Kabbooms.
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 sol fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Wow.
The clearing House of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now here.
We go in the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Big Ben and Danny g Radio The Weekend kicks off. A Happy Friday to you the sixteenth day of August.
But you are knew that?
And Dan, are you wearing your Hawaiian shirt? It's Hawaiian Shirt Day today, big big holiday, Hawaiian Shirt Day. I don't look good in Hawaiian shirts. Of course you would argue, I don't look good in a lot of things, but Hawaiian shirts. I used to have a lot of them, and then people pointed out that they made me look like job of the hut, so I don't really have any at this particular point.
Some of them look like tablecloths, so I actually only have one, and I got it there in Maui the last time we were on that island. I'm not a big Hawaiian shirt guy either.
Yeah, when you're a bigger guy, it often looks like a moo MoU and it's not a great look. But I used to love them because they were very comfortable, and in my head because they had a call or the Hawaiian shirt, I was like, Okay, I must be looking good. And then other people say, you know, it's not a really good look. You know, it's not it's not particularly great there, and I'm like, all right, there you go. It was also National work from a Home for Wellness Day. That must be one of it. That
sounds like a fugesy holiday. They must have just came up with that in like the last couple of years.
Right, Oh, that's for sure from COVID.
Gotta be gott to be definitely.
Feel like Grudy Gobert invented that day.
It's pretty pretty bad.
I Hey, I I like, I have a remote studio, which I love. It's great, but I don't know that my wellness has improved my time. I have extra time, So I guess that's that's pretty important. You have extra time and all that. But yeah, that's that's that's another one of these these weird holies.
Anyway, let's get into it right now. Let's not waste any time.
A lot of email, Danny, I was on the East Coast doing my thing and so we are reunited on this podcast, and many people were wanting details on what was a mallor.
How would you describe this now?
It was it's not a malord meet and greet because it was just me and one other person, well, me and my wife and one other person. It was.
It was like a military.
Date. Man.
It's like, I'm old.
So you remember like the Flintstones and the Jetsons got together and it was like whoa. It's like mind blowing, right, you know when like shows crossover.
Oh yeah, it's crazy. It's like, whoa, how did that happen?
It doesn't happen as much anymore because everything is compartmentalized, its streaming and all that. But I was on the East Coast last week for a fair amount of time. Fair amount of time as.
Most of the week.
Actually, I was in Boston, and I went to a bunch of Northeastern states they're the New England states. In fact, I made it to all of them outside of Rhode Island. I didn't get the Rhode Island this time. I know Redbreast Paul's likely devastated. And I did not get to Connecticut. But I made it to all the other states. And the only state I've been, I've been to Boston a lot over year, is the only state in that region
that I had not been to. I had to cross that off, and I did, and that that box was the state of Vermont. And the only reason that was not the only reason. There were two reasons I went. Number one was I hadn't been there, and I was like, oh, you know, it's so close, it's not that far.
Drive why not listen in my head it wasn't that far. I drive so fine.
The other thing is I have a friend, old radio friend, that lives there and someone you know a little bit as well, Danny, our buddy Arnie Spanier, who lives in Burlington, Vermont.
And so I was like, you know.
I can kill two birds with one stone. I can go to Vermont. I don't know anything about Vermont, and then I can hang out with with Arnie. So it was like military exercises. It's malad militia and Arnie's Army. I got together and I had text Arnie and I said, you know, I'm going to be in Boston.
I guess some stuff I gotta do there, and I I'd like to.
Come by and say hello. And he wrote back a serious you know. He went back and forth and then the text exchange and we're going back and all that stuff. Yeah probably, you know, if something comes up, I might not make there, make it there, but I most likely will be there. And so we're going back and forth, and Arnie's recommending like hotels to stay at. He's telling
me like all the things to do in Vermont. He's asking what my hobbies are and all that if I could go there, and I ended up having to brave The Element's more on that in a second.
Actually almost I'll do it right now. I almost died on the way to Burlington, Vermont.
So if you're not familiar to get from Boston up actually I was in Needham, Massachusetts, and the Boston suburbs that's where we're standing.
Need them.
To get from Needham to Burlington, Vermont is give or take a three and a half to four hour.
