Kabooms.
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Wow.
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
In the air awhere The Fifth Hour with Me, Big Ben and Danny g Radio on a Saturday, Saturday Saturday, providing you with weekend pod fun. On this the eleventh day of the great month of May. It is National Eat what you Want Day. But more importantly, Danny, it is the day after the Great Southern They Meet and Greet of twenty twenty four, the first ever in the South part of the US below the Mason Dixon line.
As we hung out, we had a great time.
But Danny, I'm sitting in the remote studio here in a secret location somewhere in the Carolinas in a garage, and so.
I with a bear in a cave.
Yeah exactly, So I want to get back, and I'm in front of a professional, professional radio microphone with.
Broadcast quality audio.
Then I will be able to tell all the tales will I will leave nothing out.
It's a podcast.
I can get into all the glorious details of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Hey, I'm disappointed that you didn't have authentic Southern food. I know you're going to get that complaint a lot.
Yeah, well, people complain about everything. But no, listen, it's been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed my time, and we're gonna make you wait. It's like a great cliffhanger to next week's pod. So not only do we get you to listen today and to the mailbag on Sunday, but then I'm gonna make you wait until the following Friday for tales from the Road the Mather meet and
Greet we'll call. In fact, I've already got the name for next Friday's pod, the Postgame Show, because as you know, we have big budget, a big budget on this podcast, and so we will have the exclusive post game rights, which will be.
Massive, very original.
Yeah we've never done that before, that's so yeah.
Never had I've never once labeled a podcast postgame special.
No, no, we don't do that. No, all right, So we have on this podcast. We've got the Carolina Welcome Committee, Sultry, the forty two dollars shoe, the drive by Stocker, a pirate's life for me, and we even have some other things we may or may not get to depending on how long we bloviate throughout this podcast on this Saturday, but we will begin with this more tales from the
Malard travelogue. When last we spoke yesterday on this podcast, we told stories about getting to South Carolina and spending the beginning part of the week in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I have some in laws that are living here, and we continue with that them because part of the thing you have to do when you're a tourist in a place you haven't been before is to do the tourist things like visiting the Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.
Not to be confused with the Quarium of.
The Pacific, which we're used to Danny in southern California, that beautiful aquarium in northern California.
But this is the.
Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher, and I saw some gators, some other cool critics. By the way, my father in law his home in North Carolina, there's a lot of retention ponds. I was like, why do you have so many retention ponds around here? And it's because they have these massive hurricanes that come through. It's Hurricane Boom through the Carolinas, and so they keep a lot of these retention ponds that fill up when they get these massive storms. So that's why they have them all over the place.
But in the one across the street from my father in law where we were staying this week, they actually have a family of three gators that live across the street from their home. But I did not see the gators at least at the beginning of the week. They were out in the woods wandering around. They actually had to relocate one of the gators because kept coming onto the front door of the neighbor of my father in law, and they're like, well, this is a problem because the gator.
I don't know if he's looking for food or what.
But we went to the Carolina McQuary and we saw some gators behind glass, which is how I like to see my gators. Danny is behind glass, and they had an albino gator which must be picked on by the other gators, and then they had like the they had the normal you know, regular fifteen foot gator, you know, twelve foot whatever it was. It was a massive, massive human you know, it's like a dinosaur these things.
It's oh yeah, that's enough. I like to see my gators on my feet. Lame jokes are actually crocodile dundee.
Yeah, lame jokes are on Friday.
How dare you so?
Listen? That was That was cool. That was that was pretty neat.
I saw some different critters and creatures that are local to the ecosystem here in the Carolinas. Then we went I had we had lunch at a local restaurant and I had the worst Ruben sandwich I have ever had.
My My my theory has been broken.
I always thought, if you go to a restaurant, Uh, well, I guess my my theory is actually still intact.
Because it was. It was chicken fingers, and uh.
It was also the other the other thing that I think you can't screw up is a Paddy Milt. But for some reason in my head, I thought, Ruben, you know, Ruben, it's you just got the cheese, you got the meat, and it's not hard, you know, sauer kraut.
But the meat they served here was.
Like bubble gum.
It was. It was like chrue.
I felt like I needed to blow a bubble with it.
