Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Lifetime Commitment to The Maller Militia

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Lifetime Commitment to The Maller Militia · 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 sol fashion of fairness. He
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: It's a clearing house of hot takes. Break free for
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Mahler,
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: as we kick off another weekend here on this twenty
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: second day of May. However, as we always point out
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: the great think about the podcast, as you can listen
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: whatever the hell you want, You do not have to listen.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: When it's fresh piping hot out of the audio.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Ven on this podcast today to kick off the new weekend,
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: we have a never before told story a someone say,
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: a great accomplishment or a very scary moment in life,
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: also rotating slowly over hickory chips. But we will begin
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: with this so as you are likely aware when you
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: do the kind of work that plausibly I do. There
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: are awards that are given out in radio. Some of
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: them are fancy awards. Some of them are lifetime achievement awards.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: There are important awards, the kind of awards where grown
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: adults put on sports coats in July and pretend the
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: rubbery chicken they're eating is edible and they're having a
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: good time socializing. For example, I just saw the other
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: day that Boomer Assiasin is a Radio Hall of Famer,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: much to the dismay of alf the Alien Opiner and
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: others that have been trying to get me into the
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Radio Hall of Fame. Good luck on that if Boomer
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Assiasin is getting in anyway. There's all kinds of awards.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: It's the Marconi Award. Did the Marconi Award? Boomers got
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: the Hall of Fame plaque? There are industry honors that
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: are given out where pretty much everyone just pass each
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: other on the ass and places grab ass.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Now. I do not like award shows. I never like.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: The only one I like is the one that we do,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the Beny Awards.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Other than that, I'm not there for the handshakes and
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: the smiles and the photo ops and the red carpet
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: and all that stuff. Awkward pointing at each other and
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: these people act like they just discovered fire. However, I
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: have been lucky, truly. I've worked at legendary stations. I
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: did some local filling stuff for WEI and Boston. The
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: overnight show was on WEI. It is now for many
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: years been on ninety eighty five, the Sports Hub in Boston,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: places that have won the Marconi Award. So indirectly, I
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: am a multi time Platinum Marconi Award winner. Wink wink
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: nod four hours of the day. And when I worked
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: at WEI, it was more than that I was in
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: control of I was at the very front of the plane.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I was in the cockpit. I had my.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Hand on the steering wheel and the throttle and all
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: that stuff. And those are big time radio cathedrals, places
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: where people care deeply about every quarter hour and the
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: numbers and all that stuff, and whether a microphone sounds warm?
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Does it sound warm?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: However, none of that prepared me for this, all right,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: None of those things prepared me for what I'm about
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: to tell you, because on the recent Boston trip I
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: received the single greatest honor of my broadcasting career. And
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: you probably said, well, why didn't you mention this? You
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: did three shows last week, you didn't mention this art.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: I was so overwhelmed by this. I was trying to
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: process this particular moment and it did not register.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to think about this.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: How I want to present this to you as you
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: are a real next level p one. And from what
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: I understand, a lot of the people that were at
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: this event didn't even realize what they were witnessing. I
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: didn't even realize at the moment what I was witnessing.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: So what is the single greatest honor of my broadcasting career.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: You want to take a guess, all right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: The correct answer would be a tattoo, not my tattoo,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: all right.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I did not go out and get a tattoo.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I didn't go full mikey Adams, Boston radio legend who
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: had got tattoos on his tooks. I did not suddenly
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: become a backup guitarist for some garage band from twenty
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: oh four. I did not wander into some random tattoo
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: parlor in Southey after three Canolis and a bunch of
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Sam Adams summer ale screaming.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Put a dragon on my neck right now? Do it?
