Cutbooms.
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, it's the clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now.
In the a.
Em Way.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler and Danny g As we hang out and schmoos all week in long and a happy Saturday to you as we have reached the seventeenth day of the month of February. Spring training underway. We talked a little baseball this week on the Overnight Show. It's just a little bit. I'm happy that weasel Rob Manford's leaving. I wish he was leaving sooner.
Yeah. When Monty did enough date and announced that in the background, I said.
Bye bye, bye bye.
Yeah. Yeah, just a piece of metal.
They should give him a statue in Houston. Rob Manford got a statue in Houston, trash can. Yeah, they should retire his name in Houston.
Uh.
No, one in the history of sports has done more to support cheaters than Rob Manford. Oh and I'm seeing some of these these baseball writers writing these these think pieces about what a great commissioner Rob Manford is and how baseball is going to be, you know, be in a tough spot to replace him. I'm like, really, how hard is to replace the guy? I mean, the guy's a snake. The guy is a snake. What are you doing?
I don't want to. We don't do sporty here, but on this the Saturday Pod, we have chicken Palm with Big Red. Chicken Palm with Big Red, kick him out. We've got the idiom of the week, and who knows what else we will have time for, but we begin with this. So back to lost wages Nevada last week. A couple of things about the trip. Now, I did not get the first class VIP Tree, but I went on my own. The company did not pay for a single cent of my trip to Las Vegas. I wanted
to go, I had access to it. I didn't get a hotel room, I didn't get to airfare, I didn't get any meals paid for. I paid out of pocket. So I drove. We drove from La to Vegas. I did the overnight show. I took a bath for about thirty minutes to try to calm my mind down, and then got in the car and drove to Vegas. And I like driving. I don't really like flying to Vegas. I like having my car with me, even though they charged thirty bucks to park everywhere in Vegas and that's embarrassing.
And Vegas was better when the mob ran it. But I drove through the night to get to Vegas. We got there, had to get there early because we had an early win though, to record some of the podcasts and whatnot. And you have to go through NFL security and there's a whole bunch of hoops you have to jump through to get into where you need to go and all that stuff. But on the way to Vegas, we stopped in your Mo beautiful your Mo, not my Mo, your moo. Now we did not where.
You're hoping to build a vacation home someday.
You can get land very cheap there, very cheap. So in Beautiful Eumo, which is one of the many stops along the highway from La into Vegas Highway fifteen. If you've made that drive from La to Vegas, and so there stops in Victorville, Barstow, your mo and then you've got Baker and then you go to right through the state line, Nevada state line. You've got right there across the border, prim where you have on one side Buffalo bills. On the other side, you've got a different hotel there
and so side by side. But we stopped in yourmo at Peggy Sue's Diner.
Driven past that.
Yeah, they have a lot of billboards out in the desert. And my wife was kind enough. I drove to Barstow and then she took over. So I drove halfway and then I started to get a little tired. I got a little tired, so she took over, and then she wanted to get somebody to eat. So I was fasting, so I was like, go wherever you want. And she's like, hey, is Peggy Sue's diner. So we went to Peggy Sue's Diner. It's a cool little roadside diner in the middle of nowhere.
They've got different themes, old Hollywood memorabilia sitting in the middle of the desert. It's very odd because you go there and you've got all these like whole Hollywood mementos in the middle of nowhere, and then down the road is this place called Eddie World. Not Eddie's World. Should be Eddie's World. It's called Eddie World and it's just
a gas station and then a candy store. And for some reason, in that place in Eddie World, they have a piece of the floor from the original forum, the court that and Kareem and the Lakers played on winning all those championships back in the day. They actually have the Laker logo from that court sitting in a truck stop. It's pretty funny. You should go there sometime, Danny when you drive to Vegas, because it's it's it's hilarious, Like of all the places for this to end up.
Yeah, it's like that famous Big Santa Claus that used to sit on the roof of that candy store in Santa Barbara. As kids on the one on one freeway on that drive, we'd always see the Big Santa Claus on top of the building. Well, it started to uh break that roof down on that property, so they had to get the Big Santa Claus with a crane off of there and it wound up. Of all places in Oxnard, California, across from the Strawberry Fields where a Gentleman's club is.
