Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Calling Dick

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The Fifth Hour: Calling Dick · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kutboobs.
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: The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
0:22
Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
0:29
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler,
0:36
Speaker 1: As we are hanging out together here on a Friday.
0:39
Speaker 1: It is the seventeenth day of April. We are in
0:42
Speaker 1: the audio dojo. Was I at my post last night? No?
0:48
Speaker 1: I was not. What happened, Well, I had a relative,
0:55
Speaker 1: my brother in town, came in for a couple of
0:58
Speaker 1: days from New York. I don't get to see him
1:01
Speaker 1: very often. So I was like, I'll take the rare
1:03
Speaker 1: and appropriate, rare and appropriate night off from the radio show.
1:08
Speaker 1: And why not. So that's what has been going on,
1:13
Speaker 1: And I said, I can still do the podcast. The
1:16
Speaker 1: podcast takes like thirty minutes, that's nothing. I'll do the
1:19
Speaker 1: podcast on this edition, the Friday special. We have the
1:23
Speaker 1: Playground remix, not all heroes wear capes, and who knows
1:28
Speaker 1: what else, but we begin with this. So it arrives
1:33
Speaker 1: every year on this day. What is it? You think, Well,
1:36
Speaker 1: it's just a random Friday. Is nothing special about the
1:40
Speaker 1: seventeenth day of April. You want to bet on that
1:43
Speaker 1: it is National High five Day, a holiday that feels
1:47
Speaker 1: less invented than discovered. Today's the day we've all done
1:53
Speaker 1: the high fight. Hey, give me a high five. Yeah.
1:56
Speaker 1: And like so many things in American culture, there is folklore.
2:03
Speaker 1: There is disputed ownership. The origin story is rather interesting.
2:09
Speaker 1: You've got dueling pianos. Now. The most Hollywood version, hooray
2:14
Speaker 1: for Hollywood. That's got the Razmataz. The most Hollywood version
2:19
Speaker 1: belongs to that Dodgers. They just had Jackie Robinson Day,
2:25
Speaker 1: and baseball provided the Dodgers provided Jackie Robinson a team
2:29
Speaker 1: to play for back in the day. The Dodgers also
2:32
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, with Bell bottoms and all that.
2:36
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy seven, Dusty Baker hit a moonshot home run
2:41
Speaker 1: at Chavez Ravine and Glenn Burke was at home plate,
2:45
Speaker 1: lifted his hand in the air everywhere and there it
2:49
Speaker 1: was what appeared to be a spontaneous moment punctuation. Dusty Baker,
2:55
Speaker 1: who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.
2:58
Speaker 1: Unsure of the choreography, but certain of the mood, he
3:03
Speaker 1: slapped the hand and flag was up off to the races.
3:08
Speaker 1: In that instant, baseball took ownership, accidentally invented a new
3:15
Speaker 1: form of public punctuation. A legend was born, and it
3:20
Speaker 1: seems a little too perfect, a little too perfect, which
3:24
Speaker 1: means it's probably not entirely true. There are competing claims
3:28
Speaker 1: hovering around, all right, hovering around back before the interweb.
3:33
Speaker 1: But note tanking was done by things called newspapers. It
3:37
Speaker 1: was not an exact science. At the University of Louisville,
3:41
Speaker 1: players by the name of Wiley Brown, like the name
3:45
Speaker 1: Wiley Brown and Derek Smith. The legend is that these
3:50
Speaker 1: guys deployed the high five. They said, we came up
3:52
Speaker 1: with it during the seventy eight seventy nine season, and
3:56
Speaker 1: that that's where it started. Meanwhile, at Michigan State University
4:03
Speaker 1: Old Sparti, there was a another person say well what
4:08
Speaker 1: about us, what about me? A person by the name
4:11
Speaker 1: of Irvin Johnson, better known by his stage name Magic
4:15
Speaker 1: Johnson insisted that he was the one that cooked that
4:21
Speaker 1: spell up. He was the choreographer of that. So you
4:26
Speaker 1: have three different groups taking ownership of this. Very similar
4:29
Speaker 1: to how the wave has started. There's a debate who
4:34
Speaker 1: started the wave. Did it start at an Oakland A's game,
4:37
Speaker 1: Did it start at a University of Washington football game.