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Put some barbed wire around my arm. No, Mike the
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Leprechaun got a tattoo of me. Let me repeat that.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Mike the Leprechaun. Yes, that Mike the Leprecaun. H I know,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I know, don't shake your head. Mike the Leprechaun got
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: a tattoo of me, not of my face. Thank god,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: nobody needs that horror movie on their shoulder blade. However,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: he did get a tattoo that reads quote Ben Mahler
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: show in the air everywhere tattooed.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Where was it on his left or right ass cheek? No,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: his right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Forearm, permanent ink forever.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not lying. By the way, this is not a joke. Now.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: This was revealed at the Mighty Squirrel tap room in
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Boston after the Red Sox game, during the first of
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: a weekend of malard meet and greets. One minute, I
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: am shaking hands, taking some photos, trying not to spill
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: all the alcoholic beverages on myself, and the next minute,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Mike the Leprechaun casually flashes his forearm like he's showing
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: me a new watch.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, Ben Boom body ink.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Now, as you might imagine, I stared at it the
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: way you would stare at an unexpected draft standing in
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: your kitchen. Why is there a draft in my kitchen.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: I didn't ask for the draft to be in the kitchen.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Where did the draft come from? When is it going
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: to leave? I was confused. I was alarmed. I was thunderstruck.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: I was also slightly honored. I was also concerned. I
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: guess mostly can sir. My first thought was, Okay, now
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: you boys have punked me a lot over the years.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: This must be fake, right, this has to be quite
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: the gag haha, let's bust mallards balls Mike the Leprechaun's doing.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: Do some kind of irish humor, and it had to
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: be a counterfeit. One of those I think they're called
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: henna tattoos. You know what I'm talking about? Those all
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: those temporary sticker things, maybe a sharpie, one of those
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: prank tattoo kids Back in the old days, kids used
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: to get those at the arcade.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they have arcades anymore.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Right next to the rubber spider and the stale laffy taffy,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: right next to all that stuff, you get the little
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: little fake tattoos. So I actually wanted to rub it
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: with a towel. I was like, in my head, the
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: internal monologue in my head's like, well, let's get a
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: washcloth in my head, I said that some rubbing alcohol,
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: wind dex anything because there was no warning, no build up,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: no drama addict speech. Mike never mentioned this, not once.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Now when I say that, we had many interactions via email,
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: most of it won way from him. We talked on
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: the phone several times, all of that leading up to
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: the big event in Boston, and Mike de Lebron could not.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Have been nicer. He was very kind a.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Little too aggressive, but we love Mike de Leprecaun, so
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: we had some conversations. There were multiple discussions involving the
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: logistics of the Malor meet and greet and what was
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: going to happen and all that, and Finnway going to
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: the Red Sox game, the Wuss game at Polar Park
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: and Wooster, the parking, the beer, the bathroom strategy, all
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: that stuff, very important topics in life. I'm still trying
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: to also get over Mike de Leprecaun going around Lansdow
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: Street and all the other places we went and saying, Hollywood,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: these people are Hollywood Radio Hollywood's Oh my god. Never
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: once did he ever say casually, hey, Ben, by the way,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: just to give your heads up on therengraving your name
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: into my skin, into my body. That feels like somewhat
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: relevant information.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It does now.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: I've had listeners in the past that have said, how
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna get a tattoo. I love the show, I'm
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: gonna get a tattoo, and it never actually happened, unless
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: they never told me and did it anyway.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So to my knowledge, as.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: As I recall, this is the first time this has happened,
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I certainly believe this is something that is so memorable
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: I would have known. Again, I've had a couple of
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: people that have emailed me and saying, you know, this
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: show's a big part of my life.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, going through.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: A tough patch and I had one guy in particular
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: back East who's like, hey, I love your show man.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I was in jail for a while, I was doing
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: some drugs or whatever.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: And I got out and shows kept me sane, and
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I'm going to.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Get a tattoo.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: But that guy just kind of disappeared, and so I
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: figured out he was just kind of probably drunk one
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: night sent that email, and then he sobered up and said,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: I'm not doing that, and so I didn't have any
