The Fifth Hour: Captain of the Safe Harbor

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 soul 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.

In the air everywhere.

Well, come in, here we go.

It is the Fifth Hour podcast, which means the weekend is upon us. I am Ben Hi, and you like we already know what this podcast is about. Now, My man Danny G is on assignment, hard at work doing stuff with the Colino and Rich Joe, so he will return to the Saturday podcast. We'll be back tomorrow, but we wanted to get the weekend started. Just have to settle for me.

Yeah, Danny G here, I'm still producing this bad boys, It's just me.

This the second day of February, and a thing that has become a bit of a tradition here of late on the podcast is to see what dope holiday it is today? Today is not a dopey holiday day. Today we mentioned this on The Overnight Show February second.

A massive day for you if you live in.

A city that actually gets winter, because today you probably already know now it is groundhog Day today. Now I reference groundhog Day quite a bit. Part of the reason I loved the movie.

Named Groundhog Day with Bill Murray back in the day.

It's a classic and has stood the test of time in my opinion. But it's a day where Pontsatani phil is the star and there's actual see a couple of different Groundhog Day celebrations, but the one that is the most famous is Gobbler's Knob in punk Satani, Pennsylvania, and you're.

Waiting for the rodent. The rodent is the star of the show.

It's the only time other than like Mickey Mouse, which is like a cartoon thing, this is a real rodent. A groundhog is a legitimate rodent. And this tradition actually started back in the seventeen hundreds, and it was started by German immigrants, the settlers in Pennsylvania. I don't know, well you called immigrants in the seventeen hundreds before before the you know, everything was settled, probably not, you were just like traveling, but anyway, the German settlers will call

Winter chill will continue. This good day.

To watch Groundhog Day, I might have to dust off. I don know what streaming service groundhog Days on. I'm not sure, but I'll have to track it down and watch it. A yearly rite of passage on this day, Groundhog Day, Gobbler's Knob.

What a town, What a town? Just absolutely wonderful.

I believe though that Groundhog Day was filmed in Chicago, a lot of it. I read that years ago. What else did we got National Bubblegum Day Today?

It's a big day there.

And the urban legend if you swallow a piece of bubble gum, it will stay in your stomach for what eight years or something like that remem when I was a kid.

My family would scare me used to a lot of bubble gum, But I was a kid.

The big thing was well, first of all, it was like toys, R US fruit stripe gum, which I believe just went out of business within the last couple of months. But then we also had this Big League chew, and as I remember it, as a kid playing little league, I grew up in an era where baseball players would take softball size gobs of chewing tobacco and their entire cheek could be blown up like a cartoon with this nasty, repulsive chew, And of course, being an impressionable child, I

But it is national.

Bubblegum today, so day today, so enjoy chewing that rubber. Have a great day, Dick and Dayton like this one. It's National ukulele Day. Loser.

Whoopie damn do and Marcel.

I thought of Marcel when I saw this and I was going through the calendar, I said, this is this is a day for Marcel.

It is National tater Tat Day today.

You killed it with the knife.

As you you probably know from listening to the Overnight show, one of the many ridiculous drops we have from our friend Marcel is tater Tots.

The way he said, tater Tots outstanding.

Don't worry, it's.

Just tat the Tots. Marvelous drop from our friend Marcel. But anyway, now we get.

To the main event and no dilly dowling, no wasting time, none of that stuff. It is the Friday Pod here, the second of February, Groundhog Day, and normally on Friday. For the past twenty weeks we have provided you with shameless touring of a.

Certain television show.

However, this weekend different than all other weekends that we've had over the last several months. Because all was quiet on the Western front this week I did not make my weekly sojourn to Universal Studios. I did not walk through the bowels of the NBC News bureau to go

Not for me, maybe for you.

So the TV show was dark this week after twenty consecutive weeks in sun, rain and whatever their weather popped up.

No new episode this weekend.

