Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Black Friday Body Blow

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The Fifth Hour: Black Friday Body Blow · The Ben Maller Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Cutbooms.
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  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 sole 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 Mallard starts right now in.
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  Speaker 3: The air everywhere The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: and Danny g Radio. You have come within earshot of
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: this podcast. It is the twenty eighth day of November.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: We had Thanksgiving yesterday, a day of football.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: We have another game today.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Black Friday kicks off later on today with the Eagles
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: hosting the Chicago Bears. A programming note, it is our
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: doorbuster special, Benny Versus the Penny. You can get my
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: pick on the Bears and the Eagles. I know Lucky
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Tony is excited to watch that, and so is ferg
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Dog and Alf and all the regulars will be over
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: there watching that as they waltz through life. So that
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: content will be up later today. We'll have the full
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: episode of Benny Versus the Penny I was gonna post
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: it already, but my good friend Tom Looney in production
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Looney did not send me the copy of Benny Versus
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: the Penny. It's actually in the can. It'll be up
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: here later today. On this podcast, you've heard of the
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Great Battles. How about the Battle of Costco Hill. The
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Battle of Costco Hill, it's a revolutionary war story back
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: in black and the word of the week.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: We'll start with this.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: So, as you go through life, there are certain checkpoints
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: that you have to go through, and certain things that
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: test your metal, that make you question whether the fellow
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: human beings that you share this world with it's mortal coil,
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: whether they know what they're doing, whether the all of
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: society is hanging on by dental floss. Now, one of
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: those moments happened to me earlier this week, the day
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: before Thanksgiving.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So I have two words for you. Costco Run. Now.
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  Speaker 3: I talk about Costco a lot. It's one of the
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: things I do on a regular basis. So a lot
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: of the stories that I tell you on this podcast
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: are somehow related to Costco because I spend time at Costco.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Now, I'm not.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Talking about your random Tuesday afternoon meander where you sashchet
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: your way around Costco and you eat a lot of
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: samples and you might buy some double A batteries. Maybe
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: you take a bag of pretzels or something like that.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about a Wednesday Costco trip, the day before Thanksgiving,
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  Speaker 3: the big one. This is where you get the Costco
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: and it's like a religious revival.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: The day.
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  Speaker 3: The parking lot looks like an evacuation scene from Armageddon.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: They're loading up Noah's Arc, getting two of every animal,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: and the shopping carts move in this formation. These convoys
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: like navy destroyers through the asphalt and the parking lot.
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  Speaker 3: And this is not shopping. This is a quest. It
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: is a quest. So I got the text the reason
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  Speaker 3: I went on Wednesday. I got the text, can you
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  Speaker 3: grab a couple of pies and some dinner rolls for
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  Speaker 3: my work?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I got a thing of things. My wife had.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Sent this to me. Some of you know she's a
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: nine to one to one operator and they have more
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: events with food at police stations. So her job was
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: to bring the pie and the roles. And since she
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: was sleeping and I don't sleep very much. I'm only
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: sleeping four or five hours a day, I guess I'll
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: go out and go to the store.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: No problem.
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  Speaker 3: So I went out, did my thing and did the
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Costco trip again. This is the this is not the
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: amateur one. And I went there and I had no map.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: You know, there's muscle memory. I didn't get a pep talk.
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  Speaker 3: I just had the outline of the mission, pie and
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: dinner rolls, and the ominous sense that I might not return.
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  Speaker 1: This could be the end of me.
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  Speaker 3: I might be swallowed up into some kind of portal
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  Speaker 3: going to another dimension. It'll be a Kirkland brand dimension,
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  Speaker 3: and that could happen.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: So there's really no casual way to get the Costco.
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  Speaker 3: The day before Thanksgiving it felt like the NFL Combine.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: You know they do that thing in Indianapolis, the Underwear Olympics.
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  Speaker 3: Instead of the forty yard dash and the cone drill.
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  Speaker 3: People were competing in who can get through self checkout
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  Speaker 3: with without losing their sanity?
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  Speaker 1: Right, that old thing? Where do I find a shopping cart?
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  Speaker 1: There's none here? Where do I go?
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  Speaker 3: So, because they were all out in the parking lot,
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  Speaker 3: so I grabbed my metaphorical armor, my version of chainmail,
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  Speaker 3: the modern version, and I stormed through the sliding door
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: into medieval times.
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  Speaker 1: If you will, I was like a medieval night.
