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The Fifth Hour: Numb Footed Maller · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
0:12
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
0:15
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers.
0:16
Speaker 1: In the penthouse.
0:18
Speaker 2: Wow to the clearinghouse of hot takes, break free for
0:21
Speaker 2: something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
0:28
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere.
0:32
Speaker 3: The Fifth Hour with me Ben Mahler, and I assume
0:35
Speaker 3: you know who you are. We are together again on
0:37
Speaker 3: this Saturday. The audio Dojoe the Sweatshop does not stop
0:43
Speaker 3: this the twenty third day of May. I hope your
0:46
Speaker 3: weekend is off to a good start. The one hundred
0:49
Speaker 3: and forty third day of the year, I am told,
0:52
Speaker 3: which means that if you love the number two, then
0:56
Speaker 3: you're really excited about the rest.
0:58
Speaker 1: Of twenty twenty six d There are two hundred and
1:01
Speaker 1: twenty two.
1:01
Speaker 3: Days left in the calendar year, and then we flip
1:05
Speaker 3: it to twenty twenty seven, and a lot of weird,
1:11
Speaker 3: random things happened.
1:13
Speaker 1: Big events happened on this day.
1:16
Speaker 3: I was reading that in seventeen eighty five this guy
1:22
Speaker 3: named Ben Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a buddy
1:28
Speaker 3: of his and described this brand new invention that he
1:32
Speaker 3: had come up with. And what was the invention bifocals? Hello, Yeah,
1:39
Speaker 3: seventeen eighty five. So before that you didn't have any bifocals.
1:43
Speaker 3: And likely it took a while after that for bifocals
1:46
Speaker 3: to become a thing. In nineteen thirty four, you know
1:51
Speaker 3: who Clyde Berow is. You're familiar with Clyde Berow. No,
1:57
Speaker 3: how about Bonnie? You know a woman named Bonnie, Bonnie Parker.
2:02
Speaker 3: Now well together together, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow became
2:09
Speaker 3: known as the Great American Outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde.
2:14
Speaker 1: And on this date, way back.
2:16
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty four, almost one hundred years ago, ninety
2:20
Speaker 3: two years ago, they were killed by police. They were
2:24
Speaker 3: ambushed in Louisiana. So that was the end of Bonnie
2:27
Speaker 3: and Clyde. And that's all. And at one point that
2:33
Speaker 3: the car, that one of the cars they had was
2:36
Speaker 3: at I'm pretty confident I remember seeing this in prim Nevada,
2:40
Speaker 3: which is now a ghost town, on the way from
2:42
Speaker 3: La to Vegas. They had one of Bonnie and Clyde's cars.
2:47
Speaker 3: It might have even been the one that they were
2:49
Speaker 3: in when they got killed, and it was just randomly
2:52
Speaker 3: in the Nevada Desert. I remember that. Also on this
2:57
Speaker 3: date in nineteen eighty forty six years ago, the horror
3:01
Speaker 3: film The Shining, which is still revered revealed in Hollywood,
3:08
Speaker 3: still loved. Jack Nicholson was in that. Stephen King was
3:12
Speaker 3: based on a Stephen King book. Stanley Kubrick his direction.
3:18
Speaker 3: That was back in the day. So that was some weird,
3:21
Speaker 3: weird things that have taken place on this day and
3:24
Speaker 3: birthdays and all that stuff.
3:26
Speaker 1: But you didn't tune into this podcast for that.
3:29
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no no no no. By the way,
3:32
Speaker 3: John Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller died on this date nineteen
3:37
Speaker 3: thirty seven. And when you're that rich, you don't ever
3:39
Speaker 3: want to die, right, You never want.
3:40
Speaker 1: To die, all right?
3:41
Speaker 3: So on this podcast we have Benny Bigfoot and the
3:45
Speaker 3: Radio Family.
3:47
Speaker 1: Benny Bigfoot and the Radio Family.
3:50
Speaker 3: We begin though with this, so there is an imaginary warning.
3:55
Speaker 1: Label before you enter New York City.
4:00
Speaker 3: And I've talked a lot in the last couple of
4:02
Speaker 3: weekends about the travels and there's many stories left to
4:05
Speaker 3: be told that when you enter New York City there
4:09
Speaker 3: needs to be a warning label. I think of this
4:11
Speaker 3: as an imaginary label. It should be real comfortable shoes,
4:14
Speaker 3: strongly recommended. Pride will not protect your golden arches. All right,
4:20
Speaker 3: this is not McDonald's, so naturally, of course I ignore
4:23
Speaker 3: this mythical warning. And in previous episodes, we told you
4:28
Speaker 3: about our adventures around Boston, Worcester, Portsmith, New Hampshire, Portland, Maine,
4:34
Speaker 3: Salem in Massachusetts, all over the rest of vacation land,
4:39
Speaker 3: beautiful part of the country with lighthouses and just really
4:43
Speaker 3: cool stuff, lovely stops. Enjoyed my time. I cannot tell
4:47
Speaker 3: you how much I enjoyed my time. It was just wonderful, scenic,
4:51
Speaker 3: it was manageable. There was a lot of all right,
4:54
Speaker 3: let's drive here, let's walk around for ten or fifteen minutes,
4:57
Speaker 3: let's eat something deep fried, and then we'll get back
5:01
Speaker 3: in the car. We'll drive for half an hour, and
5:03
Speaker 3: then we'll stop, and then we'll do the same thing,
5:05
Speaker 3: and there you go. So after the game in Worcester,
5:10
Speaker 3: after leaving the WUSS game in Worcester on Mother's Day,
5:13
Speaker 3: we pointed the rental version of the malamobile towards Gotham
5:18
Speaker 3: and New York City exposed the strategy immediately right.
