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The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in the.
Air everywhere, and a happy Friday to you as we are recording this podcast in real time early on Friday, the fifteenth day of December, Ben Mallor and Danny g Radio because five.
Overnights are not enough. As we are here every Friday, Saturday and Sunday original audio content. You have to follow the podcast. I assume you're already following because you're listening, but we are available all weekend long here with new podcasts and Danny. Have you recovered from the Raiders scoring over sixty points in an NFL game? A Raider team that has been unable to cross twenty most games putting up sixty three points. That was absolutely bonkers on Thursday night football.
It's not often that I'm comfortable during a Raiders game, usually I'm biting my nails, I'm pacing. I usually can just have the game on my iPad as I'm finishing up at work and just have it on in the background. In this case, they scored so much that it interrupted me working on the podcast, so I got home late. I just hope they saved some points for next week at the Chiefs.
Well, the key to this, if you want to score, is to have the other team just hand you the ball via door dash and just drop it off at your front door. So it was very kind of the Chargers who played. And I said this on the Overnight Show as I it reminds me of when I covered the Clippers in the nineties and every once in a while they you know, they passed through a lot of coaches, and sometimes the players just revolted on the coach and decided they were not going to play, and then they wouldn't,
they wouldn't, and they would get the coach fired. Usually it took more than one game. But in the NFL, it's not like Brandon Staley, the coach of the Chargers, was you know, was locked into the job.
It reminds me of when Josh McDaniels would speak like, get this guy out of here. He was the coach of my favorite team and I didn't like him. So I can't imagine what Charger fans, the few we know must think about all this. But blessing in disguise. Right as we're recording this, he's not fired yet, but that probably will be coming in an hour or two, I'm guessing.
Yeah.
I mean, the story is he's the ownership group has called Stalyan for a meeting, so that's generally a bad sign. That doesn't Yeah, that doesn't seem like a great time. So yeah, I mean, we're doing this on early Friday morning, and the plan is they will they will get together. I mean, you gotta fire the coach. You have to fire the coach you fire.
This is the fifth year in a row that they have gone under their expected win total, which was nine and a half this year, by the way, and they are standing at five games. Pretty crazy when you look at that stat. They're always a paper tiger. They always blame it on injuries. They always have quote unquote bad luck with close games. When do you just say that they're a piece of crap team in the NFL messed up by putting them in LA Well, yeah, I.
Mean that's it has not gone like they expect. There are a bunch of people, though, I go to these Charger games sometimes and there are a bunch of people that work for the Chargers on game day that still drive up from San Diego. It's an odd it's an odd thing. But the fans, the actual fans of the old San Diego Chargers, not a lot of them making the drive from San Diego up I five and crossing over the four or five there in the hood in Inglewood.
But yeah, that's a that's a bad I mean, the Vegas odds makers that set the point the total for wins, I mean, they're pretty spot on right. If you're you're underachieving if you don't get to that level once in five years. And the Chargers have not hit on all cylinders since what Ladanian Tomlinson was playing for them.
Is that?
Am I going back far enough? No?
You're right.
I have nightmares about that dude running in touchdowns and throwing in touchdowns against my favorite team. You're right, that's when the Chargers were a threat to beat any team. Now, who would have thought, especially at the start, of the season because we always hear quote unquote experts picking them to go all the way or making it deep into the playoffs, and they always wind up wedding the bed.
It'll happen again. Brandon Staley is not going to be coaching next year. The Spanos family will will have to get rid of him, and then they'll hire some whether it's Belichick or some other hot shot coach, and the media is going to hype up the Chargers. All they did I had to do was get rid of Brandon Staley and now it's gonna be sunshine, rainbows and lollipops.
And just like last year, Justin Fields won MVP of the offseason, and they didn't make a coaching change, but they made a couple of roster moves right They added a wide receiver, they made some other moves, and we were all excited and saw how that worked out.
