Kabooms.
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 sole fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter 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 everyway, The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g Radio on assignment. He'll be back later this weekend. It is the twenty seventh day of December. National Fruitcake Day today, so celebrate appropriately. Shouldn't that have been before the Christmas holiday? Yeah, it's National Fruitcake Day. I've never met anyone my entire life that likes fruitcake. I don't know any one that enjoys it. But yet it goes back to like five hundred BC. It's very bizarre.
But anyway, on this edition of The Fifth Hour, we've got the home stretch, the PSA, the laughing gas, and we'll also toss in the Idiom of.
The week, the Idiom of the Week.
But we begin with a reminder, despite this being that dead zone between the Christmas holiday and New Year's Honik is still going on. Happy Honkah, So if you celebrate, if not, just have a good day. So with all that happen, With all that happening, we are in the home stretch of the NFL season. It started back on Christmas with the Netflix situation on Christmas Day, a game last night in Chicago, and it continues tomorrow, NFL on Saturday,
also NFL on Sunday. But we're in the middle of week seventeen of the NFL season, which means that starting last night and then airing later today is a brand new episode of the Mellow drama that is Benny Versus the Penny, Benny Versus the Penny. We'll have the pregame show in Boston. That is the flagship of Benny Versus the Penn. It's syndicated all over the country, but it's produced out of NBC Sports Boston, so it'll be on prior to the Celtics Pacers game Tonight.
We'll go live on tape, Live on tape.
On NBC Sports Boston at six pm and then encore showings after the Celtics postgame show, we'll be on at eleven thirty pm and then for my night Owls twelve thirty am, a little late night after Celtics basketball, and airing all weekend all weekend on various NBC sports affiliates around the country. Will be on in La on the Lakers cable home starting tomorrow, and later on today there should be, assuming I hit the rate button here, another
one of those behind the scenes videos. I gotta tell you, we have had so much fun meandering around the back lot at Universal Studios.
It's awesome. And this week, since it's.
The Christmas holiday and all that, not too much going on, so we pretty much have full range. Sometimes we're not allowed to go to parts of the back lot because they're actually working making movies and TV shows and things like that. And so this week pretty light, pretty light, you know, most people not doing anything production shut her down,
shut her down. I assume they'll pick up even next week and then take some more time off for New Year's But there'll be a video up later today promoting Benny Versus the Penny, and you'll enjoy that.
Hopefully, maybe not. I don't know. I get mixed reviews.
Last week we had Back to the Future, which I thought was was pretty cool to be in Hill Valley, the stupidly named town there from Back to the Future.
But Benny Versus the Penny all weekend long. Check it out.
Please tell a friend. It's on Peacock. If you don't have cable television, it's on the streaming on Peacock.
It'll be available all.
Weekend, and then on TV it stops airing once the game's kickoff on Sunday, even though there are games on Saturdays. So depending on when you watch Benny Versus the Penny, you'll be like, oh, that's really smarter boy, that guy's really stupid.
But either way, these shows will be available.
Now turning the page on that a yearly public service announcement. I was supposed to do this last week. Bad job by me. We did not get to it. I would like to remind you to be on guard as a consumer of audio content. Here late in twenty twenty four. We're about to flip the calendar in a few days to twenty twenty five. So even though we are past the Christmas holiday, we still have Honika going on, and then, of course, as you know, the New Year's Eve celebration
and all that. So this is a public service announcement to be on guard for the lazy river, as we like to call it, of holiday radio. How to tell if your favorite sports talk radio personality is not putting any effort into their show. Consider this a good mitzvah of the day. So I've been doing this business a long time. I've been in the business a long time, and I've never one thing I've never done I probably should. I've been told by people I should is just take
the easy road. I try to prepare for every show and make it as good as possible. But there are ways that you can do talk radio where you do not prepare that you just show up and do a generic yearly topic. For example, I know, Christmas just tapping the other day, but still it's the post Christmas weekend, so you'll still get some of those Christmas lazy river topics like who's been naughty?
