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The Fifth Hour: VooDoo Googaloo · The Ben Maller Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Kabbooms.
• 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.
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  Speaker 2: It's a 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 Maller,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Happy Saturday to you. It is the twentieth day of June,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the day after USA USA. Yeah, the US national soccer
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: team advanced to the knockout round at the World Cup.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I am told that is a big deal. I actually
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: watched most of this game on Friday. It started at
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  Speaker 1: noon on the West coast. That's typically not when I'm
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: wide awake, but I did watch with half an eye
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and then slowly woke up and they beat the Aussi's
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the Aussie muffed it two nothings. You probably know that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: by now. I'm assuming you know that by now. So
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: they made a big deal about this injured guy who's
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: supposedly really good because he plays with like a team
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: in Europe and he was out with with the calf injury.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So they've advanced. So that means the USA into the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: next stage and we'll have more chatter about that going
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: forward on this podcast. The Saturday special, we are up
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: early for the ninety percent and Mister fix It Flop.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: The Mister fix It Flop will begin with the Saturday
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Sermon from the Tabernacle of the mal Or Militia. Buckle up, Bukaroo.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: This is a big meat ball, a big meat the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: ball right down the middle of the plate. So if
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: you've listened over the last I don't know how long
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: have we been doing this. I have often ramped about
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the web, the world wide Web. One of my pet
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: peeves over the last number of years has been realizing
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that much of modern life feels like an episode of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: The Twilight Zone. Doo doo, doo, doo doo doo. Do
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: do do do do do do do do doo. Now,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I don't even know how many people alive today even
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: though they hear the Twilight Zone. I don't know if
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you ever watched it. I'm assuming if you're below a
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  Speaker 1: certain age, that is like the most ridiculous phrase the twilights,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and what is the twilights. I know there's twilight, but
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the twilight zone is. But just
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: bear with me. I just bear with me on that,
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  Speaker 1: because it I'm telling you, it feels like the Twilight Zone.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: You start noticing things that that like, well, okay, I
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: see something here, and then you make the mistake of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: talking about the things that you see, and that is
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: when you discover that shouting into the wind is still legal,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: however largely ineffective, largely ineffective when you just shout into
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  Speaker 1: the wind. And that's kind of where I have been
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  Speaker 1: on this situation. And we're gonna do. If you've never
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  Speaker 1: seen the Twilight Zone, they had the famous open and
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  Speaker 1: then they say, picture if you will, a world we're
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  Speaker 1: only to be ruined by so and so or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: You know that sign post up ahead and the Twilight Zone.
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  Speaker 1: You're traveling here, it is you're traveling through another dimension,
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  Speaker 1: a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind,
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  Speaker 1: a journey into the wondrous land whose boundaries are that
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  Speaker 1: of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead, Your next stop,
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  Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone. There is a fifty man beyond that,
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  Speaker 1: which is known demand. It is a dimension so vast
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  Speaker 1: as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle
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  Speaker 1: ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and
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  Speaker 1: it lies between the pit of man's fears and the
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  Speaker 1: summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.
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  Speaker 1: It is in an area we call the twilight zone.
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  Speaker 1: No seriously, so. One of my favorite quotes in movies
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  Speaker 1: that are old but not that old yet. One of
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  Speaker 1: my favorite quotes comes from Mark Hannah in The Wolf
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  Speaker 1: of Wall Street. Now, that was Matthew McConaughey's character explaining
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  Speaker 1: Wall Street by saying, nobody knows anything. It's all for gazy,
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  Speaker 1: very dust, not real. Well, it turns out that was
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  Speaker 1: not just about stocks. It's social media. And I've been
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  Speaker 1: lucky or unlucky, depending on your perspective to peek behind
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  Speaker 1: the curtain and see how the sausage gets made. And
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: once you've seen the kitchen, it's difficult to enjoy the
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  Speaker 1: meal without wondering what exactly you're chewing on. That's a
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  Speaker 1: very piece of chewy sausage. The oldest lesson, and I've
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  Speaker 1: studied magic. I was a kid that grew up going
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  Speaker 1: to Disneyland right near Disneyland. It used to be affordable
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  Speaker 1: and went to the magic Shop at Disneyland. That was
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  Speaker 1: my go to on Main Street USA. The oldest lesson
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  Speaker 1: in stage magic is rather simple. People have blind spots.
