The Fifth Hour: Dummy Run!

terrestrial radio like the Overnight Show. As we celebrate a very important holiday for me. I don't eat this very often, but when I do, I have a smile from ear to ear. It is National Sticky Bun Day. That's right, an entire day to celebrate the sticky bun, which is one of the great things about being alive. The sticky bun a confection that is Philadelphian of nature. It was brought to the United States by German immigrants in the eighteenth century. And one of the producers on Benny Versus

the Penny, this guy John Good. Dude, dude, good like lifetime TV dude, you know, old school TV guy. And so John lives in Philadelphia and he helps on the TV show during the you know, the football seasons. Obviously we don't do it now. And John loves to talk about Philadelphia pretzels. He loves talk about pretzel. But the sticky bun also a Philadelphia treat from the German settlers

back in the eighteenth century. Normally you think you have the sticky bun with breakfast, but you know, sometimes the cinnamon rolls, but carmel rolls, monkey bread and all the different names. But the sticky buns originally were known as Schnannecken. I think I'm saying that properly. I think I believe I'm correct on that. They go back to the eighteenth century, but German settlers in the Dutch Pennsylvania area brought them

over and the rest, as they say, is history. So celebrate appropriately a very important day, the sticky Bun Day, which I can go for the walnut ones. You know, last time I ate one was at the airport where was I was in South Carolina, I believe, at a small airport and they had the cinemon. I hated the cinebun place there, which is the only time I eat cinnamon is at the airport. And liked it. Liked it. How do you not like it? I mean, that was great. It was a great way. You get on the plane.

You're good to go. It's outstanding, outstanding. So on this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, on this Friday, we got the dummy run, political theater, foody fun, and the word or words of the week. That's right, all of that coming your way right now, and we begin with the week that was on the Ben mal Show, the original Recipe show. As it has come to an end, the radio program. It was not like pulling teeth there

and all things consider. I got this email from Blind Scott Who's like, well, this is the greatest time of the year because it's all about the callers now there's not much sports going on. And I got all these these people who are like he wasn't the only one. There were several other people who reached out to me. So, oh, this is great because you don't really have a lot to talk about. And this is the part that I kind of like because I've pointed this out before. First

of all, anyone can do sports talk radio. It's not that hard, right, It's not that difficult. Now the question is can you do it well? Can you put the work in and master the craft, And there's not that many people that can do it. I'm still trying to master the craft. But this time of the year I think is more fun because there's a lot of people that get exposed and it's neat because if you don't put the work in, it's like the vampire exposed to garlic,

right or sunlight. You know, under normal circumstances, daylight can be very harmful to vampires. If vampires were real, it would be a big problem. And for sports talk show hosts, this time of the year when things slow down in the NFL is a problem. It's an issue, right, And so you got to kind of work your way through it.

And I laughed because when I first started, I mean, I've been doing it for a while now, but when I first started in the radio business, we got almost all of our sports news from these things called newspapers. And I remember when I worked at the station in San Diego, we had an AP sports wire and a sports ticker and they would update breaking news bulletins and all this stuff, and we had that. That was the way we got our news. Lee Hacksaw Hamilton, it was

my mentor in radio. He would get a bunch of newspapers delivered and he'd scroll through them and cut out different parts, and that's how we got the information. But now there's never a slow that you might not like the inventory, but there's always inventory. You might say, there's not a lot of meat on the bone, but we've got potatoes, and we have really good potatoes. You have country fried potatoes, We've got potato wedges. Those are outstanding.