Not good, not good at all. It was disgusting. So I didn't eat that. Uh yeah, it was pretty bad. But I picked up.
I went to bow Jangles, because when when you're in the South, you got to go to boat Jangles, which is coming to.
L A at some point, which will be be good.
Of course, by the time it gus to la you know, four chicken strips will cost you seventy dollars by the time it gets DELI but anyway, we picked up some Bojangles. Thought well, we're in Carolina Beach, right near of the Carolina Aquarium down the road, so we will just stop at the beach and we'll go and we'll have I'll eat.
My wife had already eaten, so at.
This point, danny A family tradition continued, a Malord family tradition continue. So we parked the car, I go out, We put the towels down. My wife was like feeling tired, so she immediately falls asleep, right, she immediately falls asleep, and we went back. I went back to throw in my trash because I don't pollute on the beach. And we got back to the car and sure enough, there was an envelope on the windshield. Wipers of the car got dinged for a parking ticket. Welcome to Carolina, a
nice Carolina. Welcome there not a speeding ticket, but the old parking ticket. There parking violation because the wife who usually does you know, she's the one that pays the parking, and she fell asleep and they were we were not.
There very long at all. I mean, they just nailed us real quick.
So once they had given us the ticket, I was like, all right, well we're good. We can stay as long as we want. Now we're paying full price. We're paying a premium park here, so we don't have to worry about paying for them, but we're paying for the park. We're going to pay, you know, eight times what the cost of the parking is here with the ticket.
So that was how much was the ticket?
Well, it's it's funny that because there were three different penalties and we were we got out okay. Because if you wait a day and if you don't pay it right away, it's sixty's three dollars. If you wait like two days, it's one hundred and thirty two dollars. But I know, all right, but if you pay that day, it's forty eight dollars.
So we paid.
So that's how they get their money immediately.
Exactly exactly.
So we ended up paying forty eight dollars for what should have cost like six dollars to park.
We paid forty eight dollars to park.
But we you know, it's a small it's a lot cheaper than the ticket I got in Minnesota for speeding by the state trooper, who's, oh, yeah, that's like a forty or fifty dollars ticket. Then they add on all the fees. It's like, you know, two hundred and fifty dollars or whatever. So but that's Carolina welcome. You know, We've got that out of the way. Got the ticket, so that's that's good to go.
I am such a radio loser.
And then we went We didn't really stop at this, but we drove by Fort Fisher, which is a Civil War site, the Battle of Fort Fisher, a two part naval siege during the Civil War. And there's not a lot there now because it's been a couple hundred years since the Civil War. But the Union fighting in the fort guarding Wilmington, North Carolina. They have a museum there in a historical the place the last major Atlantic port the South, last major Atlantic port there and they had
all kinds of plaques up. And this happened in eighteen sixty four and ended with the Union retreating and there was a massive naval bombardment for the time there and the people that had written about that, and there was another battle in eighteen sixty five and that was by land and water and the North able to cut off the supply line the General Leese Army, and that was said to be one of for those that studied the Civil War, a devastation situation. That was a crushing situation
for the Confederacy. So a major turning point in the Civil War, which worked out. And now we have people wearing weird costumes at college universities protesting and all that
good stuff. But yeah, so that was interesting. I'm into that kind of stuff, like I wish I could have experienced more of it when we were in Wilmington, but we had a lot of stuff going on, and you know, the first first part of the trip, a lot of family with my wife's family, my aunt, my wife's aunt, which is now my aunt, was a very nice woman. She lives in Knoxville, which is a few hours away, and she drove over.
So we hung out and kind of explored spot a little bit. It was very sultry. It was very sultry here.
Danny, as Tony Bruno used to say, it's not the heat, it's the stupidity, not the humidity.
It's the stupidity. It's it's no joke, man, it's craziness. Man.
I feel like you're always feel like you're you need to take a shower.
It just.
Nastiness.
I don't like. I don't like that kind of weather. Not a fan. I mean, I guess who is right. But the pros outweigh the cons as far as living in a region that has weather like that.
Yeah, but it is so much cheaper than California. And my wife was getting annoyed because every time we drove by a gas station, I.