4:41
Speaker 1: It started around the same time, but who exactly started
4:44
Speaker 1: at first? Who knows? So all of these accounts they
4:49
Speaker 1: share the amnesia of what happened prior. You see, if
4:54
Speaker 1: you go on the Hot t Top time machine, long
4:56
Speaker 1: before the High five became a thing, that was the
4:59
Speaker 1: lofi or as they said, hey give me some skin,
5:03
Speaker 1: you know, like that, And that was from before television,
5:09
Speaker 1: and it just happened organically in jazz clubs, was improvised
5:15
Speaker 1: in the black culture and jazz clubs. The legend goes
5:20
Speaker 1: and street corners back one hundred years ago, nineteen twenties,
5:23
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, so give me some skin, slapping skin, and
5:28
Speaker 1: that's how that went. And by the time that something
5:30
Speaker 1: called the Jazz Singer went on the big screen in
5:33
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven with a version of the Low five,
5:39
Speaker 1: it had already been around. It was already established. That
5:41
Speaker 1: all changed again in nineteen seventies the invention of the
5:44
Speaker 1: high five, the elevation. The low five became the high five.
5:48
Speaker 1: The high five is just the low five. You just
5:53
Speaker 1: raised your hand up a little bit. You reoriented your hand,
5:56
Speaker 1: and it's more visible. And it has become a big
6:00
Speaker 1: part of American culture over the years, and still to
6:03
Speaker 1: this day, fifty some years later or close to fifty
6:08
Speaker 1: years later, it is still seen on television and movies.
6:11
Speaker 1: It's a private ritual, public declaration at the same time.
6:16
Speaker 1: And so when Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke connected at
6:21
Speaker 1: Dodger Stadium, it wasn't the beginning so much as it
6:25
Speaker 1: was it was a debut. The cameras were there, the
6:30
Speaker 1: stakes were different, The moment had a narrative. Baseball always
6:35
Speaker 1: wants those nice, clean storylines, and they seized it. The
6:38
Speaker 1: baseball writers seized it. And it has become bigger and
6:43
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and even to this day, it's a
6:46
Speaker 1: thing that the truth, though, is less satisfying and much
6:49
Speaker 1: more revealing. And I fell down this deep dive because
6:52
Speaker 1: it is National High five Day, and that's why we're
6:55
Speaker 1: talking about this, and it's a cultural hand me down
6:59
Speaker 1: passed from as musicians the ballplayer. Of course, it is
7:02
Speaker 1: possible that in the Roman Empire they did some low
7:06
Speaker 1: fives and some high fives, but they just didn't write
7:08
Speaker 1: it down. There might be a cave somewhere where Neanderthal said, hey,
7:13
Speaker 1: let's do the high five. We'll put it in the stone. Sure,
7:16
Speaker 1: why not? What the hell? That's the American way of invention,
7:20
Speaker 1: though you take credit for it, even if somebody did
7:21
Speaker 1: it before you. You just adapt it. You have better
7:25
Speaker 1: lighting and things like that. Now at some point, and
7:28
Speaker 1: no one can say exactly this is the main reason
7:30
Speaker 1: I brought this up, and I apologize. I'm going along
7:32
Speaker 1: the story I want to tell. I'll get to in
7:34
Speaker 1: a minute. It's a humdinger of a story, but I
7:36
Speaker 1: just want to finish this up. Put a bone it. So,
7:39
Speaker 1: at some point along the way, the high five was commandeered.
7:42
Speaker 1: It was hijacked by the smallest trouble makers in society,
7:48
Speaker 1: the kiddos, the playground remix which I fell victim too
7:54
Speaker 1: many times, and then once I learned it, I did
7:56
Speaker 1: it to a bunch of other of my classmates. Some
7:58
Speaker 1: of you might be listening right now, now to this podcast.
8:01
Speaker 1: So the playground remix is elegant in its cruelty. Up high,
8:07
Speaker 1: you every done this? Up high? Hand raised down low,
8:12
Speaker 1: and then the downloading and then yeah too slow? Yeah
8:18
Speaker 1: up pie down low too slow. Schmucks. Yeah. It is
8:23
Speaker 1: the high five turned inside out, a celebration that has
8:27
Speaker 1: been weaponized on playgrounds from Seed to Shining Sea as
8:31
Speaker 1: a prank, a tiny morality play with expectation and humiliation,
8:38
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of blacktops across the US, the
8:42
Speaker 1: swing sets in school cafeterias. If the origin of the
8:49
Speaker 1: high five was actually just a rip off of the
8:51
Speaker 1: low five, well, the kiddos took the high five of
8:54
Speaker 1: the low five, and they combined it with the fake out,
8:58
Speaker 1: and another legend was worn, another legend was born. Yeah,
9:04
Speaker 1: put a bow on this, why don't we, because we've
9:07
Speaker 1: got other things to get to. But National High five
9:09
Speaker 1: day less a celebration of a single moment and more
9:12
Speaker 1: of a tribute of the evolution of all of these things.