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: warning here, not even a casual footnote from Michael Leprechaun.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: You know, I say, hey, oh, by the way, you know,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: traffic on I ninety was rough. I'm getting I'm getting
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: a tattoo. This is a life decision, and the tattoo
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: placement matters. I was studying tattoo placement because that's the
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: rabbit hole I fell into.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: And this was not hit. You know.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: You know some people get that tattoo, You get it
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: buried on an ankle, like lower ankle, covered up by
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: the sock, and nobody needs to see it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not not secretly.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: This was not secretly tucked away somewhere next to a
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: regrettable spring break, you know, those little dolphin tattoos sometimes
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: women will get with their friends. It's not a tramp stamp,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: thank god.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: No.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: It was right on the forearm, which I'm told is
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: prime real estate. If you're a tattoo person, that's prime
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: real estate.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Now. Uh.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: I plan on posting some photos later today, and so
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: if you go to my social media pages, you'll be
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: able to see the photographs. I have a couple of
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: photographs of said tattoo, just to prove I am not lying,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: and those will be up on the Instagram page which
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: will be Ben Mahler on Fox, and the Facebook page
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Ben Mahler's show. Hopefully, depending on my sleep schedule, I
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: will get those up.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Somewhat early in the day.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So for those that are blind that can't see, let
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: me just lay out what's going on here, because it
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter if I give out my Instagram and Facebook.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You're porked. So let me help you out. I mentioned
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: good real estate.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: It's on the forearm right under a Bible verse because
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: when you think Ben Mahler Show, you think the Bible,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: and right near a red Sox logo, which means our
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: dumb little radio show is now spiritually and geographically connected
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: to Jesus and Big Poppy very similar, very similar. What
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: are those three things have in common? What do they
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: not have in common? Which one doesn't belong? So that's pressure,
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: all right, that's forearm tattoo pressure. Because a forearm tattoo
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: is visible. It's said to be motivational when you put
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: a quote on your forearm. That's what they say the
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: tattoo people. Apparently our show is now motivational, which is terrifying.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Imagine waking up every day looking down at your forearm
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: and seeing Ben Mahler show in the air everywhere. What
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: if Mike the Leprechaun has a bad day. What if
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: he looks at that forearm and then does something bad,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: and then he connects that to the bad act. What
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: if he burns his toast right or you know, gets
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: a parking ticket, loses a five leg parlay because of
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: the Celtics.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: What if that happens.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: So now I'm emotionally involved in all this. The tattoo
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: has become sentiment in my mind. It's a I picture
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: it taking, you know, taking a bigger role in his life,
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: like it's going to talk to him and stuff, you know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: easily there, Mike, don't speed, it's the Ben Malor tattoo.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Come on, now, let's play some Insta trivia. Here's the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: who am I game for the day.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: And like, the tattoo is now a life coach for
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Mike the Leprechaun. Mike, don't do that. That's a bad decision.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And here's where it gets weirdly existential. Now, as you know,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I come from a Jewish family and tattoos generally frowned upon.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: As I was growing up verboten old school relatives. I
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: remember when I was going around as a kid, and
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: old school relatives acted like the tattoo automatically disqualified you
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: from entering polite society, and possibly several really good kosher delis,
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: really good kosher delis, which you need to be able
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: to attend. Of course, to my knowledge, the only thing
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: it really does is you can't be buried at a
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Jewish cemetery. I guess there's some other rules and whatnot,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: and there's some exemptions you can get.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: I am certainly not a hardcore religious person. I am
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: culturally Jewish. As I've talked about, I like the cherry pick.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people do this with religion.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: We cherry pick what we like and what we necessarily
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: don't like, Like I enjoy matza ball soup. One of
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: the great things about having the history that I have
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: is I can deploy Yiddish words rec relation, you know, recreationally.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: If I could talk, that would help us early.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: But I can casually just drop some Yiddish because my
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: grandfather would say it all the time, and I feel
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: like I have a free pass to say my sugarnaw
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: or hutspa or schmuck. You know, those are fun things
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: to say, and I feel like they're part of my
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: history and part of my background. It it's basically verbal
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: jazz music. I just throw those words out there and