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  Speaker 1: That's it. That's all. Every man, woman and child. Harry
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  Speaker 1: Houdini knew it. Modern Silicone Valley, they know it. Magicians
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  Speaker 1: exploit attention. Social media exploits emotion. Bada bing bata boom.
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  Speaker 1: A magician waves his left hand while his right hand
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  Speaker 1: steals your watch and you have no idea. It's the
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  Speaker 1: same way pickpocket works. They distract you and then they
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  Speaker 1: grab your wallet. Run away Instagram they wave outrage, while
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  Speaker 1: TikTok waves novelty and X waves tribal warfare. It's Blue
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: team versus Red team. It's the same trick. It's just
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  Speaker 1: a different Tuxiedo and major corporations, even small businesses, spend
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  Speaker 1: tons of money. The big ones spend billions studying your
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: week spot, my week spot are week spots. It's called
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: operation or opposition research. I guess that's why they do politics,
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  Speaker 1: opposition research. But they know we hate missing out. We
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: need to be approved, right. We crave approval. We fear
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  Speaker 1: fear the fact that we might not get approval, and
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  Speaker 1: if you're also, if you're scared of something. The old
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  Speaker 1: line of news is if it bleeds, it leads right.
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  Speaker 1: Fear spreads faster than reason. It's one of the phrases.
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  Speaker 1: I use the better stories in the losing locker room,
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  Speaker 1: not the winning locker room, because the losing locker room,
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  Speaker 1: those people aren't getting approval. They're getting ripped and their
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  Speaker 1: finger pointing and all that, and convenience also beats principles
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  Speaker 1: nine times out of ten. Repeat something often enough and
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  Speaker 1: it becomes familiar, and then that starts masquerading as the truth.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing new under the sun, just better software and different
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  Speaker 1: gadgets and all that, and knowing the trick. Knowing the
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  Speaker 1: trick does not make you a mute. In fact, I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: am well aware of what I'm partaking in, and yet
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I still click. I still occasionally doom scroll. I'll occasionally
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  Speaker 1: find myself watching a video of a raccoon stealing a
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  Speaker 1: cat or cat's food or something like that, or fighting
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  Speaker 1: with a bird or something, and then forty minutes later,
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  Speaker 1: I'm futzing around researching for some reason, snacks at the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: airport vending machines in Japan. So I'm sitting here on
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  Speaker 1: this side of the microphone, and I'm like, I'm not
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  Speaker 1: a monk. I'm not a malard monk. I live in
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the cave as well, which brings us to the clipping. Now,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I said clipping, not the clippers. God forbid clipping. Now,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: if you've ever wondered why a certain song or a
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: TV show or a talking point or some random drama
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: o rama appears everywhere simultaneously, there's a decent chance that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: you are watching manufactured enthusiasm. Say what, Welcome in to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a little place I call the Voodoo Bugaloo, which is
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a suburb of the Twilight Zone. What looks are is
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: almost always not organic. Thousands of short clips are chopped, cannibalized,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: put up from podcasts, concerts, movies, sporting events, interviews, songs,
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  Speaker 1: you name it. Armies of normal looking social media accounts
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  Speaker 1: will post them and post them again and again. Now.
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  Speaker 1: Some are real people chasing the side hustle that will
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  Speaker 1: side hustle money. Some are sock puppets. There's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of sock puppets out there. Some are freelancers hanging around
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  Speaker 1: discord servers earning a buck or two per thousand views. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the goal is not to fake popularity. That's the misnomer.
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  Speaker 1: It's not the fake popularity the goal of this. It's
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  Speaker 1: smarter than that. The goal is to fake excitement. Use
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  Speaker 1: the word momentum, which, unlike in sports, is a thing
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  Speaker 1: in the microblogging apps algorithms. I'm telling you they have
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  Speaker 1: studied this. They don't care if excitement is legit, if
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  Speaker 1: it's authentic. They only care that excitement exists. That's all
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  Speaker 1: they care about. Once enough sparks pop up, Once enough
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  Speaker 1: sparks appear, the machine starts blowing oxygen on the fire.