And by the way, congrats to Antonio Pierce. You and I both called it. If he could get some wins under his belt, he would have a really good shot at getting the job. Based on the way Mark Davis was making those facial expressions last night, I don't see how he can't give Harris a long term contract.
Yeah, I mean the Gruden rumors are still out there though, that he might come.
Through, that that ship has sailed.
Look at you, you're all in.
But I was before this game. I mean, I liked what I saw.
I know it was two New York teams that they beat up on, but I just like, I like his swag. The moment he was on the sideline as the leader of the team, it just looked right and it felt right.
We're doing a sporty podcast, you know we're doing.
I know I like it doing sporty. We better transition before half our audience.
I know people don't tune in for sporty. They don't want that. They want to hear nonsense. But yeah, I'm pulling for Antonio Pierce because, as as I told you, I one of my buddies from from high school. His sister is very good friends with Antonio Pearce has known him since he was coaching in high school. And possibly if he gets the Raider job, she might end up moving moving to Vegas so and working for the Raiders,
which would be which be cook. I think then I might be able to get the tickets or something, you know, and then then you can go. We'll go together. Anyway. We have eat, drink and be merry, Unappreciated comedy and dream Weaver and we'll get to all that. We also have the Word of the Week. So it's a jam packed pod and we just started with about seven or eight minutes of hot sports talk. So anyway, yeah, Joe, I mean that Raider game was so crazy. I'm like,
I'm watching it. You know, these games Thursday night Football, coming on after the game doing the over reread show, I'm like, well, these games are usually terrible, and that game was supposed to be bad.
Rich Davis told us on the afternoon show to take the under neither team would score twenty. I try to tell him what the game meant for Antonio Pears, and he brushed me off. This was a game I was told, don't even bother to watch it. And then they score a franchise record, and I mean, they broke all kinds of records last night.
It was insane.
And that Jack Jones interception, it was a throwaway. The Patriots kicked him off their team, and that was the most athletic defensive move I've seen all season on the Raider team. And their defense has been pretty decent. I had to keep watching that back. I think it was underappreciated because of what happened with everything else. That one handed grab as he was floating in the other direction. That was like some mentalist shit in Vegas. That was so awesome.
Yeah, and you wonder why more defensive backs can't make that because he just he read the play, he saw what was going to happen, and he reacted. And you see that in basketball where guys will jump the passing lane. You don't see that often on that kind of play in the NFL, but you would think think there'll be other guys that'll copy that and try to mimic what
was going on. But when I'm watching these games on Thursday night that I don't really have any interest in, and I'm not a Raider fan or a Charger fan, I don't even skinning the game. I do go to the Charger games, but I'm not a Charger guy, and I'm always looking for the story and I'm like, Wow,
there's gonna be nothing really here. It's gonna be a you know, a seventeen, a twenty to seventeen game, and you know you got backup quarterback here for the Chargers and then that happens, so I was able to wax poet it, so I was happy about that. Before we get to eat, drink and be merry. Do want to shamelessly promote there's a little TV show that is popping up. It's called Benny Versus the Penny, and it'll be airing all over the country on regional cable television starting later today.
