The Fifth Hour: 238 Years and Gone!

guess it's not a gift, it's a meme. And it's that scene where in The Simpsons where Grandpa the Great Abe Simpson enters the room. He looks around there's Bart Simpson sitting there at the dais and he promptly leaves. And so that's pretty much it. That's pretty god. I go into the studio, I go out, and I go back in again. And on this edition of the podcast today, the only available in the podcast format, we have the always Riveting Blue Flu, the South Park spin off with

a twist, and the Phrase of the Week as well. However, today is the fourteenth day of November. There is a holiday today you likely did not know about. It is a food holiday. I will not be celebrating this holi the day I've taken a strong position against this particular food item. Today is National Pickle Day. Yes, National pickle Day from the old world. Now. I grew up going

to Delis with my family. You know these motz of ball soup and pastromi sandwiches and all that stuff at the Delhi, and they'd always give you when you sat down a thing of pickles. My mom loved pickles. I didn't like the texture. I didn't I didn't like any the smell I was okay with. But in honor of National Pickle there, which is a big day I know for Alf the alien ol Piner, who, for some reason,

because he's Alf, loves the pickle. The pickle though they dated back they being the supposed experts, they did it back to twenty thirty BC. The Mesopotamians would pickle cucumbers were native to India, and that gave birth to what has become. I mean, that's a long time Holy Canoli twenty thirty BC. But the Mesopotamians, you can thank them.

It wasn't until the tenth century, according to the pickle propaganda, that dill became a central ingredient in many brine mixtures and all that stuff Western Europe and countries along that line. And then in the nineteen forties, the United States government they said, you know what, we're producing a lot of pickles. They produced forty percent of the US pickle output, was the United States government. And if you're producing pickles and

you're the government, what do you do. You include pickles in the rations for the armed forces, is what you do. Okay, there you go. So it's National Pickled Day. But we'll begin with this. So I was not planning on talking about this, but I got a couple of emails from people who were looking for me to rant and rave. Interesting enough, not from Lucky Tony. Not from Lucky Tony. So the baseball season is long over. They had the GM meetings this week, they had the MVP awards given out.

I'm not doing a ran about showy Otani. That's not what this is about. Apparently the Dodger nation is up in arms because Dave Roberts. How many votes did he get for Manager? He didn't win the award, I didn't win the word. How many votes did Dave Roberts get? You want to take a guess? You see this? No, you didn't see this. Okay, So Dave Roberts did he get? I'm gonna give you three options here. Did he get thirteen votes for Manage of the Year? Did Dave Roberts

get nine votes for Manage of the Year? Or did Dave Roberts get three votes from Manager of the Year or the other option? Option D is none of the above? All right? Reveal answers. Reveal answers. Turns out that Dave Roberts got as many votes for Manage of the Year as you and I did. None, not a single vote for Manage of the year. Bupkis squad douche. So let us address. We will dress together. We're going to address

the snuffle of igus in the room. So you've got David Vasse, enemy combatant of this podcast, running around like someone stole his truro at a Dodger game, yelling disrespect, disrespect. Now we know Vassay is a legendary houseman for the Dodgers, that he is friends with all the players. He's a mouthpiece. He's been that way for years, and it's part of the job when you do that job. If you're too critical, you don't get to do that job. He's had the job for a while, which tells you he's the number

one cheerleader around. He's got the blue pom poms and everything like you month. I had that job years ago. I didn't last very long because it's not in my DNA. It's baked into me to be critical. I can't be a fanboy. I wish I could. I'd get better jobs as a fanboy. You get better gigs. If you're critical, you do the overnight show. At least that's the way it's worked out for me. So let me help out Vesay because Insa used to be my producer in another life.

So let me help out Vesse and all the Dodger people out there who are I'm a Dodger person. I'm happy they won the World Series. I love the fact that they're going to win several more World Series in the next ten years. It's wonderful. The question, is it a great injustice that the Dodgers Dave Roberts got no votes for Manager of the Year as the skipper of the Dodgers. Keep in mind, because they won the World Series.