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  Speaker 1: And then real people arrive and suddenly the fake becomes real.
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  Speaker 1: It's astro turf with subtitles. Right now. The beautiful part
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  Speaker 1: beautiful if you're a cynical marketing person, is how cheap
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  Speaker 1: it is pennies to the dollar. Compared to traditional old
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  Speaker 1: world media like radio or television, the advertising budget that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: you have goes much further. Question are you getting bang
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  Speaker 1: for your buck? Are you being hornswaggled by this? Because
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: compared to traditional media advertising bies clipping campaigns cost pocket
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  Speaker 1: change and all of the big time actors are in
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  Speaker 1: on this. The major labels celebrities, sports marketing people, sports teams,
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  Speaker 1: the leagues, movie studios, political groups. Everyone and their mother
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  Speaker 1: have discovered over the last handful of years that you
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  Speaker 1: are able to manipulate the algorithm. And once you've been
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  Speaker 1: able to manipulate the algorithm, it is far cheaper than
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: buying an ad campaign on television or roadside billboards for
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: who hurt you? And here's the rub on this. So
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  Speaker 1: the platforms, you think, well, the platforms want no part
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  Speaker 1: of this. You think Instagram and x and Facebook and
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: TikTok they want to support this kind of shady activity. Absolutely,
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  Speaker 1: they're in a very awkward kuwinkie dink because cracking down.
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  Speaker 1: If they were to crack down aggressively and say we
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  Speaker 1: want no manipulation on our platform, if they did that,
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  Speaker 1: they would be attacking the very video ecosystem that is
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: their existence. Asking social media companies to stop engagement farming
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is like asking casinos to just discourage gambling because a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: lot of people lose money gambling, so just let's not
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: encourage adults to gamble. And this is the part where
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you queue the blues as in muddy waters, not that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: muddy waters, but the water's got muddy. They're not clear, Like,
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  Speaker 1: nobody knows what's truly popular anymore. This is the point
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  Speaker 1: I've been trying to make. Nobody knows what's truly popular.
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  Speaker 1: We had a story a couple months back on this podcast.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: There were some TikTok artists that were very popular, had
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like the most listened to music on TikTok, and it
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was insane how popular they appeared to be. They gave
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the illusion of popularity. So they got a deal to
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: go out and sell tickets to concerts, and they didn't
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: sell many because most everyone that was listening to their
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  Speaker 1: music were sock puppet accounts. They weren't real human beings.
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  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, the sock puppets don't buy tickets. The dummy
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  Speaker 1: accounts don't buy tickets. So that's the point. You don't
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  Speaker 1: know what's legit and popular and great and all that.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And the people that are in the media they don't know.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: The consumer doesn't know. Oftentimes, the people who are consuming
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: or making the content originally, they don't know. There's only
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a handful of people that know what's actually going on.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Everyone else is just looking around and like, well, I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: don't know, staring at shadows on the wall debating whether
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: or not they're real. Now, Plato would have looked around
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and said, I told you idiots. Plato's cave right, has
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: become a marketer controlled shadow play. You don't know Plato's
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: cave look it up. The really funny part though everybody
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: everybody knows everyone else is cheating. Imagine if you will,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Imagine if you will, a baseball league where all the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: star players are using steroids, and eventually refusing to use
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: steroids became a competitive disadvantage. You didn't as many home runs,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you didn't make as much money. The bar rises. Participation
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: becomes mandatory, and whether you're legit or not authenticity it
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: becomes a luxury item. Of course, we could also point
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: out that actually happened for a number of years in
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: baseball under Bud Selik, the commissioner at the time, in
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the nineties and the early two thousands. Yeah, and so
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: we continue now. A leading snake oil salesman who knows
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: a thing or two about this world because he has
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: been a gigantic part of this world. A leading snake
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: oil salesman in this space recently claimed that what percentage
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of what you and I see online is advertising? In disguise.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You got a guess on your hands, all right, Well,
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  Speaker 1: the number is ninety percent. Let me repeat that for
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: those of you a little slow because it's it's a Saturday.
