Kubbooms.
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 Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in the air everywhere.
Welcome in the Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler and Danny G Radio. Because four hours a night are not enough for me, and the daytime shift with Covino and Rich for Danny G not enough. But eight days a week, eight days a week from the podcast Dojo at a super secret location and Danny G. There is a sense of relief in the podcast Dojo today after over a year. It's gotta be over a year. Brian Billick, Brian Billick.
This was two years ago that this all started.
Two years jeez, crazy, but it was. It was wonderful to have Brian finally on and he gave a lot of good football information as he was hanging out in Minista right near the Canadian border there, just south of the border the north country in Minnesota. So I went to Duluth. I told him when we talked yesterday, I went to Duluth, and I thought that was like the farthest you could go. But he's like another hour and a half north of that, so he's way way up
there around Lake Superior. But it was great to have him on. And so who's our next target, Danny, do we have a new target that Billick's done the podcast and now we have to move on to someone else.
Well, the list is obviously Billick and Michael Jordan. Those are the two most sought after guests on any sports show.
Neck and neck with Jerry Delabatti, Baba Booie who we could get on, But yeah, I mean Michael Michael. I guess Michael was texting Stephen A And do you see that this week that he's texting him at five in the morning, you think, do you think that actually happened or six in the morning.
I don't know any of us that are on a media platform could say anybody texted us like, oh shit, Alicia Keys just texted me right now.
Yeah exactly, Well that's congratulations.
Good morning. Why did you have a baby without me? You, Dick.
My only theory on that Jordan thing was that it's conceivable. I've heard Jordan's been spending a lot of time in Europe. So he's in Europe. It's not as early, right, because it's a few hours ahead of where he might you know, the East coast, so where he might have been. So I mean, that's conceivable. But we're not here to yap
about that. We got a lot to get to. We got the cool hand, Luke smoked meats, back to school, backscratcher, the word of the week, not the phrase of the week, the word of the week, and we have time Pop goes to the culture. But we start with this. So I want to get your perspective, Danny and you listening. I want to get some feedback on this, okay, because this is our Saturday podcast. It's all about the life of malor the life of Danny g So. I had
a buddy of mine. I've known this guy since elementary school in town. He don't live here anymore, and he's been gone. He lives in Dallas. He visits usually once a year, sometimes twice a year.
Now.
We grew up together and we spend a lot of time on the playgrounds, and every year we will get together and enjoy a nice meal and tell old stories from back on the swing, you know, the swing, the swings and the you know, the playing kickball and all that crap.
Uh.
So that's it's kind of a normal thing. I think most people do that with old friends. And this guy's an Elvis impersonator. That's not my thing. But whatever floats is both that's fine. But this year was different than all other years. So he told me about a month before he was visiting. He said, you know, I'm gonna be out there, and I said, okay. So then I explained to him, you know, I've got some big things
going on right now. There's some exciting stuff happening. I've got a very busy schedule and I'm only available socially on Friday and Saturday. Right but he was going to come from Saturday to Saturday. So I explain no one to listen, I can see you Saturday you fly in. I could see you the following Friday, or like Saturday.
Before you leave. Bertie sounds like you were a big time in him.
Well no, no, no, no, no, no, no not at all, because that's like that's the schedule. I gave him plenty of advanced notice. So I figured, if I give someone enough advance notice, okay, they'll work with me, right Uh. And so he comes out, he comes out to visit. Now, we had the Malor Meet and great last Saturday. So that was that took up a big chunk of my time, which was great. I had a fine time with Andy the comic guy.
It was.
It was a fun, fun afternoon.
It was cool.
It was different. He's got a really cool comic book shop and Brave New World Comics is really neat and so I had a great time there.
It was.
It was really nice. A lot of people showed up. We had a good time. We had a good crowd. It wasn't too big, but it wasn't too small. So it was a good mix of people that showed up. To be a great but I then text him one of his favorite restaurants at La is L Coyote on Beverly.
You know that.
