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 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 everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Big Ben and Danny g As. I have ended my audio silence. We are back at it with the podcast. No radio this week, but the Fifth Hour podcast continues from a secret location somewhere in the Carolinas, which is in a garage. Danny, I'm literally in a garage. Everyone around me is sleeping right now at the time we are doing this.
It sounds like you're in a cave on a mister microphone. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, yeah, well, I pretty much am at this particular point in a cave. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. If you can see where I am, you can't see, thank god, because it's a podcast. But but here we are, and hey, listen, Joe Rogan said his podcast started in a garage, so this could be the beginning of something even bigger for the fifth hour podcast. What the heck? But it is the tenth day of may or, as I like to say, National Shrimp Day today, not a not a shrimp? Are
you a shrimp guy, Danny? Do you like the shrimp?
I do like shrimp, Mang bang chicken and shrimp.
All right, well, this is a big day for you, So go out, go out and neat some shrimp today. Knock yourself out with the shrimp. Didn't shrimp put what was the seafood restaurant Red Lobster? Was it all you can eat shrimp? That is going to put them out of business?
Yeah? Remember Coop told the story on the air that he went with a buddy to that all you can eat red lobster shrimp. He ate eighty five of them by himself. Yeah.
So people like Coop tearing down an American institution. I wish I could pull off those suits the people over at Red Lobster. But it is also more than National Shrimp Day. It is go time. It is green light, gotime, Danny. Today is the day in Charleston we have the mallor Meat and greet the first one of twenty twenty four.
It'll be this afternoon at three o'clock. Obviously in the location, we're at three o'clock Eastern till five o'clock, and maybe even a little bit longer depending on how it goes. We'll play it by year on that, but a minimum of two hours of schmoozing and hanging out. And I'm excited about it, looking forward to it. I've been promoting it with these cheesy videos on social media, Danny, because you know I'm going all out. I'm going all out. I went to a waffle house the other day and
did a video. I had another video up yesterday, all in an effort to get the Great Unwashed to come together. And if you somehow have missed it, I don't know how you could have missed this, considering the amazing amount of promotion that we've put in. But it is today at my father's Mustache Day. You love this restaurant, Danny's, the James Island location, your favorite restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina.
I did some research on this place. When it first opened, it was called General Lee's.
Yeah, well, I mean that's a lie.
Their name got canceled, so they changed it to my father's mustache because they figured that wouldn't offend anybody.
Well and my father's mustache fine. Establishment, We're gonna have all kinds of weird English food they have, like normal bar food and all that. It'll be a good time. So and as we pointed out in a previous episode of the podcast, and I said this on the radio show when we were in Appleton, Wisconsin, we pretty much go anywhere we can find someone that will have us. And my brother knew a guy. My brother lives in Wisconsin, and he knew a guy that owned a Mexican fusion restaurant,
so we ate. We had a meet and greet at a Mexican restaurant in Appleton, which is the next level as well. But you think of Southern food, you don't normally think of like beef Wellington and stuff like that. But they have bar food, and so we'll have a good time. It's not about the food, Danny, It's about the people. It's about people. I think, I don't know, I want my chicken.
I mean when it comes to Malord, though you do think food, think Costco, food clippers. What is still wrong with the clippers, cheapskate.
No, no, no, A tight wad more than cheap skate.
But I haven't been through that. Yeah, that's true. You're not cheap, you have nice things. You're a tight one. That's a better way to put it.
Yeah, I'm a tight What if I have been to Costco? I have made the pilgrimage to Costco this week, and so consider this this this weekend, I'm gonna have some travel stories. We'll have many more next weekend. But I figured since I've been away from my post in the Watchtower, yeah.
I've been seeing listeners complain on Twitter.
Well, they can play, they can play when I'm there, and they can play when I'm not there. So it's just the common theme. There's a thread here complaining, and certainly whoever fills in for me gets the brunt of it. I feel bad for them people, very grumpy and whatnot. But I figured we spent some time this weekend of going over and stuff. Today being the Friday Pod, We've got driving Miss Malor, the Feast, Southern Hospitality, and I got a bunch of other random things that will come out.
We have the Word of a Week as well, and a bunch of other random stuff. We'll see what we have time to get to. As you know, even though this is a podcast, there's a certain window because we have market research that has determined after a certain amount of time, it doesn't matter. You can have the greatest podcast in the world and people are going to tune out at a certain point. So like, what are you doing?