5:24
Speaker 1: The plan was simple. Plan was simple.
5:27
Speaker 3: Spend quality family time with my older brother and his wife,
5:32
Speaker 3: my sister in law, wander around Manhattan, eat a little pizza,
5:36
Speaker 3: have some bagels, consumed delicious pie like emotionally exhausted tourists
5:43
Speaker 3: are supposed to do, and pretend that we're still young
5:47
Speaker 3: enough for the spontaneous urban adventure. Now, on long trips,
5:54
Speaker 3: there's no room for one more than one parachute. When
5:59
Speaker 3: I try, there's only room for one set of shoes.
6:05
Speaker 1: That's it. Number one.
6:07
Speaker 3: Now, this is not a lifestyle choice. This is aviation economics.
6:13
Speaker 3: If you've traveled at all recently, you know that the
6:17
Speaker 3: airlines treat the customers like an ATM machine, and whatever.
6:21
Speaker 1: Used to be free is no longer free.
6:23
Speaker 3: Airlines treat check baggage like it's gold bouyon, and for
6:28
Speaker 3: them it is I get it, and we're all captive
6:32
Speaker 3: and all that, and so it's like gold Bouleon being
6:35
Speaker 3: transported across enemy lines. So as Benny Bigfoot, the Sasquatch
6:40
Speaker 3: of sports talk, I made a decision and in hindsight,
6:45
Speaker 3: this was a terrible, terrible decision.
6:49
Speaker 1: All right, what was my decision?
6:51
Speaker 3: I chose style overfunction? Yeah, why would I do that.
7:00
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about my appearance. I'm ugly, I do radio.
7:03
Speaker 1: What am I worried about?
7:05
Speaker 3: Well, Dion Sanders famously said, back when he was playing,
7:08
Speaker 3: he said, if you look good, you feel good, and
7:10
Speaker 3: if you feel good, you play good. So I said,
7:13
Speaker 3: you know what, if I look good and I feel
7:16
Speaker 3: good and if you feel good, then I'll have a
7:20
Speaker 3: good trip.
7:21
Speaker 1: Well, didn't quite work out that way.
7:23
Speaker 3: Primetime never tried walking fifteen miles through the streets of
7:27
Speaker 3: Manhattan in shoes designed by a medieval torture enthusiast. It
7:34
Speaker 3: was the great Clipper fan, Billy Crystal, who once said.
7:37
Speaker 1: You look marvelous. You look marvelous.
7:40
Speaker 3: So I guess I looked marvelous like a game show
7:43
Speaker 3: host slowly losing blood circulation. Now, the shoes I wore
7:48
Speaker 3: were perfectly fine for Boston and Wooster, because our travel
7:53
Speaker 3: style was again mostly stop and go, mostly stop and go,
7:58
Speaker 3: the kind of trip that we likery somewhere historic. You
8:02
Speaker 3: get out, you take a couple photos, look at the lighthouse, look.
8:05
Speaker 1: At the ocean.
8:07
Speaker 3: You consume some pastry at nice bakery, like we go
8:14
Speaker 3: to Bova's on the North End. You get back in
8:17
Speaker 3: the car and that's it. And so my social battery
8:24
Speaker 3: collapse like a folding chair with an elephant sitting on it.
8:27
Speaker 1: It happens.
8:30
Speaker 3: And New York is much different than any other city
8:34
Speaker 3: that we have in America. And New York is a
8:37
Speaker 3: full contact sport.
8:39
Speaker 1: Now.
8:39
Speaker 3: My older brother, meanwhile, is one of those marathon running people,
8:45
Speaker 3: you know, the type of the kind that wakes up
8:47
Speaker 3: at five in the morning voluntarily to run thirteen point
8:53
Speaker 3: one miles for fun. We're gonna have fun today. That's
8:59
Speaker 3: not exercise to me. That is a hostage situation with sneakers. Okay,
9:05
Speaker 3: So he has run the New York City Marathon multiple times,
9:09
Speaker 3: my older brother, twenty six point two miles.
9:13
Speaker 1: When he talks about it, he says things like the energy.
9:17
Speaker 3: And the crowd and it kind of carries you and
9:21
Speaker 3: the all that stuff. Now, the only crowd energy I've
9:27
Speaker 3: ever experienced is trying to escape the parking lot at
9:30
Speaker 3: Dodgers Stadium. I'm just going to try to escape and
9:33
Speaker 3: all that stuff. And that's a marathon it's a different
9:36
Speaker 3: kind of marathon. I'm in my car, I've got the
9:38
Speaker 3: ac going, I got some music whatever I'm listening to.
