The Fifth Hour: Pop Tarts & Moxie Farts

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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 soul fashion 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 Maller starts right now in the air.

Ywhere The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallor and Danny g The Weekend for All Intensive Purposes has arrived because it's our kickoff of the podcast and a glorious Friday to you. The sixteenth day of February and we've arrived at another weekend. Hallelujah. Valentine's Day in the rear view mirror. So we survived another year of Valentine's Day, which is a positive.

I believe that's a positive. You don't part take anyways.

You've always said that you celebrate the day after so you can get all the candy half price.

Well.

I have advised for many years to help the frugal listener save a little bit of money, But it's.

When you're married. It's not it's not like that.

Right, when you're dating, you can get away with that, but when you're married, it's.

I don't think you can get away with it at all. But okay, yeah you can't. I don't know what women you've dealt with.

Well, if you work a lot and it's during the week, Valentine's Day fell on what a Wednesday?

I see, So you blame work. You're like, I can't because of work, I'm swamped. I can't do anything.

Well, what if they suggested to have the Valentine's date the day before?

What would you say?

Well, you know you're busy, so you really want to, you know, live it up.

On the weekend is.

When you want to live it up, Right, Friday or Saturday you want to live it up and and all that. Well, how come I looked at the dopey calendar of stupid holidays. Today is National Almond Day? Why why is that not a big day? National Almonday? And isn't that the group of people that complain that to grow almonds, because a lot of almonds are grown in California, they take too

Some ridiculous things like that. Take that for data. They complain about that.

But it is National Almonday today, So you are you a big almond guy? I like chocolate covered almonds.

I am. I really like pistachios, and that's not an almond. I know, I know, I don't.

It's not National Pistachio Day, Danny.

I don't hate almonds. I just think pistachios with the shell on, lightly salted, so good. Like once you start eating them, you can't stop.

Yeah, I like the National or not national.

The chocolate covered almonds milk chocolate at Coser those a brand. Yeah, but of course you would cover anything in chocolate and it would be pretty good, right. You don't really taste the almond.

Some almonds seem too dry though, you know what I mean, Like you eat a handful of them and.

You can get bad pistachios though, too true.

There's not that many though. Like you know, as kids, there was a walnut tree near our church, and the church claimed it because it was close enough to their property. So my mom would go early to church and she'd tell us, all right, collect the walnuts and she'd give us bags, and then she gave us like these walnut crackers, and that was supposed to be like this awesome snack for us that she didn't have to pay any money

Yeah, they were bad, Yeah, not good. It was a bad tree, you're right.

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, here's one. It's National tartar Sauce Day.

And that's that's a big one. Did you ever go to Long John Silver?

Oh yeah, absolutely, man, that was a huh yeah. The fish, everything deep fried. Just they just threw everything in the bat frier for like ten minutes and it was just wonderful.

Did they ever change their oil? No?

No, and and and we thank them for that. But I thought tartar sauce was invented to eat fish, But they don't really know.

The origin of tartar sauce. I was.

I was reading up on this because they do a podcast Nanny you got to look up the origins of tartar sauce.

Very important there.

But they they think it actually began all the way back in the Roman era, that that that was originally in the Roman era. But other people say that was not the case, and they're not really sure when tartar sauce originated the modern version as a condiment, and it was some part of Europe. Yeah, but the tartar sauce corse mostly just that mayo.

And then they put the herbs.

In there and the lemon juice and now are you a fish and chips?

Guy? I eat fish once a year.

It's deep fried beer battered fish. I'll eat that once a year and then I'll say, well that's pretty good, and then I'll never eat it again. Usually when I'm going to the beach, something like if we go to like San Diego or Santa Barbara or something like that, Okay.

I'll eat fish. But yeah, day to day, no, day to day I do not.

But if long John Silver's, I guess they're still around. But I don't know if I went back in there. Now, I have such fond memories as a child going there and eating everything just deep fried.

Yeah, it's like our really good memories of burger King when we were kids.

Oh yeah, yeah, I have fond memories of burger King long gone or those days. Yeah.

Now I go there, I'll get into ingestin heart, you know, the heartburn and all that be.

Like, what am I doing here? Now?

Do you think that tartar sauce was created for fish or do you think that it was created for something else and then people just decided, well it goes great with fish. Maybe if it originated in the Middle Ages, I mean, yeah, that's pretty wild.

