The Fifth Hour: Benny's Travel Log

Hour podcast since the weekend getaway in Northern California. We're gonna call this Barnacles on the Mayflower. We're gonna call this one Barnacles on the Mayflower. Now, I did notice it was World Radio Day today. I saw this. Now I did not know that it is World Radio Day. I did not realize this was a thing. However it is. It hasn't been a thing for that long. World Radio Day was first proposed in Spain in September of twenty ten,

and then it began shortly after that. In twenty eleven, World Radio Day was accepted by all member states of the I guess there's a world body that puts these things together. And the first official World Radio Day was the University of Pisa, the Leaning Tower of Peace in Italy. They hosted an event there and we can thank the great Marconi who invented radio, and then this guy James

Clerk Maxwell who proposed radio's possibility. But it was Marconi that invented the first practical radio device and providing me with a lifetime of employment. And the gadgets have changed right to watch you McCall. It's the thinking. My jiggs are all different now. But the radio it's as many radio days today as one of them. So we honor broadcasting and the history of the wacky, wacky business. And it was some of the things that took place here in radio. I don't know that I want to get

into this right now. Actually, I had to study this. When I was in Saddleback College. I learned a little bit about radio, and like the first radio station was KDKA and Pittsburgh and nineteen nineteen and then radio FM radio began. There was a bunch of pirate radio stations. That's why the government regulated radio to avoid pirate radio. Of course, now we have the Internet which has nothing but pirated this, that and the other thing. So celebrate appropriately.

It is again World Radio Day. Meanwhile, the Mallard travelog has been activated. The road from Los Angeles to San Francisco is not merely a drive. Now, I've done this a few times over the years, but this is a pilgrimage. And I was reminded, having not done it in a little bit of time, that the trip from the South to the north, you feel like you're reading about Lewis and Clark, but you're living it. But you get better snacks,

better snacks, conditioning, heating, that kind of stuff. Manifest destiny in a malormobile. As we traveled the overnight sports talk conn of Hall in the malomobile made the migration right up the spine of California, right up the spine. Now as you are aware because you are a loyal minion of the Fifth Hour podcast. We completed a world wind journey at what used to be called Radio Row. That's the colloquial term Radio Row and is now more accurately

Influencer Row. A bizarre of ring lights and really self important people. The guy I used to do the podcast with West of the four h five. These are his peeps, right, real smarmy, arrogant people who think their gods give the world. That is what was here. It was a meet way of marketing. Look like a lot of interns and dudes who use the phrase content vertical and they use it. There's no irony there they use it. So Fox Sports Radio, as you are aware, they send the daytime Royalty. There's

two types of radio. There's night radio and there's daytime radio. So the daytime radio shows get treated a little bit better. The overnight peasants, as usual, are left to finance their own travel expeditions, while the daytime guys get hotel rooms and per diem and things like that. So fortunately, my brother in law happens to live about ten miles from the heart of San Francisco where this was going on.

At the convention, center and my wife, bless her. Intrepidzoul loves a good road trip the way some people love of breathing. So the journey north on I five Interstate five is a lesson in humility regarding geography, and California is a massive monster. It's vast, it's got the agriculture, and it's empty because of that in the middle. There's not a lot going on when you're driving through the middle. Bakersfield, Fresno, Visalia, towns like that, I just feel like Commas in a sentence.

No one ever finishes the cows. They just outnumber people, which drives the animal rights wackos crazy. Oh my god, they're farting and there's come on, I want my milk, I want my meat. Fart away boys, flatulence everywhere, And what I enjoyed. One of the things I laughed at was the billboards scolding the bozo gas newsome and I didn't realize that this was as big a thing still, and things maybe moved on, but no, there were a bunch of billboards with this rural venom, which is a

different kind of venom. Farmer venom is a different kind of venom, the kind of venom that could curdle milk. And we're talking about the bread basket of California, which stretches out like it's this green ocean. And you realize that driving again from LA to San Francisco is the West Coast equivalent of driving from Boston to Washington. Of course we don't have the charming colonial plaques and historical monuments, but you're going through. If you're going from Boston to Washington,

you're traveling through seven states. Right now, We in California have a great deal of garlic. That's our advantage. Now, we made the required stop at In and Out Burger. We stopped right across the Grapevine, which is when you're leaving LA, you gotta go up through the hills and go down into the place where they have all the food. They make the food, and that's the Grapevine. It's a little like truck stop there, and there's hotels if you're

