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 sol fastion 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 eywhere the weekend has arrived, the final, the final weekend of the month of February, and we are back hanging out myself, Ben and Danny g right over there as we celebrate on this Friday. What a day it is. It's National Hospitality Workers Appreciation Day, who always a big holiday in my house. I don't know about you, Danny, but for me, it's it's almost I'm overwhelmed with emotion because not only is it that, but it's National Banana Bread Day. And that's that's a big one as well.
That's that's a big one as well. When's the last time you had banana bread?
My grandma used to make it by the panful.
Oh did she? Yeah? The banana bread. I recall my wife we get bananas sometimes and then as soon as they turn like black, that's banana bread. Racist. When they go bad, you make the banana bread because you can still make banana bread with it. But yeah, I haven't had banana bread in a while, but they I'll tell you what. Though, freshly made banana bread, all baked goods taste, you know, smell pretty good. But banana bread, oh yeah, A loaf of banana bread coming out of that oven.
Oh man, it's like old people's food.
Though, yeah, are we old? I don't know, help, but on this pot, we've got the Roger Rabbit of baseball, hippity hop and uh yeah, you know, word of the week. We'll see what else we have time for. But I did want to start with this, so I had this sent to me the other day and I was like, I guess trying to I was abating whether or not to do it on the radio show, but I wanted to mention it here because we had brought this up.
I forget where there's a lot of microphones. But the Doyers, the Dodgers have been talk for a number of years about building this massive gondola like in the Alps that would take people from down the hill. If you're not, you know, most people listen to this podcasts aren't in LA. But there's a Dodger Stames on a hill overlooking downtown LA, and then below it is that is this neighborhood called Chinatown, and then next to that is Union Station, which is
the train depot in LA. And so the plan, and I'd heard about this a couple of years ago, and there was actually a gondola at Dodgers Stadium out in the outfit you could see what it would look like. And it's a five one hundred million dollar plan to build one point two miles of gondola between Union Station in LA and Dodger Stadium. And so I didn't think much of it. I thought it looked kind of cool. Like I said that, I like, that's kind of neat, that's different.
Why not. I'd be fun to be in a gondola unless there's an earthquake. But what the hell? So I got sent this the other day and apparently the gondola plan. I don't know if you heard of this, I heard about this or not, Danny, but it's like the Roger Rabbit of baseball. Now we're old, we know Roger REVV. The plot of Roger Rabbit. If you remember who framed Roger Rabbit? Classic film? Classic film, Who framed Roger Rabbit? The plot was actually about replacing public transportation with a freeway.
But this is kind of the reverse because the person you want to take a guess who's behind this plan? And when I saw this name, I immediately turned my position the other direction.
No, don't tell me.
It is the guy who made all the money off the Dodgers parking lot.
Ding Ding, Ding, ding ding. Yes, this is the brainchild of Frank McCourt. Frank McCourt who owned the Dodgers and ran them into the ground from twenty oh four to twenty twelve.
Eighth, he owed them all right, Yeah.
The big Dodger star then was he stopped Choy. No disrespect to he stopped Choy, but he sopped Choy. Was the big star of the Dodgers from twenty oh four to twenty twelve. It was a disaster, a debacle, But then the Dodger fans boycotted. It was one of the few times that sports fans have successfully forced an owner to sell the team. Major League Baseball stepped in the used car salesman Bud Selik and the owners of baseball realizing, wait a minute, this is one of our great cash cows,
the Dodgers. They have a license to print money, and people are not going. The attendances down, the TV ratings are down. Dodger fans were airing their grievances all over the place, and in those days, social media was not that big, so they were doing it like radio shows and letters to the editor and the newspaper and all that. So it was a big deal. And then Frank McCourt,
of course he didn't have any real money. He had parking lots he had I think inherited from his family in Boston and then flipped those to get the the Dodgers, as I understand it, and so Frank McCourt made a deal. He sold the team because Bud see looks like, all right, you got to sell the team. They were like, you got to get out of here. And he heavily leveraged the team and he left it like they were kind of like he was facing bankruptcy. It was a big mess.