9:16
Speaker 1: And so these origin stories are not always tidy, camera ready,
9:22
Speaker 1: preferably endorsed by someone famous and all that. So, yeah,
9:26
Speaker 1: we will credit the Dodgers if you want. Why not
9:29
Speaker 1: what the hell, Dusty Baker. It makes for a better story.
9:33
Speaker 1: And just understand that the palms meet midair, they carry
9:37
Speaker 1: with them a history that goes way way wait wait,
9:41
Speaker 1: wait at least one hundred years, if not much longer
9:43
Speaker 1: than that. Well, now to the main event, main event.
9:50
Speaker 1: So I spent a portion of this week doing something
9:53
Speaker 1: that if you had told me when I started out
9:56
Speaker 1: years ago dreaming of being in the magic radio box,
10:00
Speaker 1: and when I started my journey in radio, and I
10:03
Speaker 1: started at my college radio station KSBR, and then got
10:06
Speaker 1: my first commercial radio job in San Diego at the
10:09
Speaker 1: mighty six ninety, if you had told me that this
10:13
Speaker 1: would be part of my profession, that I would end
10:15
Speaker 1: up doing this at some point I would have these responsibilities.
10:20
Speaker 1: I would have assumed that you were either joking or
10:24
Speaker 1: you thought I instead become a social worker. And yeah,
10:28
Speaker 1: I'm talking about coordinating transportation logistics for a man named Dick.
10:34
Speaker 1: Not just any Dick. This is a special Dick, Dick
10:38
Speaker 1: and Dayton. Yes, so we are now a week and
10:41
Speaker 1: a day out from the great Cincinnati area malor meat
10:45
Speaker 1: and Greek. Can you believe that a week from tomorrow
10:50
Speaker 1: it's on? Like, don't get call April twenty fifth, Newport, Kentucky,
10:56
Speaker 1: a scenic one mile putt from the Ohio River, the
11:01
Speaker 1: Mighty Ohio River, and within the smell of broughtworst coming
11:06
Speaker 1: from where the Reds play. Now I mention this because
11:12
Speaker 1: geography suddenly becomes a very important part of this story.
11:16
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in a minute. As the great Paul
11:19
Speaker 1: Harvey would say, you know what the story is, but
11:22
Speaker 1: you're about to hear. Yeah. So April twenty fifth is
11:25
Speaker 1: a important date. We have circled it, we have underlined it,
11:30
Speaker 1: we have put it in bold. And have we over
11:34
Speaker 1: hyped this? Absolutely? Absolutely We've overhyped this. And I'm telling
11:41
Speaker 1: you I feel a little anxiety because I can get
11:43
Speaker 1: a lot of email from people like this is gonna
11:44
Speaker 1: be one of the bigger things we do. If everyone
11:46
Speaker 1: shows up that says they're going to be there, this
11:48
Speaker 1: is gonna be pretty big. Like we've had some really
11:50
Speaker 1: big Mallord meat and greets, We've had a lot of
11:52
Speaker 1: mid sized ones. We've had some small ones like this
11:55
Speaker 1: seems like a bigger deal. This seems like a bigger deal,
11:59
Speaker 1: and so so I'm getting a little anxiety like this
12:03
Speaker 1: is not my thing, this event, and you know, I'm
12:06
Speaker 1: inviting you to come hang out with me and you
12:12
Speaker 1: Mostly these are people that you know, I don't really
12:15
Speaker 1: know you in real life, disembodied voices with fake avatars
12:21
Speaker 1: and user names. You're my people of the overnight. We've
12:25
Speaker 1: had tons of RSVPs every day, and you don't need
12:29
Speaker 1: the RSVP. Just show up. You don't need to announce
12:32
Speaker 1: your showing up, like big names Queen Roxanne flying in
12:35
Speaker 1: from Denver, which is flattering, Robbie the Mariner fan the
12:41
Speaker 1: heavyweight champion coming from the Pacific Northwest, just Josh of course,
12:45
Speaker 1: local Joe the ghost Hunter, and others. Some really cool
12:51
Speaker 1: names that I'm excited about meeting. Cardiacs. Stanley's gonna make
12:56
Speaker 1: the pilgrimage. She's gonna drive down far out Dave, I
13:00
Speaker 1: believe Chris, who thinks I hate him because he's just
13:03
Speaker 1: a troll. He's going to be there. So there's some
13:06
Speaker 1: really cool people that I'm looking forward to meeting that
13:09
Speaker 1: I have not met. Some of you I have met
13:11
Speaker 1: that I get to see again that's cool. And some
13:14
Speaker 1: of these other names. A few of you sound like
13:17
Speaker 1: you should be pitching minor league baseball somewhere, and a
13:21
Speaker 1: couple of you seem like you should be really good
13:22
Speaker 1: at fixing the gutter on your house or my house.