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  Speaker 3: Just think of me as swashbuckling my way into the battlefield.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't have a sword. I had an iPhone and
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: my Kirkland brand membership. Now, truth be told, Costco is undefeated.
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  Speaker 3: It doesn't just test your endurance like the New York Marathon.
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  Speaker 1: It abuses it.
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  Speaker 3: Suddenly you're buying garlic that the quantities of the garlic
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: are large enough to provide relief to an entire continent
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: somewhere in Africa. And you walk in for two items
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: and you leave in for somehow you're like in an
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: inflatable kayak that is the size of Rhode Island and
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: enough toilet paper to last at least three, possibly four presidencies.
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  Speaker 3: Like you have that much. And so my first stop
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  Speaker 3: was to pick up the dinner rolls. I figured, this
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  Speaker 3: is no problem. How hard could this be? I can
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: figure this out. And I'm guessing that even though it's
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: the day before Thanksgiving, this is not going to be
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  Speaker 3: a popular part of Costco.
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  Speaker 1: So I made my way.
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  Speaker 3: I knew, because I'm a Costco veteran, I knew where
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  Speaker 3: the dinner rolls were aisle forty seven B. Everyone knows
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  Speaker 3: the gold standard when it comes to a dinner roll
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  Speaker 3: is a Hawaiian role. It's sweet, it's soft, it's got
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  Speaker 3: the pillowy carbs there. It's a gift from the gods.
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  Speaker 3: It's really not the nectar of the gods. It's the
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  Speaker 3: bread of the gods. But here's something I've long argued
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: on the radio. I got married in Hawaii. I've been
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: to Hawaii many times. I love the Hawaiian islands. The
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  Speaker 3: people are great, wonderful, the scenery is amazing. It's the
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: most beautiful place I've ever been is the Nepali coast
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  Speaker 3: on Kawaii.
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  Speaker 1: It's amazing, just absolute paradise.
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  Speaker 3: However, there's something that is not right about Hawaii is
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  Speaker 3: the food.
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  Speaker 1: I don't love it.
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  Speaker 3: I'll swim with the fish, However, I don't eat the fish,
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  Speaker 3: and that's a problem. That's a bit of a problem.
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  Speaker 3: I don't really care for spam. I'm not a spam guy,
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  Speaker 3: and I will make the exception with Hawaii Hawaiian roles.
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  Speaker 1: And I learned I was curious. I said, well, I
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  Speaker 1: wonder what island they're from.
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  Speaker 3: I thought, well, maybe they're from Kawaii and that's the
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  Speaker 3: island I got married and I was going to tell
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  Speaker 3: some big story and oh, by the way, these rolls
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  Speaker 3: have a sentimental meeting, now they don't. They Actually Hawaiian
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  Speaker 3: roles come from Portuguese immigrants who arrived in Hawaii in
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: the late nineteenth century and brought their native recipes sweetbread
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  Speaker 3: recip he's with him from Portugal, and over time the
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  Speaker 3: bread got rebranded. Portugal made the dough. Why he got
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  Speaker 3: the credit, and it's bread essentially wearing an a loha skirt,
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  Speaker 3: and what's wrong with that?
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  Speaker 1: Nothing?
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  Speaker 3: And I'll tell you this, Costco stacks those rolls up
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  Speaker 3: like they're preparing for a delicious carbohydrate apocalypse. And I
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  Speaker 3: don't have a problem with that. Entire mountains man made
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  Speaker 3: mountains and would literally just bury a tesla, would just
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  Speaker 3: be buried in this. And then came the moment, the
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  Speaker 3: real test, the pie aisle. The Hawaiian role thing was
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  Speaker 3: that was child's play to my right, So imagine me.
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  Speaker 3: I'll get into the pie and it's really kind of
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  Speaker 3: near the bakery, so I don't know pie aisles the
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  Speaker 3: right way, but.
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  Speaker 1: It's still kind of aisles. So I get to the
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  Speaker 1: pie aisle.
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  Speaker 3: To my right, they have arranged apple pies, each one identical.
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  Speaker 3: It's synchronized. It's like in the Olympics synchronized swimmers. But
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: this is the Dessert Olympics, not to be confused with
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: the housekeeping Olympics, which we workshopped on this podcast a
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: few weeks ago. To my left, so I've got to
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  Speaker 3: my right, I've got the apple pies. To my left,
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  Speaker 3: this massive pumpkin pie display that at the time, it
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  Speaker 3: felt large enough to affect the gravitational pull, Like if
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  Speaker 3: I took the pumpkin pie out, I would somehow, you know,
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  Speaker 3: somebody would fall over in New Zealand because of that.
