Kutbooms.
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 to 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 Maller and Danny G Radio and a very good Friday to you as we are together again the standalone podcast, not the original recipe podcast, which is separate. No, no, no, This the Extra Crispy, Extra Spicy Fifth Hour Podcast.
Danny G will be with me tomorrow.
He will be producing this, but he is away from the microphone as he normally is on Friday. And it is Valentine Day today. Woo hoo hoo.
Wow.
Yes, I did have a fun fact though about Valentine's Day. As today's fourteenth day of February Valentine's Day, twenty twenty five. And if you do not like Valentine's Day, you can kind of thank the Catholic Church. But it actually is more complicated than that. I did a little legwork on this.
So the origins, if you go way back to the point of conception to what is now Valentine's Day, you go back to people that studied it, say it's the feast of the patron saints named Valentine by the Catholic Church. This was in fourty four hundred, four ninety six a D. Rather four ninety six a D was the year, and so it started with that. But keep in mind it did not become associated with love and romance until the fourteen hundreds, So it went like almost one thousand years
without romance being part of it. And then messages or Valentines as they were called, began to appear, handwritten letters, poems, all that stuff, and that became more popular. But in the mid eighteen hundreds, so now we started in four ninety six.
AD all the way.
In the eighteen hundreds Valentines cards began to commercially be produced, and that's when big business was like, wait a minute, we can make a couple of bucks. You know, I will sell these people these cards, and they got to get a new one every year, and we can make some money. And so they started commercially producing gifts that are still to this day, all these years later, associated with Valentine's Day. Candy flowers, red roses that symbolize the love.
And the beauty and all that stuff. And so there you go.
It started four ninety six and really took off in the fourteen hundreds and then the eighteen hundreds it became commercialized. And now here we are. The monster is upon us here in twenty twenty five.
So there you go.
Now it is not the only holiday. Oh it's kind of tough to compete with Valentine's Day, right, and it's like, what else.
Are you gonna do? It's like, that's the whole day. It's big business.
You go to the stores, they get all the balloons out and the flowers and all that stuff. But it is also among other holidays today International Winter.
Bike to Work Day.
What because I can't think of a better thing to do on a cold winter's day than to bike to work. Just wonderful. It is Library Lover's Day today. And I did see a story this week. I don't think I mentioned it on the Overnight Show that the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York is looking for someone anyone to run the old library there at the Hall of Fame. And it's sounds like, well, that'd be a good job, right though, working at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
How cool is that?
The National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York. So they're looking for a librarian. You have to have a master's in library science, which is like, okay, you know how much the job pays.
Somebody sent this to me. I did not come up with this, but the.
According to the website, it's posted on this job app where you can look for the jobs at the Baseball Hall of Fame. So this gig again, you gotta have a master's, which I don't think is cheap. And I don't have a master's, but I don't think it's cheap anyway, get to the point, please, So they're looking for someone who has this masters to preserve history, honor excellence, and connect generations as a steward of the game's history, baseball history.
So for that they will pay you thirty five thousand to forty five thousand dollars a year.
You know what you're doing.
You're better off going down to the Taco Bell or the McDonald's or the RBS and applying for a job, and you'll get some perks like food discounts. You'll also make more money. My god, I know it's supposedly cheap. I've never been to Cooperstown. It's a charming little village Cooperstown there. They say it's an American treasure and wonderful snowmobile trails, biking.
There's a lake right there. All of that.
I actually know several people that have worked in Cooperstown, New York over the years, people that have run the Baseball Hall of Fame at different points, so I know a little bit about it. But they didn't go there to make thirty five forty five thousand.
Dollars a year.
No, they were there for big Bucks, Big big Bucks. Meanwhile, moving on from the Baseball Hall of Fame, on this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, the Friday Special, we've got the very Last Dance, soap Man Cometh and Ring the Bell, Ring the Bell.
We'll also have some.
Foodie fun and who knows what else, but we'll start with this, A meloncollie, a melancholie, last supper, last dance, if you will, The Swan song of season two of Benny Versus the Penny, the conclusion of a show that started in late August. Here we are in mid February, and the culmination of months and months of work. The farewell performance. It is the last hurrah for season two of the TV show and I want to thank everyone that has watched the show.
You know who you are.
Thanks to so many of you who have watched it eight gazillion times to help us out. Alf the Alien, Opiner, the late great Masshole Mickey, may he rest in peace, and several of you as well who have sent me messages and photos of you watching at different places and going to restaurants and saying, hey, can you turn on his show Benny versus the Pennies coming on.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I do appreciate it. Proud of the show.
It will air tonight at six pm and seven thirty.
Pm on BC Sports Boston.
NBC Sports Boston, which is the flagship, as you know from listening to me try to get you to watch the TV show every week on this podcast.
It is the flagship.
It is produced out of NBC Sports Boston and the team that works on the show is out of NBC Sports Boston. It is very important that people watch the show on NBC Sports Boston. So that is tonight six o'clock and seven point thirty, and it'll layer all day on Saturday, off and on and even on Sunday. And it's kind of cool because it's All Star weekend in the NBA.
So what does that mean? All Star weekend in the NBA.
That means that we will not be preempted by a Celtic game or a Sixers game, the Warriors of the Sacramento Kings, or the Lakers or any of the other teams that are on the stations that carry Benny versus the Penny.
So we should have full clearance and the.
Show should air about every ninety minutes, about every ninety minutes. The show should be on somewhere somehow about every ninety minutes. So that that is the deal with the TV show. We had a lot of funny. So how do you do a TV show? You're supposed to pick games, there's no games to pick.
What do you do? Let me explain? All right, calm down, cowboy.
So the TV show is a look back, a retrospective as we look at the season that was what went well, what did not go well? We also look ahead to some of the big storylines that we'll be talking about.
The odds you can bet