The Fifth Hour: "Benny Blings & G. Sings" Mail Bag

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 Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.

In the air everywhere.

The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller and Danny g Radio Live on tape. You're listening live on audio tape from Radio Row in Lost Wages, Nevada, where people come and

And did you see the billions of dollars being placed on these two teams that play today? This is the Sunday Pods, right. We have made it to Super Bowl Sunday.

Someone will have the joy of victory and the agony of defeat.

Yeah, and millions of fans will have the agony of losing money trying to explain that to their significant other.

Yeah, it's why this week I had a crazy night on the radio show.

I was telling a story about Billy Walters.

I don't know you know, are you from Billy the greatest gambler of all time, the babe Ruth of gambling. I've actually heard you tell the story. Yeah, so I read a story about him. There was a book written about Billy Walters when I was like in high school, and it was like the most amazing thing, Like this guy. Nobody consistently wins betting on sports. This guy does. He's in like the one percent, so much so that he's been banned from casinos from betting a lot of money because he actually wins.

You know, the ugly truth is they don't if you win. They don't want you. They want you. They want losers, they don't want winners.

And so Billy Walters would hire people to go out and as surrogates for him.

He would give them money, but they.

Couldn't say that they were working for Billy Walters and they would put bets on So I was like, this is like the greatest thing in the world I measured being your young guy. They'll fly you to Vegas every weekend to put bets in on the games. So I'm telling the story and this guy calls up from Cleveland. I think he was in Cleveland, might have been somewhere in northern Ohio. He's like, hey, you were talking about

How he did the thing that I wanted to do.

You were a runner for the Dodger and so many other teams. I figured you would have did that for him too. I would have.

I would have loved that job. It would have been like perfect, would have been like a movie, right, because.

The way the story is I understand it, like Billy Walters would hire college kids, but they would pretend like they were like trust fund babies and they had all this money because otherwise to get cleared to bet a lot of money, you have to if you bet a certain amount, you have to show bank receipts and all that stuff. So it's uh, it was wild so an it was this crazy you never know who's listening to live radio, and this guy called up and he told his story, and I was like, wow, that's pretty cool.

The pre game to the pregame to the official pregame.

Of the big Game.

But I'm told like, as long as you don't do it for commercial reasons, you can say super Bowl.

Yeah, so super Bowl, super Bowl, super Bowl.

Now if I said, Ben, I'm here on behalf of Coca Cola, Oh yeah, for the big Game. See, they can't say they put a guillotine over here exactly put super Bowl in there. Yeah, you just did. You're in trouble.

That would be it. Yeah. But uh, well, enough of that.

Let's get to the mail bag that you know what that means, Ohio al So we have to strike up.

The band for the great Ohio al. It's b.

All right, a lot of mail this weekend, Danny. That's a that's a good thing. We we believe that means the podcast is doing well. It's healthy. H When no one sends mail in, that's a bad thing.

That is. We don't like that. We we say, oh, holy crap, what have we done? What have we done? But it's been good this this year.

I don't know what has changed here, but we've gotten some different people that have been emailing.

And I love the regulars.

It's not like I don't like the regulars and and our guys off the air, well.

You know, some of them. Some of the called the radio show annoying.

But but the podcast people are great and they're they're they're just wonderful. Uh So thanks Ohio again. First, what comes from Mike from Wisconsin? Uh says guys. I love the pod. Have encouraged my boys at work to listen as well as your your overnight show, Ben, but we listened during the day because.

Of the hours we work.

A question for Ben, for you and Danny, what is the coolest freebie that you've gotten this week on Radio Row. This is probably more of a question for you, Danny. I I haven't been here that long. I think the only thing I've gotten is chicken wings and I'm on a fast, so I didn't even eat them. They were handing out boxes of chicken wings and paper towels across as fasting.

Yeah I should eat, I don't really should. This is a bad weekend for you to be fasting. So what's the coolest freebie that you've gotten?