Oh is that right? Yeah, so same sort of thing. It's like, how did that get there?
Yeah, it's like when I went to the Neon Museum and they had all like these giant I guess that makes more sense the Neon Museum. Although we didn't get to the one in Vegas. I heard the one in Vegas is insane. So we stopped at Peggy Sues, through Euromo, went to Vegas and all that. But that get to the point, please, So I thought this was kind of amusing, so we do the whole thing. It was a fun day, Danny. You were great. I appreciate your hard work. There was fun.
You were bouncing around because you had Covino and Rich and you were doing stuff with me, and we had to put it all together, and you had to do a lot of the editing. So I thank you for that. And so, but I was there a lot longer than I anticipated because we had some interviews lined up, and as we talked about some things went sideways and people did not show up that were supposed to show up, and so I was wandering around and I was I just was killing time. I did a segment with Tony Bruno.
That's where the Kevin Harlan came up. And then some of our old producers people that worked at Fox Sports Radio. I was talking to them. They were working different radio stations and stuff, and just had it have fine time at fine time. But I was there a lot longer than I wanted to be, and so we went out to get a bite to eat after we were done with the radio row stuff, and we go to our favorite Italian restaurant in Las Vegas. I've been there in a couple of years. It's called Capos Have you ever
been to Capos No, I've heard of it. Though the place is insane. It's like a speakeasy type place, a real dark restaurant.
You know, it's good.
I've never been to a bad restaurant that's got hardly any lighting.
Sounded scary.
Coppos restaurant and speak easy. Just amazing Italian food, just just absolutely great. So we're in there and there's there's a couple of things that stand out about this.
Danny.
Number One, I got I got shaken down. I got shaken so we did not have reservations. It was super Bowl weekend, and so they were pretty busy in there and you needed reservation and we didn't have any reservations. So my wife calls up because we were originally going to go to this barbecue place that I had found, this like local barbecue place which is way off the strip, passed downtown, just like a locals barbecue place. But we went to the barbecue place and I was like, this
is this place? Look amazing? Right, they had outdoor tables and it looked just looked like your trashy Texas barbecue, which you knew the food was going to be amazing, and there were people lined up around the building. But they closed in like forty minutes, and we looked at the line and we did the math in our head. We're like, there's no way we could stay online. We could wait online, but we're not going to get it.
And so I don't even know why were we. It's kind of was kind of cold in Vegas, and I was like, what are we going to do? You know, as much as I want that barbecue, Vegas is like a suburb of LA We'll be back again, no problem. So then we were trying to find a restaurant. My wife's like that, what about that Capos place? Said that place is good, and said I told her call her call him up. So she calls him up and they're like, ah, we don't have any reservations. You can't you know, you
can't here. So my wife's like, well, we're in town, but we're only in for a couple of nights and we got to get back to La. We love your restaurant. So the person on the phone is like, all right, well come on down and I can't guarantee anything, but you know, tell him so and so Sancho, we'll see what we can do. So we go down to Capos and they they have the speakeasy, so they let us.
They let us in.
This paisan racist he comes up to me, right, this guy works at the restaurant. He comes up to me to say, I need to talk to you and uh, and my wife's like following and following with me, and the guy's like, no, no, you stay here, I need your husband. So he then takes me to the side and he shakes me down. He said, listen you, yeah, you take care of me. I can get your table right over here, right in the front.
I'm like I told you Bobster started these restaurants.
So I'm like, God, I'm like in my head, I'm like, I don't know, you know, like I don't I mean, I like this place, but this is kind of shady.
But I was like, did he give you an amount?
No, he didn't give me an amount, but I I slipped him. I slipped him a few bucks and uh, and he he took me right to the table.
Is it then? Is it like that time with Rod in Bakersfield where you tipped the waiter a five dollars?
You know, I wasn't exactly fun. I was, yeah, well I didn't look.
See that was the way I thought it was one hundred and it was a ten. Remember, Yeah, well it was.
It was a bit of a mistake, but I tried to be smooth about it. I didn't want to look, and I just kind of reached my hand in there.
I saw one in a zero and you're like, that must be one hundred.
Back to the to the So I got shaken down. I gave the guy, you know, some money, and then he he took me to the table.
He didn't accidentally take a ten. I know that.