So, yeah, you know, the last time I talked to one of our bosses, Dawn, who you know very well, he told me that we could check out at twenty minutes if we want to.
Yeah, but we usually go about thirty. We do a bit.
I think it was last weekend we had one that was forty two minutes long.
Yeah, which is probably way too long, but we'll try to keep it shorter. But so the Malor travelogue a staple of this podcast, the Mallard travelogue. So kind of setting you back to the beginning of the week. Here, I did the show Monday Sunday, and the Monday did the radio show and then got up after just a couple hours of sleep. Now, we flew from southern California to get to South Carolina. I get to the Carolina
is not the easiest thing in the world. Not a lot of direct flights, so we flew out of Ontario. I've never flown out of the Ontario Airport in the Inland Empire of southern California. This is the first time I think I might have done it. That's not actually you. I think years ago I blocked it out of my memory. I think it was probably like twenty five years ago. I flew out of the Ontario airport, but we mostly
used for like Amazon and ups. It's a southern California airport, but anything to avoid lax the ghost Town Airport, the Ontario Airport in southern California. Hardest part of flying out of that airport is getting to that airport, and so I was drying. We took an uber to get out there. I was just I wasn't driving anyone. We took an uber to get out there. And the wife she wanted to have have breakfast. But my main goal in life is to avoid the powder room on a plane that
she wanted to meet to eat breakfast. And you know, you got a cross country flight if you need breakfast, and I'm I'm a faster anyway. Plus, the airport food is often terrible and ridiculously overpriced. And so I try to avoid try to avoid that.
In general, I would guess also that you don't even fit in the airplane stall.
Yeah, it's a tough situation. It's a lot of being a contortionist and trying to bend certain ways and all that, and so that that's bad. But we flew from there to Atlanta, and I gotta tell you, I had one of the greatest flights I've ever had in my life. And I've flown a fair amount over the year. It's not as much in recent years as I did back in the day. But I had a tremendous trip. And the reason I was flying Delta, it's not because of Delta,
it's because of location, location, location. So I sat in row twenty seven. I sat in an exit row, which by itself is great because you get an extra leg room in the exit row. But the way the plane was set up, the row in front of me, I want to make sure I pink the picture of the proper way. So I'm in twenty seven, row twenty six.
It had two seats, not three seats. So I'm in a row with three seats, and then in front of me there's a row with two seats, and I happened to be in position where there was no seat in front of me. I got to stretch my legs out like I was like I was flying on Tom Cruise's Gulf Stream. It was awesome. I mean, I loved it. I could have flown to Australia or New Zealand or wherever, Tim Shanghai, I could have gone anywhere with that setup. It was the greatest thing. I'm like, this is the
way to fly. I don't have to worry about anyone leaning back into me. I can stretch my legs as far as I want, I can lay down basically, And so it was. It was awesome. It was absolutely awesome. I loved it, and so I wish the flight had actually been longer. I was upset that it wasn't longer because I was like, this is great. So then we had to change planes in Atlanta because there's no no direct flight. So we got to Atlanta, the beautiful Atlanta
Hartsfield or Hartsfield Atlanta Airport, whatever they call it. And at that point I was like, well, I probably should eat because I don't eat here. I'm not going to eat at all, and so ended up breaking my my fast. I had fasted since I think it was like Saturday, so it was a fair amount of time. Got to Atlanta, and what I did, I don't know how you handle this. I don't like to eat at airports, but when you have a stopover and you're in a long travel day,
I'm like, all right, you gotta eat something. So I scouted. I did a recon mission on the food court in Atlanta, and I went around and I observed there like a southern restaurant. They had a Windy's, there was a TGI Fridays. They were like a couple of other places, and I I was what I was doing was I was like, well,
would this be airport quality food? And then like I did a cost benefit analysis, But then I was also looking to see like what was what was busy because I figured if it's busy people, probably that's a good sign as normally people aren't going to, you know, go gravitate towards eating dog food.
Yeah, like they've been to this airport before, they know where to go.
Yeah. There were a lot of middle aged dudes who travel all the time. You know, you know that look of that guy that's in a plane all the time, like a couple of times a week flying, so I ended up eating Chinese food at the It was like a ripoff Panda Express at the Atlanta airport, and because that was the busiest spot, it was the most bang for your buck. And I gotta tell you, it was pretty pretty good, Danny. It was pretty good. However, it could have been the fact that hunger is the best
sauce in the world. It might not have had anything to do with the orange chicken and just that I was hungry. Oh you fat fuck you got head roll, you got the breezeparem, you everything. It tasted about as good as Chinese food that you could possibly have out of a fast food type of restaurant. So it was great. And we had.
