Kutbooms.
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 to clearing House of hot takes, break free for something Special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny G Radio and a Happy Saturday.
The fifteenth day.
Of February, the day after Valentine's There was Valentine's Day weekend, right, so I don't know if you survived or not. You're here, you're listening, whether it's early or whenever you listen. We're recording this early on Saturday morning, but we are here hanging out with you on the Fifth Hour, myself, Danny G on assignment today. It must be the Valentine's Day thing, but he is scheduled to join us at some point, hopefully tomorrow. Because I don't think he's going to be
on this podcast. You're stuck with me, but Danny will be producing this podcast. Should be with us tomorrow for the mail bag. And normally we start out by praising some dope holiday. Really not anything stands out today on the dopey holiday thing. The only thing that kind of got my attention this is more because my brother lives there. It is National Wisconsin Day today, and we have some regular p ones that listen to the show, whether it's live the Green Bay Gobbler for example, comes to mind,
or we have podcast listeners, guys that email. We have some email guys from Milwaukee. We have some email guys from Wisconsin as well, from all over Wisconsin. Brandon, for example, sends emails so often, so listen, We're on in Wisconsin.
It is National Wisconsin Day.
So I thought, all right, let mean, I really did this to kind of send something to my brother because he lives in Appleton, my young brother and I don't talk to them that often, but I think of Wisconsin, you think of cheese, and you think of beer, and yeah, so I cooked up some fun facts about the state of Wisconsin. And these mayor may not be true. These mayor may not be true, but I believe them to be true. I believe them to be true. So ten
thousand BC. They asked to me. Now, how the hell they know this?
I don't know.
Ten thousand BC. The Paleo Indians the first known inhabitants in Wisconsin. Now, I would argue that dinosaurs like we lived there way before the Indians got there. But they're claiming that was the beginning of humans in the.
State of Wisconsin.
And Wisconsin became US territory or I guess it was the Wisconsin Territory created by an Act of Congress in eighteen thirty six and became a state officially a state part of.
The Union in eighteen forty eight.
It's been a minute since Wisconsin's been part of the US. We stopped making states with Hawaii and Alaska.
That was it. We don't need anymore, I guess.
Sounds like President Trump, though's gung ho to get a couple more states.
He wants to have some more states, Greenland and wherever. Who knows.
Anyway, it's the National Wisconsin Date's Fun Fun Facts about Wisconsin.
Fun facts about Wisconsin. Let's see what do I have?
I have Wisconsin. Now, I did not know this. By the way, it is known as the Badger's state. I knew that, right, Wisconsin Badgers, the Big ten team there in Wisconsin. But did you know it is not called the Badger State because of the animal. I always thought, well, Wisconsin's mascot's a badger, and that's the badgerer animal, but
no turns out. In the early days of Wisconsin the Badger State, the nickname a just goes back to the eighteen hundreds refers to the lead or the lead rather lead miners who used to travel and dig the tunnels and they would stay warm and sleep and all that. They were the Badgers, the lead, the lead group. And yeah, well I know that Harley Davidson's from Wisconsin. Uh, you know, they're not as popular as they used to be. When I was younger, Harley Davidson was like the end all
be all. I don't think they're doing as well anymore. And the first ever ice cream Sunday we can thank because of the Twin Rivers Soda Shop. Some guy named George George George George George George of Twin Rivers. Yeah, at the Twin River Soda Shop. He asked in that soda shop for a dish of ice cream and sauces on a random Sunday, And that was the point of conception for the ice cream Sunday. So I'll send some of those over to my my brother. Today's National Wisconsin Day. Very very exciting.
Indeed. Now in this podcast we have what do we have?
We have the signs you have a work force problem, signs you have a workforce problem.
We'll get to that.
No up charge here, something that I'll likely get ripped for by you idiots and worse than the chiefs, if that's possible, worse than the chiefs.
So we'll have that.