Who's been nice? In sports? What do you get? You know? Blank? What do you get? You know? Pick your fait Aaron Rodgers for Christmas?
Or what is your what is your what is under your favorite athletes Christmas tree?
This year? You know who gets a lump of colon sports?
Oh, and then give out the number who in sports did you invite to your Christmas dinner?
And then it keeps going.
Some people even go the next level is like, if you're ultimately lazy, you'll do the Christmas draft, the Christmas draft, which is a version of the Thanksgiving Lazy River of talk radio. The Thanksgiving one is your favorite food items at Thanksgiving, you draft them. The Christmas draft would be like gifts, stockings, family dinner, Santa Claus, reindeer, you know that kind of stuff, Christmas, Carol, all that, and so
that is the Christmas version of that. Now we're coming up on New Year's, so many of my colleagues in the business will pivot away. They will move away from the New Year. From Christmas, they'll move to New Year. So how does that work? How does lazy River radio work on New Year's? So I'm glad you asked. So after years and years of research, I've determined here's some of the topics that you will get if your talk radio host is lazy. One is tell me your New
Year's sporting resolutions. For example, if you're a beaten and broken Raider fan, your new Year's resolution is to not care so much for the raiders something along those lines. Who needs to spend more time with family? That means that's code for lose a job, because in sport it's when people lose their job. They're like, well, I want to spend more time with my family. Of course most of us have families and we still have to work and we can balance that. How about this one? Tell
me who in sports needs to work out more? Who's out of shape? Now, that's a spin on the yearly tradition. The yearly tradition when New Year's going to the gym, and I know in January the gyms are always always pretty busy, and then usually by Martin Luther King Day not so much. You could also do a who needs to quit smoking too much?
Too much?
We'd stay off the weed, stay off the weed, those kind of things. So again, those are all ideas. There's other possibilities. You guys have been so great over the years of reaching out to me and letting me know when people are doing.
Lazy lazy talk radio. It's not that hard.
It's pretty obvious between your eyes and all that. So check it out. Check it out now, turning the page on that. I got several emails this week from the Christmas Eve overnight show. Many of you were concerned, which I appreciate you pulled an all nighter with us. We were on Monday into Tuesday, our Christmas Eve show, a show that normally most regular weekday hosts do not take part in. But I was there because of the aforementioned TV show. I worked a good chunk of this week,
good chunk of this week. I was not on last night because again Thursdays into Fridays a little tough with the schedule because we did the TV show on Thursday. But anyway, so back, let's go all the way back in the hot top time machine.
We're going to go back to Monday. Monday, Monday, Monday, so Monday and a Tuesday. It's chrism Seve.
And the show sounded a little a little off, sounded.
A little off, and you're like, what is that about.
So all I can explain is that I prepared for the show the same way I always prepare for the show, put the show together, spent most of my day getting ready for the show. I put the show to bed. I watched the Monday night game, which wasn't much of the game. The game was over at halftime, Saints did not score against the Green Bay Packers back on Monday night. So I'm preparing for the show. I'm doing my thing, and I cruise in and it was like one thing
after another was upside down. It was bizarrero world, and it obviously sounded a lit literally that some people loved it. Some people thought, well that it's great, loved the new sound of the show, Little Goofy. There was a lot of laughing gas in the studio, So I don't know exactly what happened. I have no idea. I have some thoughts on what might have happened. There was a lot of laughing and a lot of joking. People were in very good moods on Christmas Eve, so you can put
two and two together. But I did the show, and it's like a steeplechase. Sometimes it's like you're driving down. There's potholes over here, there's a sinkhole over there. It's like it's like a video game, an old school arcade, and you got to navigate with your joystick, try to get around everything, and just try to do as much as I can and possibly do, and make the show as possible, as good as possible, and all that and then the.
Next day, so the day after.