The first airing, if I'm reading my notes properly, is in Chicago, seven o'clock local time in Chicago, which is five o'clock out here in LA on NBC Sports Chicago the Bulls and Blackhawks. I do not believe we're playing, so that's a prime spot for us at seven o'clock in Chicago. We'll be on late night after the Celtics game on NBC Sports Boston there Magic or playing the
Celtics at the Garden there and that's our hub. The show's produced out of NBC Sports Boston, so we'll be on there at eleven and eleven thirty one on Philly tonight at eleven, and a couple of showings in the Bay Area today starting at six pm, and then we're on all day we have three airrings on Spectrum Sports Net SoCal on Saturday, and there's other airings on these channels. I'm just giving you some of the ones I know, and then the big slot for us in New York
on Sunday morning. I'll remind you on Sunday, but we're on SNY, the channel of the Mets are on in New York Sunday morning at eleven thirty in the am. But eat drinking me Marry. So we strive, Danny. We strive, both of us profecstional radio guys, broadcasters. We strive for excellence, whether it's the fifth hour, you with Covino and Rich or me with the gas bag buddies I have there in the overnight. But the goal is to provide your ears with a cacophony of goodness. And as you escape,
you unlock the door. I remember seeing this one as a get the key to imagination. Beyond it is another dimension, Danny, a dimension of sound, a dimension of mind. You're moving in to a land of both shadow and substance of things and ideas. You've crossed over into the Mallard zone, otherwise known as a twilight zone. But this is a yearly podcast. I now present, without further interruption, the twenty twenty three Mallard Ugly Sweater Party postgame show. Nobody else
has this content, Danny. It is a global exclusive. iHeartMedia sparing no expense. Hey, the company paid a shopping four dollars and twenty eight cents to win a ginning war, so we're very happy. Last year we paid the company paid three dollars and eighty eight cents, So we've added value here. That's forty extra cents. Inflation is a mofo, Danny.
WHOA You could buy a Panthers ticket with that?
Yes, yes, And you're better off keeping the money though, and than buying a Panther's ticket. But what can you expect from the pod? Post game exclusive never before told stories. We're gonna go deep into the weeds. This year was an absolute blast. In fact, if you watch Benny Versus the Penny, you will see something that has never been broadcast before involving this event. And I'm gonna tell you when it happens, or how it happens, or what it is,
but just file that away, file out away. Something related to this event made the television show. But we had a packed house. We had a great turnout and my wife's plan was accurate. Now last year we had a Halloween party and a Christmas party. Too many parties, so if you have one, everyone shows them. If you have two, people choose one and they don't go to the other.
So we had we had one. We had Radio Royalty, big radio celebrities at Eddie Garcia made the appearance Iowa Sam Mike Harmon from The Jesus Show, Bobo on the radio, a legend Bobo who doesn't really work at our place anymore, but he did and I love Bobo. Rob Parker stop by with buddy of his, the great Art Martinez, the
Prince of Darkness, League Line Ted Sobol. They have a bunch of other people that made the guest list, and then my wife had a bunch of her friends, so we had a bunch of police officers ex law enforcement people. There was a rambunctious night and sustenance is that a word I can say? I think this early in the morning. Yeah, food was provided, not to say grub exactly. And the menu we had the traditional nacho bar which is very popular. Kirkland brand pizza both pepperoni and cheese pizza. Here's a
big one, Danny. A charcuterie board with various meats, cheeses, and crackers or Kuca River. Yeah, I just you know, I say it my own way. And we had a chocolate bar. I told you last weekend. I was busy making chocolate as the chocolate tear, and I posted some photos on Instagram and also on Facebook if you want to see. And I'm pretty proud of my chocolate. I'm not gonna lie, Danny. My chocolate game's on point, I think. But I had Hanukka chocolates. I had Christmas chocolates good
for everyone. I didn't have any I didn't have any atheist chocolates. But those are just chocolates, so any of that. But people loved the bakery, Benny's Bakery. I made homemade chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies and every tasty morsel finger licking good. And I can report exclusively on this postgame coverage here. On the fifth hours, everyone ate drank and was merry that the chocolate chip mixed with the
peanut butter was a big hit. It was chewey ooey, gooey goodness, and it actually went quicker than the oatmeal raisin But the main reason I make the oatmeal raisin is because my wife likes so she actually is happy that people don't eat them as much. They did eat a lot of them, but they didn't need as much as the chocolate chip ones. In fact, I was told I have to double the chocolate chip for the family version of the party. So we've got that now, turning
the page, Danny, we had unappreciated comedy. As we continue our in depth team coverage of the twenty twenty three malar Ugly Sweater party, the night got off to a rather bizarre start. People showed up around the time the party started. There are a few people early. Mike Harmon was the first one there, by the way, he was the first one there, and then there were a bunch of other people. But my friend Art Martinez, you know from these parties. He's been in these things over the years.