And I actually wanted to start with the phrase of the week because I did not get to it on the Friday podcast. So the phrase all the work, oh here is the phrase of the week. The phrase of the week is with a grain of salt. Now there's a couple of ways to say this. You can say with a grain of salt, you can say with a pinch of salt. I use this on a semi regular basis.
This is part of my lexicon, and it actually comes from a Latin phrase which translates and I'm not going to try to speak Latin x nay on the Latina.
That's all the Latin I know.
Although there's a fair amount of words that we use that are Latin, but we know how to use them.
But anyway, get to the point.
So with a grain of salt or a grain of salt translates the Latin phrase with a grain of salt or with a grain of wit, the phrases used to indicate that something should be taken with skepticism or reservation. The phrase is thought to originate it and be written around seventy seven a d.
That's been a while, seventy seven a d.
And in the book Plenty Plenty the Elder's Natural Historia, that was the name of the book. But in the book Penny described an antidote for poison that included a grain of salt, and that phrase that was taken from seventy seven AD. In this random book the phrase was adapted by English writers and oh there we go. And in Britain the phrase is used with a pinch of salt. In in America it's with a grain of salt. So obviously again you're you know, you don't believe it. You're like,
that's not really true. And they're lying to us there, they're lying to us. Take it with a grain of salt. Now it is NBA all Star Weekend. Last night they had this for gazy rookie thing with run TMC and Team C. They got it done over Team T and you had the Golden State war influence.
So of course these are the Warriors.
When I was a kid, when they had Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullen and they were known as run TMC. It was an exciting team. It's fun team that was back in the late eighties. I think Sleepy Floyd was still part of that team. Good name anyway, they used that in the Rising Stars Challenge.
I watched about two minutes of this. I'm not gonna lie and on that. I'm good. I'm all right.
Uh yeah, Team T, Team M and Team C alongside the g League Crew, which was coached by Jeremy Lynn.
Yeah, this is not for me. This is not for me.
I did see after it all ended that Steph Castle of your San Antonio Spurs was the MVP. So congratulations on ringing the Rising Stars Towns. I gotta tell you, I didn't see a lot of Rising Stars the two minutes I watched. Maybe I missed the Rising Stars. I should have kept watching, right, I should have kept watching. I did see Dalton connect play a little bit and the.
Lakers tried to trade him.
But he's a rising star. Why would you trade a rising star? I don't understand. I have no idea. Now I did, I didn't want to mention that. I tease this and the story. This is one of those stories every once in a while, something happens on a Friday or Saturday where I was like, man, I would really love to do a monologue on that, and I'm not going to do it here because we try to avoid all sporty all the time. But there's something that I saw that my eyeballs popped out of my head a
little bit when I saw it. Is that you gotta be joking, like this gotta be satire. This is something like Sports Talk Barry my guy who I've had on this podcast, or butt Crack Sports, or Babylon B came up with. Did you see that the NBA and the Players Association holding meetings with the All Star players, the top players in basketball, like the top guys, biggest names in the sport ahead of the All Star Game, which is tomorrow, and they were essentially evangelizing that it's very
important to play hard for the fans. But then they tossed in and this is the most important part.
For the business.
For the business now, I would argue, I would argue, this is a sign that you have a workforce problem, that you as a business, something has gone sideways, something is off a little bit. You have people in your business that are so confident in their celebrity that they can rest all Star weekend.
They don't want to hammer away and put on a show.
And it's man, it's something that is across all sports. It has infected all of the sports. Drastic times require drastic measures. So you know something's drastic when the commissioner and the union are meeting with the players to say, hey, boys, you gotta kind of give us a little bit effort. You got to get off the inner tube and stop floating on on the lazy river. There they punch the
clock guy mail it in and just coasting along. And in all those words, the NFL players did the same thing, right, They cut corner. They didn't want to tackle boo hoo hoo. And so the nfls has got rid of it. And the Pro Bowl is like now it's like a water balloon toss tic tac toe.
It's like summer camp. The Pro Bowl. I mean this used to be an event.
