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The Fifth Hour: Post-Apocalyptic Snow Globe · The Ben Maller Show

0:00
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a 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.
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.
0:28
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler,
0:34
Speaker 1: as we hang out on a Saturday, the day after
0:39
Speaker 1: the New York Metropolitans finally fired their manager. And I'm
0:43
Speaker 1: not going to do a monologue on Carlos Mendoza and
0:46
Speaker 1: the pathetic Mets who should have changed managers. Actually after
0:50
Speaker 1: last season, gotta have a fall guy, You gotta have
0:53
Speaker 1: a fall guy. I do like the fact that the
0:57
Speaker 1: Natives were restless, the Mets fans were trying to get
0:59
Speaker 1: after the So the GM's like, okay, I got to
1:01
Speaker 1: sacrifice somebody. I need an Aztec like sacrifice. So let's
1:05
Speaker 1: throw the manager into the pit of fire. And we're
1:08
Speaker 1: gonna blame him for everything because the roster blows with
1:12
Speaker 1: the Mets. But I know not a full mala monologue
1:15
Speaker 1: on that, not even a malar monologue at all. It
1:18
Speaker 1: is National Sunglasses Day today, so celebrate that. The first
1:24
Speaker 1: note in the history of humanity of people wearing sunglasses
1:28
Speaker 1: was in China in the twelfth century. The Chinese wore
1:32
Speaker 1: sunglasses or a version of that, with lenses made from
1:37
Speaker 1: panes of smoky courts. That was the original sunglass back
1:43
Speaker 1: in the day. And over the years it's evolved a
1:45
Speaker 1: little bit, it's evolved a little bit. In fact, the
1:47
Speaker 1: hero of the modern sunglasses a guy named Edwin h Land.
1:53
Speaker 1: Who the hell is that? Edwin h Land is the
1:57
Speaker 1: person I am told is the big go to there
2:01
Speaker 1: and he was a scientist. Now he is best known
2:05
Speaker 1: not for the sunglasses. Edwin h Land, who has been
2:10
Speaker 1: gone from this mortal coil since nineteen ninety one, he
2:14
Speaker 1: is credited with inventing polaroid filters. Yeah, his work in
2:21
Speaker 1: the technology that Realm of Technology helped develop was a
2:26
Speaker 1: massive thing. To develop what is now modern sunglasses allowed
2:31
Speaker 1: for the glare reduction, as you know, that's the whole
2:34
Speaker 1: point of the whole sunglass thing. However, this guy Land founded,
2:39
Speaker 1: he co founded the polaroid corporation in nineteen thirty seven.
2:44
Speaker 1: And it is a fun fact. He might not even
2:48
Speaker 1: know what Polaroid is anymore. It was one of the biggest,
2:50
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the country. But Polaroid initially manufactured polarized
2:56
Speaker 1: lenses for sunglasses and other optical products. And later they said, hey,
3:02
Speaker 1: let's go over to this photography thing and let's see
3:05
Speaker 1: how that goes. And so they went to the photography
3:08
Speaker 1: and then the rest is history. They were the right there,
3:12
Speaker 1: neck and neck with Coca Cola. And you think about
3:14
Speaker 1: all the big companies back many many years ago, fifty
3:17
Speaker 1: sixty seveny years ago, Polaroid was right up near the top.
3:21
Speaker 1: So it is National Sunglasses Day today, celebrate appropriately on
3:26
Speaker 1: this podcast this twenty seventh day of June. We have
3:30
Speaker 1: what we have one hundred and eighty seven days to go.
3:32
Speaker 1: I believe that's accurate. My malord math is correct. On
3:35
Speaker 1: it's also a National Bingo Day today, by the way,
3:37
Speaker 1: so Bingo, which was Ralph Lawler's catchphrase. He's an old
3:40
Speaker 1: clipper broadcaster long retired now. So on this podcast we
3:44
Speaker 1: have the post apocalyptic snow globe, just the tip and
3:50
Speaker 1: who knows what else we'll start with this. We're gonna
3:53
Speaker 1: start with this, So the Life of Malor, we go
3:57
Speaker 1: back to the Father's Day weekend, last weekend in the
4:01
Speaker 1: concrete jungle. So as we hang out together here in
4:05
Speaker 1: the audio dungeon, another addition, another edition of the Life
4:11
Speaker 1: of Malor. And this is the part where I question
4:15
Speaker 1: my decisions and you can hear how the the bad
4:19
Speaker 1: decisions that I make, and you don't have to make
4:22
Speaker 1: those bad decisions because I make the bad decisions. Like
4:25
Speaker 1: last weekend, as we mentioned, it was Father's Day weekend
4:28
Speaker 1: and around the Malor mansion, we had options. We could
4:31
Speaker 1: go on a road trip. We could go not very far.
