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 to 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, Ben Mahler and Danny g radio along.
He'll join us at some point over the weekend.
As we are settling on this Friday, the eighteenth day of July, early in the am, as we get the party started.
Now.
I was away from my post last night as I guard the overnight, and I did not fly the Red Eye flight. This was not my decision, it was by request. The wife had requested that I take the night off. We had some plans, so I did take the night off. But the podcast, which you can do anywhere, including the super secret location I am at right now, I will not reveal my identity as far as where I am, but you can do these kind of podcasts anywhere.
So we're hanging out.
It is National Sour Candy Day to day on this Friday, very exciting unless it's not. Now, I do like these fun facts about these dopey holidays. So I went back down a rabbit hole kind of looking at various fun facts about candy, and there were a couple of things that stood out in my due diligence that in the early days of America, you talk about candy being consumed
by the masses, there was pretty basic candy. The people that made the candy did not want to risk losing credibility with the customer, so they wouldn't try anything new. Now I mentioned it's National Sour Candy Day today, and one of the other big events was in the nineteen fifties. If you're of a certain age, you probably know about this. I wasn't aware of it. I always thought since the beginning of time, going back to the Middle Ages and before that, when it was Halloween time, you just gave
out candy. But this was actually a brilliant marketing move by the people that make candy. They're like, listen, we are guaranteed in the end of October. October thirty first, on Nick Saban's birthday, to move a ton of product if we can combine the Halloween holiday and you must give candy to the kids. And so in the nineteen
fifties that became mainstream. The people that made the candy created campaigns, marketing camp is to link Halloween and candy together, and you can't say no to that because it's for the children.
And that was a defining.
Point, a point of demarcation with the people that made the candy were like, well, we don't have to really worry about credibility because we're selling so much candy.
We can try some different crap.
And in the nineteen fifties one of the things that came out was the atomic fireball, so like a kind of a tart taste. Those things are still around. I don't know if they're called the atomic fireballs. And that was the beginning of the sour candy, sour candy volcano that went kaboom interrupted. According to my research, my keyboard research, my two minute research, and it was in nineteen sixty
two that lemonhead candy. Lemonhead candy became a thing. It was introduced, it became a big hit in the early nineteen sixties, and then thirty years later, in the nineties, the Foreign Candy Company whatever that is, brought Warheads to the US. I remember when the warheads became very popular. They had been in Thailand and they came over and they were like, oh my god, this is so great. And that was a massive explosion. And we got a whole bunch of other sour candies and all that. So
it is National Sour Candy Day. Celebrate appropriately, enjoy some nice sour candies.
So on this edition of The Fifth.
Hour, which you listen to whenever you want, we have it's kind of like Shark Week and the original Big Dumper. We've got that and some other things that we have time, but we'll begin with this. So the games return today. The games returned today and tonight, and there's Cubs and the Red Sox played game, but then most of the games are at night tonight, as the Major League Baseball schedule returns. All Star Week has come and gone. We had the swing Off. It's in the record books, although
Aaron Judge and sho hail Tani didn't see it. They were on planes leaving Atlanta. But this is a week many blowhards dread. Many blowhards dread. Oh I can't believe you see a lot of people taking vacation this week, people like Colin Cowhard, Dan Patrick and others.
I've taken some time off.
Now, if you've been listening, and I don't listen that much because I don't want to steal someone else's material, but I hear the promos on Fox Sports Radio, and I hear some other random things via text and whatnot.
So if you've been listening.
To the various shows, you probably have heard the menu that is being.
Used by all the maniacs that do this.
We have rebranded this part of the All Star Week in Major League Baseball. It's It's list Week, is what it is, right, It's I mean, though the way say it, there's really no all the way to say it. It's It's list Week, the four days in the middle of July when sports radio hosts, TV pundits, podcasters, YouTubers become professional rankers of things and reactors to ranking things and other people doing. It's kind of like Shark Week. It
is perfect for lazy radio, it really is. Now we've talked on this show, and if you listen to the Overnight show, you know that we give announcements every so often, usually around Thanksgiving and Christmas, watch out for lazy sports.
