The Fifth Hour: Shredded Chicken

As Tommy Lisordi used to call it, blue Heaven on Earth, as the Doyers try to win another World Series against the hated Yankees, and the media has had an absolute field day the last week talking about the Dodgers and

the Yankees and the tradition all that. I get a kick out of it because a bunch of the players have been interviewed about this, and not a single player, not a single player in the World Series was playing in Major League Baseball the last time the Dodgers and Yankees played, nor not a single player was even really alive on the Yankees and the Dodgers. But nonetheless, they're going at it tonight and I will not be there.

Some of you have been sending me messages, are you going to be a Game one of the World Series?

That has not happened. It is the day of Game one of the World Series, and I have not heard from Marlin's man, so I'm assuming he's either not going or he's got somebody else who's most likely a bigger name, who will go. And the ticket prices are so outrageous my god, but I actually like did Dodgers chances tonight with Jack Flaherty against Garrett Coleble see what happens with that? In Game one of the World Series. It is also a big day, I mean, the worlds of the late

Tommy Losorda colliding. You've got the Dodgers in game number one of the World Series. And today is World Pasta Day. Oh yeah, World Pasta Day, which is another one of those made up holidays. They made this up in nineteen ninety eight. It was not made by Chef Boyard. It was not. Now there is a great urban legend which I'm pretty sure is not true. I'm pretty sure is not true, but I heard it when I was a kid,

and you probably have heard it too. The legend is that Marco Polo Marco Polo imported pasta from China in the twelve hundreds and that that was the whole love of pasta in Italy. It was actually a Chinese food and all that. Well, likely that is bull crap, because there was a story years ago that said a Canadian spaghetti company of all things likely started that urban legend in the nineteen twenties, about a hundred years ago, and By the time I was a kid, I had heard

about it and all that. But if you trace the origins of pasta, it's been a staple in Italy going back to the seventeen hundreds. Like, apparently, I haven't ever been to Italy. The wheat that has grown in Sicily, in southern Italy is amazing and pretty inexpensive, pretty inexpensive. So you've got that, so celebrate appropriately. I don't know what your favorite pasta is. I'm a Fetichini alfredo guy. Myself and I used to love spaghetti, but I ate

so much spaghetti. When I was a kid, My mom spaghetti and meatballs, and then she'd make a lot of mac and cheese, and I just like, eh, I don't mind macan cheese every once in a while, rare and appropriate spaghetti. I'm over it. I'm good. I've had my share of spaghetti. It is Frankenstein Friday today, Yes, Frankenstein Friday, which, by the way, we learned, was filmed at Universal Studios. The movie Frankenstein filmed at Universal Studios on the back lot,

not far away from where we filmed Benny Versus the Penny. Oh, by the way, that's right, that's right, you know what time it is? Ding ding, ding ding ding. Yes, time for me to Shamelelly. See me promote the week eight, Week eight of Benny Versus Payne. Now, last night I took the Vikings. They of course lost the game. They were favored by a few points against the Rams. Sam Darnold pooped the Bed played well for one quarter and then not so much the final three quarters of the game.

But I'm okay with that. And I've said this a lot time. If you're a big fan and you dabbling gambling, but you're ultimately a fan, it's called sports fan insurance, and it's one of the coolest things you can do if you love your team. And I'm a Ram fan. But I looked at the game. At the time I handicapped the game, I had to submit my my picks to the big Kahunas at NBC bye you a certain hour. I don't want to get into all the details and all that. You don't need to know about that, but

my deadline. By the time my deadline to submit the picks had shown up, I did not know for sure that Cooper Cup was going to play, and I had no knowledge that Puka Nakua was going to play. Had I known that they were both going to play, I likely would have flipped my pick. But you know, bygones bye, bygones, I did not took the took the vikings, but I wasn't upset. I lost the game, and I'm fine with that because the Rams won, so I was happy about that. But it's Week eight in the NFL. We got every

game covered. We make our maiden voyage again. We kick off a new week here on NBC Sports Boston tonight, also NBC Sports Philadelphia in San Francisco, all the other regional cable channels associated with NBC. And because of you, I want you to know, mainly because of the people on this podcast that were complaining when I said, oh, I can't watch your show, I don't have you know, I want to live in a city where the show's on, and you're complaining about this, that and the other thing.