Mexican restaurant on Beverly there, So yeah, I used to eat there quite a bit. I used to live right across the way there, so I used to get there a lot. And the prices have gone up up and away. But anyways, like I was, I happen to be there with the wife, and so I was like text them and say, maybe he'll come over here and meet us. I said, well, I have I have plans. I have I have some tickets to some show, so I can't meet you today. I said, okay, So I said, all right,
well let's do something next week. So let's do something on Friday. And so we tender. We made plans. He said he could squeeze me in. He had plans on Friday yesterday night, but he had lunch was available on yesterday yesterday. And then just before the Thursday night radio show, I get a tech you know, he's staying in the hood near Lax and I got a text. I got to cancel, and I'm like, we made plans for lunch. I mean we were gonna meet halfway, which I think
was a good compromise. I think that was very generous. I've spent a lot of time in traffic this week. More on that. Later says we're gonna meet halfway. So then my buddy, right, So I was like, oh, he texted me right before the show the night before on Thursday, He's like, hey, I can't do it, and he says his rationale is he says it's too stressful because of the traffic in LA and the return of his rental car would have caused too much anxiety because he had
to return it like at three o'clock. And I told him, I said, just extended a few more hours, it's no big deal. But he said they were closed. So we have here, Danny, a cool hand, luke situation, a failure to communicate. So the question I ask you, I asked the esteemed panel of listeners, who's the bad guy in this? Am I the bad guy? Am I the dick because the dick and Dayton because I only was a milla
on Friday and Saturday? Or was my friend the bad guy because he did not work with me even though I was willing to meet him halfway and he would not meet with me. He said he was, and then he he canceled. What's your perspective, Nanny?
Well, even though I was giving you a hard time at first about big timing because you gave him forewarning, then I think you're in the right here. And you also were going to meet him halfway, which is what I feel like we should do. Even if it's your host city where a friend or family member is visiting, we're still willing to, like, you know, drive halfway in between wherever they're staying at in our general area to meet them. Look, I've always been the one and my
girl always says this too about visiting her family. A lot of her family lives in northern California near the Davis area. You see Davis in the house. The thing is she has to drive up there to see them. And my family I have half down here and half in northern California as well, and through the years, Ben, it's always been the same for me too. I have to drive all the way up there to see everybody, and I'll drive from house to house to visit everybody.
What's the problem of coming down to southern California. Supposedly they're always stressed out over the traffic. The drive is long, there's so many excuses. But magically they could come down here and visit Disneyland.
Yeah, well there's no traffic at Disneyland.
It's amazing. I'm not a mathematician, but something doesn't add up.
Yeah, it is frustrating, and over the years, like a lot of the people, I grew up with people I've known have moved out of California. My brothers live in I won in Wisconsin, I won in New York, so there's not, you know, too much family in the area, and it, uh, you know, I do end up having to travel to see them. But this one was like a buddy of mine. I've known him like, you know, he's like a you know, a guy that I've been close with. He knows all my secrets and all that
I know all his secrets. But unfortunately did not work out this time. So we'll see. Maybe next time it'll work out.
Yeah, you guys were on the teener totter together.
Yeah, man, we when you when you play handball and kickball, and I mean, that's the next level. There's a there's a bond of brotherhood that is born on the playgrounds of elementary school that cannot be broken. So I had that and then I also had I want to mention this real quick. This will not be long because I know we have to we have to get to the back to school. But I had a power lunch in La La Land this week and uh, you know, to the decent name the medium logo types and I don't
do these things very often. I mentioned this on the radio show a little bit. I don't do these things very often, Danny, mainly because I cannot stand I'm a creature a habit, and I have my whole routine down and it just screws me up when I have to
change my routine. And in order to pull off this power luncheon we just mentioned the La traffic, I spent three hours, three hours in my car, an hour there, two hours on the way back in rush hour traffic, going through some fine parts of skid row in Los Angeles and places that I think makes Sodom and Gomora look like an attractive destination instead. But anyway, so one of the people I went out with and had outside we went to Langers Delhi. I love you. Ever been to Langers I love Langers Deli.