4:34
Speaker 1: It's to California, and I got to be back. I
4:36
Speaker 1: only have like a day and a half off. So
4:38
Speaker 1: you go to San Diego, go to Palm Springs, go
4:42
Speaker 1: up the coast to central California which is beautiful, or
4:47
Speaker 1: somewhere more exotic like those were our options, but pretty
4:50
Speaker 1: much within reasonable driving distance a few hours away, and
4:54
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. So those are the places of
4:56
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara. You do that, whatever we're thinking about it,
5:02
Speaker 1: and where do you want to go? My wife asked
5:05
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. Now. I could have picked
5:08
Speaker 1: a nice, relaxing, lazy afternoon, maybe a trip out to
5:12
Speaker 1: a nice restaurant for a burger or a well done
5:16
Speaker 1: steak butterfly cut. Possibly a nap, right like a Rip
5:22
Speaker 1: Van Winkle nap where I just take a bunch of
5:25
Speaker 1: sleeping stuff and then fall asleep. Instead, I volunteered to
5:29
Speaker 1: drive to the concrete jungle downtown Los Angeles. This is
5:36
Speaker 1: why no one should ever let me plan a weekend getaway. Now,
5:42
Speaker 1: the journey began as most of these do. Innocently enough.
5:46
Speaker 1: We pointed the malamobile towards the vast sea of concrete
5:53
Speaker 1: somewhere around East La, the East LA Interchange. The sky
6:00
Speaker 1: I changed colors. The sun started fading away behind this
6:05
Speaker 1: curtain of cloud haze. This what you might call it.
6:12
Speaker 1: It looked like someone had put Los Angeles inside a
6:16
Speaker 1: giant smoker. They were trying to win some kind of
6:19
Speaker 1: barbecue contest, and they said, Okay, this is going to
6:22
Speaker 1: be the biggest barbecue thing we've ever done. We're going
6:24
Speaker 1: to barbecue Los Angeles, the second biggest city in the
6:28
Speaker 1: United States. And this is not I'm not talking about
6:31
Speaker 1: like the smoker for the brisket. I'm talking about the
6:33
Speaker 1: entire city, and if you have not been paying attention,
6:38
Speaker 1: this is out now. But for over a week, for
6:41
Speaker 1: over a week, which included last weekend, there was a
6:45
Speaker 1: massive cold storage warehouse fire in the Boyle Heights area,
6:50
Speaker 1: which is real close to downtown LA. It's mostly industrial.
6:55
Speaker 1: There's houses as well, but there's a lot of businesses
6:59
Speaker 1: and factory and warehouses and things like that. And this
7:02
Speaker 1: thing had been burning like it had a personal grudge
7:07
Speaker 1: against the fire department for a week. Five hundred thousand
7:12
Speaker 1: square feet of frozen food was slowly transforming into the
7:17
Speaker 1: world's largest forgotten barbecue pit. The warehouse. I was reading
7:24
Speaker 1: about this the other day. The warehouse contained something like
7:26
Speaker 1: eighty five million pounds of imported meat, poultry, seafood, bread products,
7:34
Speaker 1: all sitting there waiting to go to restaurants and just
7:37
Speaker 1: it was. It was in cold storage. Well not anymore
7:40
Speaker 1: because the fire. Imagine opening your freezer after the power
7:44
Speaker 1: goes out for a month. Now, multiply that by infinity
7:50
Speaker 1: and use a Costco calculator, a Kirkland brand calculator. The
7:54
Speaker 1: firefighters had helicopters for a warehouse fire. It was that intense.
7:59
Speaker 1: They had to use helice, they used water cannons, drones,
8:03
Speaker 1: infrared cameras to see what was going on. Every gadget
8:06
Speaker 1: short of the Death Star, everything other than the Death Star. Now,
8:11
Speaker 1: I always love California's got eighteen gazillion rules on the
8:15
Speaker 1: environment and clean air. And you can't use straws because
8:21
Speaker 1: it might affect a turtle in Zimbabwe or something like that.