But to get rid of him as the owner, they gave him. He co owns the parking lots at Dodger Stadium. And so the whole point of this Danny is it's not Hey, we want public transportation to give Dodger fans a chance to be like they're in the French Alps, to go to a Dodger game to see Otani. No, he wants to build a luxury hotel, shopping center complex on the parking lots at Docta State, and they're going
to take out the parking lots at Dodger Stadium. And that's why I said, it's kind of like Roger Rabbit, right, because Roger Rabbit is like public transportation. People could use it, and then they put the freeways in. But it was for the oil companies, right, because they can make money on the oil. But here it's the robber baron Frank McCort. He can make money not only from the gondola, because you're gonna it's not gonna be free. You gotta pay for it. But then in addition to that, he's gonna
build a massive hotel. And you know these new outdoor what not new they've been around for twenty five years, these outdoor shopping complexes which are all all the rage.
So I mean there's a special place in parking lot hell. For Frank McCort, Bell is a real place. It would be awesome for him to just wander around a big, abandoned parking lot trying to find his way out forever.
Yeah, and I knew him a little bit when he owned. My favorite Frank McCourt story was when it was really getting bad. I mean it was really bad that you could tell the end was near where we were getting towards a point of demarcation, that Frank was in some serious trouble, and the fans that were booing, and it
was just nasty. And so I was at a game it was like on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, if I remember, and Frank McCourt, the owner of the team, walked through the pavilion in right field at Dodger Stadium like a politician trying to shake hands and kiss, you know, kiss babies and all that to gain public support. And then the next night Frank decided, you know, I need the media on my side, so he brought a group of US dopey media guys into his office at Dodgerston
the owner's office at Dodger Stateum. I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld, you know, going to the Steinbrenner's office. It was wild. It was just like you would imagine the owner's office. It's it was the corner down the left field line, massive high ceilings, window view of Dodger Stadium. I mean, it was really cool.
I mean that was the highlight for me. It was just being in there because I was like, won, I wonder like O'Malley was in here and all the other you know, the Fox people and all that, and that's probably where Mark Walter and the current owners are. Obviously that's the owner's office. But I remember in there and Frank's like, he's like, listen, I'm not a bad guy. I want to do well and all this stuff. And then within like a couple of months he was forced
to sell the team. But what a deal for him, though, I'd almost rather own the parking lots than the team. The only problem with that, though, is that you only make the revenue at Dodger Stadium for eighty one nights a year, plus some exhibition games and some some playoff games, and which lately hadn't been that many because the Dodgers have not been going that deep in the playoffs. But when I heard that, man, I was like, it seemed like it seemed like a good gondola, was like, it
was cool. But then it's like, of all the places, like of all the places to get rid of parking, Southern California, Los Angeles, where everyone is in their car all the time, it's like the only way to get around is in your car, and they're going to take away the parking lots to build a freaking hotel and to build a cheesecake factory. Like, what are we doing?
Yeah? This also makes me think about Disneyland.
I saw the other day that there's big plans Disney is starting to gobble up some of the properties around Disneyland. Oh, they're going to bulldoze and expand the park.
Is that right? Wow?
That way they can jack up the ticket prices even higher.
How much higher can they go? Though?
I don't know what.
I remember when they bought the land for California Adventure. Well, actually not necessarily California Adventure. It was land to put the parking lots build California Adventure. But the area around Anaheim and I used to go there all the time. There were like crack hotels and stuff right across Disneyland. In fact, the late Tony Phillips baseball player for the Angels, he got busted doing crack at a hotel down the street from from Disneyland.
Yeah, it was crack on Kotella.
And of course Disney bought that hotel and all the other hotels and gave you destroyed them.
And in case you don't know, Kotella the main drag there the name of the street.
Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to get on a rant when I saw Frank McCort's name. That's probably not appropriate for this podcast because we don't normally don't even talk about it. I don't either that's sports or not.
It's just that was a crazy story.
