Kabbooms.
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.
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallard starts right now.
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me, Ben Malor and Danny g Radio and a happy Friday to you, the last Friday before we have football NFL football, which comes next week. It is the thirtieth day of August, and we are glad that you have tuned in. Now Danny is away, he's on assignment today. He'll be back hopefully for Saturday and Sunday, so we'll be able to
break it down. But today this podcast of the Fifth Hour a special edition, a behind the scenes passed to the collaborative efforts to bring Benny versus the Penny.
Back to life.
We will get to that, but I did want to mention today a very important day. Now, why is today an important day? It is Warren Buffett's birthday, well, it is actually Warren Buff's birthday, but that's not why today is an important day. How about Warren Buffett, though ninety four years old today, was born in nineteen thirty and he's one of the ten richest people in the entire planet, not just the United States, the entire planet. The Oracle of Omaha, God bless him, Warren Buffett, who has lived
the life. And hey, if you have that kind of money, you want to keep living as long as you can. Anyway, But the guy had nothing when he started and became a millionaire. Started in nineteen fifty one, became a millionaire by the early sixties.
And think about that. That's nuts.
Some of the other dopey days I know Blind Scott loves when we do this. It's National Beach Day today. This being the holiday weekend as we lead in to the Labor Day weekend. People always confuse Labor Day and Memorial Day. But it is National Beach Day today, so celebrate appropriately. A sign National Beach Day. That probably should get out to the beach because the weathers is about to turn in most places. In most places it's about
to turn. That holiday not that all, that's one of those fugazi made up holidays that's.
Not that old, that hadn't been around that long.
But there are some legitimate holidays which I think we need to celebrate. For example, it's Slinky Day. Today is the seventy ninth anniversary of the slinky. Now, as a product of a world that did not have the Interweb and had these archaic video games, I was a slinky guy. I was had I had the slinky, and I did like every other kid in the neighborhood.
We took the slinky.
We went to some stairs and we put it on the top of the stairs and saw if we could get the thing to go down the stairs. But it is a toy Hall of fame, legend of not quite the Bambino of toys, I would say, but it's it's.
Done pretty well. It's done pretty well. The slinky.
I don't know now, like is anyone using the slinky. It was made by somebody named Richard James, a Navy mechanical engine. By the way, this does count alf as the fun fact, maybe the first of many fun facts on this Friday edition of the Fifth Hour. But this guy named Richard James, as I understand, he was a Navy mechanical engineer and he was on assignment for the for the military, and he discovered the slinky by knocking a spring off a shelf by accident, and he had
this epiphany. He watched as the spring ended up making all these arcs and movements and all this stuff, and he's like.
WHOA, we got something here.
And then for about a year, this guy, Richard James from the Navy started futting around, messing around and doing all kinds of things, and he played around with all kinds of wire and then he discovered the perfect spring that could walk. And now the interesting thing, I don't know if it's interesting to you, but I thought it was interesting. Is this this cat James. When he first came up with what became the slinky, he had trouble
actually selling it to toy stores. And then what was the turning point was in the nineteen fourths, nineteen forty five, he had permission to go to a show that he could demonstrate the toy, right and nineteen forty five theres is like big toy convention, and he shut it off and that it just took off and it was a huge seller.
And now I.
Don't really know, it's like this, the slinkies in that class with the etcha sketch. You feel me on that. But it is a Toy Hall of Fame or the slinky was recognized by the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York, because when you think of toys,
you definitely think of Rochester, New York. But it was shown at the US Toy Fair for the first time in nineteen forty six, and all these years later, still available going to any toy store, not that there's many toy stores left, but you go to like Walmart or one of the big box stores in the toy asle and you can find yourself a slinky. All right, So enough of that, let's get to the meat of the matter here, the behind the scenes pass. I am so excited. I hope you can join me on this journey. You
were with us last year. If you're listening to the podcast, I think you're a higher level in the mouth of militia. This is not for everybody. We do very well.
This podcast does very well.
We have a good audience, but we don't have as many people that listen to this as do the live radio show. And there's reasons for that. You know, some of our audience has no idea what podcasting is, right, they can't get bogged down by a podcast. So if you're listening to this, your next level. So the TV shows back behind the scenes kind of let you know how this all worked. This past week we had the lot Lizard, but not that kind of Lot Lizard demo
day and the real deal. Plus we're going to toss in as an added bonus for a limited time only, we are going to toss in the always popular Potato Gedding,
not Armageddon Potato Geddon. But we'll begin with this. So, now that the TV show had been given the green light we talked about in a previous episode, we had Looney on last week and we had to go back to Boston and film a bunch of stuff and meet with the producers and the directors and all the behind the scenes people that make TV magic, all the many people that had their hands on Benny versus the many.