13:27
Speaker 1: So it's quite the cast, the flotsam and jetsam and
13:30
Speaker 1: the motley crew traveling circus without a tent, and then
13:34
Speaker 1: back to Dick. It always goes back to Dick, the
13:37
Speaker 1: star of the show, Dick and Dayton, who has been
13:40
Speaker 1: a part of this show for more than two decades,
13:42
Speaker 1: which blows my mind. The show has been on the
13:44
Speaker 1: air that long. Dick and Dayton has been with the
13:48
Speaker 1: show longer than any professional athletes have been alive. Just
13:52
Speaker 1: about right. Dick, whose age exists in the polite fog
13:57
Speaker 1: where we all agree just stop counting, somewhere in his
14:00
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties. At some point numbers become less
14:04
Speaker 1: important and less informative and more decorative. So naturally we
14:09
Speaker 1: asked Dick the most basic question, do you have a ride?
14:13
Speaker 1: The main reason I'm going to do this is I
14:16
Speaker 1: had promised Dick and Dayton I was going to do
14:18
Speaker 1: it years ago, and I follow the code of the West.
14:22
Speaker 1: When you say you're going to do something, you do it,
14:24
Speaker 1: And so I'll do it, and I said, Dick, do
14:27
Speaker 1: you have a ride? This was on the radio, you
14:28
Speaker 1: might have heard it. And he said, no, I don't
14:30
Speaker 1: have a ride. And this is where things began to unravel.
14:34
Speaker 1: So we went down the list and it was not
14:38
Speaker 1: a big board. It was a list. Sorry Terry in England.
14:41
Speaker 1: We were assembling. It's like we were assembling this for
14:44
Speaker 1: a jury, like, hey, Dave and Dayton, No, Dave can't
14:46
Speaker 1: do it. What about this guy? Know that guy can't
14:49
Speaker 1: do it? And so I was trying to remember all
14:51
Speaker 1: the characters that Dick and Dayton has brought up over
14:54
Speaker 1: the years, and it was like asking a group of
14:59
Speaker 1: people if they'd help you move, and suddenly everyone has
15:04
Speaker 1: a thing. And then this is important. I made what
15:08
Speaker 1: I believe to be a ceremonial offer. I said, I
15:14
Speaker 1: will pick you up now. This is the kind of
15:16
Speaker 1: offer that you make, the way you say we should
15:21
Speaker 1: get lunch sometime, we should go out and have a
15:25
Speaker 1: nice lunch. Why not? All right? It is not meant
15:30
Speaker 1: to be operationalized. It is not meant to be examined
15:35
Speaker 1: under a microscope or a GPS app. Unfortunately, Dick and
15:41
Speaker 1: Dayton is from the old Country, and I say the
15:44
Speaker 1: Old Country of Ohio. Dick from Dayton does not understand.