Yeah, it was it was a good table. My wife was very happy, so, you know, it was before Valentine's so whatever. It was fine. But the funniest part of the night. And the food was fricking amazing, right was I. Normally, if I got shaken down, I'd be like, oh, this is terrible. The food was so good I didn't even really care, you know. It was like just amazing that everything was fresh and wonderful and one of the great meals I've had. Maybe because I was hungry, I don't know,
but it was really good Italian food. I loved it. And so we're in there. The place is packed, people are all dauled up, they're all dressed up, they got
their church clothes on, right, they're all looking good. There's live music, there's great Italian food, and here comes out of nowhere, big brand, right, and at a corner of my eye, I see this mob of young women and middle aged men and they're all trying to get close to Big Red, trying to get photos and it was wowd So remember the guy that was walking around Radio row, Danny the It looked like Andy Reid. You remember that guy, Oh of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. He took a photo
with him. I did I know the guy. Actually, he's a listener in Kansas City, and he's an Andy Reid impersonator. It's almost Andy Reid. So this guy goes to Capos. I had talked to him earlier. I saw him last year at the Super Bowl in Phoenix, and so he walks in there and the people seemed to think that that was actually Andy Reid. I don't think they realized it wasn't Andy Reid.
Ben, they're not alone because my wife he saw your Instagram page and she told me, that's so cool that Ben is friends with Andy Reid. Yeah.
No, So there were like beautiful young women that were taking photos for their Instagram page with this guy, and guys were like, dudes were like, oh Andy, you know, good luck against the forty nine ers. Well, do these people think that Andy Reid goes around to random restaurants wearing his game day attire? That yeah, it's chicken palm with big red out there. You know, it's like what hilarious?
Also, where was his wife? Because every time we see this guy, his wife is somewhere near him. Usually she's usually just a foot away from him. Post game, she was standing hovering over him.
Remember, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw Andy do some interviews and his wife was right next to him. But the Andy Reid impersonator. This is great. So I actually talk to the guy at the at the capitols, I saw him. I said, hey, you know what you should be doing right now is go down where elmo is and Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse. You know how much money that guy would have made on tips if he had gone down to the strip, you know, outside the oh yeah, part of those cartoon characters walking around.
He would have made a fortune. Yeah, because your common NFL fan would have paid twenty dollars to pose and take a picture, and they could have lied or at least tricked people the way you tricked my Wifey. You weren't trying to she was. She was tricked just because he looks so much like Andy Reid.
Yeah, yeah, he looks more like Andy Reid than.
In people know where at the super Bowl. So in her mind he was there interviewing with radio stations.
Yes, it's nuts, but that guy is a listener of he's a connoisseur of sports radio. I should get him on the podcast. I actually have his information. I can get him on the pod sometime. But I could have had him on last weekend, but I just think that's more of a visual thing. I think we said that on the podcast. But it's kind of be an interesting story, like what it's like to look like Andy Reid and when he goes to these events and stuff.
Oh, I'm sure he has wonderful stories to tell.
Yeah, but he's a listener because he and another one of those kind of cool radio nerd moments Danny where I introduced myself to him and he's, Oh, yeah, I know who you are. I hear you. I've heard your show.
And I was an impersonator for one day. I'll tell you the story in sixty seconds. Okay. So I worked for a radio station in Ventura, California. One of our am stations was kb ET. All right, so no big deal, but there was a KBET van that they let me drive sometimes. Well, the Raiders were in their last season, playing in Oxnard for training camp now where the Cowboys are located. They had me run an errand I had to go out there because there was there was something
being delivered, a commercial for something was being delivered. So I go out there to They called it the Raider Radison at the time, and I pull up in the kb Et van and there's some Raider players out there in front of where the sports bar was, in front of this ratison, and they told me, oh, kb Et,
hey come up here, come with us. So they invite me up the stairs to one of the bungalows and there's all these players who I recognized, of course, because I'm a big Raiders fan, and they're all sitting around in one of these rooms and they're just shooting the shit. One's playing like an NES video game from back in
the day, and they're talking to me. They're they're like, yeah, chit down, blah blah blah, and they're talking about b and then one of them says, so, how long have you worked for be Et Television?
Well did you just going in? You're just like, hey, yeah, yeah, it's been a while.