So maybe you don't like the meat's not really there, but we've got the potatoes. And then we have dessert. We've got some apple pie, and the apple pie is good. Who doesn't like apple pie? So the point listen if you if you want it varies because every day there are self promoting athletes that go on social media and do stuff. For example, this week, I squeezed out parts of Mala monologues on Vladimir Guerrero Junior of the Toronto Blue Jays, and he liked a photoshop of him as

a Yankee. Boom right there. That's part of a Mala monologue. But this is only something that could happen in the modern era. A story like that would not have possibly happened back in the olden days, but in modern times, those kind of things happen all the time. There's or that I didn't mention on the show that I had considered it was under review to be part of a mal monologue, but did not reach the threshold to be

a Mala monologue or in it. And that was the random emoji that was sent out by the Cheetah, the random emoji sent out by Tyreek Hill. And he's having a mid career crisis, or maybe a late career crisis. It certainly seems he's a bit miserable in Miami. So that did not end up as a mologe. So there is stuff that we didn't even get to that would have been pretty good, would have been pretty good now.

The stuff that we normally have during the NFL season, which creates a primal scream, you know, that visceral reaction. Not too much of that. The story though, that we did just last night, Friday, the Friday, overnight, Thursday and a Friday a perfect example of the zeitgeist. And I call it the I call it the hockey cult. I call it the hockey cult. So I get message. There's two or three people that have consistently emailed me over

the years who listen. For some reason. I don't have the foggiest inkling why they listen, because all they do is complain. You know you should when Eddie was working, you should give Eddie more time. Why don't you give any more time? Eddie's the hockey guy. Eddie should talk he knows hockey. And then they'll be like, there's a big story you should have talked about hockey. Why didn't you do a monologue about hockey? So they get all upset, and anytime there's a hockey story that they think should

have been on the show, they get very upset. Their namored. They love hockey, they worship hockey, right, they're the hockey cult, Hockey forever, hockey truthers, whatever. So I usually don't even write back I'm like, okay, whatever, you're complaining yet again. So I decided, since everyone's joned up about the four Nations tournament that took place over the last ten days or so, I was like, all right, you know what

I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna dust off the cobwebs and I'm gonna settle in here and do a little hot hockey. And I watched the game. And it's not like I don't watch hockey. I do. But we point out and this really annoys the hockey cult. Boy do they get upset. They do not like what I'm about to say. And this, this really is a tinderbox comment. What I'm about to say. I point out that we do broadcasting, not narrow casting, and that right there is a powder keg and it's a When I bring that up,

it's an explosive combination. People get very upset and they start blubbering and bursting into tears, and you get all emotional. I love my hockey. I can't believe it. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, So I just want to tell you behind the scenes, right behind the microphone, what goes on. But behind the scenes, and so I watched the hockey game, and it was a competitive game where I went to overtime. Connor McDavid scored the overtime game winner for the Canadians

and they win the game. And so that was a buzzkill for those of us here in America. And so I did my monologue in about fifteen sixteen minutes on hockey, and of course what happened the hockey cult the same people that send me messages saying I should have talked about this, that and the other thing. These people are in a total meltdown. My theory is it wasn't because

of anything that I did. They were upset because they really believed that Team USA was going to win and that was a reality check for them, and they had anger because they expected the American team to win. And so rather than just eat Humble Pie, they said, you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna weaponize and attack the idiot on the radio, and they did.

For the next sixty seconds, the Ben Maler Show will conducted test of the emergency hockey broadcast system. This is only a test. And then that's it. And so like people want to throw me into the the penalty box and admonish me, and I thought, I was fine, this is not It was a hockey monologue. I talked about the game. I mentioned some of the storylines around the game, which to me were pretty interesting. I don't believe that's a game misconduct penalty or anything like that. Is it's fine,

and we move on. So I will talk hockey if something happens that I feel rises up to the level of a malad monologue about hockey. The bar is very high because it's again, it's broadcasting, not narrow casting. That's the thing that triggers triggers many who are in the hockey cult. And I don't even know how you end up in the hockey cult. I would imagine it starts

in childhood, and it's really non negotiable. You're inflexible when you're part of the hockey cult and you love the hockey dogma, and you evangelize about hockey and you try to convert people. But yet when they talk about hockey and they come over to your beliefs, you're annoyed by them. That troubles you even know your life's mission is to get people who aren't hardcore hockey people to follow your teachings.