So we went back and did that in Boston, had a great time, got to go to BoA's Bakery on the North End and just enjoyed the heck out of it. Saw Arnie Spanier drove up to Vermont for a day saw Arnie Spanier.
It was a lot of fun.
But now that the TV show's back, we had to go and get security clearance. You can't just show up on the Universe a lot. In fact, we told the story last year, if you remember, my wife wanted to come with me to see one of the episodes being filmed at Universal and they will not allow anyone on the lot unless you have security clearance.
They won't do it, which I kind of get.
Right, there's people that want to do bad things and all that, and you've got a ton of security and okay, good to go, right, So the security pass needed to be updated. The last show we did was Super Bowl Week back in February, and that was I Believe in Vegas. Well, we did the show from LA and then I went to Vegas for the Super Bowl. But the pass, the way it works, you have ninety days to go without
using the past. After ninety days it gets deactivated with no use and then you have to reactivate it.
So I needed to get that taken care of.
So I went to the Universal lot the day before we were supposed to do some work on the show. I needed my Golden ticket and I gotta tell you, it's much different than the radio world.
Now.
I love radio, and I'll do radio as long as radio have me, and I'll do podcasting. I love podcasting. But the difference between television and radio is night and day and how you are treated. Now, I've been in radio a long time. I've had issues from time to time, and normally it's, hey, figure it out yourself. You know, we're not gonna help you, right, most of that. Now, occasionally though, people will help you. It's not all the time, but it seems more times than not. It's a very
combative approach to helping your fellow employee. But in the television world, and again, I'm more of a radio guy than a TV guy, I don't know how the long this TV show is gonna last. I'm shocked that they brought back season two. I'm happy, but I'm surprised. I just figured it would last one year and it would go away and that would be that. However, as I've lived this experience, which is still relatively new to me and fantastic, right, it's just exceptional that this is happening.
So I've gotten a bit of a masterclass on the difference between radio and TV.
And again I've done a little bit of TV.
I did some stuff at the NBC Sports Network back in Stanford, Connecticut, probably about twelve years ago, eleven twelve years ago, maybe even longer than that. Time has gone by, So I needed my pass updated get to the point please.
Okay. So fine.
So the person involved in the studio that we use at Universal, he's like, hey, listen, I'm going to take care of this. You got to show up, Ben you do this, Looney, you do this, and no problem. So I show up the day before. I'm so paranoid. I'm not going to be able to get on a lot. He's like, go to the security office or go to security guard shack.
Talk to this person, do X, Y and Z. You'll be good to go. So I'm like, okay, fine, I'm going to do that and I'll be good to go.
So I show up, they scan my pass and for some reason, it's not quite working. It's not working the way it's supposed to work. So I'm like, well, this is not good.
This is not good.
So I let the proper powers that be no, and they immediately circle the wagons. Right, they should give a workshop on how to handle an issue like this is a small issue, right, but they identified the problem like okay, So we ended up going to the main security office at Universal Studios, and people could not have been nicer, could not have been I ended up going with Looney because he had to get his stuff taken care of and boom in and out five minutes.
Here's your parking, here's your pass.
You're good to go. All right, So that was good. So I was on the lot. I wasn't a lot lizard, but I was on the lot. So I was kind of like a lizard on the lot, but not the lot lizard. If you're a truck driver, you know what I mean. If not, google it. So then the following day, to advance the story, it's demo day. Now, demo day is not where you go and destroy stuff. It is if you're doing home repairs and whatnot. In fact, we used to have a demo guy. We had several back
in the day. If you've been with the show all time, people that work in demo that would call us up on their way to destroy stuff, to take down a kitchen, a bathroom or whatever and just go in there with rage and a hammer and a chainsaw and go Rambo and just knock yourself out. So we've had those guys, but this, this kind of demo day was hey, back in the saddle again.
I'd gotten my.
Security pass, so I felt like I was the king of the world. I felt like, you know, this is this is great.
Uh.