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  Speaker 1: The top dude involved in this world, snake oil salesman,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: claims that ninety percent of what you see online is
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: advertising in disguise. It's like transformers, more than meets the eye,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And who knows, maybe that's fugazy too, could be one
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  Speaker 1: hundred percent. Either way, If you spend enough time in
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: that world, the online world, it starts feeling possible. Why
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: because what appears spontaneous often is it. What appears to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: be some kind of grassroots campaign was likely planted, And
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: what appears popular, let's just say it's likely been amplified
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a little razmataz to it. And what appears just kind
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of anonymous may simply be repeated. And human nature has
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: not changed. The tools that we use have changed, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that's what fascinates me. The technology is different, absolutely, go
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: back two hundred, three hundred, four hundred years, they didn't
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: have smartphones and all that stuff, So the tech is different. However,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the game is ancient. Propaganda existed before radio hype existed
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: before television con men were operating before electricity. PT. Barnum
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: would have killed for TikTok? Are you kidding me? And
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: he would have killed it on on TikTok would have
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: been amazing. So I mentioned snake oil, and that's a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that's a perfect subplot to this story, right, the modern
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you know snake oil salesman, if you will, And that's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a phrase that goes back many years the Kickapoo Indian
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Medicine Company. Say what Yeah, this goes back way before
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: modern modern fund. So the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company toward
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the United States on boardwalks, street fars and all that, right,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the county fairs, country jamborees, and they promised cures for
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: just about everything, and they put on this elaborature. They
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: literally strangled rattlesnakes on stage to use as an elixir,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: which was sold to the crowd. That is where the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: term snake oil comes from. It's the medicine men, the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: snake oil salesmen that went around the country offering all
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: kinds of magic potions and remedies. And then it moved
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: on to the infommercial crowd with things like the vegimatic
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and the ron Pole Peal showed time retisserie thing, set
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it and forget it and all that. So that's that's
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: where all that came from. Andy back to the story.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: So the difference now is obviously scale. A person selling
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: snake oil a medical man could get a crowd of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: at the state fair twenty thirty, forty fifty, maybe one
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: hundred people. I know how the trick is done, I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: know all the props in the trick, and I still
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: do it. What a world? You know? What in the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: world now? I know the algorithms, I know the outrage bait,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: and yet there I am. I'll be there on the
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: weekend tonight, I'll be up till two in the morning
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: or three or four in the morning watching somebody rank
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: gas station beef jerky while arguing with random strangers about baseball.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: So maybe I am not Morpheus. Maybe I'm just you know,
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  Speaker 1: the guy and the matrix who understands everything and still
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: wanted the steak. You know, I just still wanted the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: steak and all that cipher. I think it was his
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: name because ignorance might be bliss, but awareness is often exhausting,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it is, and still I'd rather know, because a magician
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: loses power when you know where to look. Suddenly, it's
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: not very impressive if you know how he cuts the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: lady in half and where the lady's body goes, and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: amazingly it is not in half. And on social media
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: they lose the power. Social media loses the power when
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you realize the product isn't the content, it's you. You
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: are the product always has been, which admittedly is rather ridiculous,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: right it is, but then again, right so it is
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: paying attention. You're supposed to pay attention to a world
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: where half the audience is real, half the audience are
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: bots and sock puppets, and nobody, including the people selling it,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: they don't know whether the stock is going up down
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: sideways or in freaking circles. It's for Gayzy, fu Ghazi,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: fairy dust, and somehow, somehow we're all expected to clap
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: when the shadows trend like a trained seal bouncing the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: beach ball on its head. Meanwhile, that is wild though
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: ninety so we have a life of malor. Update. It
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: is the Saturday podcast. You didn't ask for one, you
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: didn't say, hey, I want one. However I have one
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: now in a previous edition, which may or may not
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: have been lastlast weekend. On this podcast Weekend Soap Opera,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: we possibly mentioned what seemed like a success story. Well,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: it turns out that reports of my dishwashers recovery were