And when that happens and you've converted someone at least for a night, and you've done that, it's still not good enough. It's still still not good enough. But I digress now. That dummy run I thought went pretty well. The people that are the hockey cult people didn't like it. I did have the most calls I've ever had. I've been doing this show for a long time, and maybe you've been listening for a long time. I don't know how long you've been with me on the show, but

we're kind of a weird family here. Some people have been with me a long time, a short time. It doesn't matter. We're in this together, right work in the third shift. So I bring this up because we had more calls from Canada in that first hour, really first couple hours of the show than I have ever had in many I mean, I've noticed again many years, I've never had that many cous and Fox Sports Radio is

a absolute blow torch. It is a supersonic missile in terms of clearance, and we're very lucky to have that bully pulpit, if you will, and we're cleared everywhere late at night. So we're on like six hundred radio stations or something on that number, and we're on all over Canada obviously from coast to coast. In America, we're on the American Forces Network, and so it's available for those at ships at sea and whatnot, and you can hear the show.

So that's that's pretty cool. I think that's that's pretty neat that people can hear it all over the world. And we have a lot of military people that call the show, usually are military contractors that live on bases or around bases. I'm not sure how all that works.

I'm not a military person, but based on what I've gotten feedback wise over the years, a number of the people maybe their former military and they bring their family to Germany or somewhere in Asia, in Korea or whatever, and so they listened to the different radio shows from back home. Now, the calls we took in Canada, there was a common theme from the calls that we took in Canada. I don't know if you noticed the common

theme or not. It was hard not to notice pretty much every single person from Canada that called up, and very nice people, very very nice people from Canada, but they all were ready to hit the panic button because of President Trump talking about making Canada the fifty first date. Now. I heard what he said, and I chuckled, because a lot of what President Trump does is to just try to get headlines and kind of goof around with people.

And you know, we minded people freak out over everything, right, they just freak out, and mostly media dopes. They just lose their mind over everything he does because they're convinced everything is legit and all that stuff. And so the fifty first state thing, I couldn't believe how many people from from Canada were like, that's what they brought up. They're like, oh man, just like thegit and I thought it was a joke. I don't foreshadow in the next

four years, Canada becoming part of America. Not that stranger things haven't happened. I get that, it's it was amusing to me. I found it amusing and somewhat troubling that that volume of people are like, hey, I kind of think this is gonna happen. And then you had that true dog character, that that dope, and he was prodding the story, trying to get some headlines even though he's out right he's resigned. I thought, when you resign, you gotta leave radio. When you said I'm leaving, you don't

really get that final couple of the shows. That's it. You're pretty much done at that point. But it was great to hear I fro McCall's we're on all over Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, where else are we on there? We've been on and off in a lot of these places. Ottawa, we are on in Toronto, all over Ontario, Montreal, so we've got some good clearance on Fox Sports Radio all over Canada. And all it took was me to do a mala monologue about hockey, and they were raising up the Canadian flag,

loving it and in honor of Canada. This is not a This is not a list for Terry and England. This is a big board. It's Big Ben's Big board of amazing factoids from Canada. Is it true that the Vikings visited Canada several hundred years ahead of Christopher Columbus? That is true. Legend has it the Vikings arrived in Canada in one thy twenty one. How about that? Yeah, there you go. They settled on the northern side of Newfoundland and just passed Greenland and they said, we've arrived here,

we are now. The first explorer to reach Canada was in fourteen ninety seven some Italian dude. He was born in Italy and he traveled to England and secured the ships there and ended up traveling around. He was trying to find a shorter route or route to Asia, and he landed in Newfoundland and that's where he was. The coldest recorded temperature in Canada in snag Yukon it is sixty three selfies celsius. So what does that mean in