15:48
Speaker 1: Apparently the token gesture he was legit. He wanted this
15:53
Speaker 1: to happen. So I looked at a map from where
15:56
Speaker 1: I am staying in the Greater Cincinnati area, not that
15:59
Speaker 1: far from the airport to Dayton. The hotel I'm staying
16:04
Speaker 1: at to Dayton is about ninety minutes. Ninety minutes, which
16:09
Speaker 1: is a number that sounds reasonable until you realize it
16:14
Speaker 1: is one direction, not the band one direction. So now
16:19
Speaker 1: we're talking about three hours round trip just to retrieve Dick,
16:24
Speaker 1: followed by another three hour return trip because I got
16:28
Speaker 1: to drop them off. So if my math is correct
16:30
Speaker 1: using Malormath, that's six hours of driving, which is longer
16:36
Speaker 1: than the amount of time it takes to fly one
16:39
Speaker 1: way from Los Angeles to Cincinnati. Okay, so that's that's
16:46
Speaker 1: where six hours of driving, which is the amount of
16:49
Speaker 1: time that I would prefer not to spend in the
16:52
Speaker 1: car on a day where we have tentative plans to
16:55
Speaker 1: attend a baseball game. Now, if it's raining, I'm not going. However,
16:58
Speaker 1: the Reds are playing again that night against the Tigers,
17:03
Speaker 1: playing against the Tigers, and it's that's the plan. So
17:08
Speaker 1: Robbie the marin a fan, He's going to be there,
17:11
Speaker 1: I believe, just Josh is in Queen Roxanne, hopefully some others.
17:15
Speaker 1: We're all going. And there's something very appealing about sitting
17:19
Speaker 1: in a ballpark with people you normally only interact with
17:23
Speaker 1: on the radio. It feels almost human, like real life.
17:29
Speaker 1: And so I'm doing the math on this, and it's
17:32
Speaker 1: not complicated math. It's malormth, the kind of malar math
17:34
Speaker 1: that makes you question your life choices. So six hours
17:37
Speaker 1: of driving, I would miss the game, possibly fall asleep
17:42
Speaker 1: at the wheel somewhere in rural Ohio between Cincinnati and Dayton,
17:46
Speaker 1: which I imagine would be a very peaceful but inconvenient situation.
17:51
Speaker 1: And then but wait, there's more, like a plot twist
17:54
Speaker 1: in a movie you didn't realize was possible. It happened
18:00
Speaker 1: a woman named Lisa. I don't know who Lisa is.
18:05
Speaker 1: Do you know? You know Lisa? Okay, So she lives
18:09
Speaker 1: in the Dayton area, and I got a message on
18:15
Speaker 1: the interweb. She and her husband Rob reached out on Facebook,
18:20
Speaker 1: which is a sentence that normally signals stranger danger. However,
18:25
Speaker 1: in this case, it signaled salvation. Turns out that Lisa
18:31
Speaker 1: and Rob have a relative who happens to live at
18:34
Speaker 1: the same retirement community where Dick in Dayton resides. And
18:41
Speaker 1: this sweet woman and her husband offered to drive Dick
18:47
Speaker 1: and just like that, it's what I believe is called
18:50
Speaker 1: a good mitzvah, an act of kindness. Turns out that
18:56
Speaker 1: not all heroes wear capes. I was thrilled. I was
19:00
Speaker 1: only thrilled. This was like a big stress on me.
19:03
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I'm only in Cincinnati for a
19:06
Speaker 1: couple of days. I want to get the vibe of
19:08
Speaker 1: the city and see what it's all about. I love
19:10
Speaker 1: looking at places I've not been through and experiencing that.
19:13
Speaker 1: And this woman solved my problem. Logistics had been conquered.
19:18
Speaker 1: I could see the finish line. So I made the
19:20
Speaker 1: call to Dick. I wrung him up. He answered her.
19:24
Speaker 1: I said, good news, Dick and Dayton. I said, we
19:28
Speaker 1: got your ride, and I told the whole story. I said, listen,
19:32
Speaker 1: I don't really know this woman. She seems like a
19:34
Speaker 1: very nice woman. I talked to her on Facebook. I've
19:36
Speaker 1: got her information, so you's nothing to really worry about.
19:39
Speaker 1: She knows somebody at the facility. It should be all good.
19:42
Speaker 1: And she's willing to pick you up, take you down
19:44
Speaker 1: to Cincinnati. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And
19:48
Speaker 1: Dick and Dayton said something that, in hindsight, I should
19:52
Speaker 1: have anticipated instead of saying, Oh, that's great, Ben, I
19:57
Speaker 1: look forward to seeing you. Thank you so much. I'm
19:59
Speaker 1: so excited for Lisa. He said, Ben, you're my friend.