8:25
Speaker 1: So imagine what a warehouse, massive cold storage warehouse, with
8:31
Speaker 1: eighty five million pounds of seafood, poultry, meat, and all
8:36
Speaker 1: kinds of other crap burning for a week does to
8:38
Speaker 1: the environment. Well, needless to say, the public health officials
8:43
Speaker 1: were not real happy. They were very concerned about the
8:45
Speaker 1: odors and the biohazards that were in those odors. Translation,
8:51
Speaker 1: roll your windows up and prey. So driving through that
8:55
Speaker 1: smoke felt less like commuting the community. It was more
9:00
Speaker 1: like entering a chemical blizzard with better freeway signage. Eventually
9:06
Speaker 1: we escaped the post apocalyptic snow globe and headed to
9:11
Speaker 1: our first destination, which was not far from Boil Heights.
9:14
Speaker 1: Good or Old Good Things. Good Old good Things is
9:18
Speaker 1: the name of the place. Now the GPS we know
9:22
Speaker 1: the GPS is just there. It's just a device. It's
9:24
Speaker 1: a tool. It has no emotion. It simply says turn
9:28
Speaker 1: left or turn right. It doesn't bother mentioning when it
9:33
Speaker 1: says turn left that you're about to question every life
9:37
Speaker 1: choice that brought you here. So the GPS instructed us
9:42
Speaker 1: as we were heading to Old Good Things to head
9:44
Speaker 1: over to the Wall Street. We had to turn on
9:49
Speaker 1: Wall Street. It said turn left on Wall Street. So, okay,
9:53
Speaker 1: Wall Street. I got excited. I'd just been in New
9:56
Speaker 1: York to visit my brother about them. Was it a
9:59
Speaker 1: month ago or little more than a month ago? In
10:03
Speaker 1: Wall Street? You go there. That's the financial capital of
10:07
Speaker 1: the world. The beating heart of capitalism is Wall Street,
10:10
Speaker 1: New York City. You got the bulls, you got the bears,
10:12
Speaker 1: you got the statues, that famous bull statue out in front.
10:16
Speaker 1: Traders screaming into telephones like lunatics, people losing millions before
10:21
Speaker 1: lunch and gaining gaining millions. You've got venture capitalists making
10:26
Speaker 1: their fortune by screwing the common man. It's the cathedral
10:30
Speaker 1: of capitalism. Now that's New York. The Los Angeles version,
10:37
Speaker 1: don't ask. Let's just say the stock market wasn't the
10:41
Speaker 1: first thing that came to mind when I turned left
10:44
Speaker 1: onto the very small Wall Street. Wall Street featured what
10:47
Speaker 1: appeared to the LA version what appeared to be an
10:50
Speaker 1: open air drug mark. So if you need any drugs, fentanyl, cocaine,
10:55
Speaker 1: you name it, they have it right there. Very nice,
10:56
Speaker 1: very convenient for the people that live around there not
10:58
Speaker 1: many open air drug market There was an RV, a
11:02
Speaker 1: couple of RV's parked. One of them looked like the
11:05
Speaker 1: RV had lost a fight with a tornado, and like,
11:09
Speaker 1: how did that happen? They don't have tornadoes in la
11:11
Speaker 1: I don't know, but there it is. It got torn
11:13
Speaker 1: up from the floor up. There were the usual shopping carts,
11:17
Speaker 1: even though there's no grocery store for many many miles
11:20
Speaker 1: around there, and those carts looked like they had seen
11:23
Speaker 1: a thing or two. I think they had more mileage
11:25
Speaker 1: than the maladmobile. I also saw when we turned on
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Speaker 1: to Wall Street there was this bedraggled middle aged woman
11:31
Speaker 1: wearing approximately half the legally recommended amount of clothing and
11:35
Speaker 1: the kind of look that you really want more clothing,
11:38
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. The only thing being traded
11:42
Speaker 1: on this Wall Street was common sense This was not
11:44
Speaker 1: Wall Street. This was blighted Boulevard is what this was
11:48
Speaker 1: now in LA. I used to live near the Miracle Mile.
11:51
Speaker 1: Every town I feel like as a Miracle Mile. But
11:53
Speaker 1: I lived in the part of LA for years, right
11:57
Speaker 1: near the Fairfax Wilshire district of LA. It's called the
11:59
Speaker 1: Mia Come on Brown on Wilsher. And so this was
12:04
Speaker 1: not Wall Street, obviously not the Miracle Mile. This was
12:07
Speaker 1: the Misery Mile. The potholes had potholes, who had potholes?
12:12
Speaker 1: The sidewalks look like they had filed for bankruptcy and
12:17
Speaker 1: were just left there out to die. This thing had
12:20
Speaker 1: all the charm of an abandoned movie set where the
12:25
Speaker 1: Apocalypse ended up on top with the atomic elbow. And
12:30
Speaker 1: so we obviously kept the windows sealed tighter than Fort
12:33
Speaker 1: Knox and drove with a sense of urgency, like we're
12:37
Speaker 1: trying to escape some kind of survivor game show thing.