9:42
Speaker 1: Traveling with my older brother, who I love the death
9:44
Speaker 1: and I have some my entire life.
9:46
Speaker 3: Chasing after around Manhattan felt like tagging along with Sonic
9:51
Speaker 3: the Hedgehog.
9:53
Speaker 1: I might as well call him Sonic and.
9:55
Speaker 3: His idea of, hey, let's go around and have a
9:57
Speaker 3: good time and my idea of let's go around.
9:59
Speaker 1: Have a good time, or two different things.
10:00
Speaker 3: So he's darting through intersections, hopping subway stairs two at
10:05
Speaker 3: a time, navigating the massive crowds of the Big Apple
10:12
Speaker 3: with military precision.
10:14
Speaker 1: Now meanwhile, I'm the lug in the back. You know, I'm.
10:17
Speaker 3: Behind him, always chasing my older brother, and I'm moving
10:21
Speaker 3: like a city bus that's got some mechanical problems, and
10:24
Speaker 3: there's no tow.
10:25
Speaker 1: Truck in the area.
10:27
Speaker 3: So I'm like, oh boy, you frequent and I'm on
10:30
Speaker 3: the treadmill. And that's a different kind of animal than walking.
10:32
Speaker 1: Around the streets of New York.
10:34
Speaker 3: So frequent stops, strange noises, and you know, I'm driving
10:39
Speaker 3: the bus. It's broke down, questionable emissions, so let me
10:43
Speaker 3: let me pause right there.
10:46
Speaker 1: We pause, and I'm an interject. I'm an interject here.
10:51
Speaker 3: So so here's the deal we made. We made a
10:54
Speaker 3: pit stop on the way down from from Worcester. We
10:59
Speaker 3: made a pit stop in Connecticut at a gas station.
11:01
Speaker 1: Now that's not really newsworthy. We needed gas.
11:04
Speaker 3: We then made another pit stop we got into the
11:07
Speaker 3: New York area. We stopped at a target in Yonkers
11:11
Speaker 3: to use the bathroom on the drive down from the
11:14
Speaker 3: Commonwe Now, I've heard a lot about Yakers over the years,
11:18
Speaker 3: I hadn't spent really any time in Yonkers. Yonkers, by
11:20
Speaker 3: the way, fascinating, fascinating. It feels like New York City
11:24
Speaker 3: and New Jersey had a big disagreement and Yonkers was
11:29
Speaker 3: the compromise nobody fully accepted. Really good people watching if
11:36
Speaker 3: you're a daredevil. So we went out and trying to
11:39
Speaker 3: find the bathroom, and the security guards looking at us like,
11:42
Speaker 3: you're not gonna buy anything, Why are you here?
11:45
Speaker 1: You don't belong here.
11:47
Speaker 3: And we got back in the car and as we drove,
11:49
Speaker 3: I started reminiscing about my first trip to New York
11:51
Speaker 3: City and waxing loquacious to my wife about this. It
11:55
Speaker 3: was July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety four. Now you likely
11:59
Speaker 3: think that I'm some kind a rain man or cowboy
12:02
Speaker 3: John brad and windsor Ontario that I remember the exact
12:06
Speaker 3: date that I was in New York for the first time. Now,
12:10
Speaker 3: why do I remember that exact date, which was a
12:13
Speaker 3: long time ago, that's many many years. Well, July twenty eighth,
12:17
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four. The reason I remember that as I
12:19
Speaker 3: was a young radio lad I just starting.
12:22
Speaker 1: You know, the time I started my radio career, i'd
12:24
Speaker 1: covered baseball a little bit.
12:27
Speaker 3: And that was the day that the Texas Rangers were
12:32
Speaker 3: playing the California Angels, and there was a guy named
12:37
Speaker 3: Kenny Rogers, not the singer on the mound, and Kenny
12:41
Speaker 3: Rogers threw a pretty good game. In fact, some called
12:45
Speaker 3: it a perfect game. That's the lingo in baseball. He
12:49
Speaker 3: threw a perfect game. And thirty some years later, somehow
12:52
Speaker 3: I'm still slepping around airports following my older brother, pretending
12:57
Speaker 3: this lifestyle is normal. The reason I remember that date
12:59
Speaker 3: is because I was I stopped in Dallas. I flew
13:02
Speaker 3: into LaGuardia. So you can't fly non stop to LaGuardia
13:05
Speaker 3: from the West Coast. So I stopped in Dallas and
13:08
Speaker 3: we flew over the ballpark in Arlington where the Rangers
13:12
Speaker 3: were playing.
13:13
Speaker 1: At the time. I think it was the ballpark.
13:15
Speaker 3: And then I flew over the stadium anyway, Uh yeah,
13:18
Speaker 3: I saw the crowd and all that, and as we
13:21
Speaker 3: were looking down there was a perfect game going on.
13:24
Speaker 3: So and when I first showed up to New York
13:26
Speaker 3: back then in Times Square was filled with peep shows, nudes, nudes, nudes,
13:31
Speaker 3: sketchy characters who want to fake license come on. In
13:34
Speaker 3: famous story, I was there getting a fake license and
13:38
Speaker 3: the guy pulled out a book. He said, which state
13:40
Speaker 3: do you want? I got every license in all fifty states.
