Kabooms.
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow, it's clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Mahller starts right now.
In the air everywhere.
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny g Radio. A Happy Saturday. Oh what a day it is today? Holy can only a.
Big cottage football day? It is championship Saturday. You already knew that.
Am I excited to watch the Conference USA championship game in Jacksonville, Alabama between in Jacksonville State and Kennesaw State. No, there's two games that I have circled today and can you guess which two games I have circle? Now you might be hearing this podcast after these games have been played, So take this for what it's worth. But Alabama and Georgia Georgia Georgia A. What are the two and a
half point favorite? I think something like that against Alabama And that's in Atlanta, the SEC Championship game, which is four o'clock Eastern today one o'clock I believe in the West. And then the Granddaddy of them all from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Last time I was in Indianapolis, the Colts played at the RCA Dome. Have not been to Lucas Oil Stadium, but in Indianapolis there the Hoosiers.
It's like a home game Indiana.
That's a basketball school in Ohio State, the Big Bad Buck guys in Ohio State.
A four point favorite in that game.
And that is the game that I have circled along with Georgia and Alabama.
So look forward to watching those games.
And the cool thing about it is that I don't have any you know, inside friendship with anybody. I just want to watch the game and enjoy the game. And will I put some bets down? Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I don't know yet.
I'll handicap the game.
A little bit later, both games and see what happens on this podcast we have when the Malarism bites back and the Great bag Shakedown. Yes, all right, we're gonna begin with this, so uh, you know, I want to have some fun here. I want to enjoy things, and this podcast over the last couple of months has just become a weekly update on me injuring myself. It's just such a klutz and it happened yet again. So there
are people in the world who trained for marathons. I think these people are nuts, but they go on twenty six point two miles. My brother, my older brother did that for years, ran the New York Marathon and they got, you know, knees made out of titanium, lungs built like wind tunnels. There are people who climb mountains, real mountains like Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro, and even those fake icelandic ones
influencers pose in front of and all that. And then there are the rest of us navigating something far more dangerous, the silverware drawer in your kitchen. So this past week I discovered a simple truth and I got burned by my own words. Burned by my own words. So there are some phrases. We call them malarisms that well.
That's what people have told me. I didn't come up with that term, but some of you knuckleheads have said that.
One of them that I use when a washed up play, I'll give you an example. Darius Sleigh this week was fired by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was picked up on waivers by Buffalo, so is Brandon Cooks, and he came over from the Saints. He asked to be fired, and he went to Buffalo. And Darius Slaye never reported least that I even showed up whatever he said. He was contemplating retirement. And so the term we would use is
don't catch a falling knife. Don't try to catch a falling knife, and it has come back to bite me like a rabid raccoon in the moonlight. So the saying originally, which was borrowed from the people on Wall Street warning investors about jumping into early buying a crashing stock, you gotta wait.
Well, it works equally.
Well for washed up football players, as we just laid out, and apparently for yours truly sports talk radio host pretending to be a part time dishwasher. I was bragging about my dishwashing ability. And technically this was not while dishwashing, this was the postgame show. It did not happen. I was successfully able to clean off all the gunk, all the dew hickeys that get on the food or the
food he gets on the plates. But after the overnight shifted and so here I was very proud of my Benny the dishwasher title I'm running on fumes is I'm just setting the picture for you.
Eyes are glazed over. If you work overnight, you know what it's like.
My eyes are glazed like I'm at a crispy kream on the curveyor belt and I'm just trying to put the forks and the spoons.
Away after doing the dishes. I normally do the dishes.
I wash the dishes and put them in the dishwasher before the show, and then by the time I get home from the studio, I can then put the dishes away. And that's how it works. I'm letting you inside the Malor mansion and so no parade, no ticker tape, no balloons, just a middle aged man. I guess I'm older than that now, going against gravity and gravity it turns out
wins every time. The cutlery began to drop as I was putting it away, and I was like an outfielder for the Giants of the Padres, or the Diamondbacks or the Rockies, chasing a line drive hit by shoheo tani. And it turned out it was windy, and my instincts just kind of took over. I did the thing you can't do at the time. You can't do it.