Said, see two dollars cheaper. We're getting bent over in California. We go to buy food, you know, it's reasonably priced. You go to a fast food restaurant, you know, it's like, look at that. We can you know, we ate where we the other I think at waffle House.
It was like the cheapest meal we've ever had, you know, since going back to like twenty seventeen or something like that.
It's ben yesterday that mobile gas station right across the street from our studios. Yes, six dollars and forty nine cents.
There was gas. We drove by out in you know sticks of South Carolina. That was like, who's sixty three a gain? It's like, what are we doing here? You know, you're telling me that we have special gas in California.
No, they're just they're taking advantage.
The politicians and the oil industry are taking advantage of the people of California.
And it drives me insane.
What's special about it is they stick the gas nozzle up our asses.
That's pretty much right. But it's everything. I'm such a lose. I go to the grocery store, I'm like, man, look how.
Much she is?
Like crazy, It's like, this is the same product that we can get in California, but we you know here it's you know, seventy cents cheaper or two dollars cheap or whatever.
It's like it's like buying shoes.
Dan, It's like just some ridiculous thing like that that you get, but in Carolina it would probably be about, you know, twenty bucks.
You know, I can take some solace in the fact that you and your wife paid forty eight dollars for that parking bass Lake last Friday after work. Make it to Fresno late at night. The outside of the hotel, I won't say the name of the hotel, but it rhymes with quality in And it looked fine on the outside. And one of my younger brothers works for the company that owns that chain of hotels. Okay, so he gives me a family and friends discount. It's like half off.
But even paying half price was way too much for this piece of crap. Hotel looked fine on the outside. Once I got inside, the carpet was warped. There was a ceiling fan that was rocking back and forth in the hallway. I could hear people having a party in the room next door, but it sounded like kids, like teenagers. I'm like, where the am I I get to the door and it looked like somebody had used a crowbar
on the wooden door, like trying to break in. Yeah, so I felt safe right away, and by the way, when I parked there was a one legged hooker outside the hotel, a bunch of hookers and cocaine.
Now is that half off or.
Well? Surprisingly, she was a really good dancer, so I'm like, I felt like I needed a shower, like it was sultry because I'm like, we're what dirty place am I in right now? I was dead tired though really long workday and then the travel, so I collapse. I fall asleep, wake up early, do the Saturday podcast with you, and then I head off to the lake. Get to Bass Lake. I get on my phone and I go to the website,
same one I had visited two weekends prior. I punch in the info for my card and I buy another stupid one day fishing pass because I figure, I just want to relax out there. I don't want to have to worry about one of those warden boats.
Oh boy.
I get on the boat and we get out to the middle of the lake, and ye know, we're having fun. We're putting a different bait on our hooks. We're you know, catching up and everything as our fishing poles are we're hoping are gonna be you know. You see the poles starting to move up and down, and you're like, oh, I got a bite. I got a bite. I did it the first time this happens. My older brother is all excited. He's got two lines in the water because he really wants to win some money at this fishing
Derby pulls the line. He got his line tangled with my dad's line. Oh no, so that was the first catch. Second time we see one of the poles moving, it's mine. I'm just assuming somebody snagged on my line, Like, who the f got snagged on me? But nobody was twisted up on my line. So I'm now I'm I'm reeling it in and I'm thinking, man, maybe I actually have a bass. This is awesome. I got something here. Pull it up. I see the shiny scales, the sun is
sparkling on what looks like a nice fish. I get it up out of the water and it is a big sized hen shoe. Which shoe is evil?
You know? Shoe?
I swear on my mom's life, I caught the damn shoe.
What kind of shoe was it? I got somebody's dress shoe.
Now I thought catching a shoe, I thought that was bullshit, Like from a cartoon or a movie. Yeah, but no, I actually caught a damn shoe that was at the bottom of Bass Lake.
Now did you keep it or did you throw it? Did you throw it back?
They were joking on the boat. They're like, Dad, get the net, and I'm like, this is the only time you're going to use the net today. He didn't get it out quick enough because as I was trying to reel it up all the way, the line snapped. It was too heavy, the shoe to the shoe was too water logged and heavy. So not only did I catch a stupid shoe, I lost one of the best hooks I had, which is why that hook, by the way, was a double hook, and it looked like a little fish.