I was a kid at the time, so I didn't know how to roll with it, so I had to explain to him who I was and what I did. And let's just say my visit ended shortly thereafter.
Oh he's got to play along, right, Oh yeah.
Later in my career, I would have just played along and been like, yeah, man, be ET's crazy. It's a crazy job.
That's uh, that's pretty good there. But yeah, so the any Reid thing, the Andy Reid look alike was pretty pretty amusing. Of all the restaurants in Vegas, Like he just happened to walk into that one.
What did you order there that everybody wants to know what you Well?
I did eat the chicken palm. I love the chicken palm. The chicken parm there was amazing. But we had we went big, right, because this was like our big night out, so we're a big eating night. We had toasted ravioli. Oh yeah, I was standing hard.
Those in marin Ea.
They had they had a really good it wasn't a Marenia, but it was kind.
Of a ranch, no, Danny, Danny, No.
They had a really good sauce and we had like a garlic cheese bread type thing which was really just just the whole meal was was wonderful and as always, what I did to prevent myself from from hating the meal. When the bill came, I told the wife, I said, Okay, if I look at that, I can I can pay for it, but I will be in a bad mood the rest of the night. But if you pay for it. I will not be in a bad mood because I
will not know how much that is. And if I know how much I'm paying for that meal, I will want to throw it up and eat it again, so I get two meals out of it. So that's that's kind of the way we did our business.
On that Uh.
And then they they kicked us out. They didn't kick them out. They kicked us out, Danny, which was a little a little different there.
Yeah, just like how the Raider players kicked me out of their bungalow. It's one. It's been one of those weeks where I'm like, damn it, I need that. Why didn't I put that back in my backpack, like a shitty week where I'm unorganized because my stuff is all
over the place. Well, my schedule is like that too, because the school and the school district they're like, Okay, you can have the week off to go travel to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, but when you come back, we need you to pick up a couple of extra shifts to cover for people that covered for you. So I'm like, all right, so I'll do your Fridays. I'm usually off from there on Friday mornings, fine, So you got to wheel and deal with your job sometimes to
get time off. All right, Well, here's the bad part. I get a text message from our boss here at the network and he says, Hey, some good news. You guys are filling in for Dan Patrick next week Monday through Wednesday. The hat trick. They call it the CNR hat trick. Uh huh, Ben, you know what time the Dan Patrick shows on? Yeah?
Early, early in the morning.
Yeah, it's the time where I have to go unlock that campus and be an adult, all right, for the for the second job there. I tell my boss, I'm like, I think I could weasel out of Monday.
There.
There's no way I could get Tuesday and Wednesday off next week from the school because I just ditched them last week. I was trying to, you know, figure all that out. And then I get a text later that day saying, and next Thursday, you guys are filling in for Colin Cowherd. Shit, I can't get that day off either. But Colin starts at nine am. Okay, I can get out of that campus at about eight thirty am. But then I'm doing the math and I'm doing the ways app.
So a couple days ago on Thursday morning, right when it hit eight am. At the stroke of eight am, like Cinderella, I go to the ways app and I punch in our work address and it says fifty five minutes yeah to go eighteen miles cool, and I'm thinking, shit, I forgot about that the last time seeing our filled in for Cowherd, it took like an hour and twenty minute sitting in the morning crap. I mean, it was like somebody vomited all over the freeways. It was so bad.
I had to get onto Venturl Boulevard and that didn't move either. So you just feel trapped, like claustrophobic in those situations. And I thought about it. I'm like, what am I gonna do? Can I maybe kick the kids out of my classroom at eight am when it's okay
for them to be wandering around the campus. Now, normally what I do in my early morning classroom, Ben is I entertain these kids till about eight twenty all right when the bell rings and that bell is like, oh shit, you got to get your books and run to your first class. Well, can I or do you think I will get caught next Thursday? Can I at eight am
say to the kids. Hey, guys, I'm so sorry, but I got to kick your asses out of this warm room and you have to wander the campus for twenty minutes because I need to go to Sherman Oaks, California.
Will you see, as long as it's not raining, that's a good point. If there's an atmospheric river, you're screwed.