What did I do? I lunged, I reached, which.
Would not have been a problem if I didn't give you my amazing athletic ability, where I actually succeeded. The cutlery began to drop, and I lunged, I reached, and I got what I was trying to reach for, and I then failed also, So I succeeded and failed.
At the same moment. What are you talking about. You can't succeed. It failed the same ball, but it makes money.
So I succeeded in the fact that I prevented the newly wake silverware from crashing to the dirty floor.
I was successful.
I prevented that from happening, and in doing so, I yet again sliced a large chunk of my thumb bloodshd in the kitchen two point zero or three point oh a culinary crime scene CSI dishwashing unit. It has happened again. So this was not chopping onions. This is a whole different animal. So an injury tent moment, without the athletic trainer in sight, no blue medical pop up, no Bill
Belichick looking nearby asking about my thumb injury designation. This was not the Michael Jordan flu game or the Kobe food poisoning game. There was no violin music in the background, just the gentle hum of the dishwasher, and that realization, as it's happening in slow motion, that I am now a three for three person when it comes to finger injuries, both thumbs and an index finger the finger triple crown.
Instead of twiddling my thumbs, I am now slicing my thumbs like deli meat at a bodega in Manhattan before all the bodegas became weed shops. Back in the old days, when I first went to New York, back on my day, I went to Manhattan and visit my brother, and.
I was like, oh my god, this is amazing.
And there were bodegas with turkey sandwiches. Everywhere there was that, and they were in Times Square. There were a lot of peep shows, women dance and nudes, nudes, nudes and all that, and now not so much. All right, But it turns out the hardest job in America is not quarterback in the NFL. It's it's not surgeon. It isn't college football coach dealing with boosters breathing down your neck, Nil divas and all that people with dragon breath trying
to get more money. Now, it turns out that for me, performing simple household tasks while half asleep has got to be the hardest job in America.
It's just got to be.
So let me tell you something. Dishwashing, as it turns out, is not that easy. And you're dealing with very sharp knives and forks that could stab your eye out and all that stuff. I'm literally risking my life to put the knife and fork away. And so and this is not the quiet, polite chore that the sitcoms back in the eighties and nineties made it out to be. In many ways, it's a combat sport. This is the ui
See of domestic responsibility. And I'm a champion. Like you don't hear Joe Rogan screaming about it, but he should. He should have a little podcast. Oh my god, he's going for the spachela. He's got no regard for his hands, no regard. That's how it felt. One wrong move and your thumb looks like it went twelve rounds with a broken blender. Somewhere on the NFL injury list, there is
a space waiting for me. Benny the dishwasher, right thumb listed as questionable day to day with stupidity capital s stupidity. Now I have become a walking cautionary tail, a public service announcement. And I used to be the king of PSAs on the Overnight Show. But again, this job is not as easy as it looks. And so it's a
reminder of another phrase that we use a lot. Sometimes the upper balcony is empty, and that's my way of saying that the mental gas tank was abandoned somewhere around three in the morning and after the final monologue about Pete Carroll or Lamar Jackson or some other sports owner writing checks with other people's money. And yet the world expects you to transition seamlessly from talk radio insomniac, just a total lunatic, and to mourning homemaker, Penny the homemaker.
No stretching, no warm up, none of that, no wardrobe change, no rehab assignment in triple A. There's no graphic that flashes up coming up next. The morning chores sponsored by Niasporren and the people that make band aids, Johnson and Johnson. That should happen. There should be a household combine the way the NFL does it. And we talked about this with the Olympics, the domestic Olympics or whatever, where you're doing these household chores. Forget bench press. Can you scrub
a pan without having it drop? Can you transfer leftovers into tupperware without losing thirty percent to spillage? These are serious problems you have to deal with. Can you unload a dishwasher without slicing a finger and inventing a new curse word. That's the real test of a person. So give me a stop watch and I'll take whatever, and I'll show you what an elite athlete is. I'm not just a gas bag, okay. And injuries are part of sports. And you know it's like Jason Tatum got hurt for
the Celtics. You're gonna bring him back next year. I cut my fingers three different ways to Sunday, I'll be back. And it all comes back to one phrase, don't catch a falling knife.