Drive. It's a very lengthy drive. It's I guess the.
Quickly would be like going from LA to not San Francisco, maybe San Jose in that area, you know, you're driving a fair amount and maybe it's not even that far, but but what either way, So, but I had things I had to do. Was I was in Boston, had some meetings and things that I cannot talk about. But hopefully we'll be able to talk about those things soon soon. Fingers crossed on that. So I had, I had, you know, adult stuff I had to do.
Which I don't like being an adult and all that.
And I had a dinner in Boston that I had to attend on Thursday, but I was gonna hang out with Arnie on Friday. And so we made a tactical decision, much to the chagrid of my wife. We decided, you know, to enjoy the day in Vermont. Why don't we just drive after the dinner and we'll just drive at night and we'll get to Burlington and we'll have all day two futts around in Burlington.
It's like, that's a good idea. You know, we do this a lot.
We get a Friday, we'll just hear, will get in the car and drive to Vegas on a whim.
Let's go to Vegas. What the hell?
So that's the same thing. Did not look at the weather app. Danny did not look at the weather app. Figured out, come on, who's worried about weather? Summer August. Yeah, So the dinner ended much later than I anticipated. Then I had another thing I had to do after the dinner. So now it's getting late. It's getting kind of late. And we ended up getting back to where we were
staying at like eleven o'clock. I think it was eleven, if I remember doing this off the top of my head, so I think it was about eleven, maybe eleven thirty, got in the malor Mobile rental Malormobile typed in the name of the hotel in Burlington where we were going, and then we were on a way and off to the races. And we drove and drove and drove, and my wife was very tired. I was the driver. She fell asleep off and on and she does not know this because she was sleeping, but we almost slid off
the road into the woods multiple times. Because once we got out of Boston, it wasn't raining in Boston. But we got out of Boston, got up to New Hampshire, which is just like it's a suburb of Boston, that part of New Hampshire. We got out there and it started raining and it rained the rest of the trip, the remnants of Hurricane Debbie, which I guess at that point was tropical Storm Debbi, and it was just pounding
that part of the country. And the other thing I learned is that on Highway eighty three, which is the main drag that goes out to Burlington, Vermont, they don't.
Believe in lights. They don't believe in lights. There are no lights.
So I'm driving on a very small highway and it's raining off and on very hard.
There are no lights. I don't know where the hell I'm going.
And every like mile there's a sign of like a warning sign moose bears, you know, be alert all this all this crop and we what's the term I'm looking for? You know, when you hit water and you kind of like it's you take off. Hydro plane?
Is that the term?
I think that's it, right, yeah, hydro plane?
Yeah. So this happened like many times.
It's like, oh my god, we have all the ways to die on my way to see Arnie Spaniard did not have that on my big board that that would be how I met my demise. But obviously we made it there, and you guys.
Have quite the history together when it involves water.
Yes, unreal, absolutely unreal.
So we got we got to the hotel like three point thirty four in the morning, and at hotels they don't care what time you check you check out at the same time. So they kicked us out at eleven in the morning. And you know, it takes a while to fall asleep, and I was kind of on adrenaline high from almost dying or at least having my night ruined.
There wasn't really cell reception out there, and some of those some of those parts of the highway, and unfortunately there weren't many cars on the road because I think there's more I think this is true. There's more cows in Vermont than people by a wide margin, I believe. So we had to check out at eleven am, so I probably went to sleep around six or so, got up at like ten four hours and Arnie was so bright eyed and bushy tailed, the stinking genius that he drove up to the hotel to pick us up.
And he was our chauffeur.
He was the chamber of Commerce for Burlington and all of Vermont.
Great to see.
I love Arnie. I've known Arnie.
We both were doing local radio in La a long time ago. We fought the good fight. He dragged me into a hot tub and ruined a chance for me to have, you know, nice nice time with some beautiful women there in Indianapolis. Went a single bad job by him because he started talking. But anyway, so it's great to see him. He picked us up. He drives a jeep, and I guess in Vermont you gotta have a jeep. So he's he's got all this planned out. I'm gonna show you all of Vermont. We're gonna go everywhere. I
got zal planned out. I want to show you this, that and the other thing, you know, And I was okay. So the wife needed a coffee, so we went to this local Vermont coffee shop, which is like the the Ben and Jerry's of coffee. But I don't drink coffee, so I abstained. My wife got some.
