue Jays when I first kind of figured things out,
13:36
Speaker 3: and when do you figure things out, like nine or ten, nine,
13:40
Speaker 3: ten or eleven, the Blue Jays were a curiosity. They
13:44
Speaker 3: were a rumor for someone like me who grew up
13:48
Speaker 3: in California. Baseball I loved. I was obsessed with baseball
13:54
Speaker 3: now Canada. When I thought of Canada, I thought of
13:57
Speaker 3: that Montreal Expos.
13:58
Speaker 1: I'd see the Dodgers play the Expos every once in
14:00
Speaker 1: a while. But Toronto.
14:04
Speaker 3: That was just kind of foreign, like they were they
14:07
Speaker 3: were playing baseball next to maple trees, and they had
14:11
Speaker 3: like ice ranks everywhere and all this stuff.
14:14
Speaker 1: And gotta understand, this was before the Interweb.
14:18
Speaker 3: I grew up in an era, an era where we
14:21
Speaker 3: would go to the market and every was it every
14:24
Speaker 3: week or every month. They'd have an encyclopedia you had
14:27
Speaker 3: to buy, which was the Wikipedia of the time, And
14:30
Speaker 3: so we didn't have social media and all that stuff
14:32
Speaker 3: back in my day, and before you could click a
14:36
Speaker 3: stream and watch a game like we can now whether
14:40
Speaker 3: it's legal or not. Now I got my baseball knowledge
14:43
Speaker 3: from the Sporting News. They had these books, the Green
14:47
Speaker 3: and Red Book, and they had one was for the
14:51
Speaker 3: National League and one was for the American League, and
14:54
Speaker 3: that was the Holy Bible. And then you had Peter Gammons,
14:58
Speaker 3: and he wrote for Sports st Peter Gammons was the
15:01
Speaker 3: oracle of baseball.
15:03
Speaker 1: And if he wrote it, it was the Gospel. It
15:05
Speaker 1: was gospel.
15:06
Speaker 3: And on Saturday mornings before the NBC Game of the
15:11
Speaker 3: Week and BC, I got my education from This Week
15:17
Speaker 3: in Baseball, hosted by the immortal dulcetones of Mel Allen. Now,
15:25
Speaker 3: This Week in Baseball was not a show, it was
15:29
Speaker 3: a ritual. And when Mel Allen's voice hit the screen,
15:33
Speaker 3: and this was old at mel Allen. He had been
15:36
Speaker 3: the voice of the Yankees.
15:38
Speaker 1: This Week in Baseball, I was in a trance.
15:42
Speaker 3: And I was lucky enough to get to know Vin
15:45
Speaker 3: Scully a little bit, and I asked him about Mel Allen, because.
15:47
Speaker 1: Mel Allen was a hero of mine.
15:48
Speaker 3: And he talked about how wonderful Mel Allen was, and
15:52
Speaker 3: mel had fallen. Ben told me the story as he
15:55
Speaker 3: got a little older, he fell like getting out of
15:57
Speaker 3: the bathtub. And he was never quite the same after that,
16:00
Speaker 3: but for me he was wonderful. I remember when the
16:04
Speaker 3: Jays started to get pretty good in the mid eighties,
16:12
Speaker 3: like the mid nineteen eighties, they played the Royals and
16:14
Speaker 3: the playoffs.
16:14
Speaker 1: I think I was like nineteen eighty five and.
16:19
Speaker 3: Twib notes, which I only learned as an adult, meant
16:24
Speaker 3: this week in baseball notes. I just thought it was
16:26
Speaker 3: something else. What's the word twib mean? Is that like twig? No,
16:30
Speaker 3: it's twib I don't understand.
16:32
Speaker 1: Just go with it.
16:33
Speaker 3: So I'd watch these twib notes and they'd go around
16:35
Speaker 3: the major leagues, and again I didn't grow up with being.
16:38
Speaker 1: Able to watch. The Blue Jays were never ever, as I.
16:41
Speaker 3: Remember, on the Game of the Week on NBC, because
16:45
Speaker 3: they had West Coast and East Coast games, you'd always
16:48
Speaker 3: get the Yankees, and then on the West Coast we'd
16:51
Speaker 3: get the Dodgers and the Giants and teams like that.