Oh and I worked with him for a few years at NBC Sports Radio back in the day.
So I've known Art for I don't know to say how long I'm gonna date myself, but we go way back to local radio in LA and I love Art. Art's the greatest board op I've ever had. He's amazing at what he does. He's the big engineer at Westwood One, and he's.
Famous for always shutting down your parties pretty much.
And that happened, of course again we'll get to that. But he's a Fox Sports Radio veteran. He's a US Marine veteran, which is much more proud of it should be served in Desert storm. We tell all kinds of stories anyway. So Artie loves to kind of pak the bear, and he loves and he wanted to have some fun with the Prince of Darkness, the original Prince of Darkness league line, which is not hard to press his button. You know that. I mean you had your run ins
with Lee. I mean you guys, I didn't get along now, but you had when you first met him. He was kind of a douche slightly racist, yes, so, which is funny because he's like pretty liberal, which is odd so easy to get a reaction. So art goes up to Lee and tells him this in my kitchen. He tells a kind of an off colored joke in a dead pan delivery, and he was very serious as he was telling that. He tried to be the straight man. Now I happened to hear that joke earlier, because he tried
that on me and I ignored it. So, knowing what I know about art, and I knew this guy, this guy's he didn't he didn't mean what he's saying. He's busting balls, so I know where he's at in that realm. And nevertheless, Lee apparently did not either that or he chose to ignore his ear plugs, and he almost threw hands. We almost had a punch of heart, and it took a little while for Lee to calm down and realize that he was not serious.
And now Lee is usually the one offending other people. Yeah, yeah, So I mean, was this racial? Was it religious? Like?
What tone was this joke that set off Bullie?
It was a religious joke. I will not repeat it in a friendly company, but you know, it's just a joke. It was just kidding around and Lee got really really upset later on, though, you'll be happy to know the tradition continues because one of my buddies, my guy Hunter, who I don't know if you've met him, he's he's my my like, my only friend left from high school that I still socialize with, is this guy Hunter. We're
gambling buddies. We go to Vegas maybe once a year, and we's a bunch of money and we think we're gonna win and all this. Anyway, so he's at the party and he he not really met Lee, and so he had heard about Lee. He's known I've known Lee, we've done we did shows together a long time and Lee and Lee's retired from radio and we see him once a year at this thing. So my buddy's like,
all right, I'm gonna get into it. Lee, I'm gonna go political because Lee used to host shows at KFI, the big political talk station in La So he goes out to the back of the Malor mansion and he's talking politics and the Prince of Darkness, Lee Kleine, the original Prince of Dartaness. He works himself into a lather talking about politics. So and my buddy, knowing what he knows, he tried like everyone else, just like Art Martinez tried
to press buttons. My buddy like, hey, I'll press some buttons, and so he starts. He starts tapping buttons, and Lee's getting more and more worked up. And a group of my wife's friend approached Lee. They were concerned that he was getting two out of control, so they told him to calm down. How do you think Lee handled.
That the same way women do when you tell them to calm down.
Yeah. Yeah, it escalated the situation. It was interesting. It was interesting, but nobody threw any punches. As far as I know, I didn't see anything at any reports of that. Other of that. People were getting along and were singing, dancing, partying. It was all all good in the neighborhood. And as far as the the dream Weaver is concerned, the highlight for me, the highlight for I love hanging out with radio people and telling old radio stories and all that stuff.
I'll become that guy. I'm that guy. So we had a passionate conversation. It was me my friend Ted Sobel, who briefly worked at Fox Sports Radio is mostly a news radio guy and did network NFL radio studio hosting for a long time. Just recently stopped doing that. So Sobl's there, Iowa Sam, a couple other people, some of them in the business, some of them out of the business, but a lot of them were mostly from the audio wars.
