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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 fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
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It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
In the air. Ever ringwere the Fifth Hour with Me, Big Ben and Danny g Radio. And a happy Saturday to you as we are hanging out with you here after two NFL games have been played, and we've got a full slate of NFL activity tomorrow. Yet college football today here on the seventh day of September. Danny and I actually did enjoy college football last weekend. We don't talk about it on the Overnight show very much because
it's all about the NFL, but I did. I'd find myself fully immersed last Saturday and Sunday and even Monday with college football. I enjoyed it.
Yeah, I've actually watched two college football games to match the two NFL games I now have under my belt.
Yeah, I watched last weekend, Clemson, Georgia saw the second half annihilation of the once proud Clemson Tigers. Sunday Night sc and LSU in Vegas.
I saw that one.
Vegas Baby, and then on Monday they had the standalone game on Monday night the holiday that was Boston College taking down the once proud seminals of Florida State. So those were the three games, and there were a few others. I flipped around. Of course, you should not watch those games on illegal streams. You should not do that. So I don't know how I watched them, but I watched them somehow and did enjoy the college experience. Did not bet on any of those games. People have emailed me.
So you only watch games you bet on, you're not really a sports fan. I didn't bet on any of those games, and I tuned in, I was watching, I was enjoying myself, had a good time and obviously excited about the NFL. What a finish we had that game back on Thursday with the We talked about it yesterday on the podcast The Chiefs. I know, as a Raider fan, you were pulling for the Ravens to have both feet
inbounds there. Lively the tight end and they get would help the Raiders out, but did not happen, and it was great. It was a great start. You always want to win that first bet of the weekend. And even though we don't on Benny Versus the Penny, we don't pick the Thursday game. Just not something that we do because the show airs on Friday and Saturday, so what's the point of doing the Thursday game. We do pick it off the air for record keeping purposes. And I
had the Chiefs. If the Ravens had scored the touchdown, they were going to go for two. I would have lost either way. I had the Chiefs minus three, and if the Ravens score the touchdown, they're down by a point. Our ball is going to go for two. So if they don't get the two point conversion, I lose the bet and the Ravens cover. And if they get the two point conversion they win the game out right, I lose that way. So I would have lost either way. So I won my first bet of the twenty twenty
four NFL season because of a toe day. It was a toe job and twinkle toes there for the Ravens, so I was happy about that. On this podcast, though we have all dressed up for no reason. Do it yourself, the beach parlay all day, get some international flavor. We have some other things to take care of as well, included in the idiom of the week. But let's start with this. Over the years I've done this podcast with the gag On and Danny g How many years have
been on the podcast now? A couple of years, right, you've been with me a couple of.
Years now, been three years now, it's been three years. Yeah, it'll be three It'll be three years this Christmas.
Oh man, that's why. So I probably know this podcast like five years now, maybe longer.
Wow.
Wow, time is zooming by you.
Old man.
Over the course of the the evolution of the Fifth Hour podcast as your weekend audio buddy, your little companion while you're on the treadmill or doing the honeydew List or whatever you might be doing on the weekends, and Saturday is a big honeydew thing, honeyde list, And we at one point were almost completely our playbook was let's get people on the podcast and let's just interview people and we'll go that direction. So we did that for a long time, and that was fine. That was great,
and it became a bit of a hassle. Became a bit of a hassle. Then we determined that it didn't really help the downloads most of the time. It didn't improve the situation at all. And so we've evolved to what we do now. We're you know, Friday. We just tell stories and we do different bits. We get scientifical, or we'll do a foodie segment, things like that. Yesterday it wasn't a foodie segment. But on the Friday podcast, I stumbled on and I'd heard this years ago and
I'd forgotten about it. The birthplace of the cheeseburger, which was in Pasadena. The cheeseburger came from Pasadena. It's one hundredth anniversary of the cheeseburger on a menu and it was in nineteen twenty four at a diner in Pasadena on Colorado Boulevard, which back then was called Root sixty six. So it's like stuff like that, like just like interesting
random stuff. But this past week I got an email from a publicist, and the publicist these people email me on a semi regular basis and they're like, hey, we know you have a platform. We'd like you to interview ABC or one, two, three, And then I said, I don't know about that. And then they say, well what about X, Y and Z. And so we go back and forth, and most of the time the people that they pitch in their little elevator pitch, I wouldn't even want my
enemy to talk to. You know, these are these are not exciting people.