20:05
Speaker 1: I want you to pick me up. We're pals. I
20:08
Speaker 1: want to spend time in the car with you. Of
20:13
Speaker 1: course he did. So this is where things took a
20:16
Speaker 1: turn to the wild side and it turned into a
20:19
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety sitcom. I did something I raally do. So
20:24
Speaker 1: I'm having this conversation with Dick and Dayton off the air.
20:28
Speaker 1: We had a real conversation, two people speaking directly about life,
20:33
Speaker 1: radio all that stuff. We didn't have the buffer of
20:36
Speaker 1: a microphone or the safety net of I gotta go, Dick,
20:39
Speaker 1: I got commercials, none of that. And let me tell you,
20:42
Speaker 1: Dick and Dayton is a delightfully sweet man. He could
20:45
Speaker 1: not have been happier. Very rarely in my life do
20:49
Speaker 1: I talk to someone who takes just great joy of
20:51
Speaker 1: talking to me. It makes you feel much more important
20:54
Speaker 1: than you are, Like, this felt like a big thing.
20:57
Speaker 1: It happened to be his birthday. It was a really
21:00
Speaker 1: big deal for him that I called him up. And
21:04
Speaker 1: he starts rolling off all these radio shows that he's
21:07
Speaker 1: called in. Have you called Sean Hannity? Yes? I have
21:09
Speaker 1: called Shanna? What about rushlingbou No? I tried calling Russia
21:12
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Couldn't get on that kind of thing.
21:15
Speaker 1: And so then he starts asking me. Dick and Dayton
21:17
Speaker 1: starts asking me about people from the show. It's like
21:22
Speaker 1: they're long lost relatives. It's a family reunion. We're going
21:26
Speaker 1: to this pizza place April twenty fifth. Let's give you
21:29
Speaker 1: the details in a second. If you keep listening. Anyway,
21:33
Speaker 1: for Dick and Dayton, this is like a family reunion.
21:36
Speaker 1: And he says, is Coop bah loop or Coop dot Loop?
21:41
Speaker 1: He didn't say Coop dual loop. He said Coop a
21:43
Speaker 1: loopa or something like that. Is he going to be there?
21:46
Speaker 1: I forget exactly it was a mispronunciation. He asked, now.
21:50
Speaker 1: Dick sounded genuinely disappointed when I said, no, Coop's not going.
21:55
Speaker 1: Then he said, is that girl? That girl, what's her name? Larina.
21:58
Speaker 1: Will she be there? I said, no, Dick, Lorena is
22:01
Speaker 1: not going. She's unfortunately not going to go. Well tell her,
22:04
Speaker 1: I say hello, Okay, I'll tell her. You say hello,
22:06
Speaker 1: my personal favorite. And I'm not making this up. This
22:09
Speaker 1: sounds like something I'm making up for the podcast. I
22:11
Speaker 1: promise you, Hand to God, I am not making this up.
22:15
Speaker 1: Dick and Dayton asked, did Eddie Garcia retire? I said retire?
22:23
Speaker 1: So then I had to explain to the dixter that
22:27
Speaker 1: Eddie had not retired, that he had been decommissioned or
22:33
Speaker 1: as we say, whacked. Now keep in mind, at the
22:37
Speaker 1: time we had this conversation myself and Dick and Dayton,
22:40
Speaker 1: Dick has regularly called the show pretty much every week.
22:43
Speaker 1: He calls once or twice a week every week since
22:46
Speaker 1: this event happened. So I went back in my notes.
22:49
Speaker 1: It was a very traumatic day for obviously for much
22:52
Speaker 1: more traumatic for Eddie than me. But it was very disheartening,
22:55
Speaker 1: and it was you know, it was a tough, tough situation.
22:58
Speaker 1: So I went back and I looked at my notes.
23:01
Speaker 1: It has been it has been seventeen months since Eddie
23:04
Speaker 1: was excommunicated from the show. Five hundred and nineteen days.
23:09
Speaker 1: Who's counting since Eddie was given the boot, And yet
23:13
Speaker 1: in Dick's world, Dick and Dayton, this is still a
23:17
Speaker 1: developing story, developing hot dot dot dot, and it would
23:21
Speaker 1: appear in Dayton, Ohio. Time moves a little differently, a
23:25
Speaker 1: little different. I want to go there just because it'll
23:27
Speaker 1: move slowly. Yeah, honestly, time moves differently for me too. Unfortunately,
23:32
Speaker 1: it moves the other direction. Eventually, after what I would
23:36
Speaker 1: describe as a gentle hostage negotiation, like convincing a cat.