Give me an example. Ted Sobil loves to point out that he's friends with Sandy Kofax, not just casual friends, like they're like their buddies. Sandy lives in Florida, but they talk quite a bit, and Ted, much like Pat O'Brien, likes to drop names from time to time. He did point out that he also had a phone conversation this past week with a gentleman who's rather famous, who I'm gonna admit I did not know was still alive. I
thought this person was not with us anymore. But lator yes, that is absolutely correct, unless it is not my budd Ted Sobell, he is friends. He had a phone conversation this week with mel Brooks in that wild I thought mel Brooks had passed.
Away, but he's Wow. I did too.
He's ninety seven years old. Seven years old.
That's Dick van Dijke Territory.
Yeah, he's still going. That's nuts. And if you're younger, you know who mel Brooks is. I mean, the guy's a Hollywood ken That blaze he made blazing saddles right that that movie could never win the white women at exactly with Richard Pryor and all those those knuckleheads in that movie. Spaceball's made a bunch of parody movies the producers young Frankenstein were a bunch of a bunch of famous stuff And anyway, that's just randomly came up. So
Ted's also friends. One of the other stories I love about Teddy's I tell us every year, but he's friends with Paul. Do you know who Paul Olden is?
The name rings the bell?
So Paul Olden now is the public address announcer in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium. Okay, but the reason I know Paul Olden is because he is the young radio reporter. As a kid, he was a young guy, probably a teenager, maybe in his early twenty and he went up to Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda and asked, what is your opinion of Kingman's performance?
Yes, that's where his name rings a bell.
So we're talking about that. That was kind of the origin of the conversation. We started talking about Paul Olden, and I was like, you know, what's going on with Paul. I've met him a few times. I don't really know him, but I've met him. And he used to be an MLB Broadchester He was the PA announcer for the Super Bowl for years. But now he's been the Yankee guy,
and it's a great job from what I understand. You do the spring training game, so you get a month in Florida, which is where his offseason home is, and then you do the eighty one home game and that's it. So he essentially works about one hundred and twelve days a year, give or take, and if there's playoff games, it's a little more. And that's it. He just has to be available when the Yankees have a game at home. So we're talking about these coaching ti rads, which it's
a topic I love. I just love this topic. And we started going down the usual suspects. It was like Lee Elia and I celebrated Lee ilya. Eighty five percent of the world's work. The other fifteen percent come out here. It's a playground for the seasuckers, you know, and all that, and so that to me is always the measuring stake, Danny,
that's the measuring stake. But the reason this became a very interesting conversation, I'm talking about these coaching tirades, and a couple of the younger guys that were at the party had never heard Manager's Corner with Earl Weaver, and so we went to the YouTube and we played Manager's Corner for Earl Weaver and people started dying, they were balling, they were laughing. It was so good. It's pure comedy gold And if you've not heard it, we played it
on this podcast before. Yeah, it's nineteen eighties radio. Orioles are really good and they used to do these pregame shows which are only like half an hour, but the coaches Corner Earl Weaver manager Coaches Corner was twenty minutes. Our Manager's Corner was twenty minutes before the start of Orioles game. And so they did this parody one where they did a mail bag and it was hilarious. Team Speed for Christ's sakes. And then Terry Crowley, you know, he's if you could hit an F and baseball and
it was hilarious. Is Terry Crowley all baseball fan? He's like, we picked up Terry Crowley because we saw that he could sit in the end, you know his FN asked for eight innings and enjoy watching a baseball game just like any other fan. And the funniest was at the end we talked about this, he took a letter, a fake letter from Alice Sweet from Norfolk Virginia and she wanted to know when the best time was to plant her tomato plant. And that was hilarious. So it was.
It was a lot of fun at a good time. And I look forward to to next year and hopefully Danny, I know you've got the kid now, so you have the ultimate excuse to never come to these things again. But I would hope hopefully next year maybe maybe.
