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 sol fastion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter 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 Mahler starts right now in.
The air everywhere.
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g Radio celebrating World Pasta Day as we broadcast from the remote studio somewhere in the bowels of the iHeartMedia Building, unless it's not. As we're yapping away here celebrating pasta, which has been around for five since five thousand BC and came to America. We've talked about this before in the podcast because I think we've been on during World
Pasta Day in the past. But President Jefferson was in Perie back in the day and somebody served him some pasta. He called it macaroni. He loved it so much. How much did he love it? He brought back a ton of it and He's like, I got to bring that to America.
I mean, I love this macarona.
Of course it might not have actually been what we call macaroni today, but he returned with a couple of cases of this stuff, and then that helped spread the joy of pasta. The big bumpety bump in mass production of pasta was oh, you know the rest. Campbell's Soup Company invented the canned pasta known as Spaghettio's, Oh Spaghettio,
and that became a big deal. Now as a kid, it was in my rotation, and they determined the people that may the pasta determined that kids could eat the O shape rings without making a mess, and that was bull crap. I was able to make a mess. My mom's not here, but she would tell you she was still around that I did make make a mess. Some of the other ideas when they were making Spaghettio's, they were like, well, let's make a little cowboys or you know, coo cowboys.
And Indians racist. Well, they would have had to cancel Campbells if they had done that.
They thought about maybe spacemen or stars, or shapes of footballs and baseballs, but they determined that the oh was good and it rhymes spaghetti Oh kind of flows and the whole thing. And then a few years after Campbells came around the chain restaurant, the Old Spaghetti Factory opened its first location in Portland and they're still around.
There's still a few in my area.
So it is World pasta day celebrate appropriately on this podcast, The Fifth Hour with Me and Danny g on this Saturday, we've got in honor of National Past today we have the Spaghetti Western, a story that has never before been told. What you're about to hear the first time ever. This story will be told on any microphone anywhere. And also the odd ball Corner, which is our corner. It's our corner,
is what it is? Yes, all right, so listen. There is a moment somewhere between the second Margarita and the fourth rendition in your head of friends in low places, when life stops pretending to be complicated, right, and you just kind of tip your hat and you say, how do partner and let the absurdity trot on through. So that moment happened again recently in my life this past weekend,
a story that I've saved for this podcast. On the far edges of Los Angeles County, a little place called Norco, California, a town that has more saddles than Starbucks.
It does have a Starbucks, but it has more saddles.
They have wide things near the road, a little like dirt things to walk your horse. There's more livestock than Tesla's, which is odd in California. And the concept of an HOA a homeowner's association likely involves actual horses, a stampede of horses.
Now, I was not there as a gas bag. I was visiting.
I was there by marriage, as we have pointed out. And you know this if you're also married. That is how these things work. When you say I do and you sign the contract. At some point in the journey of life, you find yourself in a newly purchased cowboy hat, standing next to three goats, a fluffy cow named Jet and timing a mechanical bull that people are riding on like a man auditioning for some kind of endorsement deal with a stopwatch company. We were there for my my
wife's longtime co workers fiftieth birthday bash. Nice Woman, Good House. It was her home Western theme. It was a fandego, as they said in the Old West. A shindig, a real gudea up and go kind of party, and so it's kind of walking through this. So I don't own cowboy boots. I have very big feet. I don't own cowboy boots. I don't own spurs. I have watched the San Antonio Spurs play, but I don't own spurs. However, I do own what can only be described as a
Canadian tuxedo. We've talked about this in the past, a full denim ensemble acquired on my somewhat recent trip to Vancouver. We talked about yesterday I did this love note to Toronto, but I talked about Canada because the Dodgers and Blue Jays playing, and I mentioned Nico and here we are again. I got that when we went to Vancouver, the Canadian tuxedo, when Nico rolled out the red carpet, and you know, the red carpet in Canada is covered in maple syrup
and hospitality. But that outfit, I didn't think I'd ever wear it again. I thought, well, this is the only time I'm in Canada, I'm gonna wear the Canadian tuxedo.