And then I'm back on the Universal lot, but this time we're doing the TV show, but it's the demo version of the TV show. Now there's two different worlds at Universal. There's the Universal Studios Hollywood Tour, which has the Jurassic Park ride and all these other things. It's it's pretty wild. It's pretty wild, and it's it's a cool amusement park. They have a bunch of new attractions and whatnot, and so so that's neat. But this is
this is where they actually make the entertainment, right. This is the back lot, which has been around since nineteen twelve.
And I might have talked about this last year. I don't remember, but just about.
Every iconic film or TV show has spent time on the lot. You're going back old school, early Hollywood. Many of the early Hollywood films which are still remade or still talked about and quoted. There was a famous entertainment show, The Jack Benny.
Show, which was there.
But some of the early movies that were filmed at Universal on that lot. Frankenstein, the Original Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula die Hard, not Diehard one, but Diehard two. Spartacus was filmed there. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Who I actually watched that about a year ago. My wife's for some reasons, let's watch the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
So we put it on and I was like, boy, this is really I mean, this is not good.
I mean this is I know, we people quote that movie and stuff, but man, anyway, they filmed it Universal.
The Incredible Shrinking Woman was filmed there.
They here's one for you, you boys from the seventies and the eighties. The Best Little Whorehouse filmed the Universal Scarface say Hello to my little Friend. Back to the Future. But wait, there's more parts of Jurassic Parker film there. Psycho Batman returns, Meet the Fokers, Abbot and Costello. Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein. They filmed that there. Leave It to Beaver, which is an iconic show, and this is
the real deal. So Demo Day is rather obvious. You go in there and it is a dry run because you don't want to screw everything up. You don't you want to get everything right. So demo day, you go in there. You're not actually doing the show. You're not doing the show. You're just going and you're you're.
Doing the dry run.
You're making sure the camera people know what they're doing, the producers know what they're doing, You know what you're doing, and you're doing your thing. It's it's practice. It's a rehearsal, right, research and development, and so you're experimenting. As Alan Iverson would say back, and then we talked about practice, not a game.
Not a game.
We in here, we're talking about practice, but you want those habits and it's like, is it muscle memory?
Are you going to be back? And the same way.
And television was new to me for a weekly TV show, but in combat parlance, it would be like, hey, they use blanks in practice, but in the show it's live on tape and all that stuff, and so everything's got to be timed out to the second.
So so fun.
So we we went in there, we did the rehearsal and it actually went pretty well. The run through that shoot was pretty well done. We really jumped right back in It's on the ground and hit the ground running and all that stuff. I don't know the cliches I can throw in there, but that was good. So the screen test, if you will, was a bit of a bonanza, right, It was good. We felt good about ourselves. We're like, okay, we got this, but that wasn't the show. We didn't
record that. That wasn't the show. And we had to get to the real deal. And that was a couple days later, which was yesterday today being Friday, so we went into Universal again. So this is the third time, third day this week. I was at Universal.
And when I'm there, let me tell you something.
I'm not gonna lie just between us. It's like that I have that imposter syndrome, like I.
Don't really belong here, and like what am I doing.
I haven't quite assimilated to the movie studio and everything there. It's just so much going on. It's like censory overload. It's really cool. It's a culture shock. I'm used to doing radio overnight. You go into a dark studio, you do your thing and all this stuff. So I'm really a fish out of water. A fish out of water.
If you wel.
But fine, so we go in to do the show and we're all excited, we're fired up. However, the logistics on this, because of the way the show needs to be done and my schedule doing overnight sports talk radio, it is any.
Really long day.
No, I'm not complaining. I don't want you to think of this as a complaint. I'm just merely pointing out that the schedule. While I'm not having roads in the summertime when it's ninety five degrees in human I'm not doing that. I'm not doing heavy construction. I'm not driving a truck. I'm not doing stuff at a warehouse. I'm not driving a forklift. I'm not picking a bunch of stuff up, and I'm doing in that stuff. But from a mental standpoint, you do get a worn out.
You do get worn out.
I had to go and I live kind of far from the universe a lot, and so you got to drive from the north Woods into the Universe a lot and I did that three days. But then doing the overnight show, and because of the show being produced out of Boston, and you got to get it done by a certain hour because then they have to edit it and then it has to go to I don't even think they use satellite to themore. I think everything's used on the internet. Everyone's sending crap around on the internet.