Now, the Pro Bowl was never great in football, but there was a point where guys actually hit. There's a certain safety that died way too young for the old Washington Redskins that laid out a punter in one of the great moments in Pro Bowl history. But across all of sports, the temperature for these All Star events is lukewarm.
I rotate nuts.
I have a couple of friends of mine that have and worked in that professional sports world for a long time, and they were explaining me the whole point of the All Star Game was to promote the business.
And all these sports leagues.
When they started, they weren't they weren't that well publicized, they weren't broadcast everywhere, and so you didn't have the internet obviously in the early days. And so in order to have an event where you could see everybody like, it's all the great it's an appetizer of all the greatest things you have to offer.
That's the All Star Game.
But now everyone can see anything anytime they want, and the players are so confident and so cocky, and they lack that toughness and that Frida and I often talk about the Code of the West, right, the Code of the West, which I have tried to model as much of it as I can. The main thing is to take pride in your work and always finish what you start, do what has to be done.
Those are all parts of the Code of the West.
And that doesn't exist when you're a pro bouncy ball player and you just want to go and party at the All Star Game.
And I get it, it's fun, you know, you have a good time. Why not.
You don't want to be bothered by having to play hard in the game, so you play grab ass on the court. But Adam Silver seems to think there'll be some kind of renaissance and we'll see tomorrow in the All Star Game. I know the three point shootout and the Dunk Contest, which is really the Witness Protection Program edition of the Dunk Contests that they continue to tweak and try to modify. And I don't even know the All Star Game thing. I got you have multiple teams
in that dough Yeah, let me explain something. If you need someone to explain the instructions to you, and you're a die hard fan to watch a sporting event, something is not right there. I know you're trying to recalibrate this thing, right, You're trying to get some excitement back in the All Star Game. But if the customer needs someone to explain what is going on because you've got a business filled with players that just don't have the intestinal fortitude to play hard, I mean that is a
tough sell. That it's hard enough to watch the All Star Game. I mean, I'll probably watch some of it because I've got a radio show to do and I'm looking for content. But that is I would have done a full monolog I'm not in two monologues if there was a show on Friday night into Saturday. Here about that, man, that is just insane. Yes, we're begging you, please please come on buy in to the Dogma, buy in.
We need you. Wow. Anyway, I'm moving on from that, So about it.
I'm gonna most likely get killed for this, but I'll tell you what happened. So Valentine's Day was yesterday and it was rather a quiet been married for a few years now and the wife wasn't feeling great. I'm still getting over this. The sniffles got a lot of phlegm. I'm the King of all phlem right now. So we were like, all right, Valentine's Days for the amateurs, right there. Valentine's Day for the people that are new and new relationships.
You're dating, you're trying to impress your significant other, the whole thing.
But we're pros.
It's kind of like New Year's Eve is for the amateurs. If you're a real hard alcoholic, you don't need to go out in New Year's Eve because that's for the amateurs. So we thought about Valentine's Day's kind of same thing. And I've never been a big Valentine's Day guy anyway. Now Lorraina the other night, she was all fired up, but the wife and I were like, listen, we have to work a lot.
We don't see each other much during the week. I'm running all over the place.
We had the last TV show which you can still watch, Benny Versus the Penny on Peacock check that out.
Help us out.
So anyway, we were like, I will stay home, and I was like, okay, I'll make pizza. We'll make it from scratch. We had done this in the past, we have pizza time and all that. And then I had this light bulb go off in my head because I was reading some stories. I think I mentioned this on a previous edition of this podcast, but I read that a bunch of these pizza chains were up charging people for Valentine's Day, and not just pizza places. But the story is about pizza because I'm I'm gonna tell you
I made pizza last night. But it was like I read that. I think it was Papa John's California Pizza Kitchen. There were some pizza hut I think was I think that was a big one. Anyway, they were like, all right, listen, if you it's limited time, limited time, you know, go to a pizza hut, you can get a heart shaped pizza for Valentine's Day. And so they were like charge an extra for that, and oh, I mean it's the same dough.