That's why it caught that shoe at the bottom of the lake because it was so sharp.
Yeah, you could have framed shoe.
You could have runs the shoe and framed it as your big catch, and that could have been a fun, fun thing.
You know, you can show.
Forty two dollars in fees, forty two instead of twenty one. I paid forty two dollars a double fee, and let me tell you, it was well worth it to catch a stupid shoe. Wrong With a sock and a shoe on one foot, I could hop around and stay dry. At two o'clock it started pouring. It was in the forecast. We knew it was coming, but the forecast said three three point thirty. Nope, it got there early two pm. It started hailing. It's now getting really cold. There's a
nice crisp wind to go with it. So we're standing there getting drenched. We called it quits. We got back to my dad's cabin there and we're in front of the fire. We're drying off. My step mom takes our clothes, throws them all in the dryer. We get a hot cup of ca and she looks at us and she says, I think you boys should find a new fishing hole. Because she said that, like is bullshit. Nobody ever catches anything there.
That's great. And you know what, I bet you next year you'll be gung hole though. You'll be back.
You guys are going to be back next year, because this is what you do, this is a film tradition.
You'll be back. You'll forget about this and you'll be like, this is going to.
Be the year.
Well BYGANI keep trying. That's the most important thing.
So this week, Danny, it's very odd for me not to have the I'm very formatic creature of habits, so it's been weird having nothing to do for work.
You like your routine, yeah.
Exactly, and I'm used to it, and I like doing the show. I have a good time.
It's my life's work, and so it's weird not doing it this week.
But it's cool.
You know, it's nice to get a break and you feel refreshed and recharged when you get behind the micro again. And so this week the family did a lot of family things. At the beginning of the week, I'm going to save a lot of the South Carolina stuff to next week's podcast in a blatant attempt to stretch this content out as long as possible, but the North Carolina portion of it to kind of continue on with that.
From the beginning of the week.
I did something that was very stalker ish drive by stalker ish Dan, so uh it was we went out, had a pizza dinner, very good pizza place in Wilmington. It was a you know, it's kind of a rainy night, a very humid, rainy night, typical Southern night, and before we went back to the house we've been staying at, I said, hey, I want to I want to drive by somewhere.
I want to see something. I just I'm here. I got to do this. I don't know if I'm going to be back here, when I'm going to be back here. I want to do it.
And my wife's like, yeah, it's the weather's not great, but okay, we'll be in the car. Oh fine, so whatever. So we stopped by Laney High School. Do you know why take a guess why Laney High School is somewhere I wanted to stop by.
What do you think it's famous about Laney High School?
It's where that big booty country music star Lane Wilson is from.
Well that might be true, but that is not the reason I wanted to go there. That high school in sleeping, very sleepy Wilmington, North Carolina, is the high school that oh, nobody but the greatest basketball player to ever Grace the Court, played at and was part of one of the great bullshit stories of our life. Michael Jeffrey Jordan went to
high school in Wilmington, North Carolina, and we're here. It's like it was like ten miles away or whatever from where I was staying, and I was like, I want to see this.
I'm this close.
I'm as well see where the greatest basketball player of my life went. And also, when I say one of the great BS stories of all time, Michael Jordan famously tells the story about how he was cut from his freshman basketball team that ye was good enough, but there's actually some reality that I've learned.
Only going to be like Joe Montana right now and wreck the classic movie Rudy for all of.
Us pretty much pretty much. But before I do that, I'll give you the rest of the story.
So I went to this high school and it appears that Michael Jordan, the people at Nike somebody I'm assuming it's Michael Jordan invested a lot of money in the high school because it looks really really good. Like it looks like within the last twenty years, there was a lot of work that was done in the high school. But I did you know, it was nighttime and I I didn't want to get I didn't want to get arrested.
So I just walked up to the to the window at the front of the school and they had the Hall of Fame and then next to it, they had another window with the Jordan logo on it, like the Nike Jordan brand logo, with a bunch of other plaques and stuff. So I assume that Nike invested a lot of money to put this thing together. Danny, the building looks really new. I'm sure that looked nothing like when Michael Jordan went to high school there.
Probably looked like crap when he attended.