Yup, bupkis And I'm not sure whether NBC is going to put a test pattern up or not in our time slot.

It might get a better ratings. I'm kidding, but do not fear.

Benny versus the Penny will return to local regional cable television for one final shining moment as our final of the season. The finale episode. You always remember, the last episode, right, The most famous last episode of all time in television and the highest rated television show I believe ever still is Mash.

When I was a kid, Mash was on. My parents liked it.

I watched more reruns than the original show, but it was fine, you know, at that time that was quality entertainment. But everyone I was watching that most ratings of all time, and that show went.

Off the air.

And then in addition to that, you would say the most ridiculous ending would be Seinfeld back in the nineties when their final episode with very bizarre odd ending, and the Sopranos had a weird, weird ending to that. But this will be our Super Bowl fifty eight extravag is now. We weren't able to pull off last week a TV show with only two games. Now this coming week next week will have just one game.

But I'm not gonna lie to you.

Ask a creature of habit. It was occasionally I do a lot to you, but not now a creature of habit.

It was a little odd.

It was a little lot not doing the normal preparation for the various things I need to do during the week. He was wandering aimlessly across the side of the road looking for something to help kill the time. You see, I have become programmed like a robot to handicap NFL games every week.

This a long time, and really.

Got into it this year. I waited till the playoffs to take it to.

The next level.

Playoffs, and so it threw off this week threw off my bio rhythms.

If that's even a thing, I don't know.

But on a positive note, I did go to and oh last week in against the spread, so my playoff record is a chef's kiss.

I got a little more sleep this week, so I'm told that is good for my health. Who knows.

I believe no matter how much sleep you get, you're still going to drop dead. Also had a few spicy text message exchanges with my TV partner Tom Looney and reminded him he looked like a total jackass on national television with the outfit he wore last week. If you happened to watch last week's episode of Benny Versus the Penny,

On and on and on and on.

And then they had to play the game, and Lamar said, thank you very much, I am now going to puke all over my uniform, all over my uniform. And despite a defense for Baltimore that shut out Kansas City in the second half, there was no roar from Lamar Jackson in the Ravens effect the signature of moment for Lamar, and I thought of Looney.

I laughed when I saw this.

Lamar jacks the chess master during the regular season, who's playing checkers in the playoffs. Lamar goes out there and the Ravens are trying to come back the second and a half, they're driving the ball down the field and he threw the ball into triple coverage.

Triple coverage against Kansas City.

A bold strategy, Cotton, and it did not work out.

Did not work out.

So now we have the upcoming week Super Bowl fifty eight next week the Chiefs. The Chiefs in the Super Bowl were sixty minutes away from all Taylor Swift all the time. Well, it's actually been all Taylor Swift. I stand corrected all Taylor Swift all the time this week. And then if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, oh man, all bets are off. All bets are off. Should the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, point that out. But we'll have another episode next week. So thank you for supporting

I didn't think it was gonna happen.

I was a contributor at NBC years ago, and it's it's been awesome. It's been an amazing experience to have a team of people that work with you, work hard, that want you to look good and put the effort in and the energy and this is something I've wanted my entire career to have, you know, that kind of support system, and it's been great to have that at the people at NBC have just been just absolutely wonderful

The phrase all the week on the fifth hour podcast.

So if you listen at all, and you obviously listen now, so you do listen some you know that I love words. I'm not the most educated chap in the world. I was a bad student. I was did not do that well in school. But I like to pride myself on self education that every single day I try to learn a little something and put it in the back of my head, put it in my toolbox so I can I can use that at some point, and maybe I'll never.

Use but I like to do that.

And a guy early in my radio career, a guy told me, he says, you know, talk show host is not someone that digs a giant hole. They don't go deep down in any topic, but they have to know a lot at the surface of just about everything. A good talk show host knows a little something about everything, but not too much about anything, because you're talking about random, different topics. And so I've always taken that to light and tried to pick some things up. Now, this week

No, it's fine.