You just shaped the dough. And I was like, what's going on with that? So I got this, you know, you know what up my I was, I'll do that, why not? You know? So I did.
I made a heart shaped pizza for the wife on Valentine's Day and I have some photo.
Now she was not feeling well.
She was under the weather and she's still obviously day after so she's still in the other she refused. She said she was not photo ready, so no photos of her. But I took some photos. I was very proud of my work here, so I took some photos. It's not a perfect heart, but I saved the upcharge. There was no up charge. And I not only made the Valentine's Day pizza, we made it from scratch. I'm talking you know,
the flour, the yeast, all that, the sugar. The I had a little honey and that was good that I mean that now on honey. I had a little, just a teaspoon of honey, and it adds a little twist to it. I put some corn meal under the crust. That's pretty solid, pretty solid. But I made some garlic butter parmersan twist. Now this is a ripoff of another very expensive food item and I am a big fan of, and that would be the garlic parmersan twist from Roundtable,
which is wonderful, absolutely great. And so I found years ago how to make those a pretty good hybrid version of that counterfeit version for a lot less. So once I converted to that, I do that for big events. I do that for big events, and I try to spread the gospel. Let's say, you know, it's one of my hobbies on the weekends, futsing around in the kitchen.
But it doesn't always go well. We go on the hot tub time machine now and we head back back, back, back, back back back, all the way back to Super Bowl Sunday and one of the great food tragedies of our time. Now, as I said, I like to futs around in the kitchen, something I've started.
Doing, probably doing it for man, it's been a few years.
It's not brand new I've been I started doing the baking stuff, and now I've moved on to pizza.
And it's pretty much just food. I like, I know how to make.
It's food, I like, you know, it's cheese, steak, it's burgers, it's it's a pizza, you know, those kind of thing chicken fingers, you know, which may annoy you. I'm not like a total foodie. I'm not making the foo foo food. No, I'm making stuff I want. And that's it, right, And so that's what most people woul do, right, you make stuff you like, you know, and all so Super Bowl Sunday, big day, a big day, fired up Chiefs and Eagles, last last Sunday, and I was like, I'm gonna break my diet.
I am gonna go big.
I am going to go big, big big big big big big big big big big big big big big big big big. In fact, I want to be a cartoon character. I would like to be Porky Pig from Looney Tunes, right, And that's what I want. I want to be Porky pick. I want to overeat so much that I flash back to my younger.
Days and overdo it, you know.
I mean, I want to be stuffed to the gills, but I want good food. I want people to look at me and say, that's a big fat cub of go.
That's what I want. I want to be compared to Joey Chestney.
Now keep in mind, I watched the game in solitude, and I'm by myself because I got to pay attention to what's going.
On and all that.
So anyway, I'm settling up and on Saturday, the day before the Super Bowl, I'm like, Okay, I'm planning my menu. Eagles are in. I picked the Chiefs that didn't go so well, but I'm gonna have I'm gonna have a Philly cheese steak because that's the perfect meal. The Eagles are in there, it's Philadelphia, why not. And I'll have some pretzels. Pretzel bites is my appetizer. I'll have some ice cream for dessert and it'll be really good. I'll mixing some snacks and that's gonna be a wonderful Super
Bowl for me. So I go to the store to buy there's a certain type of bread. Now I blame the great Tony Bruno. It's an outrage because Tony schooled me when Tony worked at our shop at Fox. Tony Bruno the greatest sports talk radio host in my lifetime. But Tony Bruno's like, hey, you know, he explained to me, this is what you need. No cheese whiz, you got to have provolone. And then he talked about the bread, certain type of bread. You gotta have these rolls from Philadelphia.
So the local store where I live out in the north Woods, there's a store, only one store that sells that bread.
HOGI rolls, and they're authentic.
They're the same ones that are used in Philadelphi, and I've only used those for years. When I make a cheese steak, a cheese steak Sammy, so I have some rabbi ready to go. I had the Provolone cheese, no cheese wizz Provolone cheese.