Arnie got some and then said it was disgusting. And then we went.
On a pilgrimage driving around. We drove all over Burlington and some of the other towns around there. Arnie took us. You'd get a kick out of this. Danny Arnie takes us to the store. He buys all the Fox Sports radio producers maple syrup.
We went in there and it's ah.
You were at the source.
Yeah, yeah, I was at the I was at ground zero for maple syrup. And uh we went in there and it was pretty impressive. Not gonna lie a massive gift shop. Uh, it was like the Walmart of or Costco of maple syrup in in Vermont.
Let me see if I can find the name here. I didn't. I gotta I gotta look.
At my photos. I didn't write down the name. If you're in Vermont, you know exactly what I'm what I'm discussing here. But the page down going those for the photos here, and it took took a few, took a few. Uh let's see it's uh oh yeah. We took one right out in front, which I posted on social media. It's a cold Hollow cider mill. If you're ever Inton, Vermont, Cold Hollow Cider Mill, that is the that is the place. So they have like a whole, like a mile of
maple syrup. Might be exaggerating, Maybe it was two miles. And then they have souvenirs, Vermont souvenirs, you know, all the usual stuff like you're at the gift shop at Disneyland or disney World or whatever. So they had all that. They had maple donuts, which were okay, I.
Mean, I'm not gonna lie. They weren't the greatest thing in the world.
So then we my wife bought like, oh my god, she's oh my god, maple.
Syrup, and she bought a time.
We had to buy another suitcase just to put the maple syrup in the suitcase. That's how much maple syrup she bought. And I don't even know how much it cost.
My god.
So then we're driving around and we drove by the world headquarters of Ben and Jerry's ice.
Cream, the Wolkesters, and.
I am not a big fan of their politics or whatever, so we abstained from that. I didn't we didn't actually have time. My wife did want to go and get the Ben and Jerry's there. We ended up eating it at a different location. We went to Stove Vermont. You ever heard of Stove Vermont. There's a famous church. This is all within like forty minutes of Burlington and Stove, Vermont is the ski capital of the Eastern United States, and it is an amazing town. It's like you're living
in a postcard. They have this old white church. In fact, if you type in Stove Vermont, I think that's the first thing that comes up the hills and then you'll see this famous white church that goes back many, many years. I don't know how it is, but it was very prominent in Stove Vermont, very prominent. And you know, we're moving around doing all that little snow because it was it's August.
It was just last week.
And uh, and Arnie's given us the whole deal, the whole information thing. He's like, oh, yeah, this is where they film the Hallmark movies. And he says there's a lot of movie productions that come here in Burlington, in Stoue Vermont. And since Arnie's the Chamber of Commerce guy, he's like breaking it all down, Like Arnie, I live in Hollywood. I mean, I'm not, you know, it's good for you. But and Arnie's from La so he gets it. But he was He's he told me, He's like, yeah,
they want the locals that they don't. It's so expressive to get people to come out here. That when they film movies, they invite the locals to come down and be extras in the movies because they need bodies for the movies. And he said they filmed Beetlejuice too, was filmed in in that I think it was in Burlington, and he said he was invited.
He said, I didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
So then we kept going around.
We ended up at Church Street, which is like their famous I say famous. I'd never heard of it before Arnie told me about it, but they have a bunch of shops. It's kind of a cool vibe, hipster vibe in Burlington. And we did that, walked around there, a lot of against souvenirs, Nick Knacks stuff that will land up in the landfill, but it has Vermon on it. And there's actually there was another ben in Jerry's there.
So my wife's like, I gotta get Berend and Jerry's whatever, Just get me, give me something with cookies and ice cream and I'll be good and so done.
We did that.
We walked by actually I would have real So we walked by the office what Arnie claimed this was his office Bernie Sanders office is in Burlington, and we walked by, and Arnie sad, oh, yeah, he's not here. You know, I've seen him before though he comes in here.
Everyone here right now.
And so I posted something on social media. I was like, I didn't I didn't see that whack a doodle Bernie say. And so, of course, with anything political, that's a.