You know, I think CoA will be old enough this time next year to have a sitter. Right now, he would just shoot saliva and poop all over a wannabe babysitter.
Yeah, no, I totally, I totally get it and all that stuff. And we did have competing party we had. Covino and Rich had their own party. It was a few hours before our our party, so they had their their holiday.
Yeah, I saw that your boy Iowa Sam double dip.
He did. He did. In fact, he texts me while at the other party to say, hey, I'm here, but I will be making the appearance, but I'm gonna be a little bit later. So yeah, that's cool, It's all good. I guess I'll have to get to it with Covino and Rich. We'll have to coordinate so I can go to not that I was invited to their party, but if they invite now, I'll go to them, and then they can come to our party.
So we know you were because remember they told me to invite you. You told me to invite them, and I had to inform both parties that the date was the same.
Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah. My wife was like, hey, we got to get Comuno and Rich because she's met them at the super Bowl and that horse track Santa Anita. But it didn't work out tobly. Next year, Well, I'll do like a Saturday. They can do a Friday or vice versa or whatever. All right, so we will get out. We have one more fun thing to do. The word of the week dandy.
Of the week.
So I thought of this word at the Ugly Sweater party because there were people in the back of the Malor mansion who were smoking stogies and they were really enjoying themselves, smoking like a victory cigar.
So I thought, ah, you're pulling a Max Crosby.
Yeah, well, you know what do we do? Yeah? I saw that boy. Max doesn't need a shirt. He's got a shirt. You know, He's got his own shirt without his shirt on. He spent a lot of money on tattoos. That's probably I looked at that photo of him. You think that's like thirty thousand dollars of tattoos or more than that.
Yeah, I do, because he he hired a really good tattoo artist.
Those don't come cheap.
Yeah, they look good. I'm not a tattoo guy, but they look good. I respect someone's tattoos, I do, all right. So stogy. The word of the week is stogy in honor of the people who are smoking them at the mallor mansion Ugly Sweater party circa twenty twenty three. So if you don't know, it's kind of obviously it's large sheep cigars called the stogy. That word stogy. I think this is interesting. I stumbled into a rabbit hole. That's why I'm bringing this up as the word of the week.
So it goes back to eighteen sixty nine. It's a colloquial term. The word supposedly originally from the eighteen thirties. It was an adjective meaning rough, heavy, or coarse, kind of like workshoes or something along those lines, but also cigars, long and cheap. In eighteen sixty one. But it is a base and essentially what it is. They believe the word itself came from Conestoga, which is the name of an agricultural region in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area, Conestoga. I
believe I'm saying that properly. And these cigars came from that area. And there's also a claim that they were favored by drivers of the covered wagons, the people that drove the wagons from the agricultural area in this town near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Conestoga, and people just said, Hey, the guy's coming with the wagon and he's got us. They
shortened it from Conestoga to Stogy. So there you go, the word of the week, which is a tribute to a town in Pennsylvania, the term Stogy from the eighteen hundreds. Stogy is the word of the week. We'll get out on that, Danny. Anything you want to promote here. It is a Friday. I know you at work. You get the radio show. I'm done with my work here, so you've got yeah, I've.
Your post production of this fine podcast. After a little short nap, I will get my butt over to Sherman Oaks California for the fun Friday afternoon program Covino and Rich, and on Fridays we do weekend hob Nobin and Nervous Farts and Techmobile high fives as we preview NFL Week fifteen outstanding.
Have fun with that. Remember the TV show Benny Versus the Penny, It's on all day today. And also check social media. I'm gonna be posting some photos from beer drinking Brian. I don't want to short change him. I'll talk more about that tomorrow, but there's some photos up of a memorial We're old buddy, beer drinking Brian. I have a wonderful rest of your Friday and we will catch you next time.
Later, skater got a murder. I gotta go