not familiar with it. And so we stopped at the Grapevine at the in and Out Burger, which is less a restaurant and more it's like a civic duty to eat an in that burger. I don't eat there very much, but when I see one on the road, we always try to stop, so we kept going. After that, we were fortified again from a Loves truck stop, not the Flying j Not the Flying Jack. There was no Flying Jay at this off ramp, so we went to Loves Now keep Inlind. My wife piloted. It was a two

person operation. My wife piloted while I attempted to assemble an overnight radio program from scratch while sitting in the passenger seat. It was truly a dynamic duo maneuver that would have impressed the road warriors. They were, oh, man, that's the way to go. So the show on the West Coast begins at eleven PM, and there is no grace period in radio. I have friends that have normal nine to five jobs, and if traffic is bad, they

show up at nine thirty or ten o'clock. The microphone does not care about your plight, your journey, your traffic, doesn't care about it, doesn't care about it. So Gilroy announced itself before we saw it. The windows immediately came down. That's a requirement. The windows came down. We inhaled the stinking rows nature's antibiotic gangster name garlic, and that was awesome. I just love the smell of the guard. Now, by the time we reached San Francisco proper, it was now

rush hour. My wife was driving, trying to negotiate lanes like a diplomat in a dispute at the border, and no one gave an inch, No mercy was shown, and the wife was not enjoying this part of the trip. Now, eventually we reached the sanctuarya at my brother in law's home, where I converted a room with cathedral ceilings into a broadcast bunker, Benny's broadcast bunker. I brought this big, giant container with a remote studio setup, including the microphone, the headphones,

the thing that we need to connect to everything. So it was all there, and I was worried. I was like, well, this is probably not going to sound that good. But we had nowhere else to broadcast from because the cable that we had wasn't very long and it had to be connected to the do Hickey, and if it was not connected to the dow Higgy as Alf the Alien Opinter and Fergdog No, that would cause a problem that would cause So the acoustics were horrific. My voice ricocheted

like a racquetball. In a gymnasium. Callers wondered if I was ill. They were convinced that I had gotten the creeping crud. No, no, I I was just echoing off drywall to six hundred radio stations. So we improvised, which meant going on our phones, well mostly my wife's phone, to Amazon. We ordered a longer cable and we wanted a lower ceiling. And in order to get a lower ceiling, we're not doing the work that just Josh does. We decided, okay, we'll get a longer cable, and so we used the

Malor method. My right hand was getting a workout, not the Malor maneuver. That's something different. The Malor maneuver, as you know, is on the game shows. But the Malor method you adjust, adapt and broadcast, not man deflect and absorb. No, no, no. We use the Malord method to just adapt and broadcast. So the following day there was a package that showed up at the door and it had the cable needed, so we were able to broadcast where we wanted to. And

then we also had a luncheon. That's right, a power luncheon at the fly Trap in San Francisco. This is a relic of the olden days in San Francisco, with more than a century of stories. If those plaster walls could talk, My god, the things that likely happened at the fly Trap. How great is that? What a great name that is? So this event, there's a patriarchy to this. So the daytime host who had their trip paid for, with their nice jackets and all that, they were there.

But I had a chance to meet some really cool people, the big sales executives for the company who came in from New York and Nashville. A bunch of producers there. Danny G was a bunch of my old producer, Danny G. Wrong Button Bob the talent was also there. The big daytime guys, Rob Parker and Jonas Knox and LaVar Arrington and Brady Quinns. First time I met Brady quinn he was there, the old Notre Dame quarterback Covino and Rich and I did not see Stu Gotts. I did not

come across Stu Gotts. He was not at that event, at least not when I was there. And we made the rounds and said hello to everyone and all that, and did did our thing that got to see the president Yellow FaceTime with the president of the Premier Network. She lives in Nashville there, Julie Talbot, very nice woman who I haven't seen that often, obviously not living in California anymore, and it was great to catch up with her as a kind of a summit of the big

people at the company. And like I said, a lot of these guys I'd not met, really cool dudes, and they're the ones that keep us going because they're the ones that sell all the commercials for dude wipes and all the other stuff, and then we just have to read them on the air. I did break my fast a little early. I was not happy about it, but I did break my fast little early for free food, a small betrayal of the regular routine that I justified