Danny? Can you've been here all week?

Yeah?

Monday was media Night or opening night they call it as you know, yeah, or Allegiance Stadium. That was really cool. I wish I was on the actual grass though we were on the UNLV turf.

I was painted with the logo.

I know they spent all the time painting that turf, but I wanted their grass.

To be rolled in then would be able to play on it.

What I wanted to roll around on the real grad.

But up on level three of Allegiance they had NFL Media Dinner. Now this consisted of teketos, one of your favorite I'm a teketo guy, several different trays of different meats, from pork to chicken.

We've got the meat.

It's like Arby's, except Arby's is a cover for drug lords. Hello, but also ben. They had every Gatorade water and Gatorade beverage and soda. You could imagine the downside of this was I was in a little bit of a hurry getting something to eat, and then I had to run back down and find Covino and Rich who were recording little video clips to put on social media.

Well, I'm up there.

I had a couple of taketos and I grabbed a couple of drinks.

But I didn't have a bag.

It's not like I was carrying a backpack or a Duffel bag. And I noticed the media guys directly in front of me at a table. They were all shoving all this free stuff into their Duffel bags and their backs.

In fact, yeah, that's see, that's the better remove. I had a buddy of mine, one of my good friends, who used to work in the newspaper business, and he's got friends that go to all these big events. And this guy has one of his buddies, has made thousands of dollars he covers like college in pro basketball or

A odd thing to want to buy.

Like, we talked with our very own Dan Bayer about this on the air a couple of weeks ago. He's been on the field for some of the championship games and Super Bowls and he'll put confetti and ziploc bags.

Yeah, so he still hasn't.

Even if my Raiders were able to go and win another Super Bowl, wouldn't want a little bag of Yeah.

I mean I understand, like, if you're a diehard fan, you're like, this is a little piece. I wasn't there. If you were there, I think just the memory would be enough. But I've been you know, I've been to World series that have ended. I've seen teams win world series. I'm not I've never been to a Super Bowl. I've been to the Pro Bowl, I've been NBA Finals. I've seen team win team. I saw the Lakers back God Forbid and the Kobe days when they were winning.

Anybody on the Clippers is half of what Kobe Bryant.

Is and with Shaq and then the Kings, the La Kings when they when they they won. But it's like the memory to me, that's more important, like the actual memory, but if you want a little little piece of it.

But you're going to these things now more than the reason. I wanted the real grass out on the field at Allegiance. I wanted to dive in the end zone and pretend like I was Davante Adams.

I wanted to see what it feels like.

But you could still get that. You could see like the stands, you you could take advantage of that opportunity. Yeah, it's that's one of the cool things about this job. I've been able to like get on the field that like fin Way and yet old Yankee Stadium and kind of get the vibe like what it's like for the players when you look around. And it's pretty cool. Oh, by the way, speaking thank you for the question, Mike.

They had pallettes and pallets of freebies behind some of the states.

Great I scored.

Yeah, they didn't do that this year.

I have space in my bag. I was like, I was going to get some free candy. I know, I thought I actually eat it very much.

To paint a picture.

You know the huge bags that hikers have on their backs on the trails. Ben has one of those on his back, but it's empty. Yes, And they saw you load this thing up last Super Bowl and they're like, we're not putting these pallettes back here any longer.

Yeah, I'm ready to climb like Mount Kilimanjaro. I'm ready to go up there, all right, Steve from Dallas? Right, since is Ben and Ben now that your TV show has been canceled, what are you going to do with all your freet death? Hey, jackass, He wasn't canceled.

I signed. I signed a deal with NBC.

It was only for the NFL season, which is now over. Dummy story. But no, it hasn't been canceled. We don't know, I mean I I don't know whether the show will be back next year. We think it'll be back, but as you know, Danny, it ain't up to me. It's up to people that have higher pay grades than me. But we hope the show is back, and we think we were optimistic it'll be back, but I'm been canceling.