13:43
Speaker 3: I said, oh, that's great, that's wonderful. And all all
13:47
Speaker 3: those things which violated many city ordinances. And over the
13:53
Speaker 3: years Disney has bought pretty much that entire neighborhoods around
13:58
Speaker 3: Times Square. They installed these mass of la led screens
14:02
Speaker 3: every six feet. Now lately, the mayor, Mam Donnie has
14:09
Speaker 3: welcome back, and I think this is really a nice upgrade.
14:12
Speaker 3: Trying to go old school with New York City. So
14:14
Speaker 3: the mayor, Mam Donnie has decided that the thing that
14:17
Speaker 3: New York needs. The culture is the outdoor drug market.
14:22
Speaker 3: And a lot of people thought, well, you don't need
14:24
Speaker 3: the outdoor drug market. The mayor said, no, no, no, let's
14:27
Speaker 3: have the outdoor drug market. Okay, good, And you know
14:31
Speaker 3: we need more urban camping, so let's have endless homeless encampments.
14:37
Speaker 3: And we're going to bring back that rustic charm of
14:39
Speaker 3: New York in the nineteen seventies, in the early eighties,
14:43
Speaker 3: and the city changes, the chaos remains. It's different chaos,
14:48
Speaker 3: but it remains. And over the years, I've done all
14:51
Speaker 3: the tourist stuff. I've done the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island,
14:54
Speaker 3: I've visited Times Square, I've had.
14:57
Speaker 1: Elmo ask me for money.
14:59
Speaker 3: I was even in the World Trade Center in August
15:02
Speaker 3: of twenty oh one, just weeks before the nine to
15:05
Speaker 3: eleven attacks, and I was so cheap that I decided
15:09
Speaker 3: not to pay to go up to the observation deck,
15:11
Speaker 3: thinking well, this these buildings will be here forever. That
15:15
Speaker 3: realization still hits hard changed my life. When I go somewhere,
15:20
Speaker 3: even if I don't have a lot of time, I
15:21
Speaker 3: make sure to do the thing because I didn't get
15:24
Speaker 3: to do the thing at the World Trade Center, and
15:28
Speaker 3: this trip was not about sightseeing.
15:30
Speaker 1: It was like we were in Boston. That was the
15:33
Speaker 1: main trip.
15:33
Speaker 3: I thought, well, we're here, why don't we go down
15:35
Speaker 3: to New York for a couple of days because it's
15:36
Speaker 3: not that far drive and it was about family time.
15:41
Speaker 1: So my sister in law.
15:42
Speaker 3: Was busy working as she's got this big marketing company
15:46
Speaker 3: just down the street from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station,
15:50
Speaker 3: so which, for the record, remains not an actual garden.
15:53
Speaker 3: Madison Square Garden not an actual garden. Penn Station is
15:56
Speaker 3: actually a train station. So it became me and my
16:01
Speaker 3: older brother wandering around Manhattan, and of course we were
16:06
Speaker 3: slightly confused, the middle aged tourists, and I understand the
16:12
Speaker 3: subway system a little bit, my wife not so much.
16:14
Speaker 3: Monday turned into what gamblers would call a three leg parlay.
16:20
Speaker 3: Little Island, Big Pizza, Classic Pie, and honestly, that's a
16:26
Speaker 3: pretty good day. That's a championship caliber day. Little Island
16:30
Speaker 3: is something that I didn't really know much about. I
16:34
Speaker 3: hadn't been to that part of New York very often.
16:36
Speaker 3: It's relatively new. It's this bizarre floating park. If you've
16:43
Speaker 3: never been there, you should check it out.
16:44
Speaker 1: It's free, and if it's free, it's for me.
16:47
Speaker 3: So Little Island is this bizarre floating park on the
16:50
Speaker 3: Hudson River, and it's like, okay, it looks like someone
16:55
Speaker 3: gave a billionaire unlimited money and said build something whimsical. Okay,
17:01
Speaker 3: we'll build this thing. It's gorgeous. It's got gardens, there's
17:07
Speaker 3: walking paths, an amphitheater like six hundred seats, skyline views,
17:14
Speaker 3: very peaceful. Then right next door, about a blockdown, there's
17:20
Speaker 3: this hidden rooftop park. I guess this is the Google
17:24
Speaker 3: compound next door, so you take you go in there.
17:28
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of little restaurants and whatnot. There's a
17:31
Speaker 3: walkway and you go through there the I think it's
17:36
Speaker 3: called the Google Building. It's right next door to Little Island,
17:40
Speaker 3: and you go down, you take the elevator up to
17:42
Speaker 3: the third floor, and then you keep going and then
17:46
Speaker 3: you've got this overlook of Lower Manhattan if you look
17:52
Speaker 3: down south, and then across the way you have Jersey
17:56
Speaker 3: City across the Hudson.
17:58
Speaker 1: Stunning views.