it rare and appropriate. Rare, rare and appropriate. You got to live life if you can't just be so locked in that you gotta follow this. So I did fast the very minimum amount of time. Then came a walk to try to get to the credentialing gauntlet courtesy of

the National Football League see Radio Row. You can't just walk into radio Row, No, you have to be approved by the NFL and their security, and you have to send in this thing and that thing, and I don't know what the other thing is and all that stuff. So when I say has to approve you, we are talking NFL security, which includes a facial scan which leads

to you getting your badge printed. Pentagon level vigilance for a room full of men and women who are arguing about the future of the on side kick and you have facial recognition, Pentagon level security. Now, my wife received the pass as well, and so she was able to hang out with me, and together we crossed over, crossing the Rubicon into the funhouse. Radio Row. Now, legend has it that radio Row began with Mike and the Mad Dog, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, who both did a stint

at Fox Sports Radio. A lot of people don't know that they both did a stint at Fox Sports Radio twenty five years ago. Their weekend shows from WFN picked up in simulcast on Fox Sports Radio. However, we learned, and I didn't know this, that even though Russo and Francesa both had weekend shows, they almost never actually did them, so they were mostly carrying the fill ins for Chris Russo and Mike francessa but a couple of New Yorkers with microphones and ambitions. They would go to the super

Bowl site. They'd set up in the lobby of the hotel, and then word got out, and since Mike and the Mad Dog, it has over the years metastasized into a convention now which has been taken over by selfie sticks and beautiful women who are really trying to dress down unless they're not. Hey, good for them, you got it, show it. The NFL, they really do seem more invested in TikTok trends than terrestrial radio. I can't believe it. I don't know why. Uh, this is the part where

I would go into a rant. It's the matrix. I've already done that, you know how I feel about it. At some point there will be the great Awakening. At some point a bunch of really powerful people are going to realize that they have been taking to the cleaners. They're going to realize that. Now it hasn't happened yet, but at some point it's going to happen. The fake level of activity that goes on on these platforms is next level. Like there's obviously a lot of people on them,

just not as many as the numbers indicate. So the vibe has shifted from a barroom debate the old classic sports radio Tom Rady is the great lo Joe mont Taylor. Now it's this curated spectacle. To describe it, and if you haven't been, you probably have it. It's Costco. If Costco sold egos in bulk, this would be the loading dock,

this would be the loading dock. And still there were friendly faces, colleagues, a bunch of other people that behind the scenes pr veterans who I have crossed path with in my time in radio, so it was cool to see him. JT the Brick, who had a seventeen year run I think at Fox Sports Radio. I got to catch up with JT. And of course he does some stuff with Tom Looney and I do Benny Versus the Penny with Tom Looney, so it was great to see him. Some of my old TV people who I knew from

the Benny Versus the Penny Show on NBC. My buddy Bill was there. He was nice enough to come over and say hello, so I got to catch up with him and I briefly did some stuff at WEEI. I can't believe it's been almost ten years twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and they had a booth and I saw WIGGI, who used to play for the Pages Old Tight like a morning guy, but he was there in the afternoon. I didn't ask many questions. Ted Johnson, the Old Patriot was

there also, So those guys were wandering around. A Rash who I've known since he was an intern, and my buddy from Canada. I'm always guys. It was cool. I was shaking hands. I'm not much of a small talk guy. This was mostly small talk. Did my interviews, traded pleasantries that may or may not be remembered. I'm gonna go with not remembered. And then on a sidewalk not far from the madness of the convention center, which was secured

by a massive police presence, I nearly collided with Dave Chappelle. Yeah, my right shoulder on my left, not my left. My right shoulder passed within a foot of the Comic Royalty. The gesture Dave Chappelle the court jester, and that was that was pretty cool. And I didn't notice it that there was a gaggle like group of people. These dudes were following one of these influencer ladies who was shaking her tooks while she walked and it was not ugly,

and so everything was slowed down. And then ahead of her was Dave Chappelle. Was some dude just walking around. Oh that's Dave Chappelle, very recognizable from all the Netflix comedy stuff and all that. So there he was, and we had that brief moment. That that brief moment there and this in my private ledger. Not a big board unless it is not a list. This is a big board. So Terry and England come to so the celebrity siding.