But you got to get it done by a certain hour so they have time to get it out to the powers that be and they can approve it and sign off on it, you know, all that stuff. So it makes for a day where I ended up getting two hours of sleep between the radio show, the driving, the TV show, going back getting ready for the other radio show. And it was just a whirlwind, just an absolute whirlwind. A lot of caffeine. I don't drink coffee, you know that. That's my michig gos.
I don't drink.
Coffee, but I do take a caffeine supplement. So I'll take a caffeine supplement and do that. So we're doing the show, go in all dressed up and fired up and all that stuff, the real deal. And it's not as smooth as the demo. I'm not gonna sit here and say it was, but it was great to be back with Looney and the finished product. I'm very proud of it. I hope you'll enjoy it. It's available today.
We're going to be on all over How can you find Benny Versus the Penny, Well, the first thing you do is you look at your local TV listings, and Benny Versus the Penny available on all the NBC.
Regional cable channels.
So the hub is NBC Sports Boston and we are in the Friday six pm timeslot, so that's prime.
We're right after Felger and Maz.
Benny Versus the Penny will be on the tremendously popular Felger and mass Show, and we will be on after that. That's our first run, and we'll be on in Philadelphia, in the Bay Area, We're gonna be on in LA that'll be tomorrow, and several other major cities.
And the difference this year if you missed it.
Last season, a lot of you complained and said, well, I got rid of cable.
I don't have that anymore. You know. It's times are tough.
Not that I'm impoverished, but I'm living kind of close to the poorhouse and I look outside my window and it's the hard scrabble streets and all that stuff. So it's like that weird thing where you're not really in the Tenderloin district. But you're kind of close to it, you know, and so you try to cut back financially a little bit, and you trim here and pinch there, and I totally get it. I totally get so if you don't have cable or satellite and you're in the streaming world, which.
Is actually where I am, by the way.
I mean, let's be honest here, my house is a streaming house completely. I would like to point out I don't think my wife listens to this podcast that I would cut down on the number of streaming services that we have. She disagrees on that's she's a bit addicted having access. But by the time you end up paying for all these streaming services, it becomes a paneastic.
I'm married, my wife wants to dress up.
She today at to the point last year, it was very difficult to find the show if you didn't have cable. I had guys emailing me from across the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific sit I'm trying to find the show.
I can't find it.
Blah blah blah blah blah. You know, I gotta go to like the dark web. Well, that doesn't matter to me. Because I don't get credit for that. So the powers that be at NBC, and I really want to thank They've been wonderful people to work with. I am huge fans some of the coolest people I've been across my career, the people that are in charge there, from from Bill all the way down to John and Vinnie and Kevin.
I mean, are these are really cool people?
So you know I recommend I said, listen a lot of my guys listen to my radio show. They said they don't have cable, then they want to watch the show. Can we see if we can get on the Peacock And they made it happen. They pulled some strings and toada. So this will be our first year.
This is a national TV show.
Not only are we on the regional cable channels, which is great and you should watch it on there and set your device and watch it because that helps us out. But we don't have to worry about Peel and Potatoes because we will be on Peacock, I believe today and I have not We're doing this podcast very early in the morning, so I have not had a chance to turn on the Peacock app. And there are a couple of versions of Peacock. There's I think the free one and then the one that's a few bucks a month.
And I've been asked, was it on the free one or do I have to pay for it? And I don't know the answer to that. I will know by the end of the day. I guess I'll know. I assume I'll be able to futz around and find Benny
Versus the Penny, But that would help us out. I mean, if I just get every man, woman and child to listen to this podcast who's listening right now, to then click on the Peacock app and watch Benny Versus the Penny, and then if I can get them to get one other person to do it, my god, that's a massive amount of people.
That's a huge base for the TV show. So I would really love that and it would mean a lot.
And even if you don't like the TV show you're not into sports gambling, I get it.
There are no games this weekend in the NFL anyway, there are no games, so you don't have to worry about that. But we just goof around.
I pull jokes on Loony Loony makes fun of me, and it's a half hour and it's like being in a time warp. The time goes by pretty quick and all that. So I really do appreciate at the sport. You guys were great last year, and I do think talking to some of the people around the show, if it wasn't for you, I'm talking about you because you're a podcast listener and you're like a higher level because
you'll go above and beyond like Alf. I think Alf was forcing his children and his children's friends and like their neighbors to watch the show. And I'm sure Ferg Dog had some of his imaginary friends like Brian Finley and whatnot having to watch the show. But anyway, listen, thank you, thank.