Radio and dead give away.
The dead giveaway for lazy sports radio is when your favorite talk show host says, who's been naughty?
Who's been nice this year? Who? What do you think? Thankful foreign sports for Thanksgiving?
Right?
Who would you invite to Thanksgiving dinner?
New Year's also, So those are the three big holidays for lazy sports radio. But here in this list week, which is kind of like Shark Week, the ingredients are top five breakout stars of the baseball season, top ten NFL uniforms.
Who's the most overrated manager?
Right? I have ten right here? Least likable NFL stars? A favorite bathroom bloopers in sports? Was it Paul Pierce when he had that incident in Boston and he needed the wheelchair because he pooped his pants?
Was it Lamar Jackson running.
Off the field because he had die die diarrhea? Or Ben Bishop during the Stanley Cup finals also having diarrhea. It doesn't matter, It does not matter what it is, as long as you put a number on it.
Odd numbers are preferred. More bite, more bite. Now.
Years ago, as a young Benny Blowhard, I was learning my craft in press boxes around Los Angeles. Is I learned the truth about the list from the patron saying of cynical sports writing, the late great TJ.
Simers rest in piece. TJ.
TJ didn't just right list, he weaponized them. He knew all of the magic of the list. Now.
He told me once as a young lad, if you want.
People to talk about your little show, just leave shack off a list.
And this was back when Shaq and Kobe were the.
Bombity bombity Bombiti bamedy Bombitay with the Lakers.
So he's like, oh yeah, just leave them.
Other people will freak out and boom right, It's true, like phones would light up. There was really no social media in those days, so we don't have to worry about that. But you're suddenly the star of the outrage industrial complex. And because the inside skinny on this, the truth on this. Lists are just spam. They're just filler.
They're not it's not like journalism. You don't turn in a radio show for journalism, you know, going on social media for journalism, you're looking for opinions, right, your opinionator, But the list is bait.
Now, we don't do lists on the Ben Maler shows. You know, we don't do that.
But the list is a bright shiny thing. It's outrage bait. And TJ taught me back in those days. This is how they make the hot balks. You gotta throw one ridiculous opinion in the middle of an otherwise normal rank. For example, I give you an exent. We have a
great example this week of this type of activity. There was someone who works on Cowhard show, the consiciliere for Colin Cowhard, who put Nicola Jokic, I believe, either equal to or behind DeAndre Ayton, because DeAndre Aden played for the Lake now with the Lakers, and this guy's like a Laker fanboy, and so.
He put DeAndre Ayton either ahead.
I didn't see if somebody had sent this to me, and I didn't and I didn't watch it, but he had sent me the Lincoln there was like it was written up so and so says DeAndre Ayton is either as good as Nicola Jokic or better, And so that is that's what that's tossing a bloody steak into a cage of lions. And the thing that I've learned over the years, and again I don't do this. If Terry and England's listening, I don't do this, but people have to react. It's primal, right, we're cavemen in this case,
cavemen with microphones. But just by listening, people get all worked up into a lather.
Who belongs in the top ten clutch hitters in baseball since nineteen ninety seven? Can you include you know so and so, who are the top non steroid players in baseball?
Well, how do you know who's on steroids who's not? But here are my ten? And you succumb to it. You do even if you know better. And I'm telling you right now, and you'll still do it.
But you will.
And of course those of us that host these shows, the people that are kind of lazy, they love it.
I mean, come on these.
Particular days where you're doing it's like Shark Week, but it's list week. They eat up so much valuable talk radio, real estate, the airtime. It's like Joey Chestnut with a plate of hot dogs on Coney Island in Brooklyn. Right, And you can debate them, you dismantle them, you rebuild them. One list like one simple list, one benign list turns into four hours of programming and three days of call ins.
How could you leave Otadi off the list of the greatest baseball players the last thirty five years?
Do you think Bryce Harper is better than Aaron Judge? You must be a Philadelphia fanboy. What's wrong with you? You know?
He just goes on and on.