Now this elevates me to the next level. I'm no longer at the kiddy table and Dave Chappelle somewhere between David Beckham when he was still playing Footebois and the Hoff, the legend David Hasselhoff. Would they wink at a nod to Justin Bieber the Beebes who's hoodie touched my arm while he was going out to a Lakers game years ago.

So we are now me and Dave Chappelle the most using the most generous interpretation of proximity lifelong acquaintances like I'm sure next time, Dave Chappelle does a comedy show in LA in Hollywood, I'll be like, hey, uh remember me, Dave. Can I get a couple of tickets? Should? No problem, No problem. Now, the city itself presented a curious amount of theater in San Francisco because near the convention Center it was fine. Order was there, laws were being followed.

I don't want to say the streets were scrubbed, because there was still a lot of dirt around. The police presence was abundant. Now, one of the offers, one of the officers, confided with me and the wife, and you know, the wife knows the lingo. She's a nine and one operator, so she knows the lingo of the cops. And so this guy was really cool and he's like confighted. He used to be a radio guy names Marcus. I'm sure there's more than one cop named Marcus. And it was

really cool. He's like, yeah, give me the whole rap. And he essentially said, and this blew me away because I heard guys like Pat McAfee who were like, oh, people said San Francisco was, but it's not about at all. And you're right around the convention center it was fine. And the cop told me that the politicians in San Francisco, they gave the mandate to treat the Super Bowl convention area where all the media people were going to be and the influencers, as a geopolitical event, like they swept

up the vagrants. And it was reminiscent the officer said of when the President of China came for some meetings. Is a similar thing, and so okay. But then you leave that bubble you want under a few blocks, and the varnishes thinned, the reality reasserts itself and does about as subtle as a brass band about us, subtle as a brass band. Traffic downtown was medievil, medievil. And I'd like to meet the politician that decided we have these

three lane roads in downtown San Francisco. Why don't we convert one of the lanes in all of downtown as a busway or ride share corridor. Will paint that lane red, and we will provide one of the legendary boondoggles in any city I've ever been to. Now, traffic's bad in la and it's bad in Boston. It's a lot of it's underground, and New York City's terrible. And I've been able to travel and drive in all these places, but it once took us. This was I think on Thursday,

might not it was Friday. It took us forty five minutes to go a mile and a half. We were a mile and a half from where we needed a park. Took forty five minutes. I could have crawled in my knee pads or whatever. I would have made it in less time. Now, after waiting, there was another moment where we left Radio Row. We were going to go out and get a bite to eat, and we walked a few blocks over from the convention center. He's like, all right,

let's go a few blocks over. There'll be less traffic. Well, A, there wasn't less traffic, and B we could not believe every corner had a cop on it to avoid the people that were down on their luck from hanging out with the tourists and all that. So we went to is it Union Square? I think something Union. We went down there and it's like this really cool park surrounded by these old buildings, and you might you could have been in any city, could have been in Chicago, New York, LA.

Whatever the buildings are all. And so we saw we were like all right, Let's order an uber all right, no problem. The uber says, six minutes, will pick you up from this spot. Walk a half a block to this spot. Okay, I can walk a half a block. So we walked a half a block and the app, the uber app, said traffic is building. Car is still six minutes away. So we said, okay, understandable. I was just going to wait here. And we waited, and we waited for about thirty to forty minutes. I forget exactly

how long it was. It was more than thirty less than forty, but I'll say between thirty and forty. And I was getting annoyed, and I said, you know what, cancel it now. We had no other audit. We could not walk the hills of San Francisco. We're not lunatics. These hills are insane. I'd like to also go back on a hot top time machine find out who decided this is a good idea. Let's uh, this is almost the hill is almost straight up. Let's build a house here,

Let's build a skyscraper. That's the way to do it. Anyway, So I had this brilliant epiphany. I said, you know what, we're in San Francisco. Cancel the uber. We did, and I was overwhelmed with the tourism disease, if you will. We boarded one of the iconic cable cars, you know, the red cable cars, which is really only there for the tourists, and it was packed. It was absolutely packed. It was so packed. How packed was It was so packed that we had to cling to the exterior like

barnacles on the Mayflower. Okay, we had to cling. The only places they had were on the side, you know the poles on the side you can stand up as the cars movie. So we spent eight dollars each sixteen dollars for a thrill ride like at an amusement park. And at multiple points did we flirt with being the lead store on the eleven o'clock news. Overnight radio host is in the hospital after being hit while riding in