And I had the bolo tie, the whole thing, and I said, oh no, I want to do it.
And it's the kind of an outfit that makes you feel like an extra and a B list spaghetti western, right, the kind that ends up face down in a saloon after the first scene that was me okay in the spaghetti western on World pasta Day.
So I put on the tuxedo.
I topped it with the authentic cowboy hat which still had the label on it, and just like that, poof, I was no longer Benny from Benny versus the Penny and the radio. No no no, I had a nickname change. I was Benny Buckeroo Bennie Buckero, a man who, in theory could lasso a calf, in reality could barely lasso the TV remote control. That's just the reality. So Benny Bucco Buckaroo or Buckeroo, Benny, whatever you want to call me. So every true great party eventually involves a bad idea.
I'm not a big party guys, you know, I'm an introvert. I try to limit it to mallard meet and greets, and that's for bonding.
With you, the listener.
So I just don't go to too many parties. But I do know from the times I've been to parties that normally there's a bad idea that becomes a good thing. So some involve trampolines, some involve karaoke. This one involved a mechanical bull, the great equalizer of bravado and machismo and balance.
Now, I last was at a bar.
There's a place and I don't even know it's still there on Sunset in Hollywood. I used to go to when I was younger, and they had a mechanical bull and it was it was fun. I mean, most of the people were there just to look at the hot girls that would go on the mechanical bull and go flying off the mechanical bull. But the mechanical bulls are a fascinating invention. They were first introduced in the nineteen thirties. Right the nineteen thirties. I thought, that's almost one hundred
years at an amusement park in New Jersey. And how do I know that? Because I was like, I was sitting there at this thing, and I was like, I have mechanical bulls. I wonder how long they've been around. So I guess since I started a Jersey, which I guess means the original version likely tossed men in three piece suits and women in floral dresses into the dirt
around Atlantic City. But the true pop culture coronation, as I understand it, came in nineteen eighty when Urban Cowboy turned this contraption at Gilly's Bar into a cinematic icon, and that was John Travolta. Sissy Spacek was in that movie Legends of that Era. However, the real star was this rotating, bucking, ridiculous piece of machinery that has spent the last four decades separating cowboys or fake cowboys from their dignity.
Now, yours truly did not ride the ball.
I'd like to alert all the podcast affiliates there are none that I did not ride the bull. So this was not out of fear, well, not only out of fear. My lovely wife, knowing full well that I could trip over a cordless phone, benched me pre eminently, your klutz, You're gonna hurt yourself. I'm not spending the night in the er that kind of stuff. You know, need your healthy now. She also announced that she wasn't going to ride the bull either. She let me know right away,
I am not planning on riding the bull. But here's the funny thing about declarations made before a few margaritas at a party filled with friends. There's this thing called peer pressure. You mix that with alcohol, and by the end of the night, my wife had gone on the mechanical bul not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, how about six rides later, and you could nickname her Calamity Jane reincarnated, clinging to the bull like
a rodeo legend. If mechanical bull riding ever made the Olympics, and why not? They have all these other food, gazy things in the My wife is bringing home the gold and she'll wrap herself in the flag. It's gonna be great. It canna win a gold medal. So there, I was not riding the bull, but I was at the party and I was socializing.
And I had my.
Apple watch trapped on like some futuristic sheriff badge in the Old West, Like what is that thing? And my job I didn't know this when I showed up to the party. My job was the timer. I was timing each bull ride fifteen seconds here, thirty seconds here, one minute there.
The crowd would go wild.
Is if someone was storming Normandy with a pair of boots and a stubborn spring. So the mechanical bull riding is an underrated metaphor for adulthood, like nobody actually looks very good doing it.
You can't look graceful on a bull.