16:55
Speaker 3: So twib notes would cut to Exhibition Stadium and Mel
16:59
Speaker 3: would say, with a booming delivery, this week in baseball
17:05
Speaker 3: we go to Toronto, where the Blue Jays are flying
17:08
Speaker 3: high top the American League East standings, and then they'd
17:12
Speaker 3: cut away to a shot of the manager, and they
17:15
Speaker 3: go through and the camera would pan to George Bell,
17:19
Speaker 3: Lloyd Moseby, and Jesse Barfield.
17:22
Speaker 1: That amazing outfield of that era.
17:24
Speaker 3: And in my child ears, my boyhood ears, that was mythic,
17:30
Speaker 3: like I was told these are the greatest outfielders assembled
17:34
Speaker 3: in that generation, and I believed it, like that was
17:38
Speaker 3: the top outfield in baseball. You had the bazooka, the
17:41
Speaker 3: cannon for Jesse Barfield's arm. You had George Bell known
17:45
Speaker 3: as Taco Bell, who swung like he was trying to
17:48
Speaker 3: hit the ball into Hudson May.
17:51
Speaker 1: And you had the great Lloyd.
17:53
Speaker 3: Moseby, a smooth operator himself, just like the manager. And
17:58
Speaker 3: of course you can't tell the story of growing up
18:01
Speaker 3: watching baseball and watching the Blue Jays from afar, not
18:05
Speaker 3: a fan, just watching as a casual fan of ball baseball.
18:09
Speaker 3: The Dave Winfield story. Now, you know, you know when
18:13
Speaker 3: it comes to Dave Winfield. So in nineteen eighty three,
18:17
Speaker 3: Winfield accidentally during a game with a batted ball, killed
18:23
Speaker 3: a seagull at Exhibition Stadium, which was this football stadium
18:27
Speaker 3: that was not designed for baseball, and it was very
18:30
Speaker 3: odd on television.
18:31
Speaker 1: I'd watch it.
18:32
Speaker 3: I always have to sell the Blue Jays is on
18:33
Speaker 3: this weekend baseball or when the Angels would go there.
18:35
Speaker 3: And it was very bizarre because there's all these seats
18:37
Speaker 3: that weren't used, and they had the water right near
18:41
Speaker 3: there anyway, So Dave Winfield hit a seagull, killed it,
18:47
Speaker 3: and the Canadian Mounties arrested him for cruelty to animals.
18:51
Speaker 3: Hand to God, as I remember it, and they arrested
18:54
Speaker 3: him like over a bird. A bird is the word
18:58
Speaker 3: only in Canada. Can a man hit four hundred and
19:00
Speaker 3: sixty five home runs and still be remembered as a
19:03
Speaker 3: winged casualty. It is the stuff of legends. I'm an
19:07
Speaker 3: old dude now, I guess I don't know, and when
19:09
Speaker 3: do you come old?
19:09
Speaker 1: And I remember it now.
19:10
Speaker 3: That story is part of the weird mythology of Toronto baseball,
19:15
Speaker 3: like the Snow Games, the stadium that turned into a
19:18
Speaker 3: relic before it even hit twenty, the Joe Carter leap
19:21
Speaker 3: in the air in nineteen ninety three, a moment that
19:25
Speaker 3: still echoes every single October. So the World Series is tonight,
19:32
Speaker 3: and so here we are the Dodgers heading north to
19:35
Speaker 3: play the Jays tonight, and I've been around again. I've
19:38
Speaker 3: been around the edges of Toronto. My whole run here
19:42
Speaker 3: in radiof waxed loquacious here. I don't know how long
19:46
Speaker 3: this podcast is, but I've talked to you. I've talked
19:48
Speaker 3: to the fans of Toronto. The radio show that I
19:51
Speaker 3: do overnight has been on and off the radio in
19:53
Speaker 3: Toronto and Hamilton, and we go on, we go off
19:55
Speaker 3: station has changed formats.
19:57
Speaker 1: It's the radio world.
19:58
Speaker 3: We have a lot of listeners in Hamilton and some
20:02
Speaker 3: in Toronto that have interacted. We did a Boston meet
20:05
Speaker 3: and greet back in twenty nineteen, I think it was
20:08
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, and had a guy drive down from Canada
20:13
Speaker 3: from Toronto drove down to Boston.