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: knock yourself out. However, tattoos were a point of no return,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: never part of my family and my family business. I
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: will tell you some of the generation after me, they're
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: all in, you know, They're like, hey.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: We're in. You know. Some of my.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Younger relatives are all in on that. But I was
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: of the aide which I was programmed by my mom
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: and dad and all that. But here I am, through
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: absolutely no planning of my own, I have somehow become
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: tattoo adjacent. I don't have the tattoo, but I'm tattoo adjacent.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: So this is part of my legacy, not the show,
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: not real estate, not philanthropy or any of that stuff.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I am an arm decoration in Greater Boston.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: So when you're going around places like Worcester, Farming, Farmingham
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: or any of those places, and you see a guy
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: that looks like a Leprecaunt, however taller, that could be
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: the guy with my name on his arm. And naturally,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: my mind spiral immediately. What if this becomes a trend
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: that people are like, hey, we need to complete our
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: look with the malord tattoo, Like what's next. I remember
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: when I was a young broadcaster, the great Tony Bruno,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: and there was a listener from Maine, mister main event
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: long gone unfortunately.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: To the other side across the early gates.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: However, he did get a tattoo of Tony Bruno and
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: it was like an Italian thing or whatever. I remember Tony.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: We saw some photos of it. It was like it was
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: like a big deal. It's like, now I've I feel
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: like I've reached that Tony Bruno status indocto.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Of course, I'm not anywhere near the legend of Tony Bruno.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: However, on that regard we are equal because he had
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: a listener to get a tattoo of his name, and
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: now I have Mike the Leprechaun who has crossed over
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: and done that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty cool.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: And so my mind of course spiraled immediately, because when
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: you're a neurotic gas bag, you don't just enjoy the moment.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: You have to investigate the big meaning, right Like it's
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: you're like a low budget inspector gadget type detective.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So I started asking questions.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: I think we all have questions, and these are these
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: are questions that nobody wanted answered. What if Mike changes
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: his mind in twenty years, What if he starts listening
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: to smooth jazz U PBS, you know, or public radio,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: which is the radio version of PBS. What if another
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: overnight host comes along, does he erase my name and
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: put somebody else on there? What if there was a
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: tat I got a typo tat typo of the tattoo
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: that I missed.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: So you ever stare at.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: A tattoo long enough that the letters stopped looking real?
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: And so I kept looking at his photo, and I'm
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: like convinced, well, maybe the word everywhere was spelled wrong,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: or my name was spelled wrong. I was ready to
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: call in the linguistics experts over from Harvard Yard to
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: take a look. And so then I had this bizarre
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: awakening realization. Whatever you want to say, somewhere in Massachusetts,
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: if Mike is at the beach, you Mike said it
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: was really hot part of the week this week in
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: the Commonwealth. So he's out there at the beach, which
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: nobody wants to see. But Mike the Leprechaun is out there.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: My show is technically our show because it's a partnership,
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: has now beach exposure. Yeah, every time he goes to
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: a music venue or a restaurant or any of.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: That, we've got it. That's branding. Baby.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Johnny Depp once said, my body is my journal, and
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: my tattoos are my story. Well, apparently I am now
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: a chapter in Mike the Leprechaun's autobiography, hopefully not the
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: cautionary tale chapter, which will be determined at another time.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: At another time, we'll see what happens with Jimmy Buffett
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: called tattoos a permanent solution to a temporary problem. However,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: maybe this isn't a problem, right, Maybe this isn't a problem.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Maybe this is just sports radio fandom at its purest,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: completely irrational, slightly concerning, endlessly entertaining, and honestly, I got
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: to tell you, I was touched by I don't get verklemped,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: I don't give a clem very often.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I was deeply touched. I was also mildly.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Terrified, mostly both because, again I go back to the
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: origins of the job.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Radio is weird.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Podcasting is weird, not as weird as radio. It's weird,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: it's not as weird. The whole business is strange bizarro.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: We talking to microphones in dark rooms late at night,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: ridiculous hours, hoping that somebody somewhere is listening, and then
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: you are shocked to find out that not only are
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: they listening. One day a guy walks into the Cask
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: and Flagon and then the Mighty Squirrel Room in Boston