12:40
Speaker 1: Now finally we arrived. Of course, when you arrive at
12:42
Speaker 1: a store in that part of LA you can find
12:46
Speaker 1: parking because nobody really goes there, and then you step
12:49
Speaker 1: outside and you're like, whoa boy. Yeah, So it's let's
12:56
Speaker 1: just say that they don't really worry about that part
12:58
Speaker 1: of town, the Chamber of Commerce part of town. So
13:02
Speaker 1: we stepped outside and immediately began our hike, our sojourn
13:07
Speaker 1: through an entire garage of junk. And then we walked
13:15
Speaker 1: past that and there was there was then trash. There
13:18
Speaker 1: was enough enough garbage on the street to qualify for
13:22
Speaker 1: its own zip code. I've walked beaches that were kind
13:28
Speaker 1: of dirty and they said, well, that's got some debris. No, no, no, no, no,
13:31
Speaker 1: this was not litter. This was this was some kind
13:36
Speaker 1: of old archaeological dig. Some of those soda cans, I
13:40
Speaker 1: guarantee you are older than I am, and I'm getting
13:43
Speaker 1: old right. You could carbon date some of the trash.
13:48
Speaker 1: There were pepsi cans I walked past that are so old.
13:54
Speaker 1: How old are they? Thank you for asking? They're so
13:57
Speaker 1: old that they are able to rent a car. They're
14:02
Speaker 1: that old. I'm going way back. The streets looked like
14:05
Speaker 1: they hadn't seen a street sweeper since Bill Clinton was
14:09
Speaker 1: getting cozy with his interns explaining the definition of is
14:14
Speaker 1: even the rats appeared annoyed. You know how bad it
14:18
Speaker 1: has to be? What level close to sodom and gomorrah
14:22
Speaker 1: for the rats? To say, man, this is crazy. I
14:25
Speaker 1: think I saw one rat look at the other and said, man,
14:27
Speaker 1: this neighborhood has really gone downhill? What happened? Where did
14:30
Speaker 1: it go? Blame the politicians? My god. So after navigating
14:34
Speaker 1: that and what can best be described as a landfill
14:37
Speaker 1: with traffic lights, we went down one block, then turned
14:41
Speaker 1: left and walked down another block in all of this muck,
14:45
Speaker 1: and finally reached our destination. Old good Things. Now this
14:50
Speaker 1: place is fascinating, it's great. It's essentially a museum where
14:56
Speaker 1: they put price tags on everything you can buy. The crap,
15:00
Speaker 1: much of it should be in a museum. And it's arc.
15:05
Speaker 1: It's the antiques from buildings. They take like this stuff
15:10
Speaker 1: from old hotels, theaters, department stores, banks, famous buildings from
15:16
Speaker 1: sea to shining sea. And they've got these giant doors
15:22
Speaker 1: that are like Shaquill O'Neill size or Victor Wembanyama size,
15:27
Speaker 1: massive chandeliers, classic things they don't make anymore. Stained glass
15:32
Speaker 1: from these cathedrals, the tabernacles of great religion gone by,
15:38
Speaker 1: vintage signs, marble columns. I've been in there before. I
15:41
Speaker 1: saw a whole Starbucks sign, not a little small Starbucks sign. No, no,
15:46
Speaker 1: no, no no. I saw a gigantic Starbucks sign, which is
15:53
Speaker 1: really cool and really expensive. That marble columns, door knobs
15:58
Speaker 1: that probably shook hands with its like Teddy Roosevelt back
16:01
Speaker 1: in the day, like that, that whole thing. It's the
16:05
Speaker 1: kind of place where every object has a story, and
16:09
Speaker 1: every story costs more than my my car. Yeah, and
16:15
Speaker 1: every once in a while, every once in a while
16:17
Speaker 1: you going there and you find something that's just amazing
16:21
Speaker 1: and you want to buy it. This was not one
16:25
Speaker 1: of those times. This was not it. So shopping there,
16:28
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of like searching for one specific
16:31
Speaker 1: grain of sand on Huntington Beach. It's like, well, I
16:35
Speaker 1: want that one piece of sand, and and that's it.
16:39
Speaker 1: That's what I really You keep believing that every time
16:42
Speaker 1: you walk through, like the next aisle is going to
16:44
Speaker 1: change your life. It's it's the the search, it's where's
16:47
Speaker 1: waldough that'll of course, nothing in there is going to
16:52
Speaker 1: change your life. So we wandered around for a while.