You're flailing away, you're trying to grip, you're making weird faces, you know, and people are recording it with their phones to use against you at future points in time. And everyone's getting thrown off. No one survives the bull. Everyone gets thrown off, and in many ways that's life. You hold on you get tossed around in life, and if you're lucky, someone's laughing with you and not at you by the time it's all over. And there was something
almost cinematic about Norco. I haven't spent much time there. It's just want to be clear, it's not la as I said. There's no skyline, there's no bums over there, there's no trash. It's just different. It's a California where people have space. There's goats, there's pigs, there's turkeys, there's chickens. The whole thing a fluffy cow named Jet that was the birthday gift to my wife's friend. Beautiful black, fluffy cow that seemed to be a little scared of all
the attention the cow was getting. Jet was running around its little cage there, and he was the star though. Jet was the star of the livestock show. And it reminded me that some people's daily existence is so different than mine. It's like a petting zo These people live in like a petting zoo. Mine involves a microphone and my bulldog named Moxie, who, by the way, I'm gonna post some photos at some point today, so check out the social media pages for the show, the Facebook page
and the Instagram page. I'm gonna post some photos. And you gotta see this photo of Moxie, ourf who let's just say she put it on thick when I put on my cowboy costume to go to this event, and she really really nailed it. Listen that these people that live at this place, their morning involves like chicken feeds sunrises.
That's not my life. I go to bed when the sun comes up.
And there's a particular sound of mechanical bull makes when someone hits the ground around the bull, that thud, and then there's little laughter and the clapter, and then there's there's a groan and there's more laughter, and for this night, that was the soundtrack.
Like, that's what we got, right, We got these people say, I know there's people casually. These are my wife's friends. I know them casually. They're nice people. They're good, they're nice seeing.
Them, they always smile. They're nice to me. Even if they don't like me, they pretend to like me. And I imagine the next the next morning for these people was less laughter and more pharmacy grade ibuprofen. Like alcohol has a marvelous way of delaying pain, it does not have a marvelous way of canceling it.
But in that moment under.
The string lights, you know, the old Western themed the set up there, the cowboy hats, as the bull bucked, the turkeys gobbled off to the side, the chickens were doing their thing, and it just it was like the simplest, dumbest night.
It was fun, you know, the moment just kind of stuck there.
There people drinking margaritas, there was plenty of food. They had a taco guy there because you think Old West, you think tacos.
It was just good and anyway, maybe this was what we're we're all doing. Think about it.
As I was leaving and I was kind of like processing everything that happened, and I wrote a few.
Notes down as I was leaving this.
This party, and in some way writing a mechanical bull. We obviously didn't build it, it just showed up.
You rent it.
It's like a couple grand to rent. They didn't even can rent these things. Imagine the liability on that. And so I think, wow, we you know, we got this under control. And you know, trying to last just a few more seconds before gravity wins, and you want to impress everyone, and you cling to it and you wobble and wobble, wobble, wobble, and you laugh and people clap and cheer, and then people dust you off and somebody hand you a drink, and you.
Know that's it. Here you go.
You almost made it. You almost survive right right there. Congratulations, And if you're lucky, someone's there like me with an apple watch keeping time, not to measure how long you stayed on, but to remember, for a brief, ridiculous moment in time, we were both in the arena, and I was the man in the arena. I was the timekeeper in the arena, but I was in the arena. So
if you need a timekeeper. If you're planning on having a Western party, I will travel, I do weddings, I do bar mitzvah's, I do birthday parties obviously, and I do Western theme events. So saddle up, my friend. Life does not stop. It does not stop. It does not stop. Bucking the whole thing. I am Buckeroo, Benny or Benny the Buckeroo.
Now turning the.
Page on that, we had a great mitzvah that took place on the radio show this weekend.
I want to I want to share it with you. It happened the other day and I don't know if you were listening.
I think this goes way back to We debuted it on Monday into.
Tuesdays, so I guess it was early Tuesday. And this is one of those things.