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: and says, I like your show so much, I put
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: it on my arm forever.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: You cannot prepare for that.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: There's no Marconi category for that, and maybe there should be,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Maybe there should be.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: However there is not. All right, Meanwhile, turning the page.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Here, the fires always start the same way in southern California.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Smooth transition, no so. A little smoke here, a suspicious
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: orange glow off in the hills over there, some guy
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: on TV standing in front of a mountain yelling. Officials
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: are monitoring the situation while ash floats through the air
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: everywhere like it was shot out.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Of a cannon, and it was.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: It kind of has the texture of Parmagan cheese, Pamagana.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Cheese, except it's ash.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Floating gently through the air, and then suddenly everyone in
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: the southland the La basin here is checking the wind
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: map like its election.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Knife fact. We have an app. I'm trying to start.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I can find the name of it. I got my
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: phone right here. Let me see. We canna find it.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: We have an app that is here to monitor Let
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: me see find it. It's not coming up. It's got
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a fire thing and let me see.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: I can see it here. La da da da da
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: da da da. I'm trying to find it because it's
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: it's crazy. My my wife actually told me about it.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: She pointed this out. You're like, well, here's the app
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: and you have it on your phone to monitor the
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: fire like it gives you details. This is the same
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: stuff the news uses. I can't find it, but it's
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: a good app, trust me. And so this is what
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: we do in southern California when there's a fire. And
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: this week wildfire. Wildfire season returned to Cali right on schedule,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: like pumpkin spice latte or the Dodgers having injury drama
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: every spring training. The Dodgers have the greatest pitching staff
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: in the world, and then by the end of May
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: they're trading cash for guys that suck with the Blue
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Jays and the Reds and teams like that.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So keep my mind.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: This fire was not a mega apocalypse fire. Hopefully it
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: doesn't become that. Nothing close to the cinematic inferno from
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, when the whole neighborhoods around
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: the Palisades and Eaton Canyon looked like they had been
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: attacked by a fire breathing dragon, while the not so
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: honorable Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, was overseas collecting
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: frequent flyer miles comparing safari photos with wart hogs and
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: spotted hyenas in Ghana. Not that I'm bitter about that.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: So these current fires are obviously smaller. They're more an annoyance.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: For me where I live. It's an annoying menace. It's
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: for me.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: It's not a biblical reckoning or anything like that. Still,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: smoke has a way of spreading like gossip in a
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: small little town out in the boondocks. Now again, me personally,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: I am not near the flames.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I am not.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Standing outside with the garden hose pretending that I am
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: in a nineteen eighties Hollywood disaster movie. However, the smoke
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: is my moral enemy, all right. The smoke travels. The
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: smoke is the great California commuter. Smoke has no respect
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: for county lines. It is a rebel freely violating all
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: the many local laws on the books to protect the environment,
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: which is always hilarious to me.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: When they have all these laws.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: You can't do this, you can't have the plastic straws,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: you can't.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Do that with the bags.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: And then every year they have these fires which give
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: all of this pollution. Everything just burns up and it's
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: just a nightmare. The other night, the wind shifted just
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: enough for the Haese, not the Haes from Minnesota, Robbie
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: the Meredith fan, but the Haes to wander towards the
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: sacred radio Palace in the Oaks in Sherman Oaks, right there,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: corner of Ventura and Spalmita, the Fox Sports Radio studios,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: the audio sweatshop, the spoken word dojo, the hallowed mothership
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: of all this nonsense.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Now, at first.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Nobody noticed, nobody, nobody knows. The air conditioner was humming,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: The studio lights glowed. The vending machine down the hall
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: was probably still charging nine dollars for stale trail.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Mix with too many raisins. It was business as usual.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: The cockroaches were doing their thing, crawling around, having a
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: grand time. Then slowly, almost poetically, the smell arrived. It's like,
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I'm at the boy Scouts campfire.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: I'm at a camp out the aroma, not the fun
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: kind either. Not hey, the family's making some s'mores over
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: there at the park at Yosemite or Sequoia or King's Canyon.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: More like, did somebody accidentally smoke a sofa?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And where is that sofa?