20:15
Speaker 1: Which was kind of cool.
20:17
Speaker 3: And so I've been on the airwaves on and off
20:19
Speaker 3: there called in back in the day when the Blue
20:21
Speaker 3: Jays were still kind of good.
20:23
Speaker 1: And I learned, you know, I learned.
20:25
Speaker 3: Because of all that the mythology of Toronto baseball, watching
20:30
Speaker 3: the highlight reels and just never walk the streets, and
20:33
Speaker 3: there's there's some kind of weird poetic part to that,
20:36
Speaker 3: like some cities you visit, some cities you kind of imagine,
20:41
Speaker 3: and Toronto is still imagination for me. It's a city
20:44
Speaker 3: I know kind of without knowing, and I'll go there
20:48
Speaker 3: and I hope I'm not disappointed. Sometimes you go places
20:50
Speaker 3: you're not disappointed. But someday I'll get there and I'll
20:53
Speaker 3: stand outside the Rogers Center and I'll stare up at
20:55
Speaker 3: the CN Tower and I'll eat some ballpark poutine and
21:01
Speaker 3: I'll check that.
21:01
Speaker 1: Box and then I'll move on to something else.
21:04
Speaker 3: But it really started my fascination with the lack of
21:08
Speaker 3: information about the Blue Jays, and it was all because
21:11
Speaker 3: of this week in baseball. So while I have a
21:15
Speaker 3: fascination with Toronto, Go, Dodgers Go, They're in town.
21:19
Speaker 1: There.
21:19
Speaker 3: Cannot wait for tonight. Always fun to watch the world.
21:21
Speaker 3: There's gonna be extra special from the sportsbook here, and
21:25
Speaker 3: I'm not sure which sportsbook.
21:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to.
21:27
Speaker 3: We'll figure that out at a later day, but we
21:29
Speaker 3: look forward to it in Vegas.
21:31
Speaker 1: Now, before I get out of here, I did want
21:33
Speaker 1: to mention not that I'm going anywhere, I actually have
21:36
Speaker 1: some I'm doing in Vegas. I have to go to
21:37
Speaker 1: bed in a little bit.
21:39
Speaker 3: But I've been seeing this so often during these baseball
21:43
Speaker 3: playoffs and other college football and different sporting events I've
21:47
Speaker 3: been watching. I have to bring this up, so it's
21:51
Speaker 3: about a commercial, but just bear with me. So the
21:53
Speaker 3: thing about airline commercials is that they're all little Broadway shows.
21:59
Speaker 3: At least, it seems like like that everyone's teeth sparkles
22:02
Speaker 3: like they've been polished by the tooth fairy herself.
22:05
Speaker 1: Personally, she didn't even need any money.
22:09
Speaker 3: The skies are always cheerful, everyone's smiling, like I said,
22:15
Speaker 3: And when I fly, I see a lot of people
22:17
Speaker 3: that are in bad moods. I see many people that
22:21
Speaker 3: haven't showered in a long time. I see people that
22:25
Speaker 3: look like they would rather.
22:27
Speaker 1: Be anywhere else than the airport.
22:30
Speaker 3: And I've never seen in one of these commercials as
22:33
Speaker 3: screaming baby. I've never seen being stuck in the middle
22:37
Speaker 3: seat between two guys who smell like old tuna fish
22:41
Speaker 3: sandwiches and are bigger than the girth of the plane. No,
22:47
Speaker 3: what I see on these commercials, it's always a choreographed,
22:50
Speaker 3: happy clappy celebration where everyone's twirling their carry ons like
22:55
Speaker 3: they're starring and singing in the rain right, and now lately,
22:59
Speaker 3: as I've watched the baseball playoffs, I have been hit
23:01
Speaker 3: over the head. I'm sure you have as well with
23:03
Speaker 3: a barrage. I think they are thirty second musicals about
23:07
Speaker 3: Southwest Airlines. Good looking people dancing in different locations, laughing
23:14
Speaker 3: like the gate change was the greatest thing that ever happened,
23:17
Speaker 3: because they get the walk by the Cinabun and they
23:20
Speaker 3: didn't know the cinapun was there. You know, the usual
23:23
Speaker 3: standards stuff, and not necessarily this one. But you see
23:26
Speaker 3: the guy spinning the suitcase like he's Fred Astare with
23:30
Speaker 3: the Samsonite. The woman does the chat cha cha while
23:34
Speaker 3: the flight attendant beams with pride.