Yeah, it's not like that lady who was an expert on the hiccups.
Yeah, now that was big. That was it. So I finally saw a name that I recognized. There was someone that I've often quoted on the radio show who's like a Hall of Famer in the NFL. Okay, fine, all right, I'll take the bait.
You know.
And it's the guys. He pitches this stuff to me every week. He wants me to interview and promote this book this guy wrote. And I'm like, all right, I'll do it. So we go back and forth. This is before the holiday weekend. We're going over dates. He's like, well, the guy's available, there's a certain windows he's.
Going to do interviews.
And he gives me all these dates. Right, I said, fine, I said, you know, I do the overnight show. So the guy's on the East Coast. He's still working for an NFL team, and so I was like, all right, well, here's my window. I can do it that day at that time. And it's a big hassle, but I'll do it. You know, let's let's have some fun. He says, no problem, So we forget I forget about it. I put it on my little counter thing on my phone and that's it.
And then it's game time. It's the day of the interview. And I changed my entire schedule. I a very regimented schedule these days because of the TV show and the different things, and every day is there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff going on every day.
Yeah. Yeah, And that was another reason why it was hard to continually do interviews, because they had to fit into a certain specific window for you.
Yes, and many of these interviews are with East Coast people who want to do them at a time where I am sleeping, Yes, the bulk of East Coast time. So whatever, fine, but I made sure to move my schedule around. I was like, okay, I agreed to do this. He pitched it. I agreed to it. I will follow the code of the West, when you say you're going to do something, you do it right. I'm a big believer in that. People say, well, keep bringing that up out a bit, but that's how I model my life.
You can model your life however you want, but for me, that works, and so that's what I follow. The code of the West. You take pride in your work. You finish what you start, and when you say you're going to do something, you do it right. Your name and put your name on and all that stuff.
And so you're just like a contractor in construction. Like the guy who's been working on our balcony. He said he was going to come here to replace some wheels on our screen door, and that was four weeks ago.
Well, the problem you have there is the person that you're dealing with is on contractor time, which is a different time zone, and no one can figure out what exactly contractor time meets.
Why are they the only job who gets away with that?
Yeah, because nobody else wants to do it right. If you want to find a contractor, just go down to home depot at like, you know, one o'clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday, they'll all be hanging out.
I'm a doctor.
Make a long story even longer. Fine, I changed my schedule around. I go into the studio, I set everything up, I am ready to go. I have to prepare for the interview. So I have some chicken scratch that I wrote down that I want to ask about this, that and the other thing. I shouldn't want to ask about this quote that I use.
All the time.
And we're doing the interview on a zoom leak, but I have to record everything, you know, through the have to set up the mic and all that whatever. It doesn't take that long. But the main problem was I changed my sleep schedule and I didn't go to the gym and this all this other stuff. So I'm in there and send the link and the window. Two minutes before the window is supposed to start, I get an email and it's the PR person that pitched the interview.
And now he didn't cancel. He didn't cancel. He said, hey, can we move the interview thirty five or forty minutes from now? And I was like, well, I really don't want to do it thirty five or forty minutes now. But I'm already here and I'm up, and okay, you know, why not I'll do it, I wrote back. I said, well, you know, I don't really want to do it, but I'm here, and I sure, why not. I'll accommodate the person, even though again I kept my end of the deal.
I made an agreement. Your word is the most important thing, and so I shut up. So I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs, right, and I don't even know how long it was, It was a bit of time. I get a second email from the publicist. What do you think this one? Was?
Dan? What do you think this one? Can we push it back one more time?
No?
This was, Hey, my guys really tired today. He's not going to be able to do the interview with you. I apologize and then that's it. No rescheduled to another day, none of that. It's just f you, you blow, I don't value you. Go away is essentially what the email was. Wow, apology the end. And this is so No. I'm not gonna even say the person's name because I don't want to give them the publicity of knowing who they are.