When he owned the Dodgers, I remember the fans booing and how bad the team was, and how all he cared about was making money hand over fist and the prices kept getting jacked up in the parking lot. I don't know if you remember this, but as soon as he was pushed out, the new group brought in Magic Johnson as a pr thing really for to be like the friendly face of the new ownership, and the first thing they did was lower the car parking at the stadium.
Yeah, yeah, well I think the prices have gone up.
But yeah, well since then, they've incredmentally jacked it back up. But to kind of, you know, get the Dodger fans hyped. They're like, not only are we going to sign some real ballplayers, but we'll put the parking back down to twenty bucks because McCort had jacked that up to like sixty dollars to park there.
Yeah, it was. It was ridiculous. I mean, he's you know, and he's he's for kind of an unsavory dude. He's found ways to make a good amount of a good amount of doubt. But when I saw his name, I'm like, I'm out, Like I wouldn't mind a gone ola. But then they were talking about complaining about it, like you know that there's a big park, Danny, near Dodger Stadium down the hill. I used to live right now. I lived in Lincoln Heights, which is the next you next
town over from Dodger Stadium. And they built this massive park, which is a state park. It's beautiful.
Yeah, Mexican family is barbecuing there before all the Dodger games.
Yeah, why not. That's a great park. Racist, but they actually in order to build this gondola, they're going to have to put a massive gondola station right in the middle of this great outdoor space, totally screwing over the people that live there that actually don't care about the Dodgers and just want to use the public space.
So what are they going to do with the police academy that's right there?
I know, right, it's pretty well. I guess the police can go over to the cheesecake factory, they can go over to the Dave and Busters and knock themselves out or whatever is going to be at the shopping center. There got a murder, the hip an the hop. Now I did something a little different last weekend, Danny, I, uh, me and the wife are you trying to? You know, work a lot during the week with the TV. I did do the TV show, but that's over with till
next football season. But we had the radio show. I'd spent a lot of time on that obviously this podcast, so I don't have a lot of time to myself, and so on the weekends we try to go out and do some different things. And so we saw there was this hip hop pop up museum in Hollywood. They had a big run in New York and traveling to different cities, and so you know, I'm obviously not a music guy. I'm not even a real big hip hop guy. But I thought, you know, that's kind of cool. Why not.
I appreciate art And there's some actually the early days, when I was younger, I did like some of the og hip hop guys, like I couldn't.
I know, was it Mayor Curtis blow Guy?
No, No, no Fat Boys, No. But you know some of the early it's like, you know, Snoop Doging, some of those guys. When I was in school back in the day, we listened to that stuff. So I was like, all right, we'll go down there check it out, see what it's about. It. It's some one of these interactive. Immersive is the big word. They're immersive things. And so we went down there to Hollywood, and I really thought,
you should go, Danny. It's only opened for another couple of weeks here, but you and the wife take the take the kid. You would love it because I remember every Halloween, Danny for years, you would wear a certain mask.
I'd still do it, all right.
Well, your guy was well represented Tupac at the hip Hop Museum, and I saw that. I should have sent you a photo. I did see. There was a bunch of stuff like, oh, there was photos and memorabilia.
This pop up looks cool. I saw the pictures that you posted on social media.
Yeah, and I only put a few of them up there. But they had the artifacts and stuff and it was pretty wild because they you know, it goes through the history of hip hop, fifty years of hip hop. And this again, people love round numbers. Humans love round numbers. So we don't celebrate the forty ninth, won't celebrate the fifty first, but fifty that's a big deal, right, So
fifty years of hip hop. So they have this really cool video thing where you go into this large room and you stand in the videos on the walls all around you. That's part of the immersive stuff.
I said, was that all the old school TVs that were stacked on top of each other.