Third rail, Momma, that's a third rail.
And it always starts like this anytime you mentioned anything political, it's I like your show, but you know, it's like, that's that whole thing.
I like your show.
But you know, right there, the but everything before the butt's a lie, as we like.
To say, but your political views, I can't agree a line with my own.
So therefore I must disown you, and I must send you to the hoo's gal. I would like to point out, maybe why don't we just do the phrase of the week right now.
We'll do the phrase. Are you ready for the phrase of the week, Danny.
The phrase of the week.
Yeah, So the phrase of the week is whackadoo, because that's the word that triggered some of Bernie is who do they what do they call Bernie's fans?
I don't know. I'm sure there's a nickname for him, but whatever, Who cares? Uh?
So I called Bernie a wackadoodle. Some people got upset. I guess some angry emails. You know, that whole thing's just part of the job. You're not doing your job. If everyone loves you, some people have to hate you.
Right.
Isn't that the Howard Stern thing?
Right?
The people that hated and listen longer and all that stuff.
And anyway, wackadoodle is if you don't know what the true set the Bernie Bros.
The Bernie Bros. There you go.
So the whack a doodle describes someone who is a bizarre, foolish, you know, kind of in an amusing way, that kind of thing. Whack a doodle comes from the word wacky. It's kind of obvious. It goes back to the mid eighteen hundreds in England and it started out as wacky and it was called the fool simpleton, left handed person.
There's a shot at lefties.
And so from that point, advancing forward through the years in by the nineteen thirties, so roughly eighty years later, it became a way of describing someone who was eccentric, and by the nineteen fifties, wackadoo emerged and it kind of a playful addition.
And here's a fun fact for you.
I don't know if we can get this and play a little bit on the podcast here, Danny I fell down this wack a doodle. Hole was like, I didn't realize wackadoodle would trigger people. I was like, I use that term a lot. I didn't realize that was an offensive term to me. All politicians are whackadoodles. Otherwise, why would you become a politician? Normal people do not go into politics. Good people don't go into politics. Right, You've got to be a bit of a whack adoodle, right, Yeah.
Yeah.
We actually spoke about this on the Afternoon Show, saying that the reason there's not a lot of good youngsters in that game right now is because there's not a lot in it for them. It's kind of all negative, you know, for you if you go take bullets in that industry.
Yeah, it's not it's not great.
And now you can make a lot of money as a politician when you're done, like the amount of money, I mean a lot of I mean you go everyone that like goes into the political machine and leaves. I saw a story about like Barack Obama, who was kind of a regular guy, didn't have a lot of money when he went into politics, and now after he's been president,
he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And you hear stories about congress people that go in and then they get side you know, side deals when they get out and they get but yeah, you're right, at a young age, it's a tough racket. But Bill Haley and his comments saying whack a do that was their song, which is a you know, whack a doodle, wack a do. It was a nineteen fifty six tune Razzle Dazzle, So it was in their razzle that they added that in there.
So you know, there's a fun fact.
The phrase of the week which triggered some what are they called Bernie Bros?
Is that what they go? Yeah, whack a doodle, whack a doodle doo.
I googled that really quick.
I googled Bernie Sanders fans, and Bernie Bros Came up. Okay, honestly, politics are not my racket.
Nor mine, nor mine, And uh yeah, I have been asked by people say will you cross over and do political radio. I said, well, if I can't get a job in sports and I need to put Ramen noodles on my plate, sure, But until that happens, until I run out of every venue to practice the dark arts of sports gas baggery, I will, I will abstain from that world.
That would rather be a jock on the air playing classical music before I stepped my foot into politics on the radio.
I would.
I think I would fall asleep if I worked out a politics radio station.
Yeah, it's it's it's a tough racket.
But everything now has covered the same, to be honest with everything's got to be polarizing right now.
Now people get offended.
Sports takes and even sports things have become political in many ways.
It's a bizarre thing.
So just to put the ball on the travel log, the Malard travel log from my day with Arnie.
We went by the big Lake there in.