So I then took your complaints and I went to the few people I know at NBC and I was like, you know, these guys really want to be on the Peacock. They want access to the show. They say they'll watch, and they said, are you sure they're actually going to watch, and I said, well, yeah, I think they're gonna watch. They say they're going to watch, but I don't know if they're going to actually watch. I'd like them to watch. They claim they want to watch, and so heya. One

thing led to another and here we are. So we're on Peacock now. It's not on right now. And I've noticed the trend here the last month where I'll be like, hey, I watched the show. The podcast goes up, and then I get a message I looked on Peacock and I didn't see the show. I don't control when the show gets uploaded. I have no control. The show is in the can. We did the show on Thursday, right We did the show on Thursday before the Ram Viking game.

So we've done the show. The show is ready to go, but they have to edit it and they have to address it up and make us look like somewhat civilized human beings and not Neanderthals. So that's part of it. But it'll be up today late afternoon. I know my buddy Sports with Coleman and Baltimore. He sends me a message every Friday, I don't see your show. What's going on with that want. He wants me to have him have the show published by I think noon, which I'm

all for. I have no problem with that. But again I don't I don't control it. So watch it tonight and then watch the world series, and then watch it again and again and again and again. We had a lot of fun this week. It was interesting. Now one of the main reasons that this was interesting. I wanted to go a little bit behind the microphone. And this is a companion podcast about the radio show and the original Recipe radio show and also the TV show. So

many of you, I say many. I got like five emails.

The other one I don't have. This one's from listener Anthony, who is a big fan. He says, Ben, I listened to your podcast while working out at the gym. It motivates me more than listening to Metallica while on meth. That's wild, Anthony, A sports radio podcast motivates you while working out to my cha grin. He then rips the person that fill in for me, so you know how your legs fall asleep when you have sat on the toilet for an hour or two long. He then goes

on and rants and rants, and rants and rants. I am the guy who recites the pledge with each new mal or militia member. Please, if you cannot find someone half as smart as you, how about someone who is half as entertaining, well, listen, I don't know what happened when I wasn't there, Anthony. Thank you for your support. And I do love that whoever dares fill in for

me is public enemy number one. And it is a blessing and a curse and as you know, Anthony, you're likely pumping weight right now in the gym, pumping iron. Here's the deal. The type of radio show that we do is, I would say, in the modern sports radio game. It's unique. But maybe not. Maybe there's other people that sound just like me, and I don't know about them. I don't listen to everything. I don't listen to much sports radio at all because I don't want to copy

what somebody else's doing. However, I do believe that aside from all the puffery and all that, we have something that's rather rather unique, you know, and whether that's good or bad. You know, some people absolutely hate it and they believe it goes together like toothpaste and orange juice, and it's just disgusting. And why are you on the radio? And I always get, well, you're on and in the middle of the night, and that's why your show is terrible.

And that's the bottom line, and this, that and the other thing. And then I have other people like this guy, Anthony and some others that I can't find the email right now, we're like, I love the show. I listen. You're a cornerstone, right You're the centerpiece of my day. So Fortunately, there's more people like Anthony then there are people that hate the show. And I've never understood, and I will never understand. I'm in the radio business my

entire adult life. I will never understan and how people have this weird relationship with radio, especially talk radio, where if you don't like a talk show host, you have to let them know you don't like. If I if I go to a restaurant, I look at the menu. We do this all the time. We go to travel somewhere, meanwife, Hey,

can we look at the menu? And THO, the maj or d will hand you the menu and you'll look and you get some eggs over there, you know, I guess some kind of mixed things, some food processing crap over there. Andy, Well, it's not really for me. You hand the menu back very politely, and you walk out, and you walk to the next restaurant. And there doesn't need to be a tug of war. But yet in sports radio it's I must have my opinion heard, and I don't like your opinion. You're a schmuck, and I'm

gonna let you know. It's just I get a kick. I am at I think that if that stopped, I wouldn't like it. I'd be like, am I doing something wrong? Having strong opinions and all. So. So it's one of those weird things that it kind of crisscrosses between it's dumb. But then if you don't have people randomly sending you messages,

then then there's a problem. I'm still getting people randomly, you know, I'll make some passing reference politically and somebody, you know, some triggered so and so will oh I, Chad, listen to your show anymore? And we are heading towards the epicenter. The trade deadline in the NFL is November fifth, However, that is also the day of the election, and it is going to be wild. It's always wild. This is one thing that's changed in my lifetime. These presidential elections.

There are always a big deal. Like when I was a little kid, you know, my parents were into politics. My mom was was liberal, my dad was conservative, and so they would debate the issues of the day and they do back and forth and this that and the other thing, and it was a big deal. But the last twenty five years, it started with that hanging chad thing. It's next level. It has attracted every whack job in the world. There's nothing like it. There's no show quite

like a presidential election. The country is so split, it's next level. I'm getting off on a tangent here, but thank you all for your support on the show. As I often end up paddling my own canoe and again when somebody fills in, it's different. But I appreciate you letting me know. It's good to be missed. Got to be missed now one of the reasons I was away. In fact, the main reason I was away was not to go to the Clipper game. Eddie last night took off to go to the hockey game, which is fine.