iconic San Francisco cable car. Yeah, the automobiles came about as close as possible with no shame in their game. So close they could smell our cologne or perfume, or we could. They literally could read the expressions on our face. They could have hugged us. It was wild and now we obviously survived. I'm doing this podcast that felt like a minor achievement, just surviving, and we were planning on eating at my favorite restaurant in San Francisco, the Stick

and Rose. However, by the time we navigated the cable car, we didn't have enough time, so we decided to cross over. We went all the way to the end of the cable car, too afraid to get off because of what was going on. We almost got almost hit a car that stopped. This white jeep stopped right in front of the cable car. Why would you stop in front of the cable car. Those things take a couple of minutes

to stop it. They don't stop right anyway. So we were all way down to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and then walked over to Girideli Square for the Cookie Sunday, a very decadent dessert that should require a coast. It's my favorite dessert and I had to have it. So from there we took the dessert and sat down on that little park in Fisherman's Wharf and admired the silhouette on the distance of Alcatraz Island, this amazing monument to misbehavior,

and I looked at us. Imagine how much a condo would go for if you could put a condo on Alcatraz Island and watch out, Oh my god, would that be great? And also we admired the mighty Golden gate Bridge was off to the left. It was a cool day, San Francisco. Not East Coast coal, not Wooster Mask Cole, but it was coal. And a woman who was just a normal looking woman put on she put it on somewhere else, but she had a bikini on. I don't or she put the bikini on, but she was wearing

a bikini and she plunged in to the water. She plunged into the water in San Francis. I was like, whoa, what is this woman doing? It's wild? And uh yeah, I admired her fortitude. I questioned her sanity equal amounts. I was like, well, that's kind of cool. That's a little different. What are you doing, my goodness, what are you doing? And she see him fine, I'm guessing that's not the first time she's done the Arctic plunge. And she survived as far as we could tell. And that

was it. So we we had to get back the radio road to get my bag. And the reason we to go back and get the bag was because Radio Row was going to shut down. It was Friday, So we made it back to an uber. Had to walk six blocks. The traffic was so bad. The guys like, listen, I can you know we can keep going, or you can just get out and walk. You'll get there sooner.

So we got out and walked a little bit, saw some of the debauchery, and then we got closer and the cops were there, and so everything was fine, and we didn't eventually go back to the stinking Rows and have dinner. So we did have that and just reeked of garlic and it was just wonderful. And then on Saturday we made the journey back. The following morning, there had a brunch with the brother in law, and then made the trip down the winding road of Highway one

oh one, stopping at all our favorites. The Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo for the champagne cake, the Old West Cinnamon Roll Shop, which is about thirteen miles down the coast. There iconic Cinnabon, Iconic Cinnabons, and I had to stop at Costco in Central California for the Sacrament of gasoline. And how long did it take us to get back? We took the long way. Normally it takes about six hours to go from LA to San Francisco and vice versa. It took us ten hours, ten hours.

My brain was thoroughly sautaed by the time we got back to California. I drove most of it. I didn't drive the whole thing, but I drove about nine of the ten hours. And it's always one of these things when you look back at stuff like this, it was like, Wow, that was a lot of fun. Man, that was fun. It was a Tasmanian devil like journey. It really was

a Tasmanian devil like journey. The microphones, whirlwinds, power lunches, hanging out with old radio friends, garlic, celebrity brush bys, me and my buddy Dave Chappelle, cable call a peril, all of that stuff. Now, none of that stuff's gonna happen next year, because the Super Bowl sixty one will return to Los Angeles in the hood in Englewood and

up to no good. There will be no trips through farmland, no Gilroy perfume, no Northern pilgrimage, only traffic glorious grinding gridlock traffic as only they can do it in La La Land. And if all goes well, we will be there, microphone, live, metaphors loaded, ready to declare once more that the show has to go on. Whether we're invited or not. We're gonna be interlopers. We're gonna crush the party, and that's how that's going to go. And on that note we

will say goodbye for now. We got another episode of The Fifth Hour tomorrow on Saturday, and then on Sunday the mail Bag. Still time to get your questions in for the mail bag. Send them in right now care of Reel fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. Have a wonderful rest of your Saturday. I tell you to watch the All Star NBA stuff, but I know you're not gonna do that, So have a great day. Gotta murder, Gotta go