American terminology? Meaning fahrenheit? So that's just some malord math here, I mean type this in here Malard math. You're listening Live to the Fifth Hour Live on tape to the fifth hour. So let's see if it's if it's sixty three minus sixty three, selfies, I'm using this is big time broadcasting. Metric conversion is what I'm doing. This is big all right. So if it's minus sixty three, that would be minus eighty one fahrenheit. Wow, minus eighty one

point four fahrenheit. And that's the coldest temperature. And is that not worthy Terry in England of being on Big Ben's Big Board of Canadian fun Facts. I believe it is, I believe, and this is in honor of our many Canadian listeners as we are blatantly sucking up to our friends in Canada. Now, Canada has two national sports. We all know hockey because that's the big one, that's the bigin But in the summer, lacrosse is the official sport, although it hasn't been the sport for that long in

my lifetime. When I was a kid, they didn't have a summer sport. But the Parliament in Canada made it the official summer sport in nineteen ninety four. In nineteen ninety four, what else? Canada has the fourth longest highway in the world. We're number four the Trans Canada Highway, which is four eight hundred and sixty miles. It takes about one hundred and six hours of non stop driving, and so you can enjoy that. Canada has the record for the most lakes in the world, eight hundred and

seventy nine thousand lakes. Many of them are undiscovered and unresearched because a lot of Canada is changing because of the Glacier melts, and most of Canada is non human friendly, non human friendly. Quebec is the most, well, not the most. It's the only walled city left in North America and it's been around now for four hundred almost four hundred and twenty years. And Charles Dickens, the Great Charles Dixon Dickens, rather Charles Dickens, called it the Gibraltar of North America.

So there you go. There's a fun fact. And Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada by a Greek dude. Yeah, the great Hawaiian not from Hawaii, from Canada. Oh, come my home and native but to me. We mentioned this in a previous episode. The most important contribution our friends in Canada have given us poutine. Poutine which was invented in the nineteen fifties in Quebec. Now, if things go well later this year, I plan on visiting Montreal, and if I'm in Montreal, I am going to try to

find the birthplace of the poutine. And it started in the nineteen fifties. It was not until the nineties that the rest of Canada got on the gravy train, literally the cheese curd potato gravy train. So it took about forty years for that to become a big old deal, a big old deal. Moving on from that, we turned the page and it is now time for a staple, an absolute staple of this show. And what is that? That would be the word of the week, the word of the work. That's right, the word of the week,

and the word of the week. This week, fraz was sent in, let me get the name here, la la l. That would be Eric. Eric is a p one, he says. He listens most of the time to the podcast, but usually once a month he's up late. And Eric lives in Atlanta, or he says outside Atlanta. Well, Eric, thank you for listening. God bless you great airport there in Atlanta. I know Sports with Coleman gets annoyed when I say

great airport. I've had good experiences there. I've not been there when the weather's bad, but I've had always good experiences when I've been to the Atlanta Airport. So thank you for having a good airport, Eric, And he said, Hitchcockian. He want to know more about the word HITCHCOCKI, in which I think is raph. They're obvious, Eric, it's a word that is taken from the last name of Alfred Hitchcock, the famous you know in Hollywood back in his day in the nineteen I said, go back to like the

nineteen thirties. Really the early domination of Hollywood. Alfred Hitchcock was a big deal, a really big deal, and such a big deal that his last name, a legendary Hollywood director from the nineteen thirties, almost one hundred years ago, ended up in the Oxford Dictionary. And it's, you know, a thriller, suspense story, it's Hitchcockian or a Hitchcocky in drama, I believe, is what I usually say, Eric when I when I reference it. And it's just really anything described

as Hitchcockian is of that genre. And it started popping up. The term actually goes back to the nineteen thirty I guess so, Hitchcock, I must have been doing stuff in the nineteen twenties. It was just around the release of his third movie, a silent thriller called The Lodger, the Story of the London Fog, and it started popping up and it ended up as a word in the dictionary.