He's got time off. He didn't want to do the show. He wanted to do the hockey. More power to In my case, I made a tactical decision. If you're listening to this podcast, and there's no other way to hear it other than listening, you know that my voice likely sounds a little more How should I describe it? Punch it a raspy, a little more rasp to my voice. You can hear it, right, you can hear it. I don't sound exactly the same. I sound close, but not

exactly the same. And there's a reason for that. I've been baddling like a little head cold type situation. I did do the garlic and I was able to do the show. And over the years, I've been doing this a long time, and I do treat my voice like a musical instrument. That that is my moneymaker. If you're a prostitute, you have a different money maker. If you're

a professional athlete, of a different money maker. But for me in my line of work, and I know I'm doing the TV show now, which is kind of cool and stuff, but it's really the voice. It's all about the voice. That is my melody. That is the sweet harmony that I can provide. And I remember when I got into radio. We talked about this on a previous

episode being Danny G when he was there. We talked about radio and the whole mindset of sports radio in the early days, and I got in trouble with program directors because they said I was to FM and I said, well, I'm just doing the show and I'm not really FM, and well, you'll be more AM, which means boring, and I'm like, I don't want to be boring and so all that. But as a result, I project. I go up and down and all around, and I use my lungs and my throat and the whole thing. I use

the upper part of my throat, my mouth. We all do. But I create these vibrations and I've done it long enough where when I have a head cold with the proper amount of sucking on rock garlic and other garlic related remedies from the old world, as Andrea would say, probably the pagan witch world. But this garlic stuff, it's worth the issue This week when I do the four hour show, and it's a lot more than it used to be because we do a lot of live reads.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I try to dress them up, try to put my own touch on the live reads and add my flavor to them. Even though I don't get paid for that, I add my flavor, So I do that to the show. Is it's extra

and it adds up. And despite everything that I do to protect my musical instrument, my mouth, it takes a fair amount of time once I finished the radio show to be ready to perform again, to get my vocal cord set and reset, and there's a hole to do involving gargling salt water and sucking on garlic and just time. There just has to be time. So I did the show on Tuesday into Wednesday, and I had every intention when I went to bed of doing the show on

Wednesday and Thursday. My voice was really bad. It was the consistency of shredded chicken. By the time I had finished the show, pulled barbecue shredded chicken, so I knew it wasn't good. I woke up. My wife was not feeling particularly good either, just going around and she's like, well, I'm gonna call him sick. And I said, okay, that's fine, I'm gonna work and she she then was explaining we were doing a cost benefit analysis. He says, well, you

do the TV show on Thursday. It's Wednesday, but you have to work all night. And then if you work all night, you don't go to bed before the TV show is taped. You have to tape the TV show. Your voice takes X number of hours to get back to where you can do another show. And she's she's doing the math, and she's got her version of math. I do. I do malar math. She's a malice, So she does her own malar math and we're crunching the numbers, and I have this in the cartoon bubble, the soundtrack

of my life. I have flashing in front of me doing the radio show. My voice completely destroyed. The tone quality is terrible, horrific, right, just bad, bad, bad bad. I'm rasp beat. I have laryngitis, the whole thing. So in my head, I'm like, well, I'm doing the show. I sit down, they put the camera on. I'm talking to Vinnie, the producer in Boston, all these guys, and they're like, we can't do the show. We can't do it. What I'm like, Oh my god, this is terrible. I

got to do the show. There's a lot of people, producers, people that work behind the scenes, directors, lighting people, camera people. It's not like a radio show. I mean there's a lot of moving parts, right, there's a lot of moving parts of a TV show. One of the reasons I love radio. It's pretty much just me and you and there's somebody putting the buttons on and occasionally some other people will chime in. But ultimately, if Eddie's not there,

the show's the same. If Coop's not there, you don't notice. And as long as the mic is on the show's there and I can present the show. So in television, obviously there's a lot more involved. And I didn't want I didn't want to let those people down as I had the sick time. I've been saving sick days for ten years, and so I took the night off and I watched the Clipper game, and I stayed up. I didn't go to bed, I stayed up. I just rested

my voice. I did some garlic, I sucked on some rock garlic, I did some gargling, the whole thing, and fortunately my voice held up. I was able to do the TV show and it went pretty well. You'll be the judge of that again. It'll start airing later today, and I thought my voice was relatively solid, much better than it would have been had I done the radio show.