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  Speaker 3: And I saw one of them had its own weather system.
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  Speaker 3: It was that big, that big a pumpkin pie. And
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  Speaker 3: so I froze for a moment. I stared, and I
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  Speaker 3: debated in my head. Now this is a conversation I'm
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: having in my head. I'm not having this out loud.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not talking about this out loud. So I'm like
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  Speaker 3: an apple pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie,
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  Speaker 3: pumpkin pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie.
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  Speaker 1: What am I gonna do?
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  Speaker 3: And I was deep in thought when I saw, but
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  Speaker 3: not the spotlight, not the light from the gods, not
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: center stage. Off to the side, like a backup singer
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  Speaker 3: at the Grammys, was a separate display peep pecan pie
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  Speaker 3: ding ding ding ding ding. Now, let me be very clear,
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  Speaker 3: for those of you in the back of the room,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: those of you that aren't paying close attention because you're
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: doing the Honeydew List or you're just living your life,
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  Speaker 3: pecan pie is not just dessert. It's the unicorn of
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: the pie world. It's a seasonal pie, which makes it rare,
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: which makes it more valuable. Sometimes you'll get it for
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: the Christmas season, barely see it where I am the
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: rest of the year. You don't just buy pecan pie.
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  Speaker 3: Pecan pie chooses you. So I marched towards it. In
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  Speaker 3: my head, it was in slow motion, like a scene
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  Speaker 3: from that old baseball movie The Natural, and the music
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: was playing, the sappy music was playing in my head,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: and I picked it up gently, like the scene from
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: The Lion King when they lifted Simba there and I whispered,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: you're coming home with Daddy, And then I tossed an
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: apple pie and a pumpkin pie into the cart for
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: my wife's office office office police station thing. The Thanksgiving
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: deal because you know, again, I don't do lists, as
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: you know, Terry and England knows that we don't do
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: this on this podcast, but we do do Big Benz
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Big Pie Board where every pie has its lane. Now,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to include the King of all pies,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Banana cream pie, because that was not an option. I'm
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: not going to give you Key Lime Pie, which is
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: a very solid pie. I just had my key Lime
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Pie recently in the last year. Here a couple of
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: them from our friend in Florida who sent those out.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: So on Big Ben's Big Pie Board where every pie
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: has its lane, you've got got apple pie, which is
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: the I call that the Swiss Army Knife of dessert.
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  Speaker 3: It's available year round. Every major restaurant has apple pie.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: You never have to worry about a supply chain shortage
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: of apple pie. It's just always there when you live
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: in America. Now, pumpkin pie has a short lifespan. It's
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: kind of like the NC doublea men's basketball tournament, and
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: it goes some selection Sunday and really kind of interest
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: wanes after the first weekend of the men's basketball tournament,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: then picks up again for the final four. But the
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: pumpkin pie from relatively say October fifteenth through possibly January first,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: it's a seasonal pie. Now, pecan pie is like that
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: rare comet that flies across the holidays. Guys, you never
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: really know when it's going to be available, other than
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: possibly around Christmas. So I got everything, and at checkout,
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  Speaker 3: I then got a body blow, body blow, a gut punch.
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  Speaker 3: You want to take a guess how much the three
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: pies and the dinner rolls cost me?
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  Speaker 1: Ding ding ding ding ding.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, three pies and a bag of Hawaiian rolls cost
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: me seventy dollars. Now, look, I am not saying I
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: expect to get some kind of overnight talk radio discount
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: or a military discount or any kind of discount. I
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: just thought for seventy bucks, I should have at least
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: gotten a back massage, shoulder rub, maybe a whisper like, hey,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: you're doing great over there, We thank you.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: How about a puppy.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I would have liked a puppy, or but no, you
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: swipe the card at the self checkout and you move
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: a long soldier and don't look back. Inflation, my friends,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: you're dealing with the same stuff I'm doing.
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  Speaker 1: With is undefeated.