There's moments when you do this job, when the universe gives you the thumbs up. It just does not the corporate memo. You're not allowed to talk about. That not the engagement metrics that are you must be in the twenty five to fifty four demo.
Got to be in the twenty five to fifty four demo. Wink wink.
Now I'm talking about the real thing, the out of nowhere, middle of the night, lightning in a bottle, kind of a sign from the gods, and it happens quite a bit. It happened again, a little audio care package sent from the Buckeye State. A man who is well known in the mal Ard Militia. One of the great songwriters. You think of the legends and the Malam Militia, he's right up there with Jay Scoop and Just Josh and all the others are Buddy and Richmond that have sent songs in.
We're talking about Ohio Al and Ohio Al. If you listen to this podcast, you know he has often featured here with the little vignettes that we use Ohio Al.
I don't know much about what.
Makes him working all about IIOWI often spends his nights in my head, futzing around in his garage with his guitar, and.
He's got all his toys.
He's got, you know, kind of a raspy voice at times, and he's got this supernatural understanding of a very particular, very strange community of radio listeners and callers.
Not listeners. The listeners are normal.
The callers are a little on the edge on the spectrum, as we like to say.
And so he sent in a song and I'm gonna play it.
I want to talk about it here first and set it up as a DJ one oh two point seven kiss f M or something like that. So I'm gonna play it, I promise you. And you guys have been say employed some of these songs. All right, we're gonna play this on the podcast, and we've got it cued up. This is not just any song. Okay, I'm gonna set this up and then you're gonna hear it and you'd be like, oh, that was.
You know, that's everything.
So this is a Doors knockoff that would make Jim Morris and sit up from wherever leather pants wearing poets go when they leave.
Us behind the pearly gates. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. Just the tune was people are Strange, which is perfect. I don't know if I said this on the air or not. Maybe I did.
I know that I was talking to some friends about the show and I think this was off.
The air, and they're like, well, what song sums up the show?
And I was like, oh, the Doors people are Strange and this is people are strange, but it's reimagined, repurposed, and rebranded into a malar militia anthem. It's catchy, it's clever. I think you'll agree, but you'll be the judge of that. It will become for my purposes the Halloween theme soundtrack of overnight sports talk radio, the oddball corner of the American media landscape, which is not mainstream because we're on at night. If we were on during the day, that
would be different. Not on six am to six pm. Those are mainstream shows, those of corporate shows.
We are the afterthought.
We are where insomniacs, the night shift workers, the degenerates, the dreamers, and we're there for things that go bump in the night when the goblins are out running around and their spaceships were on. So this was not just music. This was us and that's why I'm excited to play
it for you. Over the years, the Ben Malor Show has become less and less of a sports show and more and more of it's a radio program, but it's kind of more just a late night speak easy where the weird and wonderful show up in full technicolor, and the way each hour starts out Normally we start out with a Malard monologue, which is typically sporty, normally complaining about something that is ridiculous or ripping someone that lost
the game. And then we open up the phones in the B block and the B blocks about the calls, and then we have a game or something goofy. We'd be in we do in the C block. That's normally how the show goes. And you know the characters in the show. You got blind Scott from Boston, Hurricane who's in a Red Sox cap unless he's not because he doesn't know he's wearing. You got Marcella and Brooklyn with
his morning food picks, who thinks he's reinventing radio. My man Lucky Tony, who's been dumped more than anyone on the show the last couple of years. He was always got a jab at that hater of the show, David Veasse. You've got hollering James, whose nickname is as literal as a nickname cats. You've got Jet who fled Dick and Dayton weed Man who's the big star now with Asco weed Man, Mike the Leprechaun, obviously, the characters that work on the show behind the scenes.
You've got a rogue gallery.
There's some other names as well, but it's a Vaughtvillian act as what it is. It's like a midnight opera company, and I love it. I didn't start out trying to do this kind of show. It just kind of morphed into that in Ohio, al somehow, some way fit nearly all of those characters, the big stars on the mallad Militia.