And didn't want to take any chances, because you know, not that I it's not only the fact that there's a lot of people depending on me for the TV show, it's also I had the sick time. And I don't know if you know this, but television pays a little bit more than radio, just a little bit. A half hour TV show pays a little better than a four hour nighttime radio show, which seems impossible but not really not really time now, time now for what what time

is it? Well, it's time for me to end the podcast. No, it's not. Because we have the always popular Footy Fun, Footy Fun. Let's do it a few items. I'm not gonna do too many of these things, but some of the new items coming out and about. And I had an epiphany. I was driving my A seven eleven. I said, the number one person to going who goes into seven eleven and buys their lunch contractors, construction guys, you are the boys. Without you, seven to eleven would not be

able to sell as much food. I bring that up. We have a great number of people that work as handyman and the contracting jobs, plumbers, things like that. So seven eleven launching the new five dollars pizza meal deal. But they also have wait, there's more, the new Philly cheese steak pizza. It's available starting October thirtieth, so coming up next week through January seventh of the new year. So go to seven of how good could a cheese steak be? At seven eleven? Let me know that's a

day before Halloween. That thing's going to debut with the Philly cheese steak Pizza. Now I've made cheese steak pizza before. Not bad, not bad. All the ingredients are right there. You got the bell pepper, the onion, you got the beef, and you throw in you know, the proper amount of cheese and that's it. I mean, it's pretty easy, tomato, sauce, mix it all together. Subway new deserted Subway they've introduced. This is right up the alley of alf the Alien Opiner.

Unless it's not maybe more fer Dog the new double chocolate peppermint foot long cookie. It's available from November first, so the day after Halloween, through December thirty first, but wall supplies lest the Subway think they're gonna sell out of that thing. That sounds to me like a faux version, like a faux version of the Girl Scout cookies, you

know what I'm saying. Follow Up to a story we did last week on Foody Fun, Taco Bell welcoming back fan favorite menu items from their first fifty years, including the tostada from the nineteen sixties, the green Sauce burrito It's here from the nineteen seventies, shout out in nineteen seventies, the Mexim Melt from the nineteen eighties, the Gordie from the nineties. That's the Gordida Supreme from the two thousands, the Ots caramel Apple, and Panada available for a limited

time starting on Halloween. Okay, check that out on Halloween. Now. This one is definitely both disgusting and this is the one for alf. Jimmy Johns. I don't even know if they have Jimmy Johns where Alf is. He's out in the sticks. But if you're nearer Jimmy Johns, Alf, this is right for you. I wanted to puke in my mouth. They've unveiled the new pickle sandwich, the pickle Witch, which is disturbing because my favorite ice cream sandwich has witch in the name. But the people at Jimmy John's brand

new sandwich, the pickle Witch. This thing's disgusting. Features premium meat from the you know, the original Veto sandwich, salami, pro bolone, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, olive, blah blah blah blah blah, and it's served between two halves of a juicy Jimmy pickle. Who goofed. I've got to know that is disgusting. That is that is bad time. Now four the phrase of the week. Now yet again the phrase of the week from a listener, not blind Scott, but

Scott another. This is a second time in a row he sent us a phrase he wants us to know more about. He says on the spot, put someone on the spot. You guys are full of these phrases on your podcast. This one was said by Danny g on either Saturday or Sunday's Fifth Hour podcast. Well, thank you Scott for being an eagle eared eagle eyed is it elephant eared anyway? Whatever, Thank you for listening and paying attention.

The phrase on the spot goes all the way back to the sixteen hundreds, believe it or not, Yeah, originated with someone named George Tuk. George Tuk. The first usage is believed to have happened in sixteen forty seven. Now, this guy George by George, an army officer. He was also a writer. That's how we know he used on the spot. It is an adjective that means something happens or is done at the time or place in question. For example, you might say that this podcast is on

the spot. We're doing it on the spot right and letting it rip. So anyway, on the spot the phrase of the week, all the way from the sixteen hundreds, George tuk Tooke and army officer in England. All right, have a wonderful rest of your day. I'll be watching Game one of the World Series tonight, Dodgers and Yankees. Cannot wait to see how that plays out. You enjoy whatever you're up to tonight as well, and we will talk to you tomorrow. I have a brand new podcast.

Danny G's gonna be with me and we'll talk to you then. Either we're celebrating a Dodger win or maybe not so much. We'll get to that and we'll do it on Saturday. Have a wonderful day. And as Danny would say, lader skater got a murder. I gotta go