23:42
Speaker 1: I'm allergic to cats, but I have friends that have cats,
23:45
Speaker 1: and I've seen them from a distance. It's like trying
23:48
Speaker 1: to get a cat to take medicine. You have to
23:51
Speaker 1: reach an agreement. You have to colm the cat, put
23:54
Speaker 1: the medicine in something else. Now, Dick and Dayton eventually
23:58
Speaker 1: did accept the ride from Lisa and Rob and I
24:01
Speaker 1: don't know what Lisa said. I'd like to talk to Lisa,
24:03
Speaker 1: because I just told Dick. I said, listen, I'm gonna
24:06
Speaker 1: give you Lisa's phone number. I want you to call
24:08
Speaker 1: her up and just make sure you're okay with it.
24:11
Speaker 1: If not, I'll give you a ride. And so again,
24:14
Speaker 1: not all heroes wear capes. So whatever Lisa said to
24:18
Speaker 1: Dick and Dayton convinced him this was okay and we're
24:21
Speaker 1: good to go. So thank you so much for that.
24:27
Speaker 1: And there will be no six hour odyssey, no missing
24:31
Speaker 1: the baseball game, no existential crisis on Interstate's you know,
24:35
Speaker 1: seventy five or whatever it is. Order has been restored.
24:39
Speaker 1: So I would like to thank not only Lisa, but Rob.
24:43
Speaker 1: I want to make sure I mentioned Rob's name again.
24:45
Speaker 1: By the way, she told me that the reason she
24:47
Speaker 1: listens is not just because she's a long suffering Jets fan,
24:50
Speaker 1: but Rob convinced his wife to listen to the show,
24:53
Speaker 1: which I imagine required some kind of PowerPoint presentation like
24:59
Speaker 1: what are you listening to this? What is? I don't understand.
25:03
Speaker 1: She may have had to sign a waiver. It might
25:05
Speaker 1: have been written in the marriage contract. I don't know. Lisa,
25:08
Speaker 1: based on her avatar, is a long suffering Jets fan
25:11
Speaker 1: living there in the Dayton, Ohio area, or close to it,
25:15
Speaker 1: and has already endured more than most people should in
25:18
Speaker 1: a lifetime. So volunteering to drive fine kind gentleman Dick
25:23
Speaker 1: from Dayton feels consistent with a pattern of heroic endurance
25:29
Speaker 1: that you would be willing to do that, And now
25:32
Speaker 1: we wait a week from tomorrow, a week It's crazy.
25:38
Speaker 1: All the planning, the calls, the minor inconveniences that somehow
25:43
Speaker 1: become major plot points, will culminate in a room full
25:48
Speaker 1: of people who have for years existed primarily as voices
25:54
Speaker 1: in the night, led by Dick and Dayton and ohio
25:57
Speaker 1: Al who are supposed to form perform together. And I
26:01
Speaker 1: did go over the rundown with Dick. I said, well, Dick,
26:04
Speaker 1: I want you to do some songs. Okay, that would
26:06
Speaker 1: be great. And then I said, well you know who
26:07
Speaker 1: ohio Al is. Oh, yeah, I know who ohio I said, well,
26:11
Speaker 1: Al's going to be there, and he's a very talented musician.
26:14
Speaker 1: He's a big part of what we do here on
26:15
Speaker 1: the Fifth Hour podcast. And he said, oh that's great.
26:18
Speaker 1: I said, would you do some music? Yes, I'll do
26:20
Speaker 1: some music. It's going to be a real hooton Nanny,
26:22
Speaker 1: A real hooton Nanny. Now, will we understand when Dick
26:25
Speaker 1: starts singing? Probably not, but it's going to be fun.
26:28
Speaker 1: We'll have a great time. And I want I want
26:31
Speaker 1: this place to rock when I want a standing ovation
26:35
Speaker 1: for Dick and Dick because it's really for him. It's
26:37
Speaker 1: not for me, it's for him. He's such a guy.