And while I was researching that Eric who lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, I noticed the phrase Orwellian, which is also named after It's somebody's name that became a thing. So I think we've had this in the past, but I just saw this and I wanted to bring it up again because it's come up a lot, certainly in the last five years. During the pandemic, there was a lot of stuff going on and people said was Orwellian. The government overreached, the police state that was going on

in America and still going on, was Orwellian. And so that phrase is a tribute to George Orwell's name because it's synonymous with the dystopian authoritarian society that he would write about in nineteen eighty nine. And Orwellian has been around since around the nineteen fifties and there was a writer, Norman Mahler, not Ma Mahler, who used the term in a book in nineteen fifty nine, and it's been used off and on ever since. I will tell you that

it's certainly been used more in recent years. But thank you Eric for downloading the podcast, and for now you are a show contributor, so you can brag your wife, who you say hates the show, and you can say, hey, not only do you hate the show, but now you can double hate the show because I'm now a contributor to the Fifth Hour podcast and my name is Eric, and I don't know your last name, Eric, i'd say it, I don't know it, but thank you. Meanwhile, we have

I have foody Fun. Allay for food e fun, Allay for food e fun. Yes, we love to eat. I used to love to eat. Now I don't eat very much. These are some food stories headlines got to help you boys out. And there's one that immediately jumps off the pitch. Now, this restaurant is not located everywhere. I realize that they're not widespread because it's more of a Western chain. But Jack in the Box, What's in the box? Jack in

the box? Jack in the Box celebrating their seventy fourth anniversary, and what better way, what better way to celebrate that than with a seventy four cent jumbo jack deal. It is available this weekend, so if you live near a Jack in the Box, it's only available on the app and online through the end of the weekend. Today's the twenty first. It goes through Sunday, and so if you want to get that seventy four cent jumble jack. Again, the issue, this has been a long standing issue, is

you want any of this stuff. Every restaurant wants to track you in in order to get a seventy four cent burger, you have to allow them to track you and have the app. So it's a quid pro quo. As they like to say, it's my Latin. Sounds like I'm very knowledgeable and I use Latin now can Tucky Fried Chicken, better known by their gangster name KFC. They recently introduced a new Korean barbecue loaded Fries bowl which looks absolutely amazing Korean barbecue, mac and cheese and it's awesome,

just covering the fries. Available for a limited time exclusively through the app and online like everything else, And if you want to pig out and be a hawser piggy, Piggy piggy. Golden Coral is where you need to go, and they have the all you can eat steak and butterfly shrimp deal which is back. It's available only on weekdays, of course, because on the weekends forget about it. But on weekdays after four pm it'll go all the way

till April sixth. So you got the last week here of February, you got all the month of March in a little bit in April, and they claim overwhelming demand. I don't know about that, but Golden Crowd welcoming back. The all you can eat steak and butterfly shrimp thing now is part of the offer. You get unlimited portions. They claim a perfectly seasoned and grilled sirline paired with endless servings of jumbo butterfly shrimp and fry doing golden crisp.

Well fine, I don't need the shrimp, but the steak sounds good. And it looks like they have a mashed potatoes thing taco bell again, that was a Golden Craw Taco bell. They've got the new Milk Bar Birthday Cake Truro which looks like it'll give you diabetes, but man, it looks good. Jack in the Box also has a box fries New Banana French Toasticks in the Box fries banana like it's banana French toast, but it's in like a fry box or something like that. So there you go.

Some of the food stories there some other stuff, but that's those are the main ones. Those are the main ones. Danny g should be with me on Saturday. I will see if he can make it or not. I don't know. Work out the schedule and we'll get the mail bag on Sundays Sunday Sunday. Thank you for supporting the podcast and being part of the madness of it all. Have a wonderful rest of your Friday, and don't forget we're here for you. On Saturday and Sunday, we'll have original podcast.

I will wave the magic wand and we'll have amazing fun unless we don't, but we'll get to all of that as we get through the weekend, and we'll get you next time later. Skater asta pasta? Is that all Danny did I miss? I don't think I'm right. I think that's all of them. Yeah, now, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna go lay down and take a nap. I'll be back tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Gotta murder, Gotta go,