23:36
Speaker 1: In the background.
23:38
Speaker 3: This commercial featured a lady who's smiling and excited because
23:42
Speaker 3: of what Southwest Airlines is doing. So she took a
23:45
Speaker 3: watermelon in the grocery store and pretended she was Gallagher
23:49
Speaker 3: and slammed the thing. Now, so if you didn't know
23:53
Speaker 3: any better, if you didn't any better, you would think
23:57
Speaker 3: Southwest was giving away free chip trips to Fiji just
24:00
Speaker 3: by watching the commercial. And as an added bonus, a
24:04
Speaker 3: foot massage, a manny and a petty and a warm
24:07
Speaker 3: chocolate chip cookie. But they are not no no, no,
24:10
Speaker 3: no no. They are announcing, and they're spending a lot
24:13
Speaker 3: of money doing this, a lot of ad time.
24:16
Speaker 1: I guess they're soft. Announcing hasn't started yet.
24:18
Speaker 3: That the very thing that made Southwest special, the thing
24:23
Speaker 3: that made Southwest Airlines stand out above the crowd, is
24:28
Speaker 3: going away and there's nothing you can do about it.
24:32
Speaker 3: And they're telling you this as good news because they're
24:36
Speaker 3: doing it with jazz hands. They're giving you jazz hands.
24:40
Speaker 1: Now.
24:40
Speaker 3: Once upon a time, in a land far far away,
24:43
Speaker 3: Southwest was the funky cousin, the upstart airline. They were
24:48
Speaker 3: the black sheep of the airline community. Everyone else these
24:53
Speaker 3: days charged charged you for essentially breathing. They do like
24:57
Speaker 3: the nickel and dime situation that we have here in
25:01
Speaker 3: Vegas with the overcharging, and that's a lot of the
25:06
Speaker 3: airline industry right, just a bad attitude. But Southwest was different.
25:11
Speaker 1: They weren't like that.
25:12
Speaker 3: No baggage fees, no seat assignments, just line up, pick
25:15
Speaker 3: your spot, first come, first serve. They weren't glamorous, but
25:19
Speaker 3: they were honest. They were the waffle house of the sky.
25:25
Speaker 3: If you will come as you are eat all the
25:29
Speaker 3: hash browns you want, and we'll get you where you're going.
25:32
Speaker 1: And that's it.
25:32
Speaker 3: But now now the waffle house is adding a dress
25:36
Speaker 3: code and a nine dollars fee for the privilege of
25:40
Speaker 3: sitting at the counter, if you will, metaphorically, so Southwest,
25:43
Speaker 3: if you have not heard the reason they're spending so
25:45
Speaker 3: much money on commercials, they are very excited with jazz
25:48
Speaker 3: hands to announce and a woman spiking a watermelon that
25:53
Speaker 3: Southwest is morphing into every other stale, boring, overpriced airline line,
26:01
Speaker 3: the place where customer service goes to die, in fact,
26:06
Speaker 3: customer services.
26:07
Speaker 1: Code for you'll pay extra for.
26:10
Speaker 3: That, but I got it for free. I don't understand.
26:15
Speaker 3: I don't get it. I don't get it. What's going on?
26:20
Speaker 3: That kind of thing, because that's the way of the world,
26:25
Speaker 3: reminds me of a famous a famous tune that was
26:32
Speaker 3: about the man upstairs, The man upstairs, And I've quoted
26:38
Speaker 3: these lyrics a few times, right, maybe this I think
26:43
Speaker 3: it's the boys upstairs, I think is what the song is.
26:48
Speaker 3: It's a Tom Petty song and it's all the boys
26:51
Speaker 3: upstairs want to see is how much you'll pay for
26:54
Speaker 3: what you used to get for free. And this is
26:59
Speaker 3: a great example. This is a great example of that.