They probably first invented it to cure gout and somebody accidentally put their finger in their mouth.

They're like, that's not bad. Let's just put tonight's catch on that.

It says National Tartars Days celebrated at a time when the condiment is in high demand.

During the period of seafood.

Seafood becomes the premier dish, of course, because of the calendar with lent and whatnot and people fasting and staying away from from the chicken and the beef and all that.

So okay, Yeah, there you go. I'm good.

I think that's all we need to ever know about tartar Sauce. I think we've met our quota.

Dude, I get us so smart from this show. I don't even have to read anymore.

Yeah, I am such a loser. I am such a radio loser. I read a story this week about I'm sure you guys on Covino and Rich you talked about this, but I'll give you a name. It's a pop quiz here, and let's see if you This week this name came up on the show. The name is William Post. Yeah, all right, we talked about the pop tart. Yeah, William Post, who helped create the pop tart. What a gift to humanity. What an amazing life. He lived a full life.

He was ninety six. Yeah.

By the way, Rich claims the strawberry pop tart changed his childhood.

Yeah, I am of the age. I'm not sure how old Riches.

I think we're around the same where we only had limited pop tarts. We did not have a lot of options. But I went down this rabbit hole Danny, and I know I can't use this on the Overnight show, so I figured I'd save it for the podcast, so I had. I was fascinated by pop tarts. I was like, this is an amazing thing. It's been around for a long time,

Is that not an outstanding Oh yeah? Yeah.

The legend is that the William Post pet food division had developed a dog food. It was like a burger games Burgers is what it was called. It was a concept because the dog food was semi moist but didn't have.

To be refrigerated.

And again, everything but pop tarts were created was early on in terms of modern food manufacturing and whatnot. And so Post, William Post's company, not Kellogg's, but the Post company, they took the technology that they were testing out for the refrigerated dog food and they shifted it over to the what became pop tarts, the fruit filled pastry and all that.

And so this is just like tartar sauce. Yeah, there you go, very similar.

And there was an item before pop tarts that was the precursor to pop tarts called country squares, but that did not sell very well.

That did not sell very well.

And I mean there were originally and this one in my childhood. I remember the strawberry, the brown sugar, cinnamon is like I remember those. I don't remember any other flavors. I know there were other ones. They said from the story I was eating. They said, when Kellogg's first launched what became pop tarts, they had four flavors. They had apple jelly, strawberry, blueberry, and brown.

Cinnamon, brown sugar, and then they had it was.

A Dutch apple, concord, grape raspberry and whatnot. Now there's like over thirty different kinds of pop tarts, and they have special edition pop tarts.

But the favorite fun fact.

And I'm saving this one for alf the alien o pineer who sends me fun facts during the Overnight Show and religiously downloads this podcast, and I'm saving this for him. So the reason you know why they're called pop tarts, you know the origin of this. It's it's one of the great stories. You can thank Andy Warhol, the legendary Andy Warhol, for the name pop tarts. Now, he didn't even know that he was responsible for this. But pop tarts originally were called fruit scone.

What a dumb name, right, roots gone, who's gonna buy that? That wouldn't have caught on with kids.

No, that would not or hit mom, Can I get a fruit scone? No, no you can't. But they changed it. And the legend is that the pop tart's name. The reason they went with that is because these were marketed in the nineteen sixties and Andy Warhol's pop art was popular and so they just like the people at Kellogg's were like, well, this is Andy.

Warhol Pop pop art.

Pop tart just added tea there and boom, we got a product.

Boom, shaka loaca, Yeah to the moon, to the Moon.

I'm in command.

I could order this.

And they originally did not have the delicious frosting on the pop tarts.

They did not. That's a bad job by them.

But they say, and I don't know if this is still true, because this is the story I came across that had This was a couple years ago, but they said that every year they have sold more pop tarts for over thirty years, a generation and a half, the sales of pop tarts have continued to go off. They've increased sales every year since nineteen eighty two.

Now, wild, wow, that's nuts.

You think at some point people will be like, I'm good, I don't need any more. I'm alright with my cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar, whatever it is. My frost is draw. Those strawberry ones were the bomb.