18:00
Speaker 3: Jersey City, which I believe markets itself as part of
18:04
Speaker 3: the Gold Coast. There's a Gold Coast in Florida too,
18:08
Speaker 3: but the Gold Coast of Jersey City, which is real
18:12
Speaker 3: estate lingo for these apartments cost more than you can afford.
18:17
Speaker 3: You're not even allowed to look at these Bozo the clown,
18:20
Speaker 3: what's wrong with you? So somewhere during all the sight scene,
18:25
Speaker 3: things began to deteriorate physically.
18:29
Speaker 1: The walking did not stop.
18:32
Speaker 3: We walked to the island, we walked across the way
18:36
Speaker 3: to the other building. We walked to get pizza. We
18:38
Speaker 3: walked to get more pizza. We took the subway a
18:42
Speaker 3: little bit, walked some more because apparently no subway stop
18:47
Speaker 3: is ever actually near where you need to go.
18:51
Speaker 1: At one point, my.
18:52
Speaker 3: Left foot started feeling a little numb, not sore. I
18:57
Speaker 3: wasn't in any pain, it was numb. My toes on
19:01
Speaker 3: my left foot started to kind of go away. They
19:04
Speaker 3: disappeared first then the middle of my foot that had
19:09
Speaker 3: checked out emotionally and I believe physically as well. So
19:14
Speaker 3: here i am, I'm walking, there's some water here, I'm
19:19
Speaker 3: walking through Manhattan, and I'm thinking this can't be medically ideal, like.
19:25
Speaker 1: This seems a little off.
19:26
Speaker 3: And it was only my left foot, not my red foot.
19:29
Speaker 3: And I'm a proud human being. I'm a grown ass man,
19:33
Speaker 3: and I'm way too proud to announce. By the way,
19:37
Speaker 3: I cannot walk anymore because my clod hopper situation has escalated.
19:43
Speaker 3: I couldn't say that that's a man card violation. So
19:46
Speaker 3: here I am, one step after another, and I'm following
19:51
Speaker 3: my marathon running brother, and here we go.
19:55
Speaker 1: Walk walk walk, walk, walk, walk walk walk.
19:58
Speaker 3: I sucked it up, I grunted, I questioned many of
20:02
Speaker 3: my decisions. At one point I sat down on a
20:05
Speaker 3: random bench on the high Line.
20:08
Speaker 1: Which is really cool as well. It's a good walkway.
20:11
Speaker 1: We did that as well.
20:12
Speaker 3: I forgot to mention the high Line, which is this
20:14
Speaker 3: old train track thing raised elevated train tracks.
20:17
Speaker 1: They turned it into a park.
20:19
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting on some random bench right near the Titanic.
20:24
Speaker 3: There's this place right near the little park we visited,
20:29
Speaker 3: which again is called Little Island, and they had this
20:34
Speaker 3: metal thing though, the do hickey, which you wouldn't even
20:39
Speaker 3: pay any attention to until you read the fine print on.
20:42
Speaker 1: The little plaque that says.
20:44
Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, this is where the Titanic was
20:47
Speaker 3: supposed to land, and all the relatives were here waiting
20:52
Speaker 3: for the Titanic to come back, and they never came back,
20:56
Speaker 3: and that thing is still standing all.
20:59
Speaker 1: These years later, all these years later. So there you go.
21:04
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting down, I'm pretty out of it. I
21:10
Speaker 3: got the exhaustion of a Civil War reenactor. My brother
21:14
Speaker 3: looked fresh, energized, he was hydrated. Meanwhile, my wife and
21:18
Speaker 3: I looked like we had just returned from crossing the
21:22
Speaker 3: Oregon Trail.
21:24
Speaker 1: And it did not go well. I think we got
21:26
Speaker 1: dysentery on the way there. The worst part is I
21:29
Speaker 1: knew better.
21:30
Speaker 3: Every step I took became a reminder that the vanity
21:35
Speaker 3: I chose had a cost. There was an expense, not
21:38
Speaker 3: financially orthopedically.
21:41
Speaker 1: The shoes had no support whatsoever.
21:45
Speaker 3: They were basically decorative loaf pans strapped to my feet.
21:50
Speaker 3: And because this is New York, nobody slows down for
21:54
Speaker 3: your personal suffering.
21:55
Speaker 1: Nobody cares, just keeps moving.
21:58
Speaker 3: And the Wall Street guy's bed walking while yelling into
22:02
Speaker 3: bluetooth headsets. You got the influencers taking seventeen photos of
22:07
Speaker 3: a cup of coffee. You've got the tourists jumping on
22:11
Speaker 3: and off those red buses, and the ones that aren't
22:15
Speaker 3: doing that are in the middle of the sidewalk like
22:17
Speaker 3: traffic cones. You've got delivery guys on electric bikes who
22:21
Speaker 3: think they are NASCAR drivers, and it's all just a
22:29
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. And me, I'm limping through Manhattan trying
22:33
Speaker 3: to preserve what little circulation I have left in my
22:36
Speaker 3: left foot while pretending everything is fine, nothing to see here.
22:41
Speaker 3: It's a classic manly move. My cheese mo so us
22:47
Speaker 3: men as you're probably a man. Most people that listen
22:51
Speaker 3: to this, but men will literally lose feeling in an
22:55
Speaker 3: extremity before admitting the shoes they wore were a mistake.