So I've got on this one. I've got beeswax, candle, RB's in honor of Danny g and Catholic Church, and we will combine all of these things together and we are going to make thousands of downloads. Thousands. Now, Remember I've ranted many times about bots and how all this stuff is inflated and manipulated. I never said I was against it. I just don't want to spend my own money. But if one of you knuckleheads has a bot army in Maldova, I'd be more than happy to have them

just listen and enjoy the heck out of it. Anyway, back to the point, So to answer the question, is this a great injustice that Dave Roberts did not get a single vote for Manager of the Year, My response is PULLEYE. Is my response. That is my response giving this a super duper eye roll. Credit comes from let me explain this to you. I know it's difficult for some to understand. Credit comes from exceed not doing average work. This is a regular season award. The playoffs does not matter.

The Dodgers spent I believe the number is one point three billion. The last couple of offseasons they went on a rodeo drive style shopping spree. Sho Hail Tani, Yoshinobu, Yamamoto, Tyler Glass. Now they re signed ti Oscar Hernandez. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. And despite all of that, despite all of those amazing ballplayers, the Dodgers of twenty twenty five underachieved. Oh my god, you can't say that, Ben, They won the overnight. I don't even

know what voice that is. It is true they won the overnight, but they did underachieve that. Vegas had the Dodger win total at one hundred and five point five wins. The Dodgers won ninety three games. Now, if you do the malor math on that, it's minus twelve and a half. So if you who were the skipper of a team that won twelve games less, twelve and a half less than they were supposed to. Would you be worthy of some kind of accolades for that? That's not Manager of

the Year. That calls for a performance review. You did not meet the regular season expectations. Again, just to repeat, because I know I'm going to get some emails from you knuckleheads and a little slow. It's a regular season award. Are we supposed to light a beeswhack candle for poor Dave Roberts? Give me a bleep and break. Dave Roberts is not managing the Dodgers. He's play acting. He's an IKEA display model wearing a hoodie. It's a great gig.

It pays a lot of money. Now page two here, So Dave Roberts is essentially the assistant shift supervisor at an Arby's and he reading whatever Andrew Friedman and the NERD Battalion print out the morning of the game or the afternoon of the game, the analytical menu. Imagine if you will, world where Dave Roberts is working the drive through at Arby's. Hello, welcome to the Dodger Stadium. Arby's. Can I take your preapproved lineup card? So Dave Roberts

doesn't so much manage the games, he downloads them. Roberts getting zero votes for Manager of the Year. That is not a snub. That is a diagnosis. That is a diagnosis. You can't win Manager of the Year if your biggest managerial decision all season is whether to stand on the top step or to sit near the top step of the dugout. The industry knows it. The baseball writers who vote on this know it. Held the ushers at Dodgers Stadium know it. This isn't some kind of a anti

Dodger conspira. It's not. This's not blow this thing out of proportion. This is the mafia of baseball writers, the BBWAA saying, yes, we see the snuffle upagus wearing the Dodger hat in the room, that the dude is a middle manager with a laminated card. Mallard prop guy knows that. Justin in Cincinnati knows that. Even Robbie the Mariner fan knows that. Right, they all know it. I don't know about Jed hu fled. Meanwhile, you've got Pat Murphy in Milwaukee.

The Brewers were rejected to win eighty two and a half games this year. Eighty two and a half games. They didn't go out and spend a billion dollars on free agents. Eighty two and a half wins, They end up winning ninety seven. They had the top record in baseball.

If my malor math is correct, that means they were fourteen and a half games above expectations, which I don't know how much Pat Murphy's managing day to day, but it certainly seems like if you're gonna give an award to somebody, that would be the guy that wins it.

That's actual value added. You take that roster, the brew Crewe roster, a bunch of mid tier guys, bargain bin pitching, slap together bullpen that was literally they used gorilla glue to keep the bullpen together and they went ninety seven. So yeah, you get the trophy. And again the other argument as well, I got the Dave Roberts. He wasn't gonna win, but he should have gotten a vote or

something along those lines. Now, the last word here on this part of the Malar monologue, the bonus Malear monologue. Is it true? Here's the question, Is it true that the Dodgers are the only team in baseball where you can win the World Series and the reaction is okay, but we didn't get one vote from Manager of the Year. What's up with that? We did not meet the spreadsheet? And even in the year they win the World Series

back to back, you know, two years in a row. Here, they want a regular season award at least a vote because the pr machine says that they needed a vote. They need the validation. And this has been a big part of what the Dodgers have become recently. There's a lot of whining over there at Dodgers Stadium, a lot of whining, right, they need that validation, always begging for the pad on the back and all it is that the Hollywood stuff is that Andrew Friedman, I don't know.