The good times, Oh what good times there were. So I go to bed, I wake up early afternoon and you know, I'll scan.
The email, see what's going on.
I'll check social media, normal things people that have this kind of job do. So I flip on the social media and it's like, UF an idiot, your podcast is screwed up. You know all these messages, what's wrong with you? I can't believe it.
Blank my blank and blank you who goofed? I've got it.
Going on and on and on and on. I mean, just I don't want to be too dramatic. It wasn't everybody, but it was enough where it got my attention. So I apparently what had happened. The goofiness continued, right, the goofing iss continued. And the reason the reason the goofing has continued was because somehow the podcast, the hour four of the podcast had been yesterday's hours. It was like the day before. So people were complaining about it. I don't know how that happens. I have no idea, no
idea how that happens. But apparently it did happen. We got it fixed. So anyway, that's love that. That's one thing I can't get enough of. I cannot get enough of the Hey you goofed? What's wrong with you? Bad job by you?
This isn't that the number one station anymore?
Is it? Right? Bad job by you? Now?
I mentioned in passing on that I think it was that show might have been the show the other night about Jim Healy, Jim Healley, You've got a Horse Bleach show. Jim Healey was one of my radio inspirations. Listener Paul writes in he says, you mentioned Jim Healey the other night.
Brought back some great memories. I worked at a.
Pharmaceutical company in Coasta Mason, southern California. Make sure the radio was turned on at five pm, either at my desk or in my car for the slog home.
He says, Yeah, So.
Jim Healy did a half an hour shown. You imagine doing half an hour.
That's it. Your entire work, the whole day is half an hour.
How great is that? That's how radio used to be. They had hour shows, half an hour shows. Now everything's three or four hours. I used to do five. I did six hours at one point overnight. But anyway, who cares so in terms of Paul's reference, Jim Heally was a big inspiration.
We've talked about him.
I was on the Jim Heay thirtieth anniversary show of the last broadcast of The Jim Healy Show and was on with Patrick Heey Jim he ley Son ted Sobel put that together, which was which is very, very cool, And Jim Heally would have loved, loved the show the other night with all the errors, because Heally would screw up on his half hour radio show.
He hit the wrong SoundBite, but you had to roll with the punches. Do it live.
We'll do it, I'll do it, I'll write it, I'll talk about it, We'll do it live.
And it was that kind of deal. And yeah, Heally half an hour.
It was a vignette from like the late seventies onto the early to mid nineties.
I think he died in the mid nineties.
Or so, but play all these ridiculous soundbites from people in sports and there's it's so much easier to do that kind of show now, but nobody does it. You know, it does that exact type show. But it was a very popular show at the time.
Time. Now four, the.
Idiom of the week, the idiom of the week.
Now, let's say phrase.
You've heard it, I've used it, and maybe you've used it as well. It's cut to the chase, cut to the chase. So what the heck does that mean? Cut to the chase? Well, cut to the chase. The phrase cut to the chase it originates from.
What do you think cut to the chase? Well, that's the film industry.
Yeah, early Hollywood, they were still trying to figure out what people liked and what people didn't like in movies. And oftentimes, when the big movie studios were putting movies together, if there was a lot of dialogue blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah, that kind of thing. If that was going on for a long time, they would lose the audience. People wouldn't be into it.
And so the people that ran the studios they would watch the not the final before the final edit. They would watch the film, and if things were getting a little barring in the movie, the film studio would say, cut to the chase. Cut to the scene in the movie that is the most exciting part, and that means you cut down on that conversation. Nobody needs that. What's wrong with you in this? This in the early days of Hollywood. So this is in the nineteen nineteen twenties
during the silent film era. And it makes sense, right because in the nineteen twenties it was silent, so you had to read the dialogue. I get to read the dialogue, and nobody wants to sit there and read. Even in the nineteen twenties, nobody's like, I don't want to sit there and read. And here we are one hundred years later, but that goes back to the silent film era. And one of the earliest printed references to cut to the chase was in a script direction from the nineteen twenty
nine Hollywood film Hollywood Girl. That was one of the first times documented in nineteen twenty nine. But here we are almost one hundred years after that, and still to this day people say, cut to the chase, get to the point please. That was on the Jim Healy Show and he said get to the point, please, please, get to the point please.