23:00
Speaker 3: And so by late afternoon, early evening, I was bargaining
23:04
Speaker 3: with myself.
23:04
Speaker 1: I was like, one more block, one more block, Come on, Ben,
23:07
Speaker 1: you can do it. One more block, and then another block,
23:10
Speaker 1: and then another and another.
23:12
Speaker 3: Because my brother would casually say something psychotic like, oh,
23:15
Speaker 3: we're close. It's like the cliche of the kid and
23:20
Speaker 3: the parents when they go on the road trip and
23:22
Speaker 3: they are we there yet?
23:23
Speaker 1: Are we there yet?
23:24
Speaker 2: Mom?
23:25
Speaker 1: Are we there yet?
23:26
Speaker 3: Dad?
23:26
Speaker 1: And then the dad and mom said, oh, we're almost there, Johnny.
23:29
Speaker 1: We're almost there, little Johnny, almost there. Everything is great.
23:33
Speaker 1: So in New York.
23:34
Speaker 3: I've learned when you say the word close, it means
23:36
Speaker 3: another forty minutes and three emotional setbacks on top of that, Listen.
23:43
Speaker 3: I don't hate New York. I don't love it. It's
23:46
Speaker 3: not my favorite place to go. There is something magical
23:50
Speaker 3: about the Big Apple. And even when it smells like
23:55
Speaker 3: hot garbage and the steam coming out of those underground
23:59
Speaker 3: pipes and it's like, well, that's pretty disgusting.
24:01
Speaker 1: There's rats the size of the moon wandering around, And
24:07
Speaker 1: even when.
24:08
Speaker 3: The subway arrives, sounding like a mechanical bear attack, and
24:12
Speaker 3: even on your feet are filing workplace grievances against your ankles.
24:17
Speaker 3: You look up and see that skyline. You feel the energy,
24:22
Speaker 3: the weirdness, the humanity of it all. And spending time
24:26
Speaker 3: with my my brother, you made the whole thing worth.
24:30
Speaker 1: As you get older, you.
24:31
Speaker 3: Realize these moments matter more than some dopey tourist attraction.
24:36
Speaker 1: You don't really care about that.
24:37
Speaker 3: The conversations while walking through Union Square, arguing over which
24:42
Speaker 3: pizza place to go to, laughing about something that's not
24:46
Speaker 3: important at all, Listening to my brother explained marathon strategy
24:50
Speaker 3: while I'm actively trying to survive a eight block walk.
24:55
Speaker 1: It's all good stuff. It's all good stuff.
24:57
Speaker 3: Of course, by the end of the day, I finally
25:01
Speaker 3: we got to my brother's apartment and I removed the
25:05
Speaker 3: shoes with the care of a bomb technician. Now I
25:09
Speaker 3: fully expected my left foot would not be there.
25:12
Speaker 1: It turns out it was.
25:13
Speaker 3: Then I thought, well, there must be smoke coming out
25:16
Speaker 3: of the shoe. The left foot still felt numb. The
25:20
Speaker 3: right foot had entered into a silent protest. And there
25:25
Speaker 3: I was lying in my brother's New York apartment thinking
25:28
Speaker 3: about all the brilliant life.
25:29
Speaker 1: Choices that led to this moment.
25:32
Speaker 3: Not the career in overnight radio, or the endless airport
25:37
Speaker 3: travel nightmares, not the questionable late night bakery.
25:40
Speaker 1: Decisions in Boston.
25:41
Speaker 3: No, the true turning point I was packing one stylish
25:47
Speaker 3: pair of shoes and convincing myself that Manhattan would somehow cooperate.
25:52
Speaker 3: Spoiler alert, it did not. New York always wins. New
25:55
Speaker 3: York laughs at you and points at you and says
25:57
Speaker 3: ha ha. Especially New York wins against out of towners
26:01
Speaker 3: wearing clown shoes.
26:03
Speaker 1: So that happens, that absolutely happens, all right.
26:06
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, turning the page on this the Fifth Hour Podcast.
26:09
Speaker 3: So there are certain voices in life you assume will
26:13
Speaker 3: always be there. For example, if you've ever heard the
26:16
Speaker 3: noise of the Mister Softy truck or pretty much any
26:18
Speaker 3: ice cream truck, that's a very memorable sound. The guy
26:23
Speaker 3: or the gal at Costco asking if you'd like another
26:27
Speaker 3: sample of Teriaki meatballs at ten point fifteen in the
26:30
Speaker 3: morning on a Saturday. That's a sound that you will
26:34
Speaker 3: not forget. Okay, you will not. And of course the
26:37
Speaker 3: callers to Overnight Sports Radio who have become part of
26:43
Speaker 3: your emotional support system, whether you want that or not,
26:47
Speaker 3: whether you want to admit that or not. Now, earlier
26:49
Speaker 3: this week, on the mighty powerful bully pulpit that I
26:52
Speaker 3: have at Fox Sports Radios Mothership, we had what can
26:57
Speaker 3: only be described as a radio rapture, a resurrection tour.