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: greatly exaggerated. There was a setback. So in the last
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: episode on I think it was last Saturday, he missed it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I'll give you the mall of a thumbnail recap. So
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: we had a leak. I originally thought Moxie had bladder
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: issues my dog Moxie and decided to create a great
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: lake in the kitchen. So turned out it wasn't hers,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: it was the dishwashers. So we hired a handyman. She
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: tried to fix it. We looked at some YouTube videos
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and then said we're not doing that and went to
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: a handyman. And he came out and was messing around
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: with stuff and was able to fix the leak. He
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: walked out of the Malor mansion with the swagger the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: confidence of a man who had just landed on the moon,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and I was ready to nominate him for the Nobel
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Prize of Plian's Medicine. Eureka. Then for some reason, Lee
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Corso popped up. Yeah, the retired college football commentator Leek
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Corso popped up and said, not so fast, my friend,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: not so fast. Well, the leak was gone, and the
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: leak did not come back to the dishwasher. Terrific, wonderful, outstanding, Mazeltov.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: A little bit of a problem. Though, a little bit
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of a problem. So the dishwasher no longer got hot
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: enough to clean anything. Now I presh everything. However, the
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: key part of this I do a lightwash. I get
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: rid of all the food remnants, and then I put
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in the dishwasher to sanitize everything. So it's got to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: get hot. Otherwise, what's the point. So I opened up
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the dishwasher and I looked at the stuff, and I noticed, well,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: it didn't look right. I think had been in there
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: for ninety minutes, and I guess the water was at
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a lukewarm day spa type temperature. The glasses had film
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: on them. The forks looked dazed and confused. The spoons
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: appeared a little bit disappointed. And I had named the handyman.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I was very happy with the work. I'd named him
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: fix It Felix out of the movie Everybody gets a nickname.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: That's the rule. Everybody gets a nickname. Well, fix it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Felix returned to the Malor mansion with swagger bravado. He
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: had answers, right, so we hey, listen, you fixed it.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: There's something else going on. He had theories, he had confidence.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I admire confidence, and I explained what happened. He said,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: no problem. This is a common issue. When you fix
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a dishwasher this way, typically something else needs adjusting. And
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: he said, no problem again. So then he went to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: work and an hour went by and nothing. Another hour
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: went by, nothing more, and more time goes by, and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: this guy is poking and prodding. He's taking the do
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: hickey apart and looking for the what you might call it,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and putting things back, making noises, and the kind of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: noise is usually heard during open heart surgery. Fix it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Felix had transformed into professor. Professor, maybe maybe that's the problem.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is the problem. I don't know what the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: problem is. Could be the motherboard, Okay, that sounds expensive.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Could be some census underneath, Well, that doesn't sound that expensive.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Could be this could be that could be another three
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars that you have to pay for
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the part. And then on top of that, service. So
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: now we're entering the pit. Not the pit in Albuquerque,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the money pit. Now I am pretty
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: much bald at this point. I'm relatively cheap, and I'm
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: not very handy. Those are not attractive qualities. However, I
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: own them three things. Relatively bald, cheap, and clueless. The
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: rule of three never ever fails. So the whole thing
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: became an assembly line of aggravation. You solve one problem
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and te da another one punches you right in the face.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: It's like squeezing a clown's balloon dog. You know, you
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: go to a kid's birthday party in Bozo, the clowns
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: there with the balloons. Oh would you like a dog? Sure,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: how about a pretzel? Okay, I'll give you a pretzel,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: little kid. And so you squeeze the pretzel and the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: problem just pops out somewhere else. The popcorn machine never
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: stops popping. That phrase popcorn problems. Well, popcorn problems here
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: you go. For example, you fix the leak on the dishwasher,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you're celebrating, and then you break. You replace the heat
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and you break something else. It's a game of whack
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a mole with kitchen appliances. This is going on, and
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I begin to think, and that's always where the paranoia
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: enters the room, that perhaps the dishwasher itself had become
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: angry that I had somehow annoyed the dishwasher, that I
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: did not allow it to properly do its job. I
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: made mistakes that I should have not thoroughly cleaned all