But it's a person who is very tied to a Hall of fame quarter actually has worked with many Hall of fame quarterbacks and has a very famous quote which I have used on a semi regular basis. I'm sure Alf and some of these guys can figure out who it is. A person's worked in the NFL going back, I think to the seventies, so you know someone that's certainly tiy the But just I have no use for that. And I know this, This PR person is going to be emailing me again next week saying, Hey, I got
Joe Blow who wants to talk about schmucks? Would you like to tell you? No, I'm good. And it's like I always say about these podcasts and radio shows, Danny, and like, the most important thing we have is our time. You can't get more of it, you can't buy it. You know it's gone. It's gone. You don't know how much you have and all that stuff. And when you take that almost valuable, come on wasting my time. And when you agree to do it, that's the thing, Like,
don't agree to do it, fine, I don't. I can handle that. But if I futz around, I get up, I change my schedule, go in the studio, and then you don't have the courtesy to live up to your end of the bargain because you're tired.
Now take the producer hat and put it on your head for a moment. Imagine setting this all up for a host and then having those issues with emails and cancelations and rescheduling and pissing off the host, because I've had to deal with that in the past, and that's a big pain in the ass.
Hey, I pissed myself off, Danny.
I bet you did.
Like, why do I agree to that? You know? I was like, what the hell? We have a good rhythm here with the podcast. The downloads are great, people love it. Right, We'll see how this goes during football season. The mail bag tomorrow is obviously going to be important to make sure the numbers are up on the mail bag. But the whole thing just left a bad taste mouth and I was just annoyed. It was like, and I don't need to I don't need this. I'm helping you out.
You got some crappy book that I'm promoting, and this is what you do.
And I don't even think, uh we should I say his name? I don't know. I don't think Brian Billick's book is going to be that great.
Well, we finally at least got him on it. Took us two years, but he finally got him on. But yeah, yeah, that was that was another one. Well, we just had to get him on because we it was so annoying with him. It was so annoying, and uh, it's really one of those things. It's you know, it's a di I y right, it's do it yourself situation. You end up doing it yourself. It's just better to do the podcast yourself sometimes, right, a little do it yourself situation.
Last weekend, I had to run to Target to get some baby formula. When big ass baby cod gets off the stupid goat milk formula, I am going to do some backflips, like I just scored in the end zone. Every time I go there, that canister is five dollars. Now, it's it's ridiculous.
And how often do you have to go through these things?
Every two weeks?
Okay, all right, at least it lasts a little while, but that's not that long.
And there's some weeks where he drinks more bottles maybe a week.
What's magical about this that he has to drink it? Like, what's the magical?
I think a lot of it's comfort, because when you're trying to wean a kid off the bottle, it's hard, you know, because that's that's like his go to for comfort when he's sitting in your arm on the on the recliner, and right before he takes a nap, he wants his baba daddy, and there's nutrients in it too. I mean, you're supposed to be given these things to the maybe up until they're one. He's one now, so we're trying to wean them off this, but I don't know when it's gonna.
Be ah wow, wow wow.
We always check the target website to make sure they have the formula that he uses. It said they had seven in stock. Okay, good. So I get there, shelf is empty. Nothing. I walk around this stupid store for ten minutes to find one employee and she begrudgingly helped me, gets on her walkie talkie and says, guests needs help in the baby formula aisle. Hurry back over to that aisle and I stand there for a good solid ten minutes. Not one employee shows up.
Yeah, crickets, you're swidling your thumbs and you're waiting, And did you walk out or did you stay?
I said, f this place. I walked out with two blazing middle fingers. So that was the start of a great week of customer surface unless it wasn't it is. Now fast forward to the opening of NFL season Thursday night, we do the Cavino and Rich Show. We have a great time talking a lot of football and having fun on the air. And then when the show's over, we got an hour before the game kicks off between the
Ravens and the Chiefs. I I tell it on their podcast and walk outside to the scorching one hundred and sixteen degree heat across the street to the galleria and we go to Buffalo Wild Wings and of course there was that little bit of the weather delay and everything. Yeah, gave us time to put our order in though. Right, So we're sitting there and we're waiting. We're waiting, and we're looking. They're way understaffed at this Buffalo Wild Wings. There's probably three employees working.
Wonderful.