Yeah, but I mean it was pretty neat still to imagine, like this guy would go on become the greatest NBA player of all time, much better than Lebron James and all that, and so.
So that was cool than Blake Griffin though, how dare you?
But but no, I did not. I'm not a total loser. I did not go by where Jordan's father was murdered here. I did not go by that spot got a murder. I just went by the high school and uh, and that was that. But as far as the story goes, so Jordan has told this story many times, it has been repeated. It is when a legend becomes the fact, go with the legend.
And Michael had to respond.
And the legend of Jordan is that he was cut from his high school basketball team. But Jordan played so long ago, so long ago, Jordan played that there was a rule at Laney High School that no freshman made the varsity. You were always you were never going to be on the varsity as a freshman. It would you know that used to be even when we were in school, Danny, I think they still a lot of places still had that rule where yeh, yeah and so.
But Jordan was so offended by that.
But if you were a freshman, you were going to play on the JV team, the JV sophomore whatever they had, they had a lower level team and they had a varsity team.
Did he feel like he was so good that they should have bent that rule for him?
Yeah, I guess Jordan felt he took he took offense to it. But it was like they were just punishing Jordan nobody. It's kind of like Dean Smith at North Carolina when Jordan was playing there. You know, how do you remember the joke was, how do you stop Michael Jordan have Dean Smith coaching him? Because Jordan was was hardly used the way he was in the NBA and his talent was not was not on display, and it was just a different time in basketball. They didn't showcase
players the way that they do these days. So while it is technically true Jordan was from the varsity, he had no chance of making the varsity.
But wasn't the story that he was cut from the team?
No, he wasn't, ok, I understand man, the way I was told to me.
I mean I've heard that version of it that he was just cut from the team.
Yeah.
No, it was that he couldn't play on the varsity. So I'm a player, you know he didn't.
This story is not it's so wonderful.
Then, well, the story and again I've I've done some research on it. It was in imbellish to add to the mystique in the legend of Michael Jordan.
And it's like you make it a little bigger.
You add around the edges, you add a little puffery to it.
It's like a puffer fish.
Got it?
And listen Jordan to me, Like I said, he's the greatest player I ever saw in that sport. And I was lucky to see him play for the Chicago Bulls several times back in the day in his prime with with those great Bulls teams.
So yeah, I mean I'm I'm obviously biased.
So I went to his high school and it you know, I can check that off the list little Stockers. But there's a bunch of people of some celebrity, I guess some importance that have have have been from this area, which I've never really spent much time thinking about. When I think of North Carolina, I think of Charlotte or Raleigh. I don't think of Wilmington, North Carolina.
I don't. But there's like a bunch of celebrities that have houses here.
It's right on the beach, and everyone from John Travall to Dustin Hoff been to Vana White people like that. And there's a bunch of athletes that have come out of this area. Imagine being an athlete from here and you're all, you know, you're never going to match Michael Jordan, right, you know. And there's been some other people that we've heard of that have come out of this area. There was a tight End. Remember Algae Crumpler of the tight End. He's from around here.
Of course, one of the best names in all of football for years.
Yeah, Roman Gabriel Old, the former MVP in the NFL quarterback he was from here. Sonny Jurgensen, another quarterback Hall of Famer. Here's another pretty good basketball player, Meadow Lark Lemon Harlem Globe Trotter.
Yeah from here.
Willie Stargell lived here, died, died around here, I believe, I think in this area. Sugar Ray Leonard the boxer spent time in this area.
So there's been a.
Bunch of random people, some big names, some not so big. But yeah, Willie Stargell lived here at the end of his life. H Willie Stargell and trot Nixon. If no I remember, well, we'll get out on that. We get the mail bag tomorrow in It's Mother's Day tomorrow at the Fresh Pod.
Yeah, don't forget to get a card for all the mamas in your life.
Yeah, I got to take care of the moms in your life.
And anyway, Dan, we'll do another one tomorrow as we continue with more tales from the Mallard travel Log, and we'll answer random questions send in to the email by you guys, and we'll see what we have.
Who knows.
Yeah, we're gonna do a show for all you mother efforts.
That's right, that's right.
But I having a wonderful rest of your Saturday. And we'll catch you on the other side.
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