I am planning to make my return to the gym.

I have not been going to the gym because I've been focusing on the TV show. So I'm going to get back to my gym routine, and which is good. So I think I can fast a little less if I'm working out a little more.

I guess it's like a trading situation. Right.

This week, I had a seventy two hour fast which was.

Which was a little bonkers, little bonkers, So we had that going on. I am such a radio loser. What is next?

Jay in Kansas writes in he says, Oh, this is for you, Danny. He says, did baby CoA come with you for the first Super Bowl or did you keep him home because you didn't want him to become a Chiefs fan after if they win? It's from yeah, well, yeah, well he wouldn't remember this anyway.

Right, We've had this discussion before about how you still want to put the best possible memories into your little baby's head. Although I couldn't bring him to this city. And here's the reason why Las Vegas as fun as it can be, it is one of the dirtiest cities in our country with germs. This is they call this the unofficial COVID capital of the world. Now, my parents, my dad and stepma, they came here probably about six months after the pandemic. Yeah, and they hadn't had COVID

They left Vegas with COVID.

It made me scared to come here for some of the boxing matches that we cover with Covino and Rich because I'm like, damn, I don't want COVID right now.

Well, you don't want to really run it, buddy, if you know.

What places to stay away from, because you might get COVID going there. This is definitely there's because there's a lot of people from everywhere all over the world come here to Las Vegas to have a good time. They smoke right in your face, they get right in your face, and there's tons of people elbow to elbow, and I think that's one of the reasons why people get so sick sometimes when they yeah.

For me, though, I come to Vegas a lot because it's so close and in fact, I'll be back in a couple of weeks for my wife's got some friends. We're having a like a birthday celebration and stuff. And I was just here a couple of weeks ago. It's like so close. It's like, you know, it's like a kid. It's a suburb of LA It's just essentially part of Los Angeles. But to me, the dirtiest places I've been are the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, which is like

So people love it.

Other people say there's some dirty streets there. I've been there a couple of times. It's going to be interesting for the Super Bowl there next season.

Yeah, all right, mass Old Mickey Wright's in on the mail bag here. It's a super Bowl Sunday says, we all know the best thing on Sunday will be the.

Super Bowl halftime show with Usher just Cai.

If you were to charge or change, make a change or in charge of the halftime show, which artist would you? He wants to know who we would have perform at halftime. He says he would go with Metallica. That's a good choice. I would like since you gave me the power mass w Mickey, I would go and reincarnate Elvis Presley and I would have Elvis or Johnny Cash perform.

That would be the bottom. I don't watch the halftime show. I'm not a halftime show guy. It's not for me.

I would have programmed fifty years celebrating hip Hop with run DMC as the headline.

There you go old School.

That would have been fun. Yeah, that would have been really fun.

That would have been cool.

Yeah, they should bring back Remember the first Super Bowl to Coliseum, didn't they have like the high school band from some high school in Anaheim, and they had somebody flipping that's a thing, you flip up the metal thing.

I forget what? Oh no, yeah exactly, yeah, something like.

You don't care.

Carl Channing was the very first singer at a Super Bowl halftime show, and prior to that, there was just a couple of marching bands that would perform, and Carol Channing as she was an actress and singer and all that, and she sang when the Saints come marching in because it was the halftime there in New Orleans. And after that they were like, let's just have a singer every year. And it's obviously we've come a long way since that. It would be cool to have Carol Channing commemorate that moment.

But she died a couple years ago. She's unavailable.

But if she did show up now, that would be a story, right, you know, it would be great.

Maybe wheel her coffin shell.

Dig her up. She's back, everybody, she is back? Yeah, why not?

Or this would be cool? Now, this would make headlines. At halftime you have the first interaction with extraterrestrials and they perform at halftime, right they get You get a band of like aliens and they just go out there and perform.

Now, that would be amazing, Right.