But this one comes from listener Gary, a dedicated minion to the Overnight Show, and he said, why don't you you look up the term safe harbor. Now, this came up in conversation earlier in the week as a listener said something you can't say. I think it was angry Bill, but it could have been a number of people that say things you're not supposed to say.

But it came up a conversation.

We pointed out that we are floating in the Overnight through the safe Harbor, that I am the captain of the SS Safe Harbor.

So Gary wrote.

In He's like, hey, you know you and Jason Smith are on at why don't you let me know more about safe harbor.

I'm paraphrasing, so I said, you know what, that's a good idea. I don't really know much. I know the term because I have to do training every year.

For the show to be able to broadcast, I'm required to do a certain amount of red tape training, which is I actually did it during the show.

This was kidding. People thought I was kidding. I was not kidding. I got an email. You're fully you're full of crap. You didn't do it, ur I did, no, I had. I literally was doing it while I was doing the show. Because one of those things is like the way I would go through that.

I want to get too specific here, let you know how we make the hot talks, but what the hell, it's the podcast. If you're listening to this, you're like the one percent of the one percent, right, you're the super fan, God bless you. So the way the training goes. The closest I would say it is too, is if you've ever gotten a speeding ticket and you have to go online and take one of those courses online. It's a lot of clicking and waiting for videos to play

So it's that kind of thing. And I already know what I need to know, right. Everything's I've done this a long time and it's not my first rodeo. I've I've been.

Here, I know how to do it, and I know what you need to do, what you don't need to do, and all that stuff. So I'm well versed in FCC rules and they don't change the rules very often, so I'm good. So the term safe harbor get to the point. Please well believe it or not. Listener Gary, and you listening as well. We can thank dead comedian George Carlin, former sports talk radio caller in Los Angeles. George from Venice.

He used to call.

He was a big sports radio listener in Los Angeles. New York had Jerry Seinfeld. We had George from Venice, and he didn't say he was George Carlin. He would just call up as George from Venice and want to talk ball and talk sports. He became friends with a guy that I worked with a long time, Lee Klein, likely a lot. Actually they went to lunch and they hung out and George invited him to his comedy shows.

And all that. It was pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

But we can thank George Carlin for the term safe harbor. You see, the term safe harbor refers, if you're not familiar with it, the lingo of broadcasting. It refers to the hours during which broadcasters can legally transmit material deemed indecent for children. The term safe harbor legally means from ten pm to six am, from ten o'clock at night to six am. That was established, believe it or not by the United States Supreme Court, not even the FCC.

And tits.

And he he did that bit was hilarious. It was absolutely hilarious. It was wonderful. And uh but he got played on w b A I in New York and the wrong person was listening.

Right, it was part of the program.

And you know, Carlin did his bit about the attitudes towards language, and a couple of weeks later, this guy named John Douglas. You don't know who that is, and nor should you know who that is, but he was a member of something called the Morality in Media group. Sounds like a fun, fun group of people. So he had stated in a formal complaint to the Federal Communications

I'm sure the kid never said any of those.

Words, right, never, ever, never would have used any of those words. Now, this guy Douglas also stated that the material was inappropriate for that time of day. The broadcast happened at two o'clock in the afternoon AM time, right two o'clock in the afternoon. Now, in response, the Pacific Broadcast Group, which owned WBAI in New York, they received a letter a reprimand from the Federal Communications Commission and

Okay, fine.

So this led all the way to a Supreme Court battle because s PACIFICA Broadcasting said, that's bullshit.

What are you doing. It's ridiculous. This is a long ass time ago, right, We're going back fifty years.

Fifty plus years. So they went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the FCC's ruling. This happened in nineteen seventy eight, so the original broadcast was in nineteen seventy three.

This thing lasted five years.