About a ninety minute eighty ninety minute layover in Atlanta, and then we had another flight, which was like a really short flight forty five minutes or so to beautiful Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
And our flight was a few minutes to late, so we actually had to rush. And this is where the Southern hospitality comes in. We had to rush to get to the rental car because we were told the rental car place closed at eleven forty five pm. We were in the plane waiting to dboard at eleven thirty one, and fortunately we were able to make it. It was right across from the baggage plane, very small airport in Myrtle Beach, no shuttle needed, and we were able to get the
rental car. But one of the dudes helping us give us the car and filling out all the paperwork and all that adult crap that you have to do, he happened to be a listener to the show. He's listened to the show going back twenty years, big sports radio guy, and so that was a really cool prize. He's like, yeah, are you And he's like you are you? The Ben Mallett from the radio who as you know, as you know da. It ended up happened very often, but he made my day. Made my day. And this guy a
long time connoisseur of sports talk radio. He brought up a couple of legends back in the day. Papa Joe Chevalier, who did the one on one sports thing back in the day, brought up John Renshaw, Johnny Renshaw, who actually worked at Fox Sports Radio briefly among allthers. So that was pretty cool.
He made you look cool in front of your wife too.
Yeah, exactly, because my wife was like she was telling me, She's like, I was gonna yell at you because I was on my phone. I was like looking at my phone. You know, I wasn't I wasn't being social. And then the guy was like, hey, yeah, you know so and so. So that that got me a pass on that. So that was that was pretty neat. So I was like, well that now the trip's off to a good story. I had a great seat to Atlanta, had good Chinese food,
go to the airport, got the rental car. The guy recognized me, so that was unexpected.
Was it awkward though, when after a couple minutes of silence he just said, so, how about weed man hippie?
Eh? It was no, it was it was cool. I was like I was. He did not know we were coming, so I did not announce what airport I was flying into. But that was pretty neat. And so then we we got the car and had a ninety minute drive because we the beginning of the trip we were in Wilmington, North Carolina, so we we went to Wilmington. There's a long story, I'll get into it. A little bit later.
But but by the way, I must point out when I got to Myrtle Beach, the first sign I saw getting off the plane was something that I've talked about on the radio. This goes back many, many years, and it's one of the all time great Well, let mean there is let me say it, and they said this. I want to see if you can recognize this. Danny, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. So Myrtle Beach is close to Coastal Carolina University. Why do you
think that university resonated? And a light bulb immediately went off in my hair? What about Coastal Carolina University do you think made me smile? There's only one thing that they're famous for, as far as I know.
Their mascot.
No, I mean, they do have a unique mascot, the chant Chanta clears, I believe.
Yeah, that's the first thing I think of.
No, no, no, no, I mean it's a cool mascot. But let's go back. Okay, go back thirteen years and there was a football coach named David Bennett at Coastal Carolina and he had a random news conference where he starts talking about cats and dogs, oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, and he said, we don't need a bunch of cats, and hear me, Now, yeah, he's the guy. And so I'm like, lo, more like dogs, Yeah, be a dog. We need more dogs. Ruf ruf. And yeah, this was
his university. He's you know, he's like an athletic director at some high school or something like that around South Carolina. But I was like, wow, that's great. You know, we we got to play that here on the podcast because this is one of the all time great grants. David Bennett, the coach at Coastal Carolina, So that that was pretty cool. I guess it's right in Erere's a few miles away from Myrtle Beach, and so they had a big sign up in the airport and so so that was kind of cool.
Trying to get our two boys ready to carry to the golf tournament. Four printice right, twelve cats live cross the road. Our door's open, screens broke. We need to get a new screen door, but the screens broke. So you come in through the screen, but you can't get back out. I turn to look, there's a little kiddy cat in our in our kitchen, So I said what are you doing in here?
A little kid cat.
By that time the cat turns, tries to get back out, that scream won't go that way. Cats starts going all crazy, and I told our players we need more dogs. Bows barking in the back after go shut bow up, mels like, what's going on? It says the cat and house cat in the house. I said, it is a cat in the house. So I told our players. I tried to let it out the front door. Weird cat's still going crazy in there. And I told our players, you needy bit more like a dog. We don't need a bunch
of cats in here. Looking in the mirror, I look good.