27:02
Speaker 3: Two long lost callers returning from the abyss, like retired
27:07
Speaker 3: sitcom characters suddenly walking back onto the set to applause.
27:12
Speaker 3: First up Angry Bill from Jacksonville, Florida, by way of Nutley,
27:18
Speaker 3: New Jersey. Now, people have been asking me at these events,
27:23
Speaker 3: what about Angry Bill.
27:26
Speaker 1: They've been asking me about this. What happened?
27:28
Speaker 3: To Angry Bill now as low like I'm his emergency contact,
27:34
Speaker 3: and if something happens to Angry Bill, contact Ben Maller,
27:38
Speaker 3: like I'm supposed to receive quarterly updates from the Department
27:41
Speaker 3: of Cranky Elderly Men. Now, last time Angry Bill called in,
27:46
Speaker 3: he sounded not well, not well.
27:51
Speaker 1: I am not a doctor, but I can play one
27:53
Speaker 1: on the radio.
27:55
Speaker 3: And you just know when you hear something, You know,
27:58
Speaker 3: when someone sounds like they're placing a collect call from
28:01
Speaker 3: the afterlife.
28:03
Speaker 1: And Bill had that vibe.
28:05
Speaker 3: Every sentence felt like it was a struggle, like you
28:09
Speaker 3: were traveling through a haunted ceiling fan And I don't
28:12
Speaker 3: know if you've ever talked to somebody and instinctively.
28:17
Speaker 1: You lower your voice and you're like, what is going
28:20
Speaker 1: on here? All right? That was Angry Bill.
28:23
Speaker 3: I was basically doing hospice radio the last time he called.
28:26
Speaker 3: So when he popped back up in the air everywhere
28:30
Speaker 3: this week, sounding relatively strong, somewhat coherent, and ready to
28:34
Speaker 3: verbally assault humanity yet again, it was in this very
28:38
Speaker 3: bizarre way, genuinely uplifting. It was really pretty beautiful, and
28:44
Speaker 3: the best part, He's still a total asshole. Angry Bill
28:50
Speaker 3: that's how you know he's getting healthy when he's full ahole.
28:54
Speaker 3: You don't want angry Bill pleasant. If angry Bill ever
28:57
Speaker 3: calls up in a cheerful mood and asked me how
29:01
Speaker 3: my weekend was, I'm calling FEMA. The man's entire being
29:07
Speaker 3: is built on irritation. What about a nine year old
29:11
Speaker 3: garyl his famous drop that's been retired by Lorena. He's
29:15
Speaker 3: powered by rage the way Prius runs on batteries. Now,
29:20
Speaker 3: I told him on the air, I said.
29:22
Speaker 1: Bill, you know what you are. You are too angry
29:26
Speaker 1: to die.
29:27
Speaker 3: And I meant that that was a joke, but there's
29:29
Speaker 3: truth in the joke, and you know how that works.
29:32
Speaker 3: So my internal monologue starts going and I was like, oh, yeah,
29:37
Speaker 3: you're too angry to die, and I meant it. Death
29:39
Speaker 3: took one look at angry Bill and said, nah, I
29:42
Speaker 3: don't need that schmuck energy right now in my building.
29:45
Speaker 1: We're gonna wait on you.
29:47
Speaker 3: And then, as if the universe was really laying it
29:49
Speaker 3: on Thick, we also heard from Van, the One Legged
29:53
Speaker 3: Bama Man.
29:54
Speaker 1: Now, if you're familiar with.
29:55
Speaker 3: Van's story, it sounds less like sports radio and more
29:59
Speaker 3: like a rejected dialogue from a low budget cable documentary
30:04
Speaker 3: narrated by a man chewing tobacco so years ago, way
30:10
Speaker 3: before he started calling show. Van lost his leg after
30:15
Speaker 3: a gator attack, and then, in the most Alabama sentence
30:20
Speaker 3: ever constructed, his cousin went back, found the gator, killed
30:26
Speaker 3: the gator. They then cooked the gator, and apparently during
30:30
Speaker 3: the hunting and the cleaning process, the reptilian creature spat
30:36
Speaker 3: out the big chunk of Van the one legged Bama
30:40
Speaker 3: Man's leg. So it's not like they ate the leg
30:43
Speaker 3: as part of the deal. It just casually rejected the leg,
30:47
Speaker 3: which is really shameful considering the fact that they couldn't
30:52
Speaker 3: reattach the leg.
30:54
Speaker 1: So yeah, they just, I guess, spit it out like you.
30:57
Speaker 3: Would bite into a chicken wing and then that weird
31:01
Speaker 3: rubbery part and you quietly place that in a napkin,
31:04
Speaker 3: hoping nobody notices you doing that. And so the boys
31:07
Speaker 3: dined on alligator Van the one like Abama Man and
31:12
Speaker 3: his pal and somehow, somehow, some way, this man's biggest
31:18
Speaker 3: concern when he calls the show, after all this talking
31:22
Speaker 3: we've done here, he wants to talk about braves, baseball
31:26
Speaker 3: gambling lines. He also took a shot at cowhard. That's commitment.