Yeah, there's not much parking, but the food delicious.
Yeah, there's a little lot. It's right across from MacArthur Park, and it is the greatest deli I've been to. I've been to all the big delis in New York, all the delis you know in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and this place is at the very top. It is better the way they make their pastrami is insane. The problem is you have to dodge landmines and it's just wild down there near MacArthur Park. Because it's so unsafe there, they close at four o'clock in the afternoon because you don't
want to be there at four oh one. It's real bad. But that MacArthur Park's been around since the eighteen hundreds and it's one of the oldest parts of la and it's so old. I looked it up because I've been there so much that they actually filmed early Hollywood movies with Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin Charlie Chaplin in MacArthur Park back in early days Hollywood in the nineteen twenties. So kind of crazy one hundred years ago. But so
we had the power lunch. It was great, told some stories, you know, shot the biz and one of the people there, Danny has claim to fame, was he fired Skip Bayless from a radio job. So went into detail on that and gave some some dirt. Very few people can say they fired the highest paid person or one of the three highest paid people in sports media today. But obviously before Skip Bayless became Skip Bayliss and in the early days, Danny. I told the sturb before. But when Fox Sports Radio started,
Skip Bayless was one of our contributors. He was writing books about the Dallas Cowboys, and he was like an NFL guest that was a paid contributor on Fox Sports Radio in the early days when the network started. So and then he went off through the show called Cold Pizza I think it was.
I remember that, yeah.
At ESPN, and then that became what eventually became First Take and all that. So interesting interesting times. There was a good time. I don't know that I'll do that very often because of the amount of time I spent in the car. I am such a radio loser. There were you know, there were fair amount of people on the roads. Is that because it's back to school time?
Danny?
Would that be why there's so many people on the roads.
There's those windows now where anywhere near a school in your community, you know, shit, I got to stay away from those streets gets backed up really bad. Also when you go back to school, Ben, you know, for me, obviously I help out with the school district here in the morning time. I noticed that the weather it's kind of like a marker. Last year when we went back to school. One of the days, it was one hundred
and nine outside. I remember the kids just panting and complaining, and you know, it was like two degrees by eight am, and the kids were hating life. And I thought to myself, why are they starting back to school so much earlier than when we were kids, because for us it was after Labor Day.
Right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, we had a full summer. We had a great time, wonderful.
Yeah, they're like, screw you f them kids. They send them back in the middle of the bastard heat. But we had some weird slurricane, hurricane, tropical storm. I guess after the earthquake too. People were calling it a hurriquake. I don't know. In fact, a friend of mine JC in Nashville, he was texting me last weekend, Man, I can't wait to hear you and Mallard talk about the hurriquake. Now, you didn't feel the earthquake, right.
No, I did not. You know, I'm pretty we live kind of far from each other, and you were closer to the epicenter, much closer than I was. But yeah, the whole storm thing, Like I saw some of the headlines on the inn I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna die. This is it's over. My life's gonna end, and I'm gonna die in a freaking hurricane tropical storm. The way they were pinning the picture. I was mainly concerned about the wind because I thought, Man, if it
gets really windy, that's a nightmare situation. And fortunately it didn't seem all that windy. It just was consistent rain. I gotta I gotta tell you unpopular opinion, Danny. When I was back east in Maine the week prior, it rained much harder. When I was driving down I ninety five to go back to Boston, it was a much harder rain than it was here. It was just consistent. And the problem is, obviously we don't get a lot of rain, so when it rains, all hell breaks loose.
And did you see the video clip on the internet of the people slipping and sliding on the freeway not being able to handle their way too fast and then raining.