You, thank you for that. It does mean a lot.
Now, as far as the Potato Geddon story, I didn't want to get to this and this is a wild story. So I love the potato. I am a huge fan of the potato. But the potato ended up causing me a great amount of pain, a great amount of agony. And one of the reasons is Paul Harve would say, you're gonna about to get the rest of the story.
You know what the news is, but you're about to get the rest of story.
So I mentioned that it was a really tough day this week with the taping of the show, and I didn't get much sleep at all. And in the twenty four hour period, I did two radio shows a TV show and I got two hours sleep. Now, the reason, and this is quite the sob store. It's like a Greek tragedy, unless it's not. But the main reason that I had these issues is because of the potato. Now you're probably saying, well, Mallow, you're just a loser. You're
probably delirious. What are you talking about? The potato? The potato cannot do anything. You're just making.
Crap up, right, you just making stuff up?
But well, no I'm not. You see, I did the TV show and then I had to drive back to the north Woods. So I get in the mallomobile. I pulled the phone out of my pocket. I then type in the address I need to go to to get back to get some sleep. So I'm at that point on autopilot. I'm still tired. I did the radio show, I did the TV sh show. It was a full day and so I'm like, okay, so I just put it in. I follow the instruction.
I didn't really look at it.
You ever do that When you turn the the map thing on, you just go whatever. I was following the instructions. So I'm driving and I'm like, well, this is taking me away I don't normally go. And I noticed it was bumper a bumper to bumper. And normally the way the LA traffic patterns work, at least for me when I'm leaving the TV show, is it's really bad in patches and then it opens up for a little bit
and then there's a bottleneck. But normally it's not bumper a bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper the bumper.
That's normally not how it goes.
So the reason the traffic was so bad was because of.
The potato.
A big rig loaded with French fries crashed on I five Interstead five, the freeway in the lowest feeless neighborhood of Los Angeles. Now, if you don't know that area, if you're not familiar, and most people listen to this podcast are not from the LA area, maybe you've never been to LA. So the southbound lanes, which is where I needed to go, were blocked by a wall, a wall that was made up of boxes of fries. Yes, now the crash happened overnight right on the stadium Way offramp.
That is the off ramp that goes to Dodger Stadium. So if imagine, if you will, up on the hill, there's Chavez Ravine, the home of Otani. I used to be allowed there, but not anymore. They don't want me there. So anyway, right right there Dodger Stadium and the cab of the truck. Somehow this was such a horrific accident. The cab of the truck had somehow disconnected from the trailer, and piles of French fry boxes were left all over
the highway and these things were piled up. It was like the Great Wall of China or the Berlin Wall had blocked the entire highway. And so in southern California when this happens, they have this thing called the Ciga alert, which is actually named after an early la. At KTLA, they had a traffic guy named Sig and he decided to make it all about himself, and anytime there was a bunch of traffic in one area, it would say a Sig alert. And he's been dead for a while,
but they still used the terminology. So anyway, they closed the California Highway troll closed it. And even when I this is hours later, I was still stuck in the traffic and I saw the clean up and it was wild, and I was wondering. And I know we have some some cops that listen to show any Highway patrol guys, did anyone get a free box of fries? Because I'm thinking the first responders. These boxes were everywhere, but some of them probably were fine, right, some of them were okay,
like the boxes at the very top were okay. And did you get a free box of delicious fries to put.
In your your air fryer, your deep frier at home. I don't know that is that?
And again, thank you for listening and watching the TV show Benny Versus the Penny. We get the party started today. And send me some photos. I love seeing that. I saw Ferg Dog sent a picture of his recordings. Mister nice guy in the Bay Area, alf the Alien Opine or some other guys and gals who are fans of the show, letting me know that you're recording it and also let me know I want to see if you're watching it on Peacock and boy, we need to do
well on there right. We want to keep the show on Peacock, so hopefully we'll be doing pretty well on Peacock. Have a wonderful rest of your Friday. Danny G will be back with me in the audio dojo for tomorrow's podcast and also on Sunday with the Mailbag. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your Friday, the last Friday of August, and we will talk to you next time. Aloha was he saying, later Skater? Is that what you say, Nanny? Yes, later, skater got a murder.
I gotta go