Oh god, I don't remember the name of it now, the Big Lake in Burlington, which I believe, No it's not, but it goes all the way into Canada. Saw a lot of a lot of good people. I don't know if they're good people, but people from Canada Arnie said that a lot of the Montreal is like an hour away or hour and a half away from Burlington. And Arnie's like, oh yeah, Lake Champlain, I believe is what
it's called right there in Burlington. And Arnie's like, oh yeah, yeah, we get a lot of Canadians that come down here, and true enough on Church Street filled with Canadians and we were going to go to Montreal. I was like, we're were this close to Montreal, why don't we go to Montreal? And we realized we didn't have passports, so
we couldn't go, which sucks. You're not allowed to go into Canada unless you have a passport, right, yes, yeah, I mean years ago, before nine to eleven, you could go in there with a driver's license, but now you need to have a it's been twenty years, but over twenty years, but you have to have passport. So we were close a lot of Canadians there, a lot of that really quick.
I was just going to say, cue the conspiracy music. Lake Champlain is home to the oldest known fossil reef in the world, and some think that there may still be a dinosaur in the lake. It's a mysterious creature called Champ, similar to the Lochness monster that many have claimed to see while enjoying the lake there.
Yes, in fact, Artie took us by. There's a minor league baseball team that used to be affiliated but then Rob Manford in minor league baseball because he ruins everything. And they they're called like the River Monsters or something like that, or they've got some bizarre like monster name.
And we went in. That's actually a funny story.
So we went into the gift shop because Arnie is like, buy a hat, and they had like the River Monster was the logo of the team, and so I was looking at the hats. We go into the store and this is how this is how crazy Burlington Vermont is and you appreciate this Danny living in La Here. We go to the store and there's other customers in the store. There was no employee in the store. No one was there to like ring up the customers.
Literally we were the the.
Store was left open and there was no employee in the store, and we're like what the you know, But and then so we walked out because I was like, that's free. If they're not here, it's free, you know, Like I don't think that's how it works already. He was kidding, of course, but I didn't get a hat.
I was gonna buy.
One of these river monsters had things, but I didn't end up doing it. And so we got in the car. We were driving back down to Boston.
She should have took it and just left a ten dollars bill on the counter.
Yeah, that was an option.
So we're driving back down through you know, you know, the the back roads there, through the back roads.
Oh, I should have gone through Springfield. I didn't do that. But anyway, we're driving.
We're driving, and we ended up driving through the capital of the beautiful state of Vermont. And this was the one state when I was a kid, I loved the you know, when you were in elementary school and you had to learn the capitals. Like your your son, little baby gree in a few years is going to have to learn the capital.
I think they still make kids learn the capitals, don't they.
I don't know.
I'm sure maybe they know they hate America so much, you learn the you know, capitals of other countries.
But but whatever, who cares?
So som driving back and we drove by the capitol, and I told uh. Now, we drove back during the day, but again it was still raining because the storm was still hanging over that part of the country, the remnants of that tropical storm or hurricane whatever it was. So we're driving back down and we drive through Mont. Is it mont Pelier or how do you pronounce it? I don't even know how to pronounce.
The capital over the month Peeler. No, I don't think that's it. They stole it from the French.
And so we drove through there and I had heard it was a shithole, and I was like, wow, I had really nice capitol building with a golden dome, which was great, and that that was wonderful. It is the smallest capital city in the United States. It is the also the only US state capital without a McDonald's. This is it's just like a three roads and that's it.
Three roads and that's it. And it would make sense because again, Vermont has the greatest number of dairy cows in the country and there are like five cities in Vermont larger than the.
Capital of Vermona.
I mean, it's beautiful because you've got the the Appalachian Mountain Range and there's other mountains that aren't part of that, but are there as well? And uh and great, and so drove through the capital, took a couple of photos, got back on the road and tried to avoid dying. A little easier with the sun up, however, still a long drive, more cars on the road because it was during the day, and uh, you know, it was a
bit of an issue. And uh now we we then went through, uh, Dartmouth, which is a Ivy League institution.
You've heard of Dartmouth, right famous, that's in New Hampshire.
I went by, went by there pouring rain, stopped to get something to drink, and we were like, oh, let's walk.
Around the Dartmouth campus.
You know how often are you at dart So we start walking around and I was I was going to get I wanted to get a hat.