It was pure comedy watching the networks here in Los Angeles, so we turned the TV on middle of the day. I think they overhyped it so badly. Dallas Rains is going to be in the studio for twenty four hours and that sort of thing. They were running promos and they were just so excited over this. They were lathered up in the newsroom, you know, you know, if there's gonna be some sort of big catastrophe and it's being forecasted, Oh my god, like this, that's their super Bowl in
the weather department. So we turn on the news because, like you said, it didn't seem so bad. It was a little windy outside. It was kind of strange because it had that dirty pre rain smell where the oil off the roads are beginning to you know, wash away, and it stayed like that. So it was kind of a weird tropical Florida feeling. But other than that, it wasn't a big deal because it was just a nice little rain shower, a little bit of wind, but nothing special.
But then ben, oh my god, an earthquake. Oh yes, they took this earthquake and ran with.
Its orgasm type.
End of the world type shit, Oh my god, end an earthquake in the middle of a tornado.
It's out of the Bible. It's out of the Bible.
Volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes. It was beautiful watching this all develop on the local TV stations. So I believe we started out by watching KTLA channel five, and it was comedy, pure comedy. There was this female newscaster, a female reporter, i should say, and she was driving the TV truck. They went to her because she was on the one eighteen freeway, not far from where the earthquake was, because she was on her way driving to
a venture. Okay, so they're like, let's go to Janice, who's actually driving to Ventura right now. The camera goes to her. It's a live shot with her on the freeway. Ben She looked like she was about thirteen years old because she didn't even fit in the seat of the van. She's trying to drive and speak to them at the
same time. It was the most awkward camera shot, and she was babbling on and on about headed towards the epicenter and as you can see in front of me, there's only a couple of cars on the freeway, so people are heating the warning about staying off the freeways. She was on the air with them, I'm not kidding you for a good ten minutes, reporting on the two cars that were driving in front of her on the freeway.
Fascinating television.
My wife summed it up the best. She said, what the fuck is this? That is called filler? I think that is called television spam. You're all trying to fill the time. You're just really trying to fill the time.
It's kind of like a car chase too, because you're right, it is filler. They don't know what to do. They just keep repeating the same thing over and over.
It's unscripted. Yeah, that's the other thing we needed, Danny. We had the earthquake, we had the storm. We needed a police chase. Also. That would have been the third third of Dante's Inferno, the Five Rings of Hell. That would have been the third one in the Five Rings of Hell.
Yo, Well, they're tap dancing so much. They get super excited when somebody, anybody is brought in to speak to them, even if that person is regurgitating the same bullshit that they've been repeating for the past half hour. So now they get somebody on to talk about the earthquake and where it was centered and what does this mean? And so she and my girl's like, damn, she looks like
she's been alive since the first earthquake. Now she's like stuttering and she's explaining to the audience what an earthquake is.
Loser.
This is a new low for Southern California television. Man, Okay, they overhyped the hurricane. Now they desperately were scrambling to have a big payoff. This was the best part. The Chargers game was still scheduled for Sunday, right and it was the same bad TV coverage. They are still still searching on a way to give a big payoff to all of the viewers on this what turned out to be a little storm for us. And they're like, yeah, you know, the Chargers game is still going to go
on though. And the TV anchor said, I'll say this though, if you have a friend in Inglewood, I would go there after the game, just for precaution, you know, just go and hang out for a while. And the other anchor said, that's a great idea. Me and my wife, he looked at each other and we're like, yeah, because we all have friends in Inglewood.
Oh, of course. Let me tell you something. There's a fine bubbling community in Southern California, in the hood in Inglewood.
When Ben Maller is at the Chargers game. He's gonna call Joel Elliott from Fox Sports Radio and be like, hey, Joel, I know you live in Inglewood. Channel two told me to go hang out with you after the game.
Yeah, no, i'd hang out. Well, Joel's great long suffering Lions fan. But remember Helmet Man lives in the hood in Inglewood, so that's right, that's his neighborhood over there, right near Sofi Stadium. So I'd have to track down Helmet man. I'm actually on the live air. Yes, there's an on air light, sir, the on air light indicats you're on the air. You're talking into a microphone in a radio station. You are on the live air, Yes, yes, you're on.