See, that's what rich was all about. He said that later in life, when he was adult, he accidentally looked at the back of the box. He couldn't believe how much sugar and crap was inside the strawberry pop tart. And he's never had another one. But he's like, man, his kids running around like we were dosed up on twelve cups of coffee. And now he's like, I know why because I ate two pop tarts at a time, you know, sometimes multiple times a day. That was probably five thousand calories in pop tarts.

Yeah.

Well, think about when we were growing up, like they didn't really concern themselves with nutrition at all, Like we know, we would have cinnamon toast crunch. I down it with a glass of tang which is just powdered sugar that tastes like orange.

I love the marketing because it was.

I remember when I was a kid, it was like my mom's big selling point, this is what the astronauts drink when they're in space, is saying. I'm like, oh, I'm an astronaut.

All better that we had the kool aid that we made ourselves, and we would dump half the jar of sugar into that orange tumperware thing everybody had in their kitchen. I remember, yeah, you remember, we all had that orange tupperware pitcher, all right, and the bottom would just be this huge pile of pure sugar. My brother would be like, it's all right, and he would just stir it up with his hand, or he'd put a wooden spoon in there to try to get that sugar up off the bottom.

Oh yeah, that was great, oh man, all the days.

And then we wonder why our teeth were all rotten as we were children, and they made us flush our mouths out with fluoride.

Oh man, uh yeah, the stuff that we It was a different time, obviously, but yeah.

Oh, our grandparents thought pasta was a diet. I remember my grandmother telling my mom, all you got to do if you want to lose weight, just eat pasta for every meal.

What in the world. And it's no coincidence she keeled over from a heart attack. Intermittent chest pain and I shortness of breath and pain in my whips arm.

Well, yeah, you know you get you eventual rest, Grandma. I speaking of that. A former guest, I just read this story. I think I saw yesterday the guest on this podcast had a stroke.

Lenny Dykstra. Remember remember nails Lenny Dykstra and we had him on the podcast.

Yeah, the reason famous car wash and seem me Valley, California.

Yeah, he was at one point a financial financial advisor.

Schemist. Well that's what he turned out to be. But yeah, we love Lenny.

Lenny a listener to the Overnight show and uh and we I wanted him in studio. Lenny wanted to come in studio. We we communicate on on X and Eddie did not. Eddie was so afraid of Lenny that he didn't want Lenny to come into the studio because he Lenny has he's got some skeletons, not even in his closet. The skeletons are laying outside the closet searching. But yeah,

Right, he's Yeah, what a life that dude had.

Yeah, I mean he still has, but I doubt he's living that sort of lifestyle now.

When we were kids, though, the eighty five eighty six Mets, that that mid eighties Mets team, they had all the wild childs of baseball at those days, and they're all still alive, right that. The argument was always all those guys aren't gonna make it, like the strawberry is still around, Dwight Gooden, Lenny Distra, isn't it odd? The one I know that's not with us anymore is Gary Carter, the catcher.

On the eighty six Mets.

Yeah, the one that was like that you know your dad, you know your next door ever dad type, And he passed away a number of years ago.

And I think some of the Mets pitches look like the Brady dad. Yeah. Yeah, he was Afro is white man, Afro racist.

Yeah, he was just kind of cool, you know, cool guy and I always smiling, always happy and all that. And he passed away with dykstra Strawberry, Kevin Mitchell was on that team Gooden, like all those crazy guys are still still hanging out. Strawberry has gone straight and narrow. He isn't Strawberry a preacher in Saint Louis or something like that.

He lives in the Midwest. Yeah.

I remember how excited we were as kids when Strawberry joined our Dodgers.

Oh this is.

Like, oh my god, are you kidding me? Super team, super team, right, Darryl Strawberry My memory.

Of thought he was going to hit fifty home runs.

I know they had Darryl Straub and Eric Davis. That was oh my god, yeah, oh my god. But Darryl Strawberry. My only memory of him as a Dodger is during the Freeway Series, the exhibition games with the Agels, when he went a wall. They couldn't find him. He wanted to remember he went on a coke bender.

A bunch of hookers and cocaine before the season. Yeah, that's right.

And I remember I remember Lesorta rest his soul. Tommy was trying to be somewhat diplomatic. The Dodgers had no idea where Strawberry was. He just he vanished and I think they found him with a mountain of cocaine somewhere, just just enjoying.

The hell out of himself.

And uh yeah, that was That was my memory of Daryl Strawberry as a Dodger, and he's he hated he would rip the Dodger.