16:55
Speaker 1: We saw some cool stuff, We saw some stuff that
16:57
Speaker 1: shouldn't be sold at all. We admired a few things
17:00
Speaker 1: couldn't justify spending that amount of money on anything. That
17:03
Speaker 1: we saw. So we then retraced our steps through Dante's inferno,
17:08
Speaker 1: climbed back into the malamobile. The next stop on this staycation,
17:12
Speaker 1: after we've gone through the toxic snow globe, walk through
17:17
Speaker 1: a landfill. Next stop Langer's Deli. Now, Langer's Delhi is
17:22
Speaker 1: in another chamber of commerce, part of la It sits
17:26
Speaker 1: right across from MacArthur Park. Now I have seen television
17:33
Speaker 1: reports proudly announcing that the cops and the Feds came
17:38
Speaker 1: in and they cleaned up the area for the World
17:41
Speaker 1: Cup and they're supposedly it's all good. Now they shut
17:46
Speaker 1: down the fentanyl grocery store that they had there. You
17:49
Speaker 1: get fentanyl on your brownies, get fentanyl on your cupcakes,
17:52
Speaker 1: fentanyl burritos, you name it. Wonderful right Mazeltov. So I
17:57
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I saw it on the news, it
17:58
Speaker 1: must be true. Parked in the Langers parking lot, which
18:02
Speaker 1: is about a block away from Langers. We parked there
18:06
Speaker 1: as a security person keeping an eye on it, and
18:10
Speaker 1: that was it. We went down to Langers and it
18:16
Speaker 1: took about a minute. A minute long mallar investigation. The
18:21
Speaker 1: zombies that they had gotten rid of According to the
18:25
Speaker 1: local news and the national news out of MacArthur Park,
18:28
Speaker 1: the zombies had simply relocated across the street. It was
18:34
Speaker 1: less problem solved and more problem relocated. You know how
18:37
Speaker 1: you have that dust and you kind of you dust
18:40
Speaker 1: it underneath the mat and you're like, well, no one
18:42
Speaker 1: will see it. Out of sight, out of mind. It's
18:46
Speaker 1: like moving the dirty laundry you have from one chair
18:49
Speaker 1: to another. Well, it's not on that chair anymore, and
18:52
Speaker 1: so technically it's gone. It's gone now. Functionally, nothing has changed.
18:57
Speaker 1: I'm happy to report that if you love the way,
18:59
Speaker 1: if you're ever been to MacArthur Park, it is the same.
19:03
Speaker 1: It is a human zoo. And it's like what happens
19:06
Speaker 1: when people decide they want to dedicate their life to
19:09
Speaker 1: some really toxic substances. That is what you get. That
19:14
Speaker 1: is what you get. Now, thankfully, none of that matters
19:17
Speaker 1: once you walk in to Langers. Once you walk in,
19:21
Speaker 1: I've eaten pastrami all over the country. Famous delis Cats
19:26
Speaker 1: is the old Carnegie Deli back when that existed, and
19:30
Speaker 1: many others. I was just we told the story a
19:31
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. I was in New York near Central
19:33
Speaker 1: Park and we went to the Pastrami Queen and had
19:37
Speaker 1: had a fine time there and some really old legends.
19:40
Speaker 1: For me, it's if you look at the tail of
19:43
Speaker 1: the tape as somebody that knows a thing or two
19:46
Speaker 1: about pastrami. It's a heavyweight fight between Catses and Langers.
19:51
Speaker 1: It's the rumble in the pastrami jungle is what it is,
19:55
Speaker 1: right and on this day Langers landed the knockout punch,
19:58
Speaker 1: a towering piece of just culinary art. Pastrami piled high,
20:05
Speaker 1: big thing of fried potatoes, some Maatzi ball soup, chicken
20:11
Speaker 1: soup for the sports talk soul. Now there are meals
20:16
Speaker 1: that fill your stomach, I just eat because you need
20:19
Speaker 1: something in your belly. Then there are meals that briefly
20:24
Speaker 1: convince you all of life's problems are manageable. Pastrami has
20:29
Speaker 1: that magical quality. Eventually, after eating our meal, which was
20:35
Speaker 1: not priced to sell, it was priced not to sell,
20:39
Speaker 1: let's just say they've marked things up quite a bit
20:41
Speaker 1: over there at Langers. For a neighborhood that you need
20:45
Speaker 1: to have an armed guard with you to visit, or
20:48
Speaker 1: at least you should. The pastrami was just just grat
20:53
Speaker 1: we laughed, and then went back and continued our staycation.