And again I'm a Dodger fan. I don't like the attitude. It's weak sauce, is what it is. But let me put it to you another way. If you gave me a roster of Sho Hail Tani, Mookie Bets, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glass Now and all these other cats a payroll that requires a private equity firm to audit it, and if I don't win one hundred plus games. If I don't reach one hundred wins, I would expect zero votes for Manager of the Year. I would expect someone

to take my key card. If this was the Catholic Church, you'd be excommunicated for that. Dave Roberts is not getting robbed. He didn't get robbed. He's getting graded fairly, honestly, and it doesn't happen that often. Like he's a robotic manager. He gets well paid. It's big check and all that stuff. It's corporate baseball, it's push button, Hamburger, helper, all that pr approved quotes, and the voters finally said, they said

it out loud is what they did. So I don't have any kind of beef, any kind of issue with that at all. Now turning the page to something completely different, a show that I have not watched in years, South Park, And no, this is not about South Park, but in many ways it is. It's a South Park spin off. For years on that show, the most famous catchphrase I guess they actually finally whacked this guy was, oh my god, they killed Kenny. We can update that they did kill Kenny.

Finally they killed them off. We can update it though through the magic of the cartoon. Oh my god, they killed penny. That's right. Leave it to the federal government to accidentally give a struggling overnight gas bag who moonlights with a gambling entertainment hybrid one of the great marketing boosts in history, at least the history of this show

and the number of you were reached out. Oh, I'm so sorry, the penny's going away and tell me you don't get it without telling me you don't get In fact, Gascon who used to work on this podcast, he was trolling me, and I was like, dude, this guy really doesn't understand how this works. I felt bad for him. I've been living in Florida. He's semi retired there, shame on him. But this week the US Mint in Philadelphia hammered out its final final addition. Circulating of the Penny

dun skis finished. No more, no more naa no no naa Hey, good bye. Yeah, after two hundred and thirty eight years, two hundred and thirty eight years of making a coin that for most of that no one wanted and no one used, and no one bent over to pick up unless they were already on the ground tying their shoe or they were completely hammered, laying in a gutter somewhere. Well, the people in Washington have finally pulled

the plug. Now to give you an idea, how crazy, how absolutely bananas, two hundred and thirty eight years is. Let's do some spur of the moment, mall. So a generation is twenty years. So if you divide two hundred and thirty eight by twenty, that equals almost twelve generations, just to share under twelve generations of men and women that have entered the world. And the penny has been part of the world two hundred thirty eight years, and

they say bye bye. And doing so, they've turned Benny Versus the Penny, which is available right now on YouTube, our long running radio segment which turned into a TV show, which turned viral video on YouTube. That creation because we're creators, and it gave us something that we did not ask for, unintentionally immortal. Seriously, Oh, you're just full of crap, bad, No, I'm not. Let me explain. The penny has been decommissioned, put out the pastor given the pink slip, whatever you want.

Benny versus the Penny has been promoted like ships passing in the night the government killed the penny and made our little YouTube show a cultural time capsule. And that's how things wors Oh, that makes money. This is how things work. Number One, we ignore something for decades or longer than that. Number two, the government bans it, ends it, or shuts it down, whatever you want to say, and suddenly it becomes iconic. It's called the Streisan effect with

a copper plating. In terms of this little ditty that we're talking about right now. The second the mint in Philadelphia stopped making pennies, this became a story that was everywhere. The coin became cooler, it became rarer, it became more nostalgic, more American, became a talking point at parties and social events and whatnot, and on the Ben Maller Show and the other platforms that we partake in, like this Fifth Hour podcast where the penny was. We did Benny Versus