It's it's not conversation, it's content, is what it is. And by today, right by today, here we are on this Friday. If you've been consuming, it's like the top twenty five most ridiculous list of list week ranked. Of course, so that has become a staple. That's something that's relatively new and it's not going to end anytime soon. So if you market on your calendar the summer of twenty twenty six, although I guess they might have the Olympics, so maybe the All Star Game won't be going on.
But either way they will, there will be this kind of content.
And again for those of you will late to the party, who for some reason, I don't know how you'd be late to the party on a freaking podcast. It's a podcast anyway. On the Ben Mather Show, we don't do lists.
Now.
Occasionally I will dabble in Big Ben's Big board. But Big Ben's Big Board is not a list, right, it is not. It doesn't sound like a list. It doesn't look like a list. It does and taste like a list. It doesn't hit you in the head like a list. It's much different. Ferg Dog, doing his due diligence, said Ben. He said this in my head. I don't know if
he actually said it, but he said. In my head, he said, Ben, you know when you do Big Ben's Board, a Big Ben's Big Board, that is that's top of the world radio and the people that do the list, they just don't understand. I said, you know what, Ferg Dog. In my head, we have this conversation. I see you're absolutely right, all right now, turning the page from that, I've gotten some pretty good feedback from you idiots on what we've done in recent weeks.
I've kind of changed up the podcast a.
Little bit, kind of going into more Mallard monologues and storytelling and crap like that. Not that I didn't do that before, but we just changed it up a little bit. The feedback has been pretty good, the downloads have been good. So I will now go behind the curtain yet again.
Oh my god, he's going behind the cart.
Yeah yeah, So like all good stories, it started out like a normal day out at my beloved Mallor mansion with my beloved English bulldog, Moxie. And I woke up in the early afternoon, rolled out of bed, and I splashed just a dabble water on my face and off to the races, hit the ground running. Now, unbeknowns to me, while I slept, there was a surprise waiting for me. Now, I didn't know when I went to bed that I would be woken up with the surprise.
I did not realize that.
I didn't even know when I woke up and then put water on my face that we were going to get a surprise. I had no idea because it's a surprise, And if I had only known what awaited me, I would have likely stayed in bed. I would have stayed in bed. I get up, usually run down, jump on the treadmill or whatever. So I get put a little water on the face and go down to the kitchen area. And my friend Moxie had decided.
That she was going to join the military.
She had unleashed a biological weapon in the Malor mansion. In the kitchen. Now forget the Daily Double. This is not the Daily Double. We're talking about a trifecta situation. Okay, not just a little accident on the tile in the kitchen.
No, no, no, no.
My friend Moxie, bless her portly soul, unleashed the three headed fire breathing dragon. We had poop over here, pee over there, and vomit. She rode the vomit comet, the Big three. This was mission unflushable. Now people talk about cal Raley, he won the home run Derby this week. He's having a great year for the Mariners. But forget cal Raley, Seattle's self anoided big dumper. Moxie is the real deal. Moxie is the o G. She doesn't need a nickname. I gave her one. She doesn't need a
nickname though. She is a one dog toxic spill again, biological weapon.
Hello.
Now you're probably wondering. You said, hey, Ben, why did this happen? How did this happen? Shouldn't Moxie have been outside? Don't you have a doggy door? All good questions. So we do have a doggy door. There's a problem. The doggy door was for Bella, our old dog, Bella, a little lap dog, very small dog, great dog. We loved Bella. We sometimes I call Moxy Bella. Have you ever done that? When you change dogs and you don't just muscle memory, you call the new dog the old dog. Is very odd.
The dogs don't really know their name.
They just kind of recognize the sound a little bit, but they don't really know anyway. So we had a doggy door put in for our dog, Bella. We got Moxie. The problem is, Moxie is is so fat that she will not fit through the doggy door, and it's very expensive to expand the doggy door, so we've chosen to not do that. So we have to take Moxie out when Moxie needs to go to the bathroom. Now, there's a routine. Normally what happens is she's our watch dog.
She guards the house. So when I come in from the radio show in the very early mornings of the hour, early morning hours, rather, I will put Moxie outside for a potty break, and she's.