That's it.
And I've used that hundreds of times to describe the downward spiral of quarterbacks past their prime.
The wide receiver that can't play anymore.
The baseball pitchers lost three miles per hour and gained five pounds around the waist. The coach clinging to a playbook last updated in the year two thousand. Who's got a young lady friend who wasn't even alive in the year two thousand. It means don't overreact, okay, don't panic, don't try to intervene in something that's already going south. The phrase as we used it there, but in my kitchen that phrase became prophecy and I ignored it. I
don't catch a falling knife. Wall Street uses it, Washington uses it. We use it in sports radio. In my house, the Malor Mansion, it became the medical file titled thumb Incident number three, right thumb Incident number three.
And it has been.
Said that doing radio is like shouting down an elevator shaft hoping someone hears you. You never know who's out there. It could be the biggest audience the want. There could be like four people listening. You never know because it's it's not where you're in the same room. And I would add cleaning up the house after after doing the radio shows, like tight roping.
It's like you're tight roping across the Grand.
Canyon and you you've got the wrong socks on, and you got a plastic fork and you're balancing a stick.
I don't know why you're balancing a stick, but you got a stick.
That doesn't make a lot of sense if you're going across the Grand Canyon and there's no applause, there's no trophy. There's bandages, and there's a lot of them. So here I am a man with I'm like Mordecai three fingers Brown. I got three finger injuries as a baseball joke. Three finger injuries, an empty upper balcony, and a respect for the amount of damage a knife, a falling knife can do at that velocity. And I am not twiddling my thumbs. I am protecting them like they're the last seconds on
the game clock. And maybe that is the lesson in all of this nonsense, that we're all one spoon drop away from humility. Doesn't matter if you host a radio show on six hundred radio stations or a backyard barbecue. It doesn't matter whether you're paid to call football games or wash football shaped plates. Gravity is gonna get you, right, don't catch a falling knife, don't underestimate the silverware drawer, the transition of passing the silverware putting it in the drawer, don't try to rush it.
Just don't do it. Do not do it.
And for the love of all that's holy, buy band aids in bulk.
Go to Costco and buy a side of band aids.
And I'll be back in the line up in the kitchen soon, probably for next week's chores.
Thumb be willing, and so then that's that. That's that.
Now turning the page to what I call the Great bag Shakedown. That's right, my friends, gather around. It's another story on the Fifth Hour podcast. Oh my god, yep, another story. So let's talk about one of the great nickel and dime hustles of our time. And no one has the balls to say no to it. A con so petty? How petty is it? So petty, so small minded, so proudly wrapped in bureaucratic smugness. You'd think it was crafted in a Sacramento think tank, powered by Kale smoothies
and virtue virtue signaling emojis. If you know what I'm talking about I am discussing for a few minutes the ten cent single use bag fee in the People's Republic of California. It's ten cents, better known by its gangster name, a dime. Then let me preface this by saying this is not new. This ten cent tax has been around
for a while. It's a coin that barely registers on the seismic scale of economics, and somehow has become the line in the sand between free people and the nickel and dimers who pretend they're saving the oceans one checkout lane at a time. And I say this with every ounce of conviction. And this came up on the radio show I have left in my bagless hands. That is the conviction I have. I am not paying it. I'm not paying the bag fee. I'm not paying for it, not now, not ever, Sam. I am why because, as
I explained, this is not a Doctor Seuss book. But as I explained to Alf the alien ol Piner on the radio show this week, this is not about the dime.
It is about the principle.