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  Speaker 3: And those pies rang up like they were being hand
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: crafted at a bakery that's been around since the sixteen
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: hundreds in Peri, and then flown in not coach but
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: first class to America from Zimbabwe. So they started in Perie,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: they went to Zimbabwe and then made their way back
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: to the States. Now in the moment, I thought, well,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: this is insanity, this is ky, this is Costco and
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: again we were talking about the event is one of
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: the great events in history, the Battle of Costco Hill.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: We're doing the Battle of Costco Hill and it's not easy.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: It's not easy to do the Battle of Costco Hill.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: And then I thought, well, this is Thanksgiving. This is
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: what it's all about, right, small missions carried out by
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: exhausted people or someone else who is out there and
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: they need the help. And it's all about the meal.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: It's a war meal. Your dad, a husband, whatever, wife, teenagers, kids,
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: and you do these errands and no one's gonna remember.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: That's the thing.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: You don't remember what you ate. Nobody will remember what
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: brand of pie I bought, what size of pie I bought.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Nobody will care where it was apple, pumpkin, or pecan.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: But they'll remember that there was pie and they showed
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: up and I brought the pie to the table, and
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: that's it. That's part of the Thanksgiving festivitus. Even though
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: I did not partake in the apple or the pumpkin,
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: did not do that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And there you go.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Just another day meandering around Costco on a holiday, the
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: day before a holiday. Now, speaking of that today is
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: kind of a big deal. Back in black The things
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: you should know about Black Friday, which is today, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: it really is not about shopping. When you dig deep,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: it's about a subculture. It's about an identity. It's about belonging,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: and a lot of what we do in a lot
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: of what we do is about belonging. It's about the
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: only American religion you know, is we all practice right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: A lot of people have different relgions. Some people aren't
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: religious at all. Yeah, it's fine. I don't know.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Whatever gets you through life, as long as don't just
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: don't bother me. I'm not going to bother you.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: The thing that stands out though, the religion of America
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: is consumerism, the great unifier, the soft anthem, the pledge
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: of allegiance with a receipt at the end, and it.
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  Speaker 1: Began with panic, not pleasures.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: So the history of black Friday as a term the
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: experts dated to eighteen sixty nine.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Hello, eighteen sixty nine.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: It was used to describe an economic disaster, a gold
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: speculation scandal that rocked Wall Street and left these monstrosities.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: These newspapers searching.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: For a word to capture the carnage, and the newspapers
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: came up with this word, which was dark and ominous
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: and unstable, and that's what they came up with, black Friday.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Now you fast forward to the nineteen fifties and Philadelphia,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: so we're talking about eighty some years after the initial
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: black Friday was used, and this was in Philadelphia. Police
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: used the same phrase, but they used it to describe
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: this nightmre shopping situation post Thanksgiving, with traffic everywhere, pickpockets,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: crowds behaving like animals. It was not a celebration. It
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: was crowd control. And the cops in Philadelphia called it
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: black Friday, and they had to deal with all these
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: people who were out of control because they wanted to
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: get a deal on products. And so naturally, in this country,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: the one that can take a headache and turn it
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: into a holiday. Did what we always do. We monetized
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Black Friday. We said, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is chaos,
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  Speaker 3: but we can sell a lot of crap, and we
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: want to sell a lot of crap because America does
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: not believe in bad ideas, only unbranded ideas.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: And so retailers. It started in Philadelphia, but they flipped
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: the narrative. They said, oh, okay, you guys misunderstand Black Friday.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: The black part is not some kind of calamity. Black
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: is about profit. It means we're in the black. You're
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: in the red, you're losing money, you're in the black.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: This day is not disorder, it is economic rebirth.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Halllelujah, hallelujah.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: And just like that in exorcism, a linguistic exorcism occurred.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Black no longer meant danger, it meant deals. Graphic designers added,
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: sparkle ads cheered, the crowd arrived, chaos was.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: No longer going on. And so that was the tradition.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: It was a tradition, and that's the American special, not reinvention.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: You just reframed stuff. And as I've gone through life,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: you learn certain things. It's the same reason when I
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: was a kid, made in Japan was synonymous with cheap,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: and I heard this from my parents and relatives and
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: all that because it was after World War Two.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I was born way after World War Two.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: But the phrase made in Japan was synonymous for cheap
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties, and by the time I was
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: a kid, and it had changed in the engineering excellence
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: of Japan. By the nineteen eighties, it became synonymous with
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: good things. It's the same reason bad became praise after
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: Michael Jackson moonwalked that phrase into the dictionary. The same
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: reason underdog once meant loser in a dog fight. Now
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: it's the most beloved arc in sports. Oh, an underdog.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: Everyone loves the underdog. Words don't change. They do not
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: change the words. You repeat something enough and eventually it