Now. Lastly, how we are over earthquakes. I did feel it. I was taking a nap. It shook me out of bed. I walked downstairs, family sitting down in the living room, girls holding the baby, and they just calmly look at me and they're like, oh, you felt it, and I'm like, yeah, I felt it. And that's it. That was the beginning. In the end, there's no running around in circles screaming, oh my god, there's been an earthquake. We're so used to it and so jaded in California that that's how
we react now, just like you felt it. Yea, I felt it.
Well, now you can get a shirt, you know, baby's first earthquake and you can get something like that, those.
First Southern California apocalypse.
Now are you doing the full baby book, Danny? Do you have the full baby book where you're keeping everything and you know, all the scraps and all that, or are you too advanced for the baby book?
Yeah? I don't know. I actually got a link sent to me yesterday by my chick and it was some modern baby book where you send the photos into them and then they put the kid's picture inside the book that they print out for you.
Okay, my mom kept a is obviously a different time, but she kept a scrap book like of everything, like my hair, my first haircut, little scrap of that first tooth that I lost, you know all that.
Yeah, you're dried up in billical cord.
Yeah, she wanted a little piece of everything there back back in the day. We have a little time. Let's get to the word of the week, Danny. The word of the week, word of the week, So the word of the week. This week is pundit. Big week for pundits. We have pundits in sports, but big week politically because there was a debate this week and so we saw if you were watching the cable news channels, there's a lot of political pundits who did their thing and commented
and all that. And it's a word that I use off of it. I think I used it yesterday with Brian Billick. I used the word pundit. So where did the word begin? What's the origin story of the word pundit. Well, pundit dates back almost four hundred years to the sixteen seventies. It dates back to It's a Sanskrit word, whatever that means, but it's it's been translated as pundit from the original form.
It was referred to originally as someone who had committed to memory a significant amount of the Hindu religious text known as the Vitas I believe vedas and essentially what
it was. It became over the years, it became someone that was a learned man, a philosopher, and by the nineteenth century word pundit expanded to what it means today, like on television or radio, some expert we had Brian Billick on the Pundit yesterday, and so the word of the week he goes all the way back, all the way back to the sixteen seventies, and it involved memorizing Hindu religious texts. The word of the week is Pundit.
Word of the week.
Queen Quick and Danny, we you know how you have there's certain things you can't shave in one month. You can't you can't do certain other things in the bedroom for a month. You know how, there's like certain certain theme months. Well, the month of August is no review month, no backscratch your month, because yet again, Danny, we have pitched a shout out. Now we were away for some of this. You were away on Father I was away. We had some evergreen podcast that we put up, but
we still have yet to have a review. This is the worst month we've ever had for reviews on Backscratcher. So really we need your help here. There's only a few days left in the month of August, and our next show will be in the month of September. So but if you get it in before August ends, we're going to count that for August and we'll just read it on next Saturday's podcast. But go to that podcast page or just look at the description Danny Wright, and you can figure out how to write a review. And
it does help us out a lot. If you're a loyal minion, it's absolutely free to write a review. All that will cost you is your time, which is very valuable. But you're fuxing around with your phone anyway, you might as well just write a little review and it helps us out. And our boss is like that kind of crap, so's that's why we need it?
Yes, yeah, this is a travesty not having at least one for the month. Do not make me contact that Channel five reporter in our van on this. Okay, she'll spend a good ten minutes on this story. So yet, in the description of this very podcast, click on it and then you'll see where it says write a review. It's right next to the overall, the big overall score of the podcast, and then it has you make a
little handle for your name. Click on five stars if you think we're worthy, you write your review after that and boom, you're finished. So it really only takes five minutes of your life.
Yeah, it's it's painless. It's relatively painless unless you're just not really good with tech stuff. But it's very simple even if you're not. I'm not the most technical savvy person, but I even I can figure out how a great rest of your day. Today, we will have another brand new original podcast myself.
And Danny G.
Tomorrow we will have the Mailbag. We'll also have some pop goes to cult Sure, and we will catch you next time. I have a great day today.
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