Yeah, that was one of the exhibits. They had a bunch of the old school TVs. They had a payphone thing. I took a photo with that was from you some hip hop. I forget exactly where it's from, but it goes tough like the roots of hip hop and they have the all the big names and you know, signs and whatnot. And it was for a guy that's not really into hip hop and all that. I enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty cool. And again I can
appreciate art and whatnot. And they had you know all you know, grand Master Flash and you go, you know Snoop dog jay Z, all those Nicki Minaj, all these different random people come on, Pippin, get your tims on. It was cool. And then I'm getting crap from people online, Dan, like, what are you doing there? You shouldn't be going to the well, I'm not supposed to go to hip hop. I'm not allowed to go to the hip hop Museum And what's up with that? What a bunch of schmucks? How dare you?
I mean, it became mainstream decades and decades ago, and you know, in the seventies and the eighties, especially the first half of the eighties, there were so many parents that were like, that's a fad that's going to be gone in a few years, and so it was a huge point of history to hit the fifty year mark. Now you have hip hop bands like Run DMC that have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. I saw in the gift shop they had little action figures of like Therreous Big and Old Dirty Bastard and what it was. Really it was quite amusing to me to see the little action figures.
And it's funny to hear you say old dirty Bastard.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you should. You should try to go there. I got a couple of weeks ago.
I have my money.
It was.
It was pretty pretty neat, So I enjoyed that. I try to do some different things from time to time. Now I wanted to mention I looked this up because I fell down a rabbit hole we had mentioned on the Overnight show. This week, I did a little rift. For some reason, infomercials popped up in conversation, and I
love infomercials. So I started doing my infomercial rant, and I started giving fun facts about infomercials and all that wonderful stuff, you know, set it and forget it, but wait, there's more and all that, and so I'm doing that, and then I went on and I was going back, and I was looking through some of the stuff that I had saved in the past that I had read and about the pitchmen and the snake oil salesman, the medical and the original the original original infomercials were the
snake oil Salesman. The actually the very first, if you know, way back, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine company that would tour the country. They'd go to boardwalks and street fairs and county fairs, and these were total charlatans. They would sell
you cures for just about anything. And they had these very exotic shows where they would strangle rattlesnakes on stage and say this is the elixir, you just drink this, and the crowd would go wild, right, And that's that is actually where the term snake oil salesman come comes from. From the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. That's where that term originated.
But that is not the first televised infomercial because there was no TV when they were going around doing that, they were just oohing and awe and getting oohs and aws from the random people that were out there. So I went and I looked down, I looked on the internet. I did a quick dive down a rabbit hole and I found The first infomercial is believed to be for the Vita Mixed Blender. It first aired in nineteen forty nine,
so infomercials have been on the air for over seventy years. Actually, I they do the math on that this will be seventy five years of infomercials, right, we're in twenty twenty four. While it's pretty wild. It aired on a local TV station in Ohio. It was a thirty minute program and it showed the amazing features and benefits of the Vita mixed Blender. I was educating the viewers and forming them
how the product worked and what he could do. And then in the nineteen fifties, shortly after that, it was a year later the concept took off and you had Chevrolet got involved in infomercials and watch companies and other things. And then over the years it's gotten crazy and crazy. Although I have been told that not as many infomercials for television now they've moved to social media. But who the hell is clicking on an infomercial on Instagram? You
know what I'm saying, Like our TikTok, I don't. I don't know how that's actually working. But they're trying to get into that space with the Yeah infomercials, they're too long.
I've seen pop ups and it'll be like a supplement and I'm like, oh, that looks interesting, But then it keeps going and going, And even when you try to click ahead to see how much it costs, they want you to sit through the video to see how it was invented.
And they have doctors and scientists speaking. I don't give a shit about that. How much is yeah?
Well, and the way they do it is it's a simple formula, Like the sauce is kind of simple. It's only a few ingredients. You. It's the oldest trick you can use.
Right.
You create a problem, then sell the solution. That's all you gotta do, Right, that's it, that's all you have to do. Fashion and body industry, right, possible deal. A makeup makes you look better, jewelry makes you more attractive, Clothes, dieting, exercise, all the vices there, all the vices. No, you're right.
It's kind of like the hit TV show Shark Tank. People come out to do their pitch about their product. They always start with sharks. Have you ever had the problem where this happens? Yeah, and then they have the solution for it.