And he lives in a state where they also Nikolin Daimya, it's about government that wants you to applaud while they reach into your pocket like a silent film pickpocket and a bowler's hat. And I want to paint the picture for you. So I carry my groceries out of the store with my own bear hands, Benny bare hands. Five items or forty six out ofs it doesn't matter, And I must look to people that don't know me, like
a modern day Charlie Chaplin. If you know early Hollywood, the famous scene the pawn shop was the movie where he's balancing drills, hammers, loose cables. It's the vaudevillian acrobat. Or there was the Steve Martin planes, trans and automobiles. Remember he was hauling luggage through the O'Hare airport in the winter and all of his hands.
Were full and all that. Or you could go home alone. The mom Catherine O'Hara and home alone.
Remember she was sprinting through the airport clutching all of her bags, trying to trying to get everything there it needed to be. And it's like me trying to escape a hostage situation. And listen, I'm gonna keep doing it. Why am I glutting for punishment? Probably so, probably so, But the main reason is because I refuse to give these plastic bag tax collectors a single red scent. I'm not doing it. I'm sorry, not sorry, I'm not doing it. This is the California paradox. It is a beautiful state,
amazing geography, oceans here, there, and everywhere. It's also a state that thinks that you're too stupid, those that live here, to handle your own shopping habits, yet just enlightened enough to be guilt tripped into paying for the privilege of carrying your own groceries out of the store. Now they call this environmental stewardship is what they call it. I call it government mandated perse snatching. They're literally pickpockets, is
what they are. And it drives me nuts. And listen, if this were actually about the Earth, if this was about it, it's the what's the word I'm looking for here? I mean, think about human beings, the arrogance of it, the smugness of human beings. If this were actually about Mother Earth and it were truly about the oceans and the wildlife and reducing waste, well, then the cost would be built directly into the product.
Wouldn't that be the case? Wouldn't that make sense?
Well, well, just it's like when I go to a Mexican restaurant and I eat the chips and salsa and it's given complimentary. I go to an Italian restaurant and they put a loaf of bread, warm bread and butter on the table. I know, Oh, it's not free, it's baked into the price of the If I'm at a Mexican restaurant, the tacos or an Aian restaurant, the fetccini alfredo with the beautiful sauce and the little chicken pieces.
In there and all that, so I know that going in.
I know that going in, and yet here we are and it's like, no, no, no, it's a we're not gonna do it that way.
Nope, not not gonna do it. Sorry, not sorry. Then why don't why don't you do it? Uh?
Well, because it's quiet, efficient, invisible, like any real environmental form worth its carbon footprint.
But that's not what California does.
California insists on the public shaming business model. A ding ding ding ding ding to your dignity and your wallet, a scarlet letter, B for bagless if you decline, and a D for donor if you bend the knee and cough up that dime, and the dime isn't the goal.
I know what's going on. It's the guilt trip, That's what it is. It's the guilt.
And here's the I guess the punchline of all this, the plastic bag waste. They've had this for a little while now and they've done studies on it.
You'd think, oh, this solved the problem. No it didn't.
Plastic bag waste did not plummet. Studies across multiple cities around the around the United States where they have this have shown people simply bought more trash bags to replace the free ones they used to get. So, congratulations, California. You solved absolutely nothing. And you are charging your residence the people that pay your stupid salaries for the privilege of that. And that's the way things roll in the
Golden State. The buocic what's the word I'm looking for, the bureaucracy that turns common sense into compost and bills bills you for the magic trick. And this is the I know I'm going on a rant here, but this is the kind of thinking that this relentless barrage of petty mandates that sends people sprinting out of California trying to get to Texas and Florida like they're fleeing Jurassic Park. You know, it's like, we got to get out of here.
The stampedes of taxpayers galloping past the now leaving California side, while overhead the state government waves lovingly with one hand and reaches into the till with the other. And here's the part we really pound the desk over California politicians, these knuckleheads, these dingle bears, actually believe this is meaningful. They believe that charging you a dime at checkout is going to reverse the tides, cleanse the oceans, purify the skies, and maybe even fix.