He was the original.

Barrett Robbins, Oh yeah, yeah, he got caught also Strawberry. It was I think he was playing for the Giants at the time and they were, as there usually are, a bunch of brushfires in La, and Strawberry on a conference call he made some joke about like let it all burners like La or something like that. And this is in the days before the internet, but still I still was like a huge deal. I remember at the time people were like freaking out, freaking out by that.

Yeah, it was a dick man. Karma would burn his roof down.

It was a not the nice thing say, not the nice thing to say. So the reunion. I had a reunion this week, Dan. It was a big week for me. This week, a reunion with my friend Jim. I went back for the first time in a while. I had during football season, I was so slammed with the radio show, the podcast, the TV show, I had no time for myself to go to the gym.

So i'd stopped going to the gym. I'm back, though I had with the gym. For you, it's just cardio, right.

Yeah, I just do some car I get my body move and I get my ten thousand steps that kind of thing, and so yeah, but I had not gone. It was part of my routine and I've changed it up a little bit.

Though I went back.

It was a little weird because I'm changing my schedule around a little bit, trying to get a.

Little better quality sleep.

So I'm trying to go to bed earlier because I kept going to bed later and later, and it became kind of a big issue. Just my schedule was completely messed up. So we're trying to change that around a little bit. So I've been going to the gym in the afternoon. But the problem is there's like people there who you know, when I was going to the gym, there was like crackheads. Crackhead Bob would be there and you know, grands or whatever.

You know, Yeah, exactly. So it's odd, like vacuuming the floor.

Not only am I going during the day, but there's like good looking people and it's it's a little awkward.

It's just weird. It's uh And I'm like, don't it.

I'm thinking, like, well, if I thought when I walked in the gym was in the afternoons, like, who the else gonna be there? Doesn't everyone worked during the day. Most people worked during the day, but there were like tons of people there.

It was packed. I was like, I guess none of these people have jobs.

Good thing you got a palette of Adrian Peterson's Nirvana of Water. Yeah, you're about to be ripped.

We we had our guy that was fun last week in Vegas was yeah.

No.

I actually got to listen back to that interview because I wanted to make sure his audio was loud enough. In post production. I kept lifting it up every time he spoke, because you know, we're loudmouth radio guys. So many of these athletes are soft spoken that as a producer the whole time, you're like, oh, this is going to be so much work afterwards, and I did it

Well, yeah, and the problem there. First of all, you had a lot of ambient noise because it was a big call, a big room, and there were.

People walking around.

There are a lot of people walking around with bounty paper towels.

As I said.

As I said last weekend we were in Vegas, I said, it's like it's like the boardwalk on Atlantic City or in Santa Monica right on the ocean there, you know, and and or Venice. I guess Venice would be a better example. Yeah, the speech where's just a lot of people hawking stuff.

And you know they and then there I love the.

Attitude right because they're like, well are you are you national?

Are you local? Like they only want to do certain shows.

And we we had we got blown off by several people on that the Saturday pod last week.

We we had we were we.

Had several people lined up one flake, we had another one lined up. They flaked and I was like, oh, I'm gonna tweet the list out this weekend.

Yeah, you should. We're calling out names, Brian Billi, Brian Billick. After like the third one, I was like, oh, you know what, I I don't.

Even want to talk to these people. I was like, let me just put Lingard on. I know, I know he'll give me some good stories.

At least Kevin har You're Kevin Harlan story was better than any athlete would have been.

That made that made the trip. No it did I know you sounded?

Oh?

I was so.

I was so happy because I, you know, you don't know who's listening, Danny, and.

I thought, you know, I love Harlan. I think he's great.

Kevin Harlan's one of the great play by play guys of our generation and he's been doing it forever.

And I was like, you know, it's cool. It was nice to meet him.

But then when he like knew who I was and as a listener like that, blew. That was like total fanboy.

Moment right there. Total fanboy moment was great.

Well, sometimes I mean we get into a comfortable mode where we're not even thinking about how many people out there in the world are listening, especially on the live radio show. If you get in a nice groove, You're not thinking about all of the millions of ears tuned on to the network over six hundred affiliates throughout the United States. You're not thinking about that. Otherwise you would

Yes. The thing is, though, sometimes.