I got my extra bands on, I got my other shoes.
Be a dog. We don't need no miwns. We don't need no cats.
We need more dogs.
There you go, all right? I love that for a guy that doesn't have any name value. David Benny not bad. I mean, that's right up there with you. Think of the legends of the ran in football, Jim Mora. We couldn't do Diddley Pooh or the late Dennis Green. And you want to crown them, crown them, but they are who we thought they were, you know, and we let them got them off the hook exactly exactly. Moving on and the travel log here on the fifth hour, Pacast.
Don't forget Today's Today, Today's day. Somehow you didn't listen to the beginning of this with Charleston Today three o'clock Friday, Friday, Friday Friday Funday, three o'clock to five o'clock. Check it out my.
English chicken fingers with Ben Maller.
Yeah, beating pretzels and whatever else. But so we were in Wilmington. That was the first stop, and that was the wife's family. The in laws, my father in law and his wife along with a sister in law, live in North Carolina. My father in law splits half the time between southern California and here in North Carolina. Just moved down here recently. A sister in law also has been living here with her husband and daughter briefly a couple of years now. Actually went to their wedding a
couple of years ago. First time I ever went to North Carolina. So that's why we kind of extended the trip because they're like, we spent half the week there and then the rest of the time in South Carolina. So even though we flew into South Carolina, we had to drive you know, eighty ninety miles up to eighty ninety minutes, I should say, up to Wilmington, North Carolina. On the drive, the wife was hungry and there's not much open in small town North Carolina in the middle
of the night except waffle house. So we made a stop at a very small town in South Carolina that has a popular of about four thousand people, which is one half of one block of like in North Hollywood or West Hollywood. It's just insane. But but anyways, it was a very small, small rural town, but they did have a waffle house. My wife was skeptical. She's like, oh, it's gonna be terrible. It was not terrible, but I told us that when you're in the South, you have
to eat at waffle house. It's required.
Yeah.
Yeah, well people go to like, let's go to California. You got to have in and out Burger, you know, it's like that kind of thing. But anyway, so we went. We went back on the road after that very steamy night, very human night, and driving in the middle of nowhere. It was the twilight zone. Do do you know what it reminded me of It reminded me of COVID when
we would drive during COVID at night. Yeah, there was no one on the road except you, and you thought for a little bit, You're like, what if if everyone else is dead and I'm the only one alive.
Yeah, and upper management gave us FEMA cards like we were really important essential workers.
Yes, Yes, that was my favorite part of COVID is that we all got You're very essential, my man. My man, people need their sports takes. It's a government wants you to break the curfew.
My man. Uh to hear about the Marvel Championships, my man.
Yeah, that was the shirt? Was it the Sherman Act? Was that what it was? The Sherman Act? I believe it was. I think that was it that allowed us to have access, But not podcasts. I don't think podcasters had access. I think only the radio people.
Yeah, the live broadcasters. We were there in case of any emergency, so we could play the FCC alarms.
Yeah, doing God's work, you Jesus. Driving on the Twilight Zone type theme there, small dark country roads. But I was so paranoid after my experience in Minnesota getting a speeding ticket that I was like, I'm not I'm gonna drive the freaking speed limit. So I set auto pilot whatever the speed limit was top, like thirty five miles an hour.
Unlearned your tourist staff learned I did.
And we have out of state plates on the rental car, which is I hate that every time I travel, Every freaking time I travel, these people give me a car with plates from a different state and it's on it. Well, I've got Virginia plates on the on the car now. When I was in Virginia we had plates. When I was in North Carolina, we had like Texas plates. Last time we flew into Virginia. When I was in Minnesota,
we had Kansas plates. It's like it's always. When I was in Boston we had I don't even remember what we didn't have the state. We never get the state we're in.
Just eight I could just see a small town pop behind you, like this Virginia city slicker. I'm gonna pull this cracker over right now.
Oh exactly. Yeah. So I'm like, screw that. I'm not getting another ticket. So I'm like, I don't care how long it takes, but it really it drove me nuts. Dandy because you know, living in LA when it's at night and you can drive, you're going seventy five eighty miles And I usually go seventy nine because I know that's where I don't get tickets. But still seventy nine. Go from seventy nine to thirty seven, you know, it's like, that's a big that's a big drop in.
Oh, yeah, you might as well be rolling in a tractor.