Right now into the song that I'm about to.
Play, like a musical role call of your audio family that doesn't quite fit anywhere else, and you don't really want anyone to know about them. They're just for your late night alone time. And that's one of the cool things about people are strange. When Jim Morrison wrote it before I was Alive in the nineteen sixty nineteen sixty seven,
it wasn't about the trip. It was about being the stranger, being the one on the outside looking in, feeling like you're walking through the rain while the rest of the world dries off.
And when you don't know someone, people do give you very odd looks. I get more odd looks than anyone because I'm a very big guy.
I'm tall guy, and I'm intimidating to little people.
I rotate nuts.
Well.
Women always give strange looks, so they try not to look at you at all. But men in general also with me. Oh man, you're a big guy. I'm gon leave you alone. But it's the same energy that we get, you know, late at night, overnight, two in the morning, three in the morning, whatever it might be. The lights are out, the highways are empty. The only sound is some lunatic with a big mouth barking into a microphone in a darkened radio studio in Sherman Oaks talking about
Dave Roberts and his Shenanigans. It's that space for the misfits who couldn't get on in the daylight, wouldn't be a loud in polite society in the daylight, but have found a home together. I'm the general. You are in the malad militia. You're part of the darkness. We had our buddy, our box car guy, call up this week in Iowa and do the oath. But how there's an old line from this guy. I've used the line from
the man that shot Liberty Balance. But there's this guy named Tony Wilson who also gave a version of that quote, this is a myth making a guy behind the legendary factory records back in the day, and his quote, which is very similar to the man that shot Liberty Valance quote. If it's a choice between the truth and the legend, you print the legend, you go with the legend. And that's what happens on the Ben Mahler Show Overnight. It's been the secret sauce.
Of the show.
Right, legends have been born in our little world in the dead hours of the night. They say, nothing good happens after midnight unless you're on overnight sports radio. Nobody's fact checking Cowboy and windsor nobody's work shopping weed man's ramblings in a focus group.
It just happens.
They exist, They become part of the fabric of what this is.
And then, if you're lucky.
Somebody like Ohio I'll picks up a guitar and starts futzing around on his garage and next thing you know, we have a song, so we're about to play it. I did want to remind you to listen and watch Benny Versus the Penny. It's week eight, already Week eight in the NFL season. We would love to have you consume our product there Week eight of the NFL season, all the games, myself and Tom Looney.
It's on YouTube at Benny Vspenny.
That's at Benny Vspenny if you would like to consume the product there, and we'll have a mail bag tomorrow. I will be back from Nevada into a SoCal at some point later today.
I'll be set up. There have some things to do in La La.
Land when I get back to town, my home base, and and're going to try to watch some college football, a little bit of college football, obviously the.
Big event at the big event of that, you know what that is.
Anyway, I have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'm just gonna leave you with Ohio. I'm going to play the song here and enjoy it. I just did about ten minutes on how great the song is. So without further ado, we now hand the powerful microphones of the Fifth Hour Podcast with Ben Maler and Danny g Radio two ohioal for a little knockoff version of People Are Strange, the Malard Militia version. Asta pasta. See what I did there, Danny, I said, Asta pasta, And here it is Ohio.
Aw Black Scott is foot fifth, three different calls leaving mysel old days, de.
Confuse Love Get Tone's dumping on the best say Halo and James is taking a Susie.
They're all strange.
The malliblish you can't change because that's strange. And then they're remembers the names because it's strange.
They're all strange.
Jed who bleeds proud and the redneck rivi Era, the Dixter so proud of his calling show win a weed man is Wine and the bagging full Moon and leprecnspew and his crab jokes again.
They're all strange, Hage Coop.
De loop screen and their calls.
Because that's strange. Lorena is busting their balls because that strange. They're all strange.
M h.
They're all strange.
Has balor militia. Can't change because this strange. It's been a remembers and names because it dram They're all strange.
Hell yeah, my Felicia m