The clippers who hate each other.
It is the environmental equivalent to putting a band aid on a volcanic eruption. It's the symbolism masquerading his policy. And you know, I'm annoyed by anyone in sports who does virtue signaling. And I pointed out all the time, well, also in this world, same thing. It's people who want credit for caring, not results. I really really care. And the bag fee is the government's version of the TSA making you take your shoes off. It doesn't actually solve
the problem. But boy, boy, does it make the rule makers feel important? And now I can hear the critics warm it up?
Right?
Oh but Ben, it's just ten cents, And that, my friends, is the lullaby the ruling political dopes sing as they tuck your wallet into their backpack. It's boiling frog on one. It starts out with the dime. Well that's not working. Why don't we raise it to a quarter? Okay, that'll work.
And now that doesn't work, how about fifty cents a bag? Do I get that?
Then it becomes a fee, and then it's a it's a surcharge, and before long you're paying something called a grocery transport Optimization compliance fee. Why not more red tape, more bureaucracy, because someone in Sacramento, the state capitol of California, dreamed it up at a wellness retreat while doing urine therapy with Doc mic in Hawaii. And we know how this works. They never stop charging, they just add these Once these things come in, they're not going anywhere in
the grand opera of government overreach. The bag fee is the piccolo. It's small shrimp, annoying, but it signals the whole orchestra is tuning up for the big performance. And so here I am just a struggling overnight gas bag, marching proudly from the store to my car, from Trader Joe's or wherever, juggling boxes of pasta, rotisserie, chickens, bell, pepper, garlic, canned goods, laundry detergent.
So I don't know why there's a watermelon. My wife want a watermelon.
Like a circus act performed in the parking lot at a Ralph's.
Or Trader Joe's or Vaughn's.
These are the markets we have out here, and people stare, people smirk, and some people, you know, some pity me, some admire me. However, I will not bend. I am a Taurus. I am stubborn. The astrology insider knows that she knows I'm stubborn.
I'm not gonna break.
I won't buy the bag knocking to do that, because California can go pound sand and they'll charge itself ten cents for the shovel. In a world of petty fees and performative solutions. In air quotes, sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is carrying your groceries with your bare hands, your unwashed, bare hands, standing tall and declaring that the bureaucratic bag barons, these idiots can go away, no thanks.
I brought my own, Yes I did.
I brought my own, or I didn't bring any, and I'm just going to carry that stuff out.
And sometimes I have been told that.
They always asked you want bags, and sometimes I'll say no, and they don't hear me because I talk kind of quiet when I have headphones on, and they'll give me a bag and I don't want the bag. Well, the food's already in the bag. And every once in a while they'll give me a freebie. It's like a drug peddler giving out free samples to try to hook you on. And I have not even though I've been given bags.
I didn't pay for the bag. They didn't add the ten cent sale charge or surcharge on that didn't do it. Didn't do it, and that's it. And so I always say, I know I'm good. I don't need the bag. If they give me the bag, I might take it. And that is how you fight the bag tax tyranny. You have to go old school Hollywood, like Charlie Chaplin walking carrying a bunch of junk, or Steve Martin stumbling, or
Catherine O'Hara sprinting through the airport. The silent majority will rise again, I'm telling you, and they will carry their groceries free of charge, free of charge until then.
And I say hell Aelujah, hallelujah.
That's what I say. I enjoy the college football today. If you've already watched the college football or you're like Lucky Tony who will be listening to this sometime in twenty thirty three, have it just a wonderful day. May all your bets be winning ones. Make sure to watch any versus the Penny. Still time to watch the Sunday Extravaganza on YouTube.
Great audience last week.
We thank you guys for watching on demand, and we'll catch you on the next edition.
At the mail Bag, the mail Bag edition of the Fifth Hour. We'll talk to you then by flation