31:30
Speaker 3: Now Van had disappeared for a while, another one of
31:35
Speaker 3: our guys going through some health problems, so hearing him
31:39
Speaker 3: back felt oddly comforting, which I don't know that I
31:43
Speaker 3: should say that or not, And I guess it does
31:45
Speaker 3: say something about about the way the show is and
31:48
Speaker 3: how deeply troubling this is my emotional ecosystem.
31:54
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the line, And I'm not sure when.
31:56
Speaker 3: This happened, these callers stopped being callers and it became
32:00
Speaker 3: weird radio relatives, this odd overnight radio family.
32:06
Speaker 1: Now these aren't relatives.
32:07
Speaker 3: You'd loan money to relatives nonetheless, and then as an
32:12
Speaker 3: added bonus.
32:13
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more.
32:14
Speaker 3: We heard from Mark, the full name guy who called
32:17
Speaker 3: in from Oregon specifically to curse me and hang up,
32:22
Speaker 3: which honestly was reassuring consistency matters in unstable times. And
32:29
Speaker 3: so Mark used to live in the Tenderloin district in
32:32
Speaker 3: San Francisco, a neighborhood that sounds less like a place
32:38
Speaker 3: for humans and more like an experimental side quest in
32:42
Speaker 3: grand theft Auto, as Lancel the bus driver can testify,
32:47
Speaker 3: so he Mark screamed, he insulted me with an F bomb,
32:51
Speaker 3: disconnected the line, and for a brief, shining moment, everything
32:57
Speaker 3: felt normal yet again. And That's where I'm at in
33:01
Speaker 3: my life now. I've just come to terms with it.
33:05
Speaker 3: I measure emotionally my emotional stability by whether eccentric overnight
33:12
Speaker 3: talk radio callers are still alive and functioning.
33:16
Speaker 1: Now.
33:16
Speaker 3: Some people monitor the stock market, good for you. There
33:19
Speaker 3: are people that meditate. Congratulations, Mozleta. I'm over here wondering
33:25
Speaker 3: on my spare time if Jack the judge and Leslie
33:29
Speaker 3: from Bradenton, Florida are still alive because they hadn't called
33:33
Speaker 3: in a long time, and you start wondering what's going on.
33:36
Speaker 3: And that's the thing nobody tells you about doing this
33:41
Speaker 3: type of work.
33:41
Speaker 1: The callers become furniture in your life.
33:44
Speaker 3: Now. Granted, I'm not going to see and send that
33:47
Speaker 3: say that this is not strange furniture.
33:49
Speaker 1: It is.
33:50
Speaker 3: It's loud furniture, occasionally intoxicated furniture, however, furniture nonetheless, and
33:57
Speaker 3: when they vanish, you know, notice when the regulars don't
34:02
Speaker 3: show up to work.
34:04
Speaker 1: The microphone notices.
34:05
Speaker 3: As well, even the studio phones seem a little bit depressed.
34:11
Speaker 3: Those phones have seen a thing or two because they've been.
34:15
Speaker 1: Around for a thing or two.
34:17
Speaker 3: And if those phones could talk, they'd probably ask for
34:21
Speaker 3: hazard pay and therapy. You feel me on that some
34:25
Speaker 3: hazard pay? Well, no, we can't give you any hazard pay?
34:27
Speaker 1: Why not?
34:29
Speaker 3: So so yes, I mean this week felt like a
34:33
Speaker 3: small victory, not because the ratings changed or because we
34:38
Speaker 3: had some viral clip exploding online.
34:41
Speaker 1: Those are always fun.
34:42
Speaker 3: Stories when those happen, when the bots pick up on
34:45
Speaker 3: what we do. But that didn't happen here because two
34:48
Speaker 3: maniacs from the Audio Wilderness, the Radio Wilderness, check back in, right,
34:55
Speaker 3: just check back in, say I'm here and remind us
34:57
Speaker 3: they're still out there yelling into the darkness. And I
35:00
Speaker 3: gotta tell you that's enough. I'm good, And I also
35:06
Speaker 3: that's good for this podcast. We are gonna have the
35:09
Speaker 3: mail bag tomorrow. We are scheduled to have a big
35:13
Speaker 3: name guest, unless that guest decides not to show up.
35:16
Speaker 1: So if they don't show up, it'll either be me
35:18
Speaker 1: or I'll be scrambling to.
35:20
Speaker 3: Find someone else to come step up and be part
35:24
Speaker 3: of the fifth hour mail Bag. If you'd like to
35:27
Speaker 3: recommend someone, I am open to suggestions. I'm really open
35:31
Speaker 3: to suggestions. If you have someone's phone number or email
35:34
Speaker 3: address or way we can contact them, that would really
35:38
Speaker 3: make me happy. That would be really great if you
35:41
Speaker 3: have that.
35:42
Speaker 1: If not, I understand that we will have.
35:44
Speaker 3: The mail bag, which is exciting. We look forward to
35:49
Speaker 3: that and that'll be coming up tomorrow. Have a great
35:53
Speaker 3: rest of your Saturday and Loha and as Dick and
35:58
Speaker 3: Dayton would say, bye bye, bye bye