I collect these hats.
Dandy and the school gift shop that has all the hats is closed because it was like five thirty or six or something like that, so that was closed.
Couldn't get a hat.
We started walking towards the campus and then it just unloaded, just spit all over us. It was a total debacle, And so I didn't really see much of the Dartmouth campus. It looked beautiful, It looked just absolutely wonderful, but I couldn't really get into it because I.
Was pouring rain. We didn't have umbrellas, didn't bring the malleor umbrella. Bad planning by me. We have fun. We have a fun fact, Danny, though I do have a fun fact.
This.
I jotted this down. Are you ready for a fun fact?
And we have the whole world is ready for a ben mallor fun fact? All right?
So mentioned McDonald's the Golden Arches there McDonald's. A couple of fun facts on McDonald's. Since there is no McDonald's in the state capitol, the only US state capital without McDonald's in Vermont, they did some math. This is the last data we have is some twenty twenty one, so it's a few years old. How many burgers per second? How many burgers per second does McDonald sell globally as of twenty twenty one? As of twenty twenty one, that
is the question the esteem panel can now answer. Take a guess, and I don't go too crazy here, because again McDonald's they have locations all over the place, but per second, per second, and remember they're not open most locations aren't open twenty four hours a day.
Yeah, I'll say three hundred.
I see what you've done now is you've ruined the game. We call that the Garcia. We call that, call that the ady Garcia.
You ruined the game.
No, McDonald's. I thought this was impressive. They sold seventy five burgers a second. Wow, eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day. So if you do the math on that, and they have done it, I didn't do it. They did it, and then I just copied it. So McDonald sells six point four eight billion burgers per day.
And then to get the second per second, you divide the six point four eight they said they were doing, no math, six point four eight million into the eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds, and you get seventy five burgers a second. And so that that breaks down to two point four billion burgers a year that they sell.
That's when they.
Say billions and billions of burgers on the sign. They ain't kidding two point four.
Billion billions and billions and billions billions.
We're telling you billions and billions and billions. Oh. Also, the first drive through the first McDonald's drive through.
You know where it was for military person?
Yes, yes, yes.
The first McDonald's drive through was built in nineteen seventy five, which may or may not be the year I was built in Sierra Vista, Arizona. It was near a military base and the only reason they did it was because of the military They were not allowed to exit their vehicles off post while wearing their military uniform was against the rules, and so they wanted burgers, but they couldn't go into the store to get to burgers. So McDonald's like, all right, we'll put this drive through in and here
you go and the rest is his door. Re all right, we'll get out on that note, no foody fund this week. I mean, there were some good food stories, but do we really want to hear about Cinnabon teaming up with warheads or stuff like that.
I think we're good. I think with that.
I had to get all the Arny stories, and I didn't get to all the Arni stories.
I didn't didn't get to them all.
But we will press on a full weekend here. This is our Friday pod obviously, but we'll have a new podcast on Saturday and Sunday and we'll get in I plan if we if we have time tomorrow, we'll get into a flash mob mal or meet and greet situation. Not a full Mallo meet and greet, but a flash mob Malla meet and greet. We'll get to that tomorrow. Have a wonderful Friday, Danny, You've got a weird schedule right this this Friday.
You're not doing your normal schedule.
My correcting that you're up early, but you've got you've got a bunch of stuff here shortly right.
Well, we did finish the Dan Patrick hat trick. Okay, Thursday morning was our last morning filling for DP. So we're actually back for one day on the afternoon show, which is later today two to four pm on the West Side, and that is five to seven pm in beautiful Vermont.
And that just proves I do not look at the schedule. I do not.
I do not.
That proves I have no idea when anyone's doing anything. Anyway, have a wonderful rest of your Friday. Hey, thank you for supporting the podcast. If you want to send a letter to the mail bag, it's Real Fifth Hour at gmail dot com. If you have a question about like a phrase of the week, you want me to do the legwork on that, Or you just want me to read something that you think is interesting.
Send it to me.
Maybe I'll use it, Maybe I want on the podcast Real Fifth Hour at gmail dot com. Have a wonderful rest your Friday. Will catch you tomorrow.
Austa Posta got a murder.
I gotta go.