20:57
Speaker 1: Head west. Young Man to say to Monica. Now, if
21:01
Speaker 1: downtown Los Angeles is an anxiety attack, Santa Monica is
21:08
Speaker 1: closer to therapy. At least it gives the illusion of therapy.
21:13
Speaker 1: You see that you got the Blue Skies. It's one
21:15
Speaker 1: of the top tourist destinations. If you've never been to
21:18
Speaker 1: La they say, go to Santa Monica. It's one of
21:20
Speaker 1: the places. You gotta go. Check out Venice Beach, Santa Monica.
21:24
Speaker 1: You gotta go see the Hollywood Sign. There's certain things
21:28
Speaker 1: you have to see. Now, i live in southern California,
21:31
Speaker 1: so I've been to Santa Monica many times. And we
21:34
Speaker 1: went down and we drove great ocean breeze. People seemed smiling,
21:39
Speaker 1: There were a lot of out of towners. It was
21:42
Speaker 1: mostly pleasant, aside from a number of hoboes that were
21:46
Speaker 1: mixed in. So naturally we went there for one reason
21:48
Speaker 1: and one reason only. We wandered into the Garadelli Shop. Now,
21:53
Speaker 1: gar Deli is the og of candy in the Bay Area,
22:00
Speaker 1: northern California, and they have these ice cream shops, candy
22:04
Speaker 1: and ice cream shops with their brand on it, and
22:08
Speaker 1: they had one for years, right next to the iconic
22:11
Speaker 1: Santa Monica Pier. That's some big real estate there, the
22:14
Speaker 1: Santa Monica Peer. Now I ordered something called the cookie
22:18
Speaker 1: crumble hot fudge Sunday Now. Calling it a dessert, which
22:23
Speaker 1: many people do, and it's down the menu as a
22:25
Speaker 1: dessert is disrespectful. This thing belongs in a glass case
22:29
Speaker 1: in the louve. It is the single grace. I've talked
22:33
Speaker 1: about this before, I've preached, I've given sermons about this.
22:36
Speaker 1: If you've ever had it, you know what I'm talking about.
22:38
Speaker 1: If not, shame on you. It is amazing cookie dough.
22:45
Speaker 1: You've got cookies and cream ice cream. You've got vanilla
22:48
Speaker 1: ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, chocolate chip, cookie crumble
22:54
Speaker 1: all over Giradelli chocolate mixed on top with again another
22:59
Speaker 1: layer of fudge. It is the kind of thing that
23:03
Speaker 1: if you gave to enemies of the Unity, you sent
23:06
Speaker 1: that to Pyongyang and to Moscow, they would be like,
23:11
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is great diplomacy. This is wonderful diplomacy. Yes,
23:18
Speaker 1: so if world leaders negotiated over hot fudge instead of
23:23
Speaker 1: conference stables, we probably have fewer international instances and less
23:27
Speaker 1: wars and all that. Every spoonful, every single spoonful, was
23:32
Speaker 1: a reminder that happiness can in fact be purchased if
23:36
Speaker 1: you're at a Giadelli candy store or ice cream shop
23:40
Speaker 1: or whatever it's called. And it just happens to cost
23:42
Speaker 1: about the same as the small appliance. When I started
23:45
Speaker 1: eating the Giadelli cookie crumple Sunday, it was a reasonable price.
23:50
Speaker 1: It was probably about twelve dollars or something like that.
23:53
Speaker 1: It has more than doubled. It is more than doubled.
23:58
Speaker 1: It's a sign of two things. Either inflations out of
24:00
Speaker 1: control or I'm so old that everything just naturally goes
24:05
Speaker 1: up and that's just the way it's supposed to be.
24:07
Speaker 1: I believe. That's called California price gouging is what I believe.
24:11
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure that costs about as much as
24:14
Speaker 1: buying a blender. So walking around Santa Monica, one thing
24:18
Speaker 1: became impossible to ignore. You saw it all over the place.
24:22
Speaker 1: European tourists had arrived in very large numbers for the
24:26
Speaker 1: World Cup. Well, how do you know they're for the
24:29
Speaker 1: World Cup? And how do you know they're from Europe?
24:31
Speaker 1: Because Americans dressed for comfort that's what we do. We
24:34
Speaker 1: as Americans, we believe in comfort. Europeans, my brothers and
24:38
Speaker 1: sisters from Europe dressed like they're accidentally starring in some
24:42
Speaker 1: kind of fragrance commercial or a reality show for deodorant.