Next time the Super bowls in Vegas, they should do that because there's always so many alien sightings in Nevada and Las Vegas that this would be the perfect place to host.

Yeah, alien themed super.

Not far away from Area fifty one.

That's I mean I listened to I grew up on art Bell and art used to talk about any art was up in Perump which is not that far away.

Remember the aliens were spotted in that family's.

Backyard right here.

Yeah, ten feet tall, big eyes.

That's great, have big eyes?

Should play for the clippers, that'd be the way to go. RJ insane Antonio. He says, Ben, with you having a new addition to the family, if you had to be a dog, Ben and Danny, what breed of dog would you want to be? Well, I feel like my life right now, I just got a bulldog and we have that's Moxie. I have not put any photo. Maybe I will put some photos up here.

I gotta do that.

Keep getting my other dog, Luigi, who's a what do I call her a FuG?

Is that it's frog? A frog FuG would be something else.

But yeah, she's she's a mix with a couple of things. But I like the Moxie because I feel like my life's like she just lays around, slobbers a lot, farts a lot, eats a lot of food. Lazy, you know, it just plays a lot. It seems like it's the way to go. I would say, Oh, man, unbelievable freebies. The wife picked up some freebies here. Yeah, it would appear. See a big Las Vegas chain headed our way. Yeah, all right, outstanding? Oh there is Viva Las Vegas.

Look, I already have a chain and you could match me. Now, Ben, you could be blinged out.

I like yours. Man, That's that's solid. That's a good looking Shane. Who's the what what breeded dog?

Would you? You would want to do like a pit bull?

Probably you want to be a big gas pit bull or a great Dane, Great Dane, great Dane, because then you could.

Like lift your big leg and piss all over people and they would just still be like.

Oh, that's good, all right. Ed Wright's in next from Parts Unknown. He does not say where he is writing from.

Uh. He says on the.

Facebook pitch, how does someone get through on the phone during the last forty minutes of show?

I don't know. I get this complain a lot.

I've tried to encourage my producer to actually answer the phones.

He often doesn't. I don't know, and I have nothing to do with that.

I just do the show, and I really don't over the years, and when I first start, everyone gets into radio, they do a call in show. You obsess over who's calling in. But I am proud of myself that I have enough content. I don't worry about who's calling it.

Now.

I like to mix a call in because I feel like it breaks things up and it keeps the show moving. And we've got people that are characters on the show. But I don't give out the number, mainly because I don't want the extra drunk guys to call in. But I don't really care if people call in or it's cool if we get good callers.

You shouldn't still be accessible though.

No, here's what you do when that last hour is just starting. Tweet at a Bronco fan on Twitter that's a Bronco fan. Uh, in front there a Bronco fan and tell him, hey, answer the phone line.

Yeah.

And I get these everyone so long, get these really angry people that will write me.

I've listened to your show for twenty years. You are such as schmucking asshole. You will not.

Take my phone call. And I'm like, I have not in my head. I'm like I have nothing to do with it. Yeah, yeah, I would like to see that happen. I will again for you, Ed, I would love to talk to you. I would recommend on a newbie night. I also know when I'm you know, we do the show remotely some of the time, and then I'm in studio some of the time. When I'm in studio, I do see more of what goes on and all that. And so with that, I mean as that is part

Any question.

We obviously don't do a lot of sporty stuff on this podcast. It's we do some and we get sporty questions, but it's mostly about just life and things like you know, behind the scenes. Danny's with Covino and Rich during the week and I'm doing my own thing overnight.

And so we come together because we used to work together. We like each other, so we hang out together, as I think you know by now, on the weekends.

Mister Luciano writes in he says, this question is for Ben, and Danny says, out of all your favorite teams, which one was the first that you ever saw win a championship in any sport?

Okay, Danny, Oh, that's easy for me.

The Lakers with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and then shortly after the Marcus Allen La Raider era began in Los Angeles. So it was the Lakers and then the Raiders for me.