the Penny on the podcast here flipping pennies metaphorically. For man, it's been almost twenty years and now we can say that my co star on Benny Versus the Penny has now entered the national archive, alongside the cassette tape, the rotary phone, the floppy disc. The pager finds out old you are. If you're old, you've used all this stuff. The VHS tape shout out to our friends at Blockbuster Video back in the day, and every other relic Americans

suddenly can't live without. Once it's discontinued, the penny is now part of the Remember when industrial complex? Remember when I love that, Remember when we used to use typewriters, Remember when we used to use blah blah blah film, And Benny Versus the Penny gets to stand right next to it, right right next to it, industrial complex that. Remember when a show built on a coin and is now part of history. You can't buy that kind of branding. So I want to thank the boys in DC, the

people that made this decision. And Benny Versus the Penny now has what every show wants, a story the media doesn't have to invent. And there are networks we worked at NBC last couple of years. There are networks that spend a lot of money, millions and millions, trying to manufacture bus. Media companies just in general, whether it's TV or radio or podcasting, they spend a lot of money trying to create buzz trying to make something important, something

out of nothing. And I just happened to wake up one morning and my phone was filled with messages about people. Oh I'm so sorry. Oh that sucks. What a bum what a bum ride that is for you and I And then I was like, well, wait a minute here, well that's not bad. I wake up and I discover that our little mascot friend is trending because Congress finally figured out how math works. It's pretty crazy that it's lasted this long. That's one thing about big government, the bureaucracy.

Things never get changed right away. Another great example is the clocks, which I don't know anyone that thinks it's a good idea to change the clocks in most states in the United States, right, you go from daylight savings time and all that, and you change the clocks. As everyone complains about it, there's more access. More people die every year because of the time change. They don't get the right amount of sleep, and their bio rhythms are

all messed up. And the government doesn't care. They talk about changing, but they never do. And the penny it costs three point seven cents to make a penny. It has a face value of one cent. So someone in DC apparently saw the deficit, looking at the coin and said, okay, we can at least stop losing money on this. We're going to continue to lose money on the frivolous pork barrel spending. We're going to continue to do that unchecked,

and the bridges to nowhere. Now the result of all this, every headline about the penny all over the interweb, the retirement of the penny is inadvertently a headline that is about benny versus the penny. When people search on YouTube for the penny, they'll see benny versus the penny. Every feature story about the end of the penny production suddenly serves as free advertising for a radio bit that became a TV show that became a YouTube channel. This is

what you call falling up and the penny. The death of the penny actually strengthens the gimmick. A gimmick is only as good as the icon it leads on, and before this week, the penny was, let's face it, the penny was a nuisance for a lot of people, that annoying loose change that you can't buy anything with, right stuck between some bubble gum and the rappers, and there's like Kawan rolling around. Maybe it's in your glove compartment

now again. Conversation piece, collectible taxpayer subsidized relic of Americana Maracana, which is also a shopping center in Glendale. And every time someone says remember those pennies that we used to have, yeah, the answer is now, hey, yeah, benny versus the penny? I remember, Benny versus the penny I do. The gimmick didn't get weaker, it just gained gravatas, and we love the word gravtas. The penny is no longer pocket lint. It's not. It's a legacy object, is what it is.

Like the Yellow first down line, first down, the Red Sox Curse of the Bambino, which so many people have forgotten because the Red Sox have been really good over the last twenty five years, and the Cubs Curse of the Billy Goat. Shout out to our friend Doc Mike Darno, and yeah, so our show is now the last major remaining national stage where the penny will perform during football season. The TV, the radio, the YouTube versions have all had the penny, but they'll all benefit on the radio the

bit carries historical weight. It started on the radio, gave birth to it years ago, and there's a sense of it. We're keeping alive something the government declared dead. That resonates, right, that resonates why not right? The classic crowd that we have of rebels, misfits, traditionalists, good guys, bad guys who think the world has moved too fast. Now on TV, the story sells itself, and there's been some rumblings the

show will eventually return to television. But producers love a hook, and now it's Benny versus the Penny has a built in hook. It's obviously as shows starring a coin that no longer is produced. It's nostalgia with a current events twist. Yeah, And on YouTube Rocket Fuel YouTube lives on algorithms and controversy. Penny discontinued The Final Penny, the last penny ever minted.