Yeah, that's the way it works, right. You've got to have a problem and you have all the answers. It's like that was what Billy Mays did. Hi, Billy Mays, here, are you having problem shitting? Do you wish that your shit would be smoother? Well? Good news. The fastest, easiest way shit better is with my product, guaranteed order right now, shit begone or whatever. Yeah, so back back in the in the in the days. The word of the week. Are you ready for the word of the week?
The word of the week?
A word of the week. The word of the week this week is a word I use quite a bit bughayzy for gayzey. Now there's a couple of different interpretations of.
The or some of your favorite words.
It is one of my favorite words. I've said it for a number of years. It's a fun word. Any words with Z are fun. There's not a lot of words that have Z in them, So Z words are fun and the highlight for it's a it's a fun word. So uh. This is what is believed to be the origin of the word fugazy. It's actually American military slang, just kind of cool, right, kind of cool American military slang.
And it actually goes back to the to the Vietnam You So, I know we have some listeners that fought in Vietnam that were around in those days, some veterans. I've gotten emails from some of the fellows over the years that did their service to the country and we obviously we appreciate that, and they're fans of the show, and so maybe some of these guys can relate to this. But it is an acronym for GAYZY that stands for fucked up, got ambushed, zipped in. Is the what? Yeah, isn't that crazy?
It's nuts. I had no idea that each letter stood for something.
Yeah, it's from the Vietnam War. It's an acronym. It stands for it fucked up, got ambushed, zipped in. And the original meaning obviously, you know, situation was complete chaos. It was a disaster, messed up beyond belief. And then over the years, as time has gone by, the term has been broadened and no longer just for the military, and it's just part of some people's vernacular like me, like it's the word I use because I didn't quite
realize that it meant exactly that. I knew it meant you're kind of messed up, But I didn't know it was the Vietnam angle to it. I had no no concept of that, did not did not know that at all. The Foodie Fund, we don't have too much time, so I don't want to get too much into the foody Fund. But I did see a couple of things that caught my attention in the world of food, and one of them, do you know what a chizza is? Do you know what a cheezza is?
Anytime you eat a pizza during your diet?
Hey, there you go. How's the diet going?
By the way, me and the better half, we've been doing really good on the diet.
Have you crossed the three month mark yet?
Yeah?
Definitely, probably into month four or the beginning of month five right now?
All right, Well that's cool, yeah, Because it takes to change habits. It takes six sixty to ninety day. You know, old old habits die hard. Old habits die hard, so it takes a couple of months to form new habits. Although and if you can stay with it, is it easier now or is it still paying the ass? When you see cookies and all that.
It's not. Yeah, it's not as hard as it was in the very beginning.
Although I told my wife yesterday I was like, man, for some reason, I've been really craving a milkshake, that good stuff, like whenever I feel like having sugar. For some reason, all I can think about is like an Oreo milkshake.
There's a jack in the box right down the street. Right.
Yeah, I'm not going to do it though, I'm not going to give in to temptation.
My milkshake brings all the boys to the.
Art brings milk or milkshake, Yeah, cook shake.
So KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken, they go by their gangster name KFC, and they announced this week they're introducing an international smash head called the Chizza and it's going to be starting in a few days here. I think Monday. I believe Monday is when it starts. Now they say KFC that chizza is not pizza. It's got white and meat, extra crispy fried chicken filets top with zesty marinera sauce,
melti mozzarella, cheese, and crispy pepperoni. And this is an item that was in the Philippines almost ten years ago, starting the Philippines, and then they spread it KFC. It's been served in Korea, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Germany, Spain, and Mexico and now it's coming to the shores of the USA. The chizza. Couldn't you just make that at home?
Though, I know you're going to oh yeah, I might.
Make a ripoff, ripoff or now McDonald's. This is good for you, Danny. The McDonald's is desperately well. The owners, the franchisees of McDonald they're trying to bring back the snack Rap. One of the food websites was reporting this week that a group of independent McDonald's operators has been trying to convince the company to bring back the snack rap to the menu. It's been gone for a while. Fans, you know, people on the internet, have wanted it back.