So I did not have that. I had the Dodgers when I was a kid.

I was young, and I remember the Dodgers won the World Series in the eighties. But then I didn't count the Saint Louis Rams because I stopped being a Ram fan when they were in Saint Louis because I was a fan of the La Rams, So I said, who cares about that? So then I but the Dodgers were the one, and then I saw them or the La Rams actually win here just a couple of years ago.

I was too little to what was it eighty one for the Dodgers.

Yeah, I guess I was too for the Yankees, right, and so I would have been like kindergarten. So that's why a few years later when the Lakers won, I remember that so distinctly. But I wish I remember those early Dodger championships. The first one I saw as a kid was eighty eight with Kirk Gibson.

Yeah, I remember watching the Gibson home run with my My mom was My dad was not a big baseball but my mom loved the Dodgers and Sandy Kofax and all that, so she kind of like programmed me to watch the Dodger And I remember we were watching that night and we're like, they're gonna lose you because the athletics, you know, not to recreate the idiot World Series.

But they were like seen as this Juggerhault.

No one was the best brothers.

Yeah, they had all the swagger and all that.

I tell you the other other thing, mister, the most important championship will be this summer the Clippers with James Harden when they win the championship. What a what an event that's going to be. And they're gonna go to the end to it Dome when they're gonna have a little trophy there.

Watch out for James Harden.

I'm sure he's going to be MVP Playoff. He's the system, all right. He is the system. You can't you can't stop it.

He just is on a whole other level in the postseason.

What in the actual hell is wrong with this guy? Yeah, Matt from Dallas writes in he says, Banking, you share some of your picks for the prop bets for the super Bowl for those of us. Yeah, I mean, if you go back to the Saturday Pod. We covered some of that on the Saturday Podcast. But yeah, I don't give that a lot of that stuff out because I actually want people to watch the show. I'm sorry, Scott, you can't get it in Dallas. You just have to work a little harder. Marcus, and you have that nine

That's right. Yeah, give me all your money, and you know it's broke.

It's broke Marcus and san Antonio, Right, So he says, Ben and Danny. I've enjoyed listening to the breakdown of games and the predictions over the years, well before you went Hollywood on us and good old Danny g played the role of the penny. What I find most intriguing is when Ben states the betting odds, followed by a

But that's that is not.

One of the reasons you still wear a calculator watch.

Yes, I have a big, giant calculator for sure, al Cassio, But thank you, Marcus. I appreciate that, and I do enjoy the odds. You know what I like the most is looking where people are betting, trying to find where the sharp money is because that's where the professional gamblers are.

That why I thought you mean you followed strangers around those sports.

But name it's named Sharp. Name named Sharp there for sure.

Next up on the mail bag our buddy Alf from the Chamber of Commerce located in Springfield, mass where the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame is and Muffett McGraw is enshrined. Alf says, is beautiful downtown Burbank as beautiful as Gerry Owens describe it, and how his FSRS moved to Burbank going, He says, which happens first, Fox Sports Radio moving to Burbank or the Animal Thunderdome. How dare you that's a shot by Alf?

That is a cheap shot.

Yeah, we've been told for the past fifteen years we're moving to Burbank.

We have changed studios in that time.

You mean they put a band aid on a quote unquote news studio. Yeah, but it is nice the new studio.

I like it better.

I like it, and I don't want to drive the extra thirty minutes in traffic to go to Burbank, to be honest.

With it doesn't matter to me.

Yeah, either way.

You're coming from the other direction, Yeah, I'm screwed. It actually might be closer for you, probably eight minutes closer, ten minutes.

No, I just have to go a different way though. That's oh okay, So I don't know if that I don't know. I'm not sure that would be a better way or not.

Well, that's why we haven't done yet. They haven't The bosses haven't cleared it with you yet. Yes, they have to make sure that it fits with your driving pattern.

Well, you're considering the tenure with the exception of six months and twenty six days since the year two thousand, the end of two thousand.