27:02
Speaker 3: Now I complain about this stuff. I've talked about this
27:04
Speaker 3: on the podcast before. My wife's like, oh, it's just
27:06
Speaker 3: you know, that's the price of stuff. Now, I said, well,
27:08
Speaker 3: it wasn't the price of stuff. They were able to
27:09
Speaker 3: survive without having us to spend that. It's all the
27:14
Speaker 3: dumb stuff. It's all all the stupid stuff that bothers
27:16
Speaker 3: me anyway. So Southwest is going to be like every
27:18
Speaker 3: other airline and you'll pay extra. They want you to
27:22
Speaker 3: smile while they slip the hand into your back pocket
27:26
Speaker 3: and take your wallet out and empty all of your
27:30
Speaker 3: money and all that.
27:31
Speaker 1: They want to run up your credit.
27:32
Speaker 3: Card and they want to hand you a plate of
27:36
Speaker 3: steam broccoli and let you know that it is apple pie.
27:40
Speaker 1: It is French apple pie, and it's all the mode
27:44
Speaker 1: and you're going to love it.
27:45
Speaker 3: And that is that isn't evolution, it's erosion. And the
27:51
Speaker 3: marketing team knows exactly what they're doing. I'm not ripping them,
27:54
Speaker 3: I would. I understand why they're doing it. It's some
27:56
Speaker 3: big ad firm and that's why the commercials are so
28:00
Speaker 3: aggressively cheerful. They're trying to inoculate you against outrage. You
28:05
Speaker 3: shouldn't be happy or shouldn't be angry, because everyone's happy.
28:08
Speaker 3: It's hard to get mad at a person doing the
28:10
Speaker 3: electric slide or a woman slamming down a watermelon. It's
28:17
Speaker 3: like getting angry at a golden retriever. You can't get
28:19
Speaker 3: angry at a golden retriever.
28:20
Speaker 1: Or a baby.
28:22
Speaker 3: The brilliance, if you can call it that in a sick,
28:25
Speaker 3: twisted way of modern corporate America. Listen, I'm part of
28:29
Speaker 3: the advertising world also, but it's how it packages bad news.
28:35
Speaker 3: As a block party. They tell you, hey, your ticket
28:38
Speaker 3: is getting more expensive. But look, here's a ukulele. It's
28:42
Speaker 3: the it's the look over here. So that's what magic is.
28:44
Speaker 3: The whole point of magic is to get your eyes
28:46
Speaker 3: looking somewhere else. We also all have a blind spot
28:49
Speaker 3: right in front of us. And the magicians they were
28:53
Speaker 3: con artists, but they figured that out. And I love magic.
28:56
Speaker 3: I just know the hustle. I've learned the scam. And
28:59
Speaker 3: they tell you the thing you loved about the airline
29:02
Speaker 3: is vanishing.
29:03
Speaker 1: The bags fly free.
29:05
Speaker 3: The some people like the open seating, the bags fly
29:08
Speaker 3: free thing is the big one for me. But here's
29:11
Speaker 3: a drone shot of somebody smiling and a nice, nice
29:14
Speaker 3: looking woman in man and they're high fiving.
29:17
Speaker 1: In slow motion.
29:18
Speaker 3: They sell you inconvenience wrapped in confetti. And the cool
29:23
Speaker 3: part is that for years, Southwest built an identity on
29:27
Speaker 3: being the other airline.
29:29
Speaker 1: Right.