I went to buy the bread. They're out of it, right, So then I'm like, oh, man, maybe there's some other store. So I looked it up.
In like two towns over, there's another store that's supposed to have the bread. So I get them the malamobile and I zoom over to the other part of the town.
I'm like, all right, I'll go get the bread. They don't have the bread.
They don't have the bread, so now I'm like, well, I don't want to drive to a third store. So I was like, all right, as orchas. I love cheese steak. I got to have this bread. Apparently I can't eat it without it, because Tony Brune will be upset, even though he has no idea I'm doing this. So it's all right, I'll scratch that. I'll make pizza. That's what I'll do. How can you f up a pizza? Maybe I'll make a cheese steak pizza. I'll put the ribbi on there, I'll put some onions, a belt pepper and
make a cheese steak pizza. That's the ticket. So I want to make it from scratch. So I go and I get the yeast and the water and everything, the sugar, the salt, all that stuff. Put it all together, and it's supposed to rise. So I put it in, put a towel over it, follow the instructions, walk away, And about an hour or so before the Super Bowl, I went to check the dough because you got to knead the dough a little bit. So I went to check the dough, and the damn dough had not risen.
He did not. This was not this was not an Eastern situation. Nothing had risen.
So I was like, oh crap, I must have ft up the water temperature. When you combine the yeast with the water and the sugar and the salt and all it, the water temperature has to be one hundred to one hundred and ten.
So it was either.
Too cold or too hot. And I was tired when I put it together, so I didn't know which one. So then I'm like, all right. I was in a hurry. The game's closing in It's going to take a long time for this dough to get ready. So I threw together some more dough. And I was in a hurry, like I said, because I was trying to plan everything
out time wise. So i'd have the food around halftime, and I put the dough in and I put a towel on it, and I came back around the time I needed to knead the dough and this was flat. This was like a piece of paper. And I was like, oh crap, I'm ft is it? And this is going worse. At the time, the Chiefs were down I think twenty four to nothing at af time, and I was like, this is worse than the.
Chiefs, Like, how is that possible?
How is it possible that this is worse than the my performance worse than the Chiefs?
It was wild, and so I was right. I couldn't make it.
And now I've been told I talked to a few of my friends who are in the culinary world. They told me that what I need to do now and the next time the dough doesn't rise, it's probably some of you with the water or oil. So add some oil to it, add some water, knead it a little bit, and then it'll rise. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know that at the time. So I was f instead of having this feast of feast, instead of needing to go to a fat farm, and
and all that I was not. I was not the guy that picked out scarf down all the food over indulge. Was not that guy did not wolf down a ton of food. I made like two cheese casadillas, and I had a couple of pretzel bites which I had gotten.
So I had those, and that's it. That's that's all I had.
That's h and I some peanuts, I think, if I remember correctly. But that was my super Bowl. So I fd up. Bad job by me. And that means next year, assuming I'm not at the super Bowl, which likely won't happen, But next year, I will plan I will plan ahead, and I will make sure that my pizza is on point, make sure my pizza is on point.
I will work on that. I did want to mention this too.
I saw this story yesterday that caught my attention, and in invahl the chiefs.
I love the excuses the chiefs.
It wasn't their day. They sucked at a time you cannot suck. And as I often have preached from my bully pulpit, that the only thing that matters. And I spent a lot of time handicapping games, but the only thing that matters is who is better in that moment, who does better in that moment under the immense pressure. And as Dick Stockton taught me, stats tell you what has happened, not what's going to happen. And the Eagles were clearly dominant. And now there's a story coming out
the Chiefs suffered from super Bowl fatigue. Let me get my world's smallest violent out. I can play that.
Oh boo hoo. Who the Chiefs?
They're in the super Bowl every year and they were just worn out.
From being in the super Bowl every year. Stop, what are we doing here?
Yeah, that story's making the rounds that Andy Reid or somebody who coaches. Maybe not Andy Reid, but somebody told some sports writer claim that told the media member who had asked him if going to the Super Bowl ever gets old, and he said it does.
So. Well, the good news is if.