26:40
Speaker 1: The fact that he loves radio now he calls a
26:43
Speaker 1: lot of political radio, love sports radio. I just think
26:45
Speaker 1: it's the coolest thing in the world. We don't have
26:47
Speaker 1: too many people like that anymore. He's like the last
26:49
Speaker 1: of them will He gets that, truly gets what we do,
26:52
Speaker 1: and I get into the I got into the business
26:54
Speaker 1: because I love radio and it was my passion. Obviously,
26:57
Speaker 1: if I was younger, I would have gotten into this
26:58
Speaker 1: podcasting or something like that. But the magic of radio
27:02
Speaker 1: was just so cool to me, and Dick and Dayton
27:05
Speaker 1: is the living embodiment of that. So I hope this
27:08
Speaker 1: goes well. I don't know how many people are gonna
27:09
Speaker 1: show it. Maybe there'll just be a few people. Who knows,
27:12
Speaker 1: whoever's there. I want this to be just a wonderful
27:16
Speaker 1: memory for Dick and Dayton. He just had a big
27:18
Speaker 1: birthday this week, so I want to make sure that continues.
27:21
Speaker 1: I suspect something will go wrong. By the way, something
27:25
Speaker 1: always goes wrong. There will somebody will forget something, a
27:30
Speaker 1: chair will be in the wrong place. Someone's gonna get lost,
27:35
Speaker 1: you know, Dick and Dayton will ask if someone retired
27:38
Speaker 1: who clearly has not retired, like Eddie Garcia. That's all
27:42
Speaker 1: part of it. It's all part of it. In the end,
27:45
Speaker 1: this is what the whole thing is. It's a collection
27:47
Speaker 1: of small, slightly absurd moments that, when you line them
27:53
Speaker 1: up just right, almost resemble something meaningful. And I have
27:57
Speaker 1: so many great memories, even though I'm an introvert, I
28:00
Speaker 1: have so many great memories meeting people and hearing some
28:02
Speaker 1: of your stories about what you've been through and the
28:05
Speaker 1: stuff that's happened. And I love the origin stories about
28:08
Speaker 1: how you started listening to the show and how you
28:09
Speaker 1: know you didn't really like it, or maybe you did
28:11
Speaker 1: like it and then you stop liking it, then you
28:13
Speaker 1: came back to it and all that stuff, and so
28:16
Speaker 1: it's it's great. So it's it's gonna be a lot
28:18
Speaker 1: of fun. And I am flattered that many of you
28:21
Speaker 1: are traveling from far away to do it. And again,
28:24
Speaker 1: the date on that is a week from tomorrow, so
28:28
Speaker 1: April twenty fifth, two to five pm. A twenty twenty
28:33
Speaker 1: six Malor Meet and Greet the Cincinnati area, which will
28:35
Speaker 1: take place in Newport, Kentucky at Strong's Brick Oven petez Aia.
28:41
Speaker 1: That'll be from again two pm to five April twenty fifth,
28:45
Speaker 1: and the Reds play a little after that. And I'm
28:48
Speaker 1: not sure how this is gonna work logistically. The reason
28:54
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how this is gonna work is because
28:56
Speaker 1: a bunch of us want to go to the Reds
28:57
Speaker 1: game and it's very last minute. I'm not sure we
29:00
Speaker 1: can get tickets together. We're going to see if we
29:01
Speaker 1: can at least in the same general area. So the
29:04
Speaker 1: address at strong Sprint up in Pizzeria seven o' eight
29:08
Speaker 1: Manmath Street, seven o eight Manna Street in Newport, Kentucky,
29:14
Speaker 1: four to one, seven to one. So that's it. So again,
29:18
Speaker 1: thank you so much to the the couple Lisa and Rob.
29:23
Speaker 1: Not all heroes wear capes, as Dick and Dayton does
29:26
Speaker 1: have a ride. And I want to thank Angelina and
29:29
Speaker 1: some others that reached out that said if it didn't
29:32
Speaker 1: work out, they would be willing to help and pick
29:34
Speaker 1: up the dixter. So thank you all for your your kindness.
29:38
Speaker 1: I do appreciate it. And you're you're a good mench
29:42
Speaker 1: You're you're a good good mench there. Anyway, have a
29:45
Speaker 1: great rest of your Friday and we will chat with
29:48
Speaker 1: you on the Saturday Extravaganza and then we'll have the
29:51
Speaker 1: mail bag on Sunday. Yeah, how about that. I see
29:55
Speaker 1: you later. Bye bye, Heloha. Got a murder. I gotta go.