29:30
Speaker 3: It's kind of like my theory on America started out,
29:33
Speaker 3: you know, taxation without representation. We're going to go start
29:36
Speaker 3: our own country here, and you know, give it a
29:38
Speaker 3: couple hundred years, and there's like so much tax it's insane,
29:42
Speaker 3: especially if living where I live, in the People's Republic
29:44
Speaker 3: of California and where you can't get a free bag
29:49
Speaker 3: at the grocery store or use a plastic straw, and
29:53
Speaker 3: because they're worried about the environment, and then the whole
29:55
Speaker 3: place burns up and all those things go in the sky. Anyway,
29:58
Speaker 3: but you know, they're looking out and they're taxing you
30:01
Speaker 3: for the honor of looking out for you because you're
30:04
Speaker 3: not an adult and you can't figure it out. But again, listen,
30:08
Speaker 3: you know the identity was they were different and you
30:11
Speaker 3: didn't they didn't have to play those games, and we
30:15
Speaker 3: all bought in There are very many loyal customers. I
30:17
Speaker 3: used to fly Southwest quite a bit on my traveling days,
30:21
Speaker 3: and you're just another passenger at the mercy of another
30:24
Speaker 3: airline conglomerate that's decided customer service is best measured by
30:29
Speaker 3: how efficiently they can convince you the sucker, to pay
30:33
Speaker 3: for what used to be for free. And what's next
30:36
Speaker 3: a surcharge. If you dare to smile without the approval
30:40
Speaker 3: of the airline, that is going to cost you a
30:43
Speaker 3: preferred breathing zone. And we'll have the a breathing zone,
30:46
Speaker 3: the b breathing zone, and the sea breathing zone.
30:49
Speaker 1: For nineteen ninety nine. And that's the get in price.
30:52
Speaker 1: The buy now price will.
30:54
Speaker 3: Be much higher down the line. It's the power of marketing.
30:59
Speaker 3: It's the power mark you know.
31:01
Speaker 1: That's what this is.
31:03
Speaker 3: You can change people's perspective and all that is just
31:05
Speaker 3: just has to put enough costs.
31:06
Speaker 1: You just have to put enough gloss in there.
31:09
Speaker 3: And if you polish the pig enough, you start thinking
31:12
Speaker 3: maybe just maybe it's not a pig, maybe it's a
31:13
Speaker 3: show pony, it's not a pig, and maybe you'll clap
31:17
Speaker 3: and it's great, and I would advise you to not
31:20
Speaker 3: be fooled when a company that once prided itself on
31:24
Speaker 3: being different starts acting like everyone else and everything else.
31:30
Speaker 3: The confetti is not a celebration. That is camouflage. That's right,
31:35
Speaker 3: when it looks like a sprinkle cookie with all the
31:37
Speaker 3: different colors, that's camouflage.
31:39
Speaker 1: And it's the clown world.
31:41
Speaker 3: So listen, go ahead, they're obviously not consulting with a
31:43
Speaker 3: weekend podcast. Go ahead, Southwest, crank up the old music there,
31:47
Speaker 3: spin the suitcases, do the jazz hands, body slam whoever
31:52
Speaker 3: you want with a smile, and hire the top Tony
31:56
Speaker 3: Award winning choreographer. But I see the broccoli, and no
32:00
Speaker 3: amount of jazz hands, no amount of smiling and winking
32:06
Speaker 3: at the cameras going to make it taste like delicious
32:09
Speaker 3: apple pie.
32:10
Speaker 1: It's just not.
32:12
Speaker 3: And on that note, we'll get out, have a wonderful
32:15
Speaker 3: rest of your Friday here with my man Danny G
32:19
Speaker 3: producing this podcast, and we will be back at it again.
32:24
Speaker 3: A story that has never been told. I'm saving this
32:26
Speaker 3: for the Saturday podcast. It is a lasso of a
32:32
Speaker 3: good time. Let me just say, a lasso of a
32:33
Speaker 3: good time. So we'll save that for the Saturday Pot.
32:36
Speaker 3: Have a wonderful rest of your day today. I will
32:39
Speaker 3: be hanging out in Vegas. If you're in town here
32:43
Speaker 3: and you wanna say hello, If you're a fan of
32:45
Speaker 3: the show, and you're not crazy, and you've taken a
32:48
Speaker 3: shower within the last few days.
32:50
Speaker 1: I'd love to meet you.
32:51
Speaker 3: So send me a message, and I'm on Twitter at
32:55
Speaker 3: Ben Maler. I'll check it throughout the day. I normally
32:58
Speaker 3: don't do that, but for you, I will do that anyway.
33:00
Speaker 3: I have a great rest of your day. And as
33:03
Speaker 3: much as I talked about Toronto, if I got paid
33:05
Speaker 3: for every time I said that name, I'd make a
33:07
Speaker 3: lot of money. The Dodgers are going to win the
33:09
Speaker 3: World Series and that is that. Later skater aasta pasta.
33:19
Speaker 1: Now gotta murder, I gotta go