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the dishes methodically before putting in the dishwasher. That the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: dishwasher did not think that I believed that it was
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: old enough and strong enough to handle the job. So
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: maybe it resented the fact that I went out to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: have it repaired. Maybe it was jealous that the refrigerator
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: gets more attention. The dishwasher had feelings. The dishwasher looked
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: at me and said, oh, you thought one repair was enough. Huh, Yeah,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you won't even let me get that spaghetti off the
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: side of the plate. I'm going to teach you a lesson.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And so the dishwasher became an emotional hostage negotiator. Pay
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: me no, pay me more, no, no, no. Now, I'm cold,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I'm cold, Benny Bozo, I'm cold. The dishwasher had become
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a diva, a diva dishwasher and here's the thing. You
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: reach a point, and everybody reaches the point. I'm sure
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: you've reached it. You get to that stage and you
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: just the sponge. You grab the sponge and you toss it.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: You just toss it. That's it. And that's what happened.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: We pivoted, which is a translation. We surrendered. That's it.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: When the guy said, it may be the motherboard, it
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: might be this, and then you know, we could try
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a couple other things if that doesn't want. You didn't
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: really know, so we gave up. We said, that's it.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be like Victor one by Yama in the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: finals and just give up. And French basketball player, French
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: soldier whatever. So went out and bought a brand new dishwasher,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: which is great other than the financial situation and how
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: that kind of kicks you in that you know what,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: there so files one under the handyman hustle, the handyman camp.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: The handyman can't the handyman hustle. Now, I want to
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: point out I do not blame fix It Felix, not really.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I blame myself. I always blame myself. I am the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: genius who thought repairing a dishwasher that been around for
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: a few years was a sound investment. This is the
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: same judgment that allows me to eat a moldy piece
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: of cheese, Swiss cheese with mold on it in a
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Mallard burrito and think, what's the worst that could happen?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: What's the worst that could happen? Now there is a
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: silver lining. There is a silver lining in this. What
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: is the silver lighting? I have been washing dishes by hand.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned, I usually do a rinse and little soap,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: get all the obvious food off. But now I've gone
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: next level. A lot of reps, a lot of batting practice,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: quality reps, quality batting practice. At this point, I'm ready
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to challenge show Otani when it comes to any skill
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: set involving your hands and eye coordination. I have tremendous
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: rist strength writ at this point, I have solid soap technique,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: elite rints ability. I have developed a relationship with the
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: sponge at the Malor mansion. We just understand each other.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: We understand, sure, we don't scree. We are able to communicate.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: That's what relationships are all about. The plates snow me.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: My wife's coffee munks well aware of my ability as
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: a dishwasher, the frying device that we have has become friends.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: And perhaps that's the lesson, right. Not everyone, not everyone
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: can have a working dishwasher. Not every inconvenience has to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: be some kind of Greek tragedy. Sometimes it's just life.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: This is what happens. Minor annoyance, minor expense, minor aggravation.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: The dishwasher broke, we fixed it. The handyman shrugged, and
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the malard wallet started crying. The sponge rejoiced more time
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: with my friend, the sponge, and somewhere I believe the
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: old dishwasher sat quietly in the corner, smug and satisfied, saying,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: you fatass, you're gonna miss me. And my response to
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: that dishwasher is no, no, I am not going to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: miss you, not at all. I am happy with my
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: soon to be delivered new dishwasher supposed to come later today.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Supposed to come later today. So we'll keep you updated.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I you're dying to know about my dishwasher. On that note,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: we'll get out. We'll have the mail bag on Sunday,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: a brand spankin new edition of the mail Bag. And
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: just like you know, every commercial, right, the oldest trick
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: in the book is you create a problem, you then
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: sell the solution, or more often you create the appearance
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of a problem, and then you have the solution and
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the mail bag answers all your problems. If you'd like
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to send a message into the mail bag Real fifth
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: hour at gmail dot com. That's Real fifth Hour at
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Have a wonderful rest of your Saturday,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: and we will hit you up on the mail bag,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: which will be tomorrow, hopefully early. Get that bad boy
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: up early for my people doing the honeydew List. Yeah,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: all right, Astick and Dayton would say bye bye, bye bye.