24:47
Speaker 1: You can spot them a half a mile away. Designers
24:50
Speaker 1: scarves in June, perfectly tailored outfits, leather shoes for walking
24:57
Speaker 1: five miles. Hair that's somehow survives the ocean environment and
25:02
Speaker 1: all that. The sunglasses, which is that's next level, right,
25:06
Speaker 1: the sunglasses. You could buy a small car for the
25:09
Speaker 1: price they spent on sunglasses. Now, American tourists wear soccer
25:12
Speaker 1: jerseys because everything else is dirty. It's laundry day and
25:15
Speaker 1: they have nothing else. European tourists wear them like sacred
25:19
Speaker 1: ceremonial robes. And there were tons, There were tons. Their
25:23
Speaker 1: jerseys had enough patches to qualify as like a NASCAR uniform.
25:28
Speaker 1: Buggety buggety, Buggety Buggety is random. Ryan would say, they're
25:31
Speaker 1: in Carolina. Every one of them looked ready either to
25:35
Speaker 1: attend a match or critique your espresso. Meanwhile, I'm standing
25:41
Speaker 1: there and you know my casual, I got my shirt,
25:43
Speaker 1: my shorts on my cargo shorts, and I'm like one
25:47
Speaker 1: of us definitely misunderstood the assignment, like I'm just going
25:51
Speaker 1: to get an ice cream Sunday, Like what's up with that?
25:53
Speaker 1: What are you doing? And you had the evangelists out
25:56
Speaker 1: there begging on right next to the Santama. You know,
26:01
Speaker 1: I need money to feed my family, and I'm like, okay,
26:04
Speaker 1: go get a job that they didn't like that. They
26:07
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't like that. So that brings me back
26:09
Speaker 1: full circle the Father's Day. Now, some families celebrate with golf,
26:12
Speaker 1: all right, go out there and play some golf lot
26:15
Speaker 1: dazz love golf barbecue. Some go to Disneyland. I voluntarily
26:19
Speaker 1: drove through just to recap here a toxic cloud of
26:22
Speaker 1: smoke in a snow globe urban decay, walk through a dump,
26:28
Speaker 1: walked past an outdoor fentanyl market to visit an antique warehouse,
26:33
Speaker 1: had some legendary pastrami, hit chocolate cooky ice cream Sunday Nirvana,
26:40
Speaker 1: and walked past an accidental European fashion show. Now, looking back,
26:46
Speaker 1: this was not the most relaxing way to spend a staycation.
26:51
Speaker 1: It was memorable, and as I often say, life's all
26:55
Speaker 1: about the stories, right, got to do stuff, to pick
26:59
Speaker 1: up stories, and that I wouldn't have anything to talk
27:02
Speaker 1: about on this podcast when I come into the audio dungeon.
27:06
Speaker 1: If I just sat home all the time, what fun
27:08
Speaker 1: would that be? All right? Now? Turning the page, turning
27:11
Speaker 1: the page. Here, just the tip. So world Cup etiquette,
27:15
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the World Cup. So
27:16
Speaker 1: World Cup etiquette is causing problems here. I was reading
27:19
Speaker 1: the other day that European tourists this is in New York.
27:22
Speaker 1: So European tourists flying into New York for the World Cup,
27:25
Speaker 1: and they don't have kitchens. Some of them, I'm assuming
27:28
Speaker 1: you're doing airbnbs. They don't have kitchens, so they're at
27:30
Speaker 1: the A lot of them are not able to cook,
27:33
Speaker 1: and so they eat out. And when they eat out,
27:35
Speaker 1: they ate these great meals at really expensive restaurants, and
27:38
Speaker 1: they forget to do one thing. They don't tip. And
27:41
Speaker 1: the hospitality industry is losing their mind. So they've come
27:45
Speaker 1: up with a solution. Their solution is mandatory tipping. Now
27:50
Speaker 1: where I come from, that is not hospitality. That is ransom, okay,
27:55
Speaker 1: and you should tip, and I do tip. I even
27:57
Speaker 1: have I'm the embarrassing guy that has the tip cauc
28:00
Speaker 1: later on my phone to tip the perfect amount, not
28:03
Speaker 1: too much, not too little. It's goldilocks. I'm that guy
28:06
Speaker 1: I leave a tip. I don't leave tip when I'm
28:09
Speaker 1: taking stuff from a to go order, and I made
28:12
Speaker 1: the effort to drive there. I had to pay for
28:15
Speaker 1: it myself with my credit card in the thing of
28:17
Speaker 1: a jig, and then I had to take the bag
28:20
Speaker 1: and leave that. If you're serving giving me service, if
28:23
Speaker 1: you're refilling my drinks, if you're bringing my food to
28:26
Speaker 1: the table, all that stuff, I will tip. If I'm
28:29
Speaker 1: going to pick something up, I don't tip. I don't
28:33
Speaker 1: do it. So anyway, we've officially hit the point now
28:36
Speaker 1: in the matrix where the restaurant industry, at least in
28:39
Speaker 1: New York City, has discovered a brand new, highly lucrative
28:42
Speaker 1: revenue stream, pure unadulterated guilty. Let's call it what it
28:48
Speaker 1: actually is. Like. This is not tipping. It's not tipping
28:51
Speaker 1: culture anymore. It's surcharge culture. Let's nickel and dime them
28:56
Speaker 1: death by a million paper cuts. You're not at quote gratuity.