Finally, Rich Davis stops one of the girls, one of the three people working, and he said, hey, yeah, and he said, not to be rude, but we've been sitting here for a long time. What's the deal? Can we order? And she said, yeah, let me get the guy who's in charge of your section, and we're like, okay, so we're waiting. We're waiting. I'm like, man, what is this? Am I waiting for baby formula? Here? Finally the dude comes over Ben. Let's just say he doesn't seem like
he's impressed with all the football fans there. He's got a pissy attitude. And he tells Rich, you know what you can order from right here, points to the center of the table and it's one of those stupid barcodes.
Oh yeah, they're very popular during the COVID time.
Yes, yeah, that'll be quicker, and he walks away rudely wonderful, all right. Rich takes his cell phone scans it, opens up the menu, pressed selecting the wings, but then he gets to the alcohol because he wants an alcoholic beverage, and it has him trying to piece meal together his moscow mule. He can't figure out how to make the drink the way he wants to, and he says, what the fuck? Am I a digital bartender? He gets up out of his chair and he goes and he finds
the waiter. The guy finally comes back over to us. He takes out his pad in his pen, and he's pissed. He's pissed like he does not want to take our order, like he's doing some kind of huge favor.
You're in the danger zone at this point, because this is going to lead to some kind of foreign objects in your meal.
I'm at this point, we're not even thinking about that. We're thinking, man, we're going to have to find a new spot to come watch football after our radio show because that's.
So convenient, man, I mean, and have that direct line to the football guys. Remember that commercial back in the day.
That's right, Well, we used to the one option. The other option we used to have was right across the street from our studios. Yeah, public school, right, Yeah, and have you seen what happened to that place?
I see the sign's still up, but they're not around.
Yeah.
There's one other sign. It's a big one. It says four lease.
Yeah, there's nothing. I'm mean in Ventura Boulevard. There's a bunch of restaurants, but it's a pain in the ass because of parking in the traffic to go anywhere quickly.
It took another half hour for the food to come out. So now the game is starting. The second quarter. We still don't have anything in front of us except water.
You could hit the cheesecake factory, which is there, but that's not a really good bar setup.
For Yeah, it's like a little it's like one of those old school little bar TVs.
Yeah, they have good appetizers, but it's not to watch the game. You might as well just watch on your phone.
Yeah, we left. We just got a couple quarters of wings. We still had great conversation and fun as a radio show hanging out there, but we bailed at halftime and had way better service in our own kitchens and back on our TV screens in the living room for what turned out to be a pretty exciting second half of that football game.
Oh yeah, you know it was. The opener was great.
Did COVID just officially slam the door on ever really truly getting good customer service ever? Again?
Yeah, it certainly seems like it. And it's not like that you're paying more, certainly here in California, you're paying more, much more for food, and yet you're not even getting like the normal. And it's when you were telling me the Target story about the customer service there, I thought you were going to tell me, Hey, I got the product, and then I couldn't check out because there was a line fifty people deep at the checkout thing and the
self checkout was closed. I've seen at Walmart, oh yeah, because everyone kept stealing all these animals kept stealing stuff from the stores at the self checkout, so they put the kebash on that they limit how much you can do, and then they don't hire enough people to work the checkout stand, so there's these massive lines and people end up leaving shopping carts full of stuff because they don't want to spend an hour forty five minutes in line waiting for someone to come over.
You're exactly right. At our Target, there's always a huge line for the couple of open do it yourself kiosks, and then the couple of checkers that they do have working. Those people have huge filled carts waiting their turn to have a real human and help them, and that line is big. So as I walked out with my birds blazing, I noticed both lines were really long, so I definitely avoided that and I just I went to Whole Foods and got what I needed, you know, and Target can
kiss my ass. Now, I don't think I'm gonna go back there for a while.
Yeah, It's it's like we say in radio, it's hard to get people to listen, and then when you get them, you don't want to lose them, right, you want to keep the audience that you have. Well, if you're in a realtail store, it's like if your target, don't you, I know they're not trying to suck, But if somebody like you gets or I get turned off by the customer service, I'm not going to go back. I might never go back.
God bless truly the paper boys, security guards and threat.
Drivers pressing off. We had the Beach Daily double big heat wave, as you referenced here in this podcast, Danny, in southern California temperatures.
Did you feel like you were staying in a furnace?