Potty trained, so she'll go to the bathroom, she'll do her thing. I'll take her back in. Normally. Sometimes i'll leave her out. I'll take her back in.
Normally she's fine. Because then I wake up. I don't sleep that long. I sleep like four or five hours the most. So when I get up, I put her back outside. She goes to the bathroom. So me and Moxie have this down.
Pat.
We've got a system, you know, the Moxie system, and.
It's gone pretty well.
But the reason that this happened, to get to the why, Like all great disasters, it started with good intentions. So I mentioned, I get home from the radio show, I leave the dog outside on this day. I decided to go take a shower and kind of relax a little bit, I told.
My My wife gets home from work a.
Little after me, so I told her, I said, listen, why don't you put the dog. I'm gonna stay up here in you know, I'm gonna kind of relax, try to unplug my brain. And I got a lot of bandwidth up here. So why don't you just let the dog in when you get home? And that's that so fine. So my wife, my lovely, thoughtful, nurturing wife, a real sweet spirit, she decided that Moxie had been a good dog eat and deserved a gourmet meal. We're not talking about a dog meal like kibble, We're not talking about
milk bone Scooby snacks as Andre gives his dog Willis. No, no, no, no, We're talking chicken over here, potatoes over there, and colin flower everywhere.
That's right, cauliflower for a bulldog. Who does that? Well?
My wife does. But seriously, look, I wouldn't. I would only eat cauliflower if you paid me, and even then I would need a lot of money to do it. So this is a dog that does not need cauliflower to stink bomb the entire home. And cauliflower it's like eating fart spray. It's it's good if you want to clear out your system and smell up the room.
People talk about garlic.
Garlic smells like a five hundred dollars bottle of perfume compared to cauliflower, and it's not even close.
So what do you think happens? Again? You know I left the dog out.
My wife said, ah, I will give Maxia a nice gourmet meal, the chicken, the potato, the cauliflower, And so what happened? Get to the point, please, we have a very portly barrel chested English pulldog eating this satanic vegetable.
So I can tell you what I lived it.
She became an Oscar wild quote when life imitates art, Moxie became a living, breathing vomit comet. She rode the vomit comment. She laid waste like Sherman through Georgia. If you know your history, it was unreal there. In fact, I'm pretty sure right now if you were to come over to the Malor mansion, you're not invited.
There's a crater in the kitchen.
Even blind Scott can see the crater like inca Terra's like, I can't believe that, And I think FEMA may have to assess the damage on that. So now this led to what what do you think this all that? Tod Now, obviously there's a major cleanup, major cleanup. Guess who got to do the cleanup? That's right?
Yeah, uh.
And I normally don't get that affected by this type of stuff. Dog's poop, humans, you know, poop, it's you know, the vomit was a little much. So this led to what, as they say in the mob, we had to sit down, and you know, want to sit down. If you don't make a compelling argument, you're not getting out alive. So I had to pull the wife aside, and I had to have a sit down with the wife and I had to explain that we must as a as a family, cut back on the artillery. We're spending way too much
on weaponry. We don't need to weaponize Moxie. Moxie naturally has weapons. We don't need to give them more. What we did is create a biological weapon that we did not need to do. We did not need to do. And my wife, but she gave Moxie artillery. And it's one thing to give Moxy a little bit of food.
It's another thing to.
Feed Moxie a lunch from Whole Foods, which is essentially the equivalent of loading a howitzer with napalm and turning it on in your own kitchen.
That's what happened.
And the kicker of kickers, now Moxye, who knows. They don't talk, These damn dogs don't talk. But I'm going to assume the position. She loved every second of it, nub wagging, tongue out, proud as a peacock. She was laying right next to the destruction that she had just put in the mallar kitchen, and she was looking at me like she had just did a walk off home run to win the home run derby, which Baseball doesn't want you to call home run derby the swing off, or win games seven in the world.
She was not ashamed, and why should she be ashamed. She's a freaking English bulldog. Why would an English bulldog be ashamed?