To nineteen seventy eight, and it was by one vote, a five to four rulings. So if it had gone the other way, if that ninth person had gone the other way, we would have had a much different outcome. But the ruling was that the routine was indecent but not obs scene. You know, I think he's up there now, smiling down at US. So the court, the Supreme Court said that the FCC had the authority to prohibit such broadcast of the George Carlin comedy bit during hours which

From from back. I'm trying to remember the it involved.

I think I think it was involving Uh it was imhorn, I believe it was, and uh it was what was it it was I'm trying to think of the exact the exact term, but it was something like you know it when you see it. It was it was that kind of thing, uh, regarding pornography, right, it was.

I would know it was upset it here it is.

It's, uh, I know it when I see it regarding obscene material.

So I know it when I see which is that.

That's like NFL officials, I kind of know it when I see it. It's subjective, not objective, So there's a there's a difference there anyway, So that was the the origin of it, the court saying that you you could not do such things during the day.

So they cooked up the term save harbor.

And that is when kids are not likely to be in front of televisions or radios. Let the record show, when I was growing up, I rarely went to bed before midnight.

I was, even as a.

Child, a night owl. And that's just how I operated. And that's the way.

That it be or is or whatever.

All right, meanwhile, we have a little time left, and let's go into the kitchen for some foody fun, fruity fun. That's right, tell me, all right, So these are stories about the food world, and we don't have much time.

We'll do a few of them. We'll do a few of them.

There's a few things that stood out here, some new items that caught my attention.

This is not a new item.

I actually kind of like this. So Starbucks is allowing you. I don't know if this is at all locations or not. And I don't drink coffee, so you're probably saying, why the hell do you care about Starbucks? Well, my wife loves coffee. She loves going to Starbucks. And when she goes She'll get me one of those fruit.

Drinks, one of those fruity drinks, like a lemonade tea type thing. And I like that. It's pretty good. Get extra sugar in there, and it's really bad for you. I don't do it very often anyway.

Starbucks says you can now bring your own cup to Starbucks for drive through and mobile orders.

That's right.

They're accepting clean personal cups when you order in cafe or at the drive through through their app. And so they're claiming that this is a way to save on waste and increase reusable products, and so that's what I was saying.

But it's a way to save money. Let's be honest here. They save money. They don't have to spend as much money on cups. That's expensive.

And I like this not for the environmental part of it, but I like it from the standpoint. I can bring a bigger cup, I can get a bigger drink than the Starbucks cup. I can get a massive I'll get one of those giant, super big gulp cups from back in the day, and I'll do it. So this is supposedly was tested during the Colorado or in Colorado and before COVID. You used to be able to bring your own cup in and they would wash your cup and

But now they're going on. So I liked it. I dig that. I think that's great and bring your own why not? What the hell? Knock yourself out some new items.

Burger King can't remember the last time made a Burger King, but if you're a Burger King person, was it the Kelsey brothers.

Their favorite food is burger King. I think I read that a couple of years ago.

A Burger King going to launch a new candied bacon whopper, available for a limited time. It starts next week. It starts next week, candied bacon Whopper. They've also built a new fiery big Fish sandwich at Burger King that starts February fourteenth.

I'm good on that.

I don't need the candied bacon whopper and the big fish sandwich.

No.

I eat fish once a year, normally at an ocean side restaurant beer battered fish strip fish sticks with tartar sauce, and that's.

I'm good I'm good for the year. I at once might go over to Huntington Beach here something like that. There's a great restaurant rut of the beach over there. I might do that. But that's about it. Now.

This is an item that caught my attention for McDonald's. McDonald's has really shaking it up.

Man.

McDonald's was like the old, old, old.

Blue blood that would never change. But they've really tried to change their stuff. They've got the double Big Mac. Now, they've added some new items and McDonald's is set to launch the quote spiciest burger to date. Their first ever UK food collab collaboration. McDonald's UK is launching a food collab with Reg Frank Red's Frank's Red Hot Sauce. If I could speak, that would help. What it's called the mixed Spicy and they're gonna put that red that Frank's

And as Danny would say, later, skater gotta murder.

I gotta go