Yeah, I might as well be on an e bike making my way my way around, I mean, and so whatever, it was fine, and we got there. I didn't get a ticket, and that's great, and that's wonderful and all that. And so that was the first, the first leg, and I guess, I guess I'll leave some stuff for the weekend. The company. We do have the word of the week. Are you ready for the word of the week?
Danny? The word of the week straight out of the Carolinas.
Yeah, and so it is a theme. It was an emailer who lives here in the Carolina and said, Hey, since you're in Carolina, I was curious where did the tar heel thing come from? And I thought it would be appropriate because I spent the first part of the week in North Carolina, and so I thought, you know, what the hell, why not, let's.
Do it north ca Calaca.
Yeah. So the term tar heel, which is the mascot for the University of North Carolina. Where are they still lunatic protesters at North Carolina? I haven't kept track of that.
I don't know.
I've tuned that out this week, thank god. But the term tar heel dates back to the very early days in the history of North Carolina, and the state of North Carolina was a leading producer in supplies for the naval industry, the early navy, and the people who distilled the turpentine from sticky sap of the pine trees. They burned pine, the big things of pine, to produce tar and pitch, and they often did this well barefoot during the ridiculously hot, steamy summer months here in the Carolinas.
And so what do you think happened? They're doing barefoot and they're they're making sap. So they collected tar on the heels of their feet, and so put two and two together. Toda. North Carolina was associated with tar from the seventeen hundreds onward. And originally they were the people that did this were called tar boilers. That was a term that was not endearing to the locals since at
least they say, roughly the eighteen forties. Tar heel is a tested I guess in eighteen sixty three by some of the Confederate soldiers, and it had become common at that time. But it's the gummy resin of the pine barrens the lowland part of the state. So literally tar. You literally have tar on your heels as a barefoot worker, going back to the seventeen hundreds in North Carolina, So that is the word of the week.
That's crazy because I don't know about you, but I don't like anything on my feet like that. We were kids and sometimes we'd be walking around bare feet and if I'd get anything on my feet, it would bug me. So I can't imagine having tar stuck to your feet.
Yeah, especially at least now you can get stuff like that off your feet, but it was a lot harder in the seventeen and eighteen and early nineteen hundreds to get that stuff.
Oh you were on a beach and you got some on your feet, remember I.
Did, Yes, I did. That was in southern California. Actually, I think it was sunset beach that was covered in oil.
Yeah, what did you have to use to get it off?
We went on the internet. I forget what it was, but yeah it was. It was a little bit. We had a google it. That's a lot of work to google. That's not easy to google, but yeah it was. It was a bit of a pain. It was on there for a fair amount of time, and that was with modern modern technology. But I think we'll get out on that. I have many more stories to tell, but I'm really
excited to meet you. If you can come down today, hopefully you'll be able to make it three o'clock till five o'clock over at my father's mustache, remember the James Island location, and that is today right here Charleston, South Carolina.
I feel like there's going to be a pretty good sized crowd there at my wife's Sideburns.
Yeah. Is that lady Sideburns that that emails the show or sends messages on tour? Yeah, I don't know who's going to show up by These things are always hit and miss. Sometimes we get a great turnout like in Minnesota, sometimes a little smaller, but it doesn't matter. It was big or small. Yeah, ever shows up We've done these in Maine and Boston and Syracuse and Pittsburgh.
And then the rapper mentality. They always say back in the day, the greatest MC's they tear up the stage. Whether there's ten people or ten thousand people.
Yeah, exactly. It's like politician going around and you know, meeting with the electorate. Just whoever's there. It's great if it's a big crowd, find if it's small crowd, we'll have a good time. Whoever shows up. We'll tell stories. You can ask me whatever you want. I'll trash Eddie, I'll trash Coop. I'll trash you whatever you want, you know, Lorrain, Yeah, Lorraine of course, Ripper, Roberta, Roberto by the bus driver come.
On, yeah, Iowa, Sam, Jake Warner.
I'll go way back if you want. I don't care how how far back you want to go. But anyway, I have a great day today. Thank you for listening here. Obviously, we'll have new pods all weekend. You guys have been great. I did not promote this at all that we would have new pods. And the email, a lot of email people were asking we'll get to that on Sunday, but a lot of sporty questions mixed in, so we'll do some of those, and anyway, we'll just have a good time today and new pods all weekend, so.
We'll catch you when we catch you later. Skater gotta murder, I gotta go.