Every search term spikes up the numbers. It leads to people subscribing to our channel, to the Benny Versus the Penny channel, which is all good and so it's not a marketing gimmick. It's marketing luck or destiny delivered by a bunch of bureaucrats in DC so the penny, while it is not being made and it'll eventually be gone, it is still very much in circulation. There's a bunch of pennies out there and will be around for years, and Benny versus the Penny will be around forever. Of course,

forever is as long as I live. And once I'm no longer around, that's forever. That's the end of time. Americans love nostalgia, love tradition, wrap yourself in the flag, love old things that won't die. How many documentaries have I seen about Root sixty six? Get your kicks on Root sixty six, jukeboxes, you name it. The Chicago Cubs and the Braves on superstations back in the day, the NFL insisting that fans sit outside for four hours in a snow flurry in Buffalo. Things like that that just

continue on now. The penny belongs in the penny pantheon, and as the keeper of the penny, the man yelling into a microphone in the middle of the night or here early in the morning on a Friday that just happened to fall into the coin flipping situation. We were originally going to do Benny Versus the Monkey, but we couldn't get a monk, couldn't get a monk. And then I was like, okay, well how about Benny versus the parrot? And I was like, well, that's not going to work either,

And so there you go. Franchise that we've made out of spare change and the penny may be discontinued, but the show it inspired will outlive it. The coin is gone, the brand is eternal, and for once, I want to thank our political class. They made something more popular by ending it. Yeah, so Benny versus the penny becomes the Penny's final and greatest revenge. I couldn't do this rant about the penny without mentioning my dear old father. When my Pops passed away, he left behind at least five

or six jugs of pennies pennies. I talked about that on this podcast when we lost my pops, and the thing about that time, I kept thinking, hey, Dad, why couldn't you have collected quarters or at least nichols give me something more than pennies, because we had so many pennies and it ended up getting us like one hundred dollars or two hundred dollars. This was hardly anything and it's like, oh man, that is just wacky, wacky, wacky all right. Time now for the phrase of the week,

if you're unburdened by the phrase all the week. So it's back by popular man. I want to thank Scott and Florida, who is from Cali but has lived in Florida for a while now and Scott is a big consumer of the audio content. We thanks Scott for that, and he said, we got to bring that phrase of the week back. So I'm gonna give you some phrases. I want you to do a deep dive on. The phrase of the week today is tough as nails. Tough as nails, So it comes from Scott in Florida and

toughen nails short, straight verbal scrapyard, toughest nails now. The origin the phrase toughest nails dates back to the early eighteen hundred. It's been a minute, first appearing in a marria in English. At that time, nails, the literal metal kind were considered one of the most durable, one of the toughest, most unbreakable, everyday objects people handled in the world. Their technology was not anywhere close to where it is now.

Why would it be at that time, and so this was a very powerful thing.

became part of boxing. So tough as nails emerged in Britain with the same meaning as hard as nails. It's just a trade off there tough, resilient, not easily overcome or defeated. By eighteen fifty seven it had gone from Britain to Australia, and then eighteen sixty one it became somewhat popular in the United States, and then it was really the eighteen nineties, so another thirty years the thing

took off. There was no Internet, there were no viral videos at that time, and some other related phrases other than the aforementioned tough as nails and hard as nails. You have tough as shoe leather and tough old bird as well. It's a great homage to the blacksmith bench, the carpenter pouch, big parts of the early American jobs that people had to have that are now done or will be done by robots and AI and all that wonderful stuff. So there it is the phrase of the week,

tough as nails. Thanks to Scott in Florida for that. Have a wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have a new episode of this podcast on Saturday, and the mail Bag on Sunday. And until then, Rivadev J. Hello what else? Oh yeah, that's right. Asta pasta tastes like a touchdown in your mouth. I gotta say that, Arlse. Danny's not going to put the podcast up, so I gotta say asta pasta got a murder. I gotta go