You wouldn't be ashamed. This is what they do. There's no self control. They eat and they eat and they eat, and if it tastes good, they're gonna eat. They love human food. So it's kind of like you don't blame the rain for being wet. You don't blame the dog for doing what dogs do?
You know? Now, in the end, we all learned a very valuable lesson.
Not every dog needs to eat like Gordon Ramsey, and certainly our dog Moxie does not does not need to eat like Gordon Ramsey. Sometimes sometimes they just need to eat, Like let's see, how about a dog? How about a dogf Yeah, and again, I know cal Raley's known as the big dumper Moxie until she rides off into the sunset and goes up to the pearly gates of Doggie Heaven to join Bella and some of my other dogs she is our big dumper. And it's taken me a
couple of days. This happened the other day. It has taken me a couple of days to deal with this in terms of the vomit, the poop, and the pee that happens, Mistakes happen, the vomit, the pile of vomit which you could still see pieces of the cauliflower and the potato. That was hell on earth. That was absolutely hell on earth. And so then you clean the kitchen. The other thing that happens is you have PTSD like every time I go in the kitchen, now, I'm like, well,
that's where the vomit was. Oh, that's where the piss was. Oh okay, that's see. That's the pile of poop that I'm walking through.
Now.
We did clean it, We had cleaned. But I was thinking, this could be a money making opportunity. I'm all about the money making opportunity. So I was thinking, and I know Danny's not here today, but this would be a
great idea. Tell me if I'm wrong, how about we start a service Doggie Do Do Cleanup where we are professional poop clean up people that we go around and I would imagine our our target demo would be older people that don't want to deal with dogs, that don't want to clean up dog crap, or young people that are too old, and we offer our services. You know, send us a text, will come over, we'll clean up.
It's like a hazmat crew. We will clean up whatever kind of crap or vomit your dog puts down, right for a nomenal fee. For a nomenal fee, you can have a The key is to make this a monthly thing. As you know in business, the key is to get people to pay every month. And it's like the perfect setup has been over the years of the gym.
Now what is the gym the perfect setup?
Ben, Well, the gym is the perfect setup, I'll tell you, because you get people to pay.
And it's like I do.
Go to the gym, not patting myself in the back. But I've noticed the pattern we all do. Anyone who's ever been to the gym, Even if you don't go anymore in December for Christmas or Honkker or whatever holiday you celebrate, or if you don't celebrate holidys, just give people stuff. The gym fills up in January because people get that stuff in December, so it's a packed gym, and then by February first, there's hardly anybody there. By the Super Bowl, all the new people are pretty much gone.
And yet those people are still paying on a monthly basis automatic pay, So the gym's getting their money. They're getting their cash, and the people that are paying for it or not using it, not that it really seems to impact the quality of the gym experience.
Like the gym near me.
I go to a pretty nice gym and the equipment is always broken.
There's one dude. I feel bad for the guy.
There's one guy who's got a shirt that says maintenance on it and he only works during the normal daylight hours from nine to five. Stuff is breaking twenty four hours a day at this gym. He's just falling apart. The thing of a jig's not working, the watching MC call it's not right, and so all this stuff's broken, and there's one dude to fix everything. And it's kind of like playing whack a mole watching this guy work
because I see I go in there. He's always fixing something, whether it's the stair climber or the treadmills are breaking, or some of the weight equipment that doesn't break as often.
So this guy will fix something over.
To the right and then immediately over to the left one of the treadmills will break.
It does not end.
It's like it's wild, wild and crazy, wild and crazy and goofy.
It's all that, all right, we'll get out on that note.
So there you go, the latest tales of my dog Moxie, the original big Dumper. And we also, of course reminded you what this week has been like in the world of sports media, the crown jewel of sports media, the All Star week.
All right, have a wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have new podcasts. Danny should join me. I think you'll be with me at some point this weekend.
But we'll have new podcasts on Saturday and Sunday as well.
So until then, later, skater aasta pasta bye bye.
That's what Dick and Dayton would say, say bye bye, just like that.
Got a murder.
I gotta go