We'll hear or we'll see a tweet where it's like this famous TV guy like from the News is listening, or this actor or actress or singer will tweet, or we'll hear from somebody that a big time athlete is listening, not being interviewed, but they'll just be listening to the show. And then it's almost like, oh shit, people are listening. You know, we don't really think about it until somebody points.

That out, and it's really it's cool.

I certain people, So Kevin Harlan, you know, and I picture him in his car practicing his calls, just because he's so famous calling games, right, And do you think he listens to your show? Like, what's some of his tendencies when he calls a game?

Oh?

Well, he does the outrageous commercial reads and things like. I mean, it's just but I don't think that's from me. I just it's just it's just.

Cool to know that.

What do you think when he likes one of your segments, he lets it rip as if you hit a three pointer, Well.

I would say, I would say, Danny, it's kind of like one there is. I try not to listen to too much. I will end up if I hear something that sounds good, I might I might not realize that I'm doing a version.

Of that, you know what I mean, Like, is it just you you.

Pick stuff up just through osmosis, just by hearing it or whatever being around it. And but I just like the fact that he's getting back from a TNT game early in the morning and he's driving home from the airport or whatever, and he's got he's got to show on late at night. I think that's that's pretty cool. We've got the word of the week. Danny, are you ready for the word of the week.

The word of the week.

And the word of week on this Friday is Amazon. Now you might say Amazon or yesterday. Yeah, I just gotta we have Maxie now, so we had to upgrade our pooper scoop. We had we had to get and Luigi and I gotta send out. Maybe on Saturday, I'll send a photo.

I don't know. I'll have to talk more about that on.

The Saturday pot but I I have We had to buy a big pooper scooper because the dog Moxie is a bigger dog than Bella.

Makes you rest in peace.

And so Moxie she has full size, grown up poops and so you've got to you've got to stay up on the pooper scooper patrol. And so we got a bigger pooper scooper uh to handle Moxie. But and we did get it from Amazon. But yeah, there was a time, believe it or not, the word Amazon did not mean buying anything you want on the internet. It was different now Amazon, This is great now if you say a woman is an Amazon, right, Danny, that was the term we grew up with.

You're that one's Amazon, That that meant a big woman.

Well actually, the original definition amazon originally meant a breastless woman.

How about that? Weird?

Yeah, that's right. Uh, the breastless women were Amazonians. Uh this goes back to the days of ancient Greece, so we're going way back.

In the hot hot tub time. Shee.

But but yeah, Amazon Amazonians were tall, fierce, and not very feminine. The fable goes that these female warriors they lived near the Black Sea in ancient Greece. Uh those times, and they were they were both feared and uh, fighting force and all that, and and how do they become known as breathless breathless?

Uh?

Well, they were so committed to violence and living the life and being fearless on the battlefield that in order to better pull the bow strings in combat, the legend goes that they would burn off their breast so they would not because the boobs, I guess, got in the way when you're trying to shoot a bow string.

So the women did not want to be held back. And so oh my, that's it.

Now, that's commitment to battle there, that is commitment. You're willing to burn off your bosom in order to shoot a bow and arrow better.

That is.

That's impressive. Imagine if you wanted to be a ballet dancer.

Anyway, So that is the word of the week. Amazon will get out on that, Danny, anything you want to promote here, You've got Covino and Rich today.

I assume yes, yes, sir, after post production of this fine podcast, I'll take a little nap, wake my ass up and scoot on. Just beautiful Sherman Oaks, California, bordering bell Air.

Yes, yeah, we have bell Air to the north and to the south we have Van Eyes.

I believe beautiful van one of these like the others. You want to go north, you don't want to go south. We have Encino to the west.

And have you noticed how Van Eyes has kind of moved into Sherman Oaks.

Yea, I have those.

The other night I was walking around the building and I was walking down the hall and I looked out the window and somebody had tagged the glass. Oh yeah, somebody had decided to tag they showcase.

Window outside of our old studio and somebody, Thank god, they're a fan.

It says number one, number one. I don't know why the one is in the shape of a finger.

I know what that's all about it.

We're gonna be doing the Fun Friday edition of Covino and Rich, which is two to four pm on the West Side, and that is five to seven pm in Rhode Island.

Beautiful Rhode Island, small estate. I've been there.

Great capital of Providence, Rhode Island, great capitol building right there in downtown Providence.

Have a wonderful rest of your day. We will catch you tomorrow later. Skater gotta murder, I gotta go.