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: becomes true. And phrases, and we lived in a period
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: where people try to redefine phrases and things like that.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: It's a messy situation. Now.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: If you watch a department store at four in the
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: morning on Black Friday, it's no longer a store.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: It has become theater.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: A running back darting through a linebacker through the a
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: gap and then getting dog piled. Is no different than
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: a shopper sprinting down the left side, turning right and
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: then going fast and then turning left because that's where
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: they want to get to the target aisle for the
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: last seventy inch Samsung television, which is fifty five percent off.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: But only that, only this day, because America on Black
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Friday today stops being a country and becomes a checkout line.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: We call it shopping in quotes, but be honest, it
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: feels more like hunting. It feels like you're on a
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: scavenger hunt. People don't browse, they stalk. They camp out
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: like pilgrims on asphalt. They rush the doors like a
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: jail break. And this is not merely commerce. This is chemistry,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: is what it is. It's a dopamine surge disguised as patriotism,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: helping the American economy. It also teaches the one rule
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: that has quietly shaped our entire culture. If everyone else
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: wants something, you must want it to You just have
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: to want it again. It's not this one's not capitalism.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: It's social survival is what it is. And human beings
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: are grammable. You learn that as you get through life,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: you like to think, Oh no, I'm not programmable. Doctor
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Seuss taught me. I'm one of one. You can't program me.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: But we don't really live in a democracy. We live
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: in a brandocracy is what we live in. Because this
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: works every year without fail, the crowd's return. I don't
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: care how bad the economy is. I don't care about
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: any of that. And it's not because you need a
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: new microwave or discounted towels. It's because of three things.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: There's three triggers that are involved in this. You've got scarcity,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: which triggers the survival instinct. Scarcity of food, scarcity of
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: toaster ovens, countdown. That's something they learned in the infomercial world,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: where you introduce panic disguised as urgency. You better shop.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: These deals are going away and they're never coming back.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Oh mg, crowd participation now that replaces judgment with belonging.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And so really this is the group mind.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: It's group think, the one that terrifies every man, woman
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: and child, the one that confronts all of us, the
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: one that we all swear we're not a part of.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: You might be, but I'm not.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Even while we are filling up our cars. Now I
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: don't take part in Black Friday. My wife she loves it. Right,
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: the rise of online shopping, and you know that's big today,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: it's supercharged all of this. You enter cyber Monday, which
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: is coming up here, and end of the week before sales,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: end of the last minute sales. You've got the month
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: long shopping season today, fifty to sixty percent off. And
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: countries globally now participate and start in America and some
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: version of this around the globe. About fifty percent of
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: the countries. Europe calls it Mega Sales Day. China does
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: its own thunderous version called Singles Day. November eleventh now
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: the biggest shopping event on Earth. And Black Friday has
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: gone global not because it sells products, because it sells validation.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: And Black Friday is the latest day long line of
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: hypnotic tricks used by Madison Avenue. To me, the greatest
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: of them all, by far, the greatest of them all
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: was breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: And every once in a while it will come up
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: in conversation and I don't eat breakfast, but somebody will say, hey,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you gotta get breakfast. You'll be on baking. We gotta
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: get breakfast. Why are we gonna get breakfast? Well, it's
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: the most important meal of today. And then of course
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: I become the douche if I bring this up and
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: I say, you know that phrase breakfast is the most
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: important meal of today. That's not a medical consensus, it's
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: not scientifically based. Cereal companies, Kellogg's, they didn't just create breakfast.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: They created guilt, parental guilt. Are you are you feeding
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: your kids the fuel they need for school? Are you
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: raising a future champion? That That wasn't advice. That was
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: salesmanship and a lab coat. You put people on television
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: and lab coats and oh my god, we better listen
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: to these people said well, no, it's actually bull crap.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: No, but we better listen. It's very important. They look
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: like they know what they're doing.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: And before that slogan, people did not did not really
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: eat breakfast that much.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: If they ate breakfast, it was just leftover some the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: night before.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: And then after that it changed, It changed a lot,
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: and it's like, okay, now and now we got something.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: You know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Another one of those phrases, diamonds are forever or a
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: diamond is forever the for words from de Beers in
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: the nineteen forties, and suddenly every every single proposal required
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: a diamond.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, you gotta do it, a diamond ring.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: And before that, before nineteen forty seven, rings were pretty
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: modest or nonexistent. After that without a diamond, like, what
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: kind of loser are you? You don't have a diamond.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: They didn't just sell jewelry. They sold legitimacy is what
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: they sold. They sold that as well. The shopping cart