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: And because radio people are bizarro deeply wack adoodle, nobody
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: immediately acknowledged. We all just sat there, pretending everything was fine.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: Loreina was eating her curry. Coop was sitting there looking
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: off into the heavens. Nothing to see here. Meanwhile, the
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: studio I'm in slowly starts transforming into a deluxe indoor
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: barbecue pit. And by our two of the show, I
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: felt like Benny Brisket at a Texas Smokehouse barbecue. And
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: I was the meal just rotating slowly over hickory chips.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: While taking phone calls from truck drivers in Iowa and Nebraska.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Line four you're on the air. Also, please base mallard
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: every twenty minutes to make sure that that's okay. Now
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: here's the thing about the biz, another inside radio thing.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Some people think it's glamorous until you actually see how
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: we make the sausage. Some of you have heard this.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: When I meet you, you imagine these polished studios that
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: are like these great palaces of the Roman Empire, celebrity treatment,
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: scented candles, endless cucumber water which tastes like ass. No,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: it's mostly fluorescent lighting, and a guy eating peanut butter
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: crackers at three twelve in the morning while arguing about
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: playoff Harden.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the one precious.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Thing that we have in radio, the one thing that
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: we have that we give to the world, is.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: The voice. That's right, the voice.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: That's the inventory, that's the stockpile, the golden hammer. A
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: singer has vocal cords, a painter has brushes. A baseball
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: pitcher has an elbow ligament hanging on by dental flaws.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: However, what I do. I've got the late.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Night Carnival Barker voice that somehow pays the mortgage and
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: not much more than that, and I guard it like
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: a paranoid suburban dad protecting that thermostat.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: You cannot you know those I hate My dad used
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to do this. You can't turn it down any more
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: than that now. Years ago the goat.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Vin Scully told me that when he was an early
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: broadcaster with the Brooklyn Dodgers and then the La Dodgers,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: he never used hotel air conditioning after having a bad
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: experience and all those years traveling around the United States
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: with the Doyers during baseball season. Obviously the reason he
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: didn't use the air conditioning because he feared it would
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: dry out his throat. So when the Dodgers were in
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Atlanta in July, no Ac, Cincinnati in August, Saint Louis
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: in late late August, sweating like a rotisserie chicken. For
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: the craft, that's commitment. Now, just for the record, that
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: is not that is not just disciplined like that is
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: next level.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not that way.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: If the room feels like the inside of a toaster
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: of and I'm firing up the ac I'm not trying
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: to be a hero here.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to become a monk of broadcasting. Now.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Still, I take the voice seriously, which is why sitting
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: in a smoke infused studio for four hours felt like
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: occupational sabotage. At some point during the overnight, I could
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: feel my throat tightening, you know that feeling, just a
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: little warning flare from the vocal cords, like the check
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: engine light coming on in your car before a road trip.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Not enough to stop the show, of course, just enough
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: to make me very nervous, because again the voice, you
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: become a hypochondriac about your throat. A regular person gets
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: a raspy voice and says, eh, probably allergies. A guy
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: like me gets that, and we start preparing for our obituary.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: I spent the next day doing all the standard remedies.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: I was doing the garlic, the tea, the water, silence,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: cough drops, talking less, which for me is not hard.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: I save my yapping for the big stage four hours
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: a day and the podcast on the weekend. Now, thankfully,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: the pipes bounce back for now. Yet, this is life
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: in California. Fire season isn't really a season. It hasn't
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: been for years. It's more like a subscription service. It
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: just renews automatically every year, whether you want it or not.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And they do a terrible job of fire preparedness in California.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: So there's a.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Lot of fuel to fan the flames, and they haven't
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: been able to figure out, well, maybe if we cut
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: back some of the brush, there won't be as much
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: to burn.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, let it burn, burn, burn burn.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: The geniuses, the leaders of the People's Republic of California.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Not that I'm complaining now. People elsewhere prepare for snowstorms.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: We prepare for air quality alerts and power outages. Somewhere,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: somebody's already packing a go bag while another guy is
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: hosing off ash from his white tesla, pretending this is normal,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: and through it all, the overnight show rolls on. And
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: that's the absurd beauty of this whole thing. In fact,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: right now, even though I've taken all the garlic and
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: all that stuff, you can likely hear still a little
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: bit of a twang in my voice.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: The world can literally.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Smell like smoked porked shoulder, and there will still be
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: a guy in Rancho Cucamonga calling at three point forty
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: in the morning somewhere wanting to yell about the Raiders draft.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it is, And honestly, that's comforting
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: because as long as people are still arguing about.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Sporty stuff in the middle of night.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: The civilization probably hasn't collapsed completely and the job is
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: still there, even if the broadcaster occasionally smells like Mosquite.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: All right, on that note, we are going to get
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: out have a wonderful Friday. We've got new podcast all
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: weekend of course Saturday, and the mail bag on Sunday
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: with a celebrity mail bag guest. If you want to
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: get questions in the mail bag, send them today Real
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: fifth hour at gmail dot com. That's Real fifth hour
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: at gmail dot com. Name in city if you want
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: some love. If not, we'll just make up a fake name,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Real fifth hour at gmail dot com. Any questions you
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: want for Ben and the celebrity guest, we'll have that
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: on Sunday. We got fresh pod again tomorrow.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And we'll catch you next time.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: As Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye, bye bye,