Yes, all right, anyway, I'm moving on from that.
I did see I got an email from I know the mail bag is supposed to be on Sunday, but I thought this was it was rather interesting that there is now going to be a battle for teachers. You've got of all the jobs?
I thought this. I work in radio, right, A lot of radio jobs are being taken.
Over by AI. And there are music stations that don't have DJs anymore. It's all being programmed by the supercomputer and all that. So I bring this up because there's a gentleman Mike sent me this week where there's a news school that will teach children.
Via AI. The teachers will not be there, will not be there. It's a charter.
School in Arizona, according to the story that I've got in front of me, And so the kids will be learning via via AI. Uh, and that the selling point is say, non traditional human instructors and the bulk of the lessons will be handled by an AI program.
Yeah.
Uh, what could possibly go wrong with that? The school is initially teaching kids in fourth through eighth grade. Yeah, And one thing kids do not need is human interaction. They do not fourth a grade. And I know from my experience back when I was in school, one thing us kids do it did was always pay really good attention and we never had to.
Be told to focus. Will AI be able to tell them on the on the focus thing?
They?
Will AI be.
Able to to tell them that everything's everything's good.
You needn't your focus? Do your thing? Yeah?
No, yeah, I don't know, but I don't know about that anyway. That's one message I got. Oh, and I did want to mention this. I don't know if you were affected by the Christmas chaos this week with there was a glitch with American Airlines the late a bunch of flis. I had a buddy of mine, radio friend of mine back east, was going to Hawaii for Christmas, had a trip planned for a year, going to Hawaii.
The morning of Christmas Eve, He's supposed to.
Fly through Dallas, changed planes in Dallas heading to Hawaii, and weather it was bad.
There was this glitch in American Airlines. Never made it.
Never spent all year, lives in a cold weather city, spent all year looking forward to going to Hawaii, and the morning of the trip, all packed up, spent several days getting ready, getting all their affairs in order, and then call boom, Yeah you can't go.
You're stuck. Enjoy the cold weather. You're screwed. Yeah, good good.
Times unless it was not unless it was lacking in the good times department.
Yeah.
Anyway, all right, well we'll get out on that. Remember Benny Versus the Penny. I know it's a shorter podcast, but it's a holiday weekend. It is a fresh podcast. So if you want to check out, Benny Versus the Penny will be on again tonight all weekend long. There'll be a new video up on the Facebook and the Instagram page later today, so you can interact with that and help you have.
A great, weird weekend. It's that weird time.
It's like it's not a holiday this weekend, but it kind of is, because that week between Christmas and New Year's it's a dead period and we have Honick. You celebrate the Honick. We got the honk a going on as well.
Danny G. You'll be back with me tomorrow.
We'll have a new podcast on Saturday and Sunday as well, and kind of a weird schedule over the next few days after that because of the end of the year stuff.
As we wind down the year.
Twenty twenty four, and it's been been a good and crazy and sad year. On the show, it's been a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of everything on the show. So we will have some look backs this weekend. We'll look back at some of the things that happened and whatnot, because people love that kind of stuff. At least one thing in particular by request. We will get to it at some point, I think on the Saturday Pod. Anyway, have a wonderful,
glorious rest of your Friday. Thank you for listening, even on a holiday weekend here and we'll catch you next time. On the fifth Hour's Danny Say, Danny g said later skater no, no, no, no, I think what Danny would say here is asta pasta?
Is that right?
Se la vie? No no, no, no riva device? Who did I get it right?
I did? I didn't get it right? All right, Well, just have a good day. Got a murder. I gotta go.