29:02
Speaker 1: You're adding a stealth tax to the bottom of the
29:05
Speaker 1: receipt and praying to God that nobody notices before they
29:10
Speaker 1: swipe your card. Now, look, if you add a tip automatically,
29:14
Speaker 1: if that's what you're doing, it loses the right to
29:17
Speaker 1: be called a tip. It's a fee. Call it what
29:21
Speaker 1: it is. It's a cover charge. It's the price to
29:24
Speaker 1: get into the speakeasy. It's just got good pr If
29:27
Speaker 1: your entire business model collapses into a heap of financial ruin,
29:34
Speaker 1: now you fall into a black hole because a German
29:37
Speaker 1: guy and his wife and two kids did not leave
29:41
Speaker 1: the twenty plus percent tip. Maybe, just maybe the problem
29:47
Speaker 1: isn't the German guy now over in Europe and I've
29:49
Speaker 1: not been, but I am told and Terry in England
29:51
Speaker 1: can help me out on this. I am told they
29:53
Speaker 1: call a tip a service charge and it is almost
29:57
Speaker 1: universally baked directly into the price on the venue, which
30:01
Speaker 1: is wonderful and should be the way that it's done.
30:05
Speaker 1: If I ran a restaurant, I would put the taxes
30:10
Speaker 1: into the food. I would put the tip into the
30:13
Speaker 1: food and the people that were buying the food, the
30:16
Speaker 1: customer would be like, this is great. I don't have
30:18
Speaker 1: to worry about the taxes. I don't have to worry
30:21
Speaker 1: about anything leaving the tip. In fact, I would build
30:26
Speaker 1: the tip into the cost of the food. I would
30:28
Speaker 1: then say, no tipping, do not tip. This is the
30:32
Speaker 1: no tip restaurant. No tip. Is that not a great plan?
30:36
Speaker 1: Everyone would love it. They think they're getting a deal,
30:38
Speaker 1: even though it's built in, which is what it should be.
30:41
Speaker 1: It's built in the cost. Imagine that now for them,
30:44
Speaker 1: a tip is actually in Europe what it was meant
30:47
Speaker 1: to be, a small gesture, a little extra couple of
30:50
Speaker 1: euros you tossed down if you genuinely liked the hospitality,
30:56
Speaker 1: the service, the food. Now, that's not what we do here.
31:00
Speaker 1: Restaurants will do absolutely anything to avoid changing their upside
31:06
Speaker 1: down system. Just say you wanted a to raise the
31:10
Speaker 1: prices and stop hiding behind all this other stuff. That's
31:14
Speaker 1: what I say. Just raise the prices. Instead, we get
31:18
Speaker 1: a breakdown of administrative percentages, the world Cup up charge,
31:23
Speaker 1: the surcharge, the localized inflation adjustment. Here's a golden rule
31:30
Speaker 1: for the culinary world. If you have to spend five
31:34
Speaker 1: minutes explaining to your consumers the customers, your fees, and
31:41
Speaker 1: they just want to pay the bill, you're charging too
31:43
Speaker 1: many damn fees. Well, that's an outrageous take. Now, I
31:48
Speaker 1: don't eat out very often much anymore. I just told
31:50
Speaker 1: the story about an it langers, which is ridiculous. I
31:53
Speaker 1: usually can make a ripoff version of what I like
31:56
Speaker 1: pretty good. If you want to change your business, I
32:01
Speaker 1: recommend just building the tax in, building the tip in,
32:04
Speaker 1: and everyone will think, boy, this is the greatest thing
32:06
Speaker 1: in the world. Now, if you want to charge more,
32:09
Speaker 1: change the numbers again on the menu. That's it. Otherwise,
32:11
Speaker 1: stop holding the dinner hostage because someone from Berlin did
32:18
Speaker 1: not understand the complex science behind the American culinary industry.
32:28
Speaker 1: I don't know all right. On that note, as Dick
32:31
Speaker 1: and Dayton would say, bye bye bye bye, population