You'll know this. How do you wind up getting in trouble at a school? Well, somebody rats you out, yes, and who would rat you out? There's always that one kid. Yes, there you go, the one kid who wanted to stay and play on his phone and charge his laptop. I'm mister G. You love, mister G. I was cold for ten minutes. And then that mom's gonna call the principal, and then the principal is gonna text me that she needs to have a sit down with me, and then you know, the shit will hit the fan. I have
to be very strategic in this. Now, Do I maybe do the rundown for that next Thursday morning show the day before, give it to Covino and Rich a day early and tell them, hey, I'm going to be running just on time, you know, And do I push it to like eight p fifteen and then watch the show is starting. I don't know how to do this, Yeah, so I would.
The way I would play it is you tell the kids on Wednesday tomorrow, you know I'm gonna have to s them a whole day to rat No, but if you let them know, maybe they'll be prepared for rather than springing on them, then I would definitely do there.
I'll definitely do the rundown like on the Yeah, the night before. But here's one little problem with saying something the day before. There's different kids each day. There's some regulars, but there's also different kids who come on different mornings. Gotcha.
Yeah, So technically, by the letter of the law, if you're only supposed to be there till.
Eight, they allow me to clock out at eight thirty five am. Anything after that, I'm not supposed to put on a time card. So in their minds, I think I'm supposed to be cleaning that room up around eight thirty. Okay, so about half an hour.
Is there anyone else there that you trust that works there?
They could No, No, no, there's no there's no one to conspire with. Unfortunately, you're so it's a thirty minute block of time that I have to be real gangster about.
That's a tough one. It's only it's only thirty minutes though, But in kid time last like four hours.
True, that's the problem for us.
Thirty minutes flies by, no problem.
You know, it's been California cold in the morning. The chances of a kid complaining and crying about it, those chances are high right now.
Yeah, it's always that one kid.
I'll update you next week on whether or not I have a second job.
All right, let us let us know you're fired. The uh A couple of things to the idiom of the week. Are you ready for the idiom of the week?
Idiot of the way?
It's idiom, it's an idiom of the week. Well, this is something that you'll actually have to deal with probably next week. Well, Danny, it's called face the music, right, you have to face the music? And oh dare you and all that? That happens to be the idiom of the week. And most of us know what that means. It means to accept the truth and whatnot. So time to face the music that you have a problem. You have a problem. Well, that term face the music. There's
a couple of theories on where it originated from. The idiom face the Music the most popular and what is believed to be true is it comes courtesy of the British military. And the legend goes back in the day, when someone was getting court martialed, they were getting in trouble, there would be a military drum squad playing, and that's where the term faced the music came from. When you were being court martialed, you would be greeted by the military drum squad and the term drummed out of the
military also came from that particular practice. Now I haven't really heard that much drummed out of the military. The other popular theory, which is not as believed as the first one. Most people seem to think that face the
Music came from the British military. But the other theory is that in acting, the actor who faced the music was the one that faced the orchestra pit in a live stage performance, like you have the right in front of the stage there often you'd have the orchestra back in the day, and so those are the two theories. But the idiom of the week is face the music, Face the music, and that is the idiom of the week. I think we'll get out on that. It's Saturday, and
it's a lazy, hazy Saturday. I got nothing to TV.
That's it, not even.
Much NBA All Star weekend, right, Yeah, don't don't contest. I'm over that.
You don't want to see?
Oh my god, yeah, that used to be a big event.
I don't like the three contest.
I'm a little I'm a little that even too. I'll tell you, yeah, I'll tell you why, because every night watching the NBA is like a three point contest. It's just poper shot. It's just get a rebound, throw it back out for a three point shot, over and over. And they should just add a moneyball. Every third three pointer you make is a moneyball. It's worth six points. They should make it and just do that. But I'm not I'm getting jaded. I'm getting to the point now
where I don't even like the three point contest. I'll check it out, as you know, Danny, for content purposes own, Ye, yes, I will. I will consume some of the NBA product or content purposes only.
Why can't they do like a moneyball system for our podcast? Like every third or fourth podcast we get triple the money.
I think every one hundredth download we get a bonus. Every one hundred person that downloads the podcast, we get some money and we have a wonderful day. Thank you. We have the mail bag on Sunday and we look forward to that. We will talk to you then Asta pasta my flation