It was brutal man I even doing the overnight show, I pulled up it was like ninety one degrees late at night in the Oaks in Sherman Oaks. It was nuts. And have been doing stuff during the day going around it's ridiculous. But so we had this big heat wave. It's still going on this weekend. It's not going to end till next week. So the other day my wife's like, hey, let's she was throwing a party, big party there, beach party. Not for me, not for me. She planned the whole
thing out. She got up at nine am on the weekend something that is against my religion and there's no way I'm going to do that. So she goes out to the beach to set everything up. She had me work like Femi from Minnesota, the uber eat driver. She's like, all right, when you get up, I want you to get some food come down to the beach. And I'm like, all right, I could do that, you know why not? So I went to the Costco. I ordered some pies at costcar four pies, sot her and moved. Get the pies.
I head to the beach. So I get down the beach and I'm not surprised by this because it's a heat wave. So I turn where I need to go to the beach and I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to hit the beach daily double. The first part of it was gridlock, absolute gridlock, bumper to bumper to bumper, which is one of the reasons I don't go to the beach as much as I had. For a couple of years. I went to the beach a lot, but it's just I don't want to deal
with im typical. Oh, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
So I go down there.
I'm like, well, I have the pies, I have to go there. So I had this gridlock. I get to the beach parking lot where I'm supposed to drop off, you know, drop off the pies and hang out and be social and all that. So the parking lot is jam, but not just jam. It's now closed. No new cars are allowed, can't park there. So this was the first leg of the situation. I got these pies, I got a you know, I'm not gonna eat four pizzas. I
don't know. He's not even for me. I'm fasting. So there's a security beach security guy, not a cop, not not formal security. I don't even know what the guy's title was. But he's standing out there futsing around. And so there's a line of cars and everyone stopped. They won't let anyone in the parking lot. Now, this is on the top of a hill. The parking for the beach is down the hill, so they close the way to get down there. It's crazy. So finally I get
up to the guy and window goes down. He's like, hey, I can't I can't let you in. I said, well, it's just a I got the pies. You know, why don't I just drop him off and then I'll leave Because there's no parking, there's a drop off spot. So he says, hold on a second, and then the second leg of the parlay, the dude rabs his rapid radio to communicate down to the parking lot down the hill to let them know that I was coming down there to drop off the pies to not allow me to park. Right.
It really was a rapid radio.
It was a rapid radio, and that's I smiled. I was like, I you know many times I've read that rapid radio commercial on the shoah for business owners exactly. And by the way, this is not a paid commercial. No one told me to say this. I just observed this out in the wild, you know. I was really cool to see. And that's a part right near the ocean. The cell reception is terrible, so it makes sense they would have rapid radios because I can't even use my
phone at that beach. There's no cell reception for what they shut it off. I don't know what they do. So the security dude, he wouldn't let me park. But I went home and watched college football, cranked up the air conditioning and I had to find I watched them baseball and I was fine. I was like, I was all right. So that was my my beach parlay all day daily, you know, double whatever it was.
But we'll have you were like an Uber eats driver.
Yeah pretty much. Yeah, that was about it. I'm going to push back the international Man of Mystery and even the foody Well, I don't think we're doing footy fun this week. How about I'll do the Idium of the Week tomorrow? Does that makes sense? I think we're good for today. All right, So I'll go a little tell. I'll try to remember that international Amoan of Mystery. If I remember, great, If not, you'll can email me and
say you moron, what's wrong with you? And I did have an Idiom of the week, and we've got the mail bag. Anything you want to promote Danny on a Saturday.
No, this is a day of producing this fine podcast and then watching some college football.
College football all day, Lolly and I will be watching Benny Versus the Penny.
Oh, I watched it last week?
All right?
Was it? I like the love you gave to Gardner Minshew.
Yeah I did. I smooched all over Gardner Mitshew, I did for sure. And your Raiders in town tomorrow.
Yes, they're home away from home. According to vivid Seats, sixty four percent Raider fans.
Okay, that is tomorrow. We'll have a mail bag and the other stories we didn't get to today. Have a wonderful rest of your Saturday. Remember you got Benny Versus the Penny today all day today and then tomorrow until one o'clock Eastern and then that's it. They're going to kill the show for the week. So if you want to watch it, you got to act or you're losing it. And we will talk to you next time.
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