That's crazy.

Yeah, but who was counting?

Yeah exactly, all right. Next up Blake in Arkansas. This is a mattress guy.

Ah, what up?

Yeah, Blake's a big fan, He's a mattress king. He says, tell Danny that those Sam's mattresses you at at Costco.

He says, those Sam's mattresses.

Are our stores two ninety nine King Specialty, nine Kings Special. However, they do seem to be pretty good ones. If he was to take it back, it will end up in a store like mine, seventy to seventy five percent off retail, he says.

So it's kind of like the Amazon products and like that. You mention, yeah, that's what this. This guy's a hustler. This guy's a hustler. Blake in Arkansas. So I sleep on the new mattress with Wifey. We do really dirty things on the mattress, like change diapers for baby call and then we're like, yeah, we don't like this, going.

To take it back to Costco. And then he gets it.

Yeah, yeah, he gets it. And he told me he's making it. He's doing very well, Blake. We should have him on the podcast. I want to hear out he's making all his money. He was trying to get me to get one of those amy. He told me he could hook me up with the Amazon place, but you got to get a warehouse, brick and mortar warehouse. You had to invest the decent amount, but he said in Arkansas he's making a.

Sell a couple of the cars from your car collection. Your garage is big enough.

At the mansion, yeah, it's completely full though. Contact the wife there. You can't. I can't even walk in there.

I can't. I gotta have like the lights on. Are you gonna kill yourself? It's like a trapdoor underneath the garage. You'll fall in there and be eaten by a pit of vipers. Bill writes in he does not say parts on known will do. This will be probably the last one. Actually will do one more for this. Bill says, I've been a Danny he had been. I've been a big fan since around two thousand and seven. I still think about Dale and how he got people's resume on flash drives.

Magnet is the Blitz?

When You and Looney was the greatest show to ever Bless the radio. I turned off the volume on TV while I watched the games and listen to you guys, Banter and the Witty rep art my question for the podcast medication. Yeah, well, thanks to the blitz me and Looney that the TV show has been pretty smooth because of that.

Anyway, says h Do I have issues?

He says, I was driving in the car with my wife the other day and it was a long trip and we turned off the radio. I started thinking about the mail Bag, and I started singing out loud ohio Al's song Ben's mail Bag, belting it out over and over again like a thirteen year old girl at a Taylor Swift concert. Mail Wife that my wife was not happy. Yeah, he said, all right, well let's accept Alcin sing.

Yeah, yeah, I'll see how's got the talent. Al's got the talent for sure.

And Big Lou rode In who He's upset that I goof on the NBA. He was annoyed by that, but Lois, Yeah, listen, he says, now that you are all better, a better person. You said TV people are better people. Can you break down TV ratings when it comes to sports specific the NFL? How do they know exactly how many people tune in all that stuff or at a sports bar. Yeah, it's guestimation, it's not exact. They know the cable numbers, and that the streaming numbers they really know because they can track.

I heard a rumor that there's these little chips that are in all of our real IDs now and they're tracking all of us.

How about coming in here face recognition when you walk in. That's a little scary behavior.

Yeah. I can't wait to get the chip in my head.

Yeah.

And my photo is from my big eating days there and they still recognize me.

I still recognize me.

So all right, we'll get out on that. Enjoy the super Bowl today. Chiefs are going to win. I'll be on tonight to break it all down.

And that's Bill Waller.

We'll be spending more time, Danny about the forty nine ers and why they lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs, because we spend more time talking about losers.

The better Super Bowl story is in the losing locker room in Las Vegas.

The agony, the agony.

It's been a fun weekend here. It has been good. Definitely, it's been good. Travel back to Lo Lowlands.

All right, sounds good and uh, we'll be back tonight. Have a wonderful, glorious rest of your Super Bowl study.

We'll catch you next.

Time later skater enjoy the game. Gotta murder, I, gotta go