They keep playing the way they did in the super Bowl, they do not have to worry about going back to the super Bowl.
They don't have to worry about going back to the super Bowl. So there you go. Wonderful wonderful, wonderful.
And what else did I see that caught my I saw the quote? Did you see the quote from Brian Cashman?
No, Okay, you'll get a kick out of this one.
So it is my belief that the Yankees and Dodgers are run pretty much exactly the same way from a day to day standpoint. You've got an army of dorks that are in the front off. Now, Brian Cashman has employed all of the nerds he can get, and in La Andrew Friedman has nerd army, So it's revenge of the nerds.
And then you've got the.
Manager who's just following the middle manager who's just following what those guys want, whatever the data indicates for that day. So Aaron Boone and Dave Roberts are pretty much the same. Dave Roberts I really liked him in that spot. I have fired Dave Roberts about six or seven times. At this point, I'm convinced Dave Roberts will manage the Dodgers
the rest of my life. That he's just going to be there forever and be like the all time wins guy in baseball history, and he's just going to manage there, he'll be seventy and he'll still be managing.
And then in New York you've got Aaron Boone.
Now, the way the Yankees played is a direct reflection of Aaron Boone. They got to the World Series and they had a total melt down. The relief, pitching melted down, the defense was terrific. They were fundamentally unsound, even though they got to the World Series, and the Yankees decided to retain Aaron Boone. A very Unyankee like thing of my younger days in my youth, because the Yankees would
fire managers all the time. In fact, they fired so many managers they brought back managers and it was a regular occurrence. So I saw this quote yesterday from Brian Cashman who said that if Aaron Boone had gotten into free agency, if the Yankees have said bye bye and let him go, he says, quote, if he wasn't the Yankee manager, it would have been a feeding frenzy for him to be a manager that's coveted elsewhere. Objectively, Cashman said, that's how I.
See it.
Yeah, well, Brian, you see a lot of things I don't see because I look at Boonie the Yankees have made the postseason six of the seven years he's been there, but they have not won a World Series, which is supposed to be the bar for the New York Yankees. You're not judged by making the playoffs. You're judged by winning the World Series. And they've had some really good teams, and Aaron boot should should have paid a price. I would have fired him. I would have fired him, but
you know, he's just a puppet. So I understand why they kept him. Why Dave Roberts continues on and all that stuff. But the decision in Game one when he put Nestor Cortes in their nasty nest Cortes, now I love it as a Dodger fan. Cortes hadn't pitched in September and then gave up that majestic one of the great moments in Dodger history, a walk off Grand Slam to Freddie Freeman in Game one of the World Series.
And then, of course, the defensive meltdown in Game five in the Bronx when they had a five to nothing lead and the great Garrett Cole could not be troubled in the World Series to hustle the cover first base, so good, so good. Oh, and I didn't even mention the Eagle parade, which was on Friday, and I saw good old Howie Roseman.
What a douche. Do you see?
He got hit in the forehead with a beer bottle or can or something like that. So he had this big scar on his forehead. And he gets up there and he's speaking, holding up the Lombardi Trophy at the parade in the rally in Philadelphia, and he said.
I bleed for this city. Does how he know he's not playing for the Eagles? Does he understand that I bleed? What a heart O, what a harder? All right, we'll get out on that.
What do we get the dunk contest and the three point shootout tonight?
Oh?
Eve, I don't know anyone in the dunk contest that is bad.
I'm not into it.
A three point contest, I like, but that's just like watching a regular season NBA game, My god.
Anyway, all right, we'll get out on that.
Have a wonderful rest of your Saturday, enjoy the day to day, and we'll have the mail bag. Whether Danny joins us or not, we will have the mail bag on Sunday. Your questions are answers nothing like ask Ben.
Nothing like ask Ben. Anyway, I have a wonderful day and thank you.
We'll talk to you next time later. Skater, asta pasta?
Is that how you do it, Danny?
That's right, that's how you do it right, Asta pasta, Now that's it, My Felicia