They claim that it would actually be good for business, the snack rap. That's of course, that's why they wanted back. But McDonald's, the corporate side of McDonald's, has said they don't want to do it, but it's it'd be something you could actually eat at McDonald's. One of the few healthy things I thought they got rid of most healthy things to people didn't buy them.
They got rid of every healthy thing, and I thought it was because they were being lazy, That's what it felt like.
No, I was told by us, you know still, by somebody that the the reason that was is because they tried to streamline what was actually being sold and what people weren't buying. Like they did a lot of those healthy adams to get Congress off their back because there was that period where they were attacking the fast food industry. It's on healthy people are dying because of your food.
But that's weird, though, Ben, because so many of my coworkers at radio stations would live on the McDonald's grilled chicken salads with the ranch dressing your favorite, and you could get the bag of apples, the slice the pre sliced apples instead of French fries. So at least around me, I saw a lot of people eating that stuff.
No, all right, Well, I mean I had heard it didn't really sell that well, and so they were like, hey, we can make more money, and it's maybe I.
Was hanging out with the wrong people. Yeah.
Absolutely, they're hanging out with the five people that were eating the food there. Yeah, so I love that McDonald's will not add onion rings because it would take away from their French fries sale. I love that we had that on the podcast a while a while back. You ever been to Philadelphia? They have ever done time in Philly.
Never been to Philly.
Okay, So if you ever go to Philly, I've been there before. There's this their local convenience stores, wah Wahs. They love it. It's like a cult following in Philly. Wahwas.
Yeah, I've heard you mentioned that place before. Yeah.
Yeah, So wah Wahs is planning on expanding over the next decade. The family plans to open two hundred and eighty more wah Wahs. They're spreading out of Philly. They're going now the Hogy Haven, which is Wahwas in Philly, and they're going on it's all over Pennsylvania now, but they're going to be spreading all over the eastern in the south eastern part of the United States, mostly the south actually, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Midwest Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio,
and Tennessee. So we'll see if those people below the Mason Dixon line enjoy getting a HOGI from from wah wahs. And do you ever go to Universal Studios, Danny in La Universal Studios in Hollywood? Do you ever go there at all? Or no?
Yeah? Our family when last summer.
Okay, well you should the whole thing with Universal if you buy like a pass for the whole year, it's like two days admission or something like that. So they just give passes away. But I just heard they have a secret menu at Universal Studios Hollywood and City Walk by the way. I did not. I had no idea. Had a bunch of weird, weird items. Mel's Diner. They
have Jurassic Park Cafe, a bunch of these things. They have different items strawberry, a shortcake at one They've got a cotton candy lemonade thing and another just.
Kind of like in and out secret menu, Like you got to be part of the club, the secret society to know what to order.
Yeah, there's a Voodoo Donut secret Is there a Voo Donuts up there?
There is?
Yeah, that's the place out of Portland, right. Yes. I haven't been a city walk in a while. Man, I should have gone. We did the TV show at a Universal Studios. I could have walked. I could have walked up the hill to Universal Studios and done. That was an eating though when I was doing the show. That's the problem, like trying to fess all right, we'll get out on that anything you want to promote. It's Friday.
We did the overnight show, So after this podcast, we're done for the day for me, and then back on Saturday and Sunday with new pots. Yeah.
What a week man.
It started out for me with a Dan Patrick show, and then I moved in to fill in for Gottlieb and CNR who stayed on the Dan Patrick Show. And then yesterday we filled in for Colin Cowherd, and finally today Friday, we're going to be back in our regular five to seven pm in New York City time slot for Covino and Rich Cool.
All right, and then and then the weekend and then the weekend.
I can't wait, dude, this has felt like two weeks in one.
Got you all right, Hey, I have a wonderful rest of your Friday here, and we'll have another fresh pot. We'll get to that.
I can't wait for the Saturday podcast.
That's right, talk to you that later.
Skater gotta murder.
I gotta go