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: is another great example. People did not like shopping carts
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: when they started, and started in Oklahoma City. So what
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: they did is they hired hot women and attractive men
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: and they had paid them to walk around the store
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: with the shopping carts even though they weren't buying anything.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: And the reason they did that is because the other
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: customers saw it and they said, well, these are that
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: woman's really hot. I better I want to know what
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: she's doing. And then the women looked at the men's
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Oh that guy's handsome. I got to find out what
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: I mean that shopping cart. I might want to get
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: one of those. And so that's how that began. Black
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Friday is not about discounts. It's about again identity. It
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: asks do you belong in the tribe? Are you part
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: of the right tribe. If the answer is yes, you'll
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: chase the sale because belonging beats logic every.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Time, and so it's it's the truth. It's not flat,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: it's not flattering.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: America does not want things as much as we want
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: the feeling of wanting things. It's buyer's remorse for so
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: much of this stuff. The chase is the thrill, The
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: KRT is the adventure. The only two left by now
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: that's the drum beat. Of course, I'll let you in
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: a little dirty secret, that a dirty little secret that
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of those only two left things on the internet.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Are bull crap. They are a bull crap.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: And anyway, when you arrive, some people still go to
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: malls and stuff that want disappears, the thrill evaporates, we
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: begin hunting again, just go hunting again. And nothing proves
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: this more than the abandoned cart syndrome, the phenomena of
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: millions of people loading digital carts and never checking out.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Which is a thing right.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: People will put a bunch of stuff in the cart
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: and then that's it, and they won't actually purchase it.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: But we're really not chasing products again, We're chasing purpose.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: That's what it is.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And so Black Friday arrives every year like a spiritual audit,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: and it asks the same question, gently, powerfully, repeatedly, do
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: we truly need all this stuff? Or do we just
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: need to feel like we need this stuff and be part.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Of the community.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: It's the busiest shopping day of the year. It's also,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: in many ways the loneliest question that hides inside it.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Are we buying gifts? Or are we buying permission to matter?
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Black Friday? It's not on the calendar, it's in the bloodstream.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: It just is.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: And until we recognize that we won't own our own choices,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: they will own us.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Now go off and bob bye bye bye bye, not
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: bye bye baby.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Go buy a toaster oven so you can make French toast.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Now for the word of the week, the word of
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: the week, and the word of the week is avocado.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Is the word of the week. This was sent to me.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: We get the name here. One second.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: This was sent by Dale, who is not related to Chip.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: I met a Dale in Syracuse whose Chip in Syracuse.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: This is not his blood relative his brother, and he said,
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Dale said, how about avocado? And I thought, well, I
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: don't eat avocado, why would I want to worry about avocado?
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: And then I realized I had the come to Jesus
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: moment when I saw the origin of the word avocado.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: It goes back to the Aztecs, not the San Diego
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: State as Techs, the actual Aztex and they called the
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: fruit by their in their own language, a word which
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: directly translates to both avocado and testicle.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: That's right, yes, that's right. Now.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Scholars believe that the association came from the obvious oval
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: shape and the resemblance to testicles, and the fact that
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: avocados often grow in pairs hanging from the tree, and
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: so you put all that in there. It reinforced this
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: sexual connotation, and it was adopted. When the Spanish encountered
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the fruit, they adopted the Aztec in their language phrase,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: and over time it was reshaped into avocado and English,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: partly influenced by the similarity to the word advocate from
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Latin and in colonial English, avocados were sometimes called alligator
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: pears alligator pairs, and the Aztecs considered avocados to be
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: fertility boosters and gave you vitality, a working libido that
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: goes to the roof.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And so the meaning, the dual meaning.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Of this ASTech word reflects how liosten things have multiple
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: meanings all the time in life and certainly in our verbiage.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And so the.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Dual meaning was not unusual for the Aztec language. Words
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: often carried layered meanings, we are told, blending physical resemblance
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: with symbolic or cultural significance and all that. And so
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: there it is the good job by Dale. The word
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: of the week. Word of the week avocado. All right,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: This podcast is being produced by Danny G.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Radio.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Is a Danny G Radio production, so if you have
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: any complaints, blame him.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: No, I'm kidding. We love Danny.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Danny's having a great holiday weekend. We will get you
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: on the next podcast tomorrow. And as Danny would say, later,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: skater asta pasta a riva da che.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Oh that's he doesn't say that.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Now he will edit that out on the point he
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: does not say a riva dre cha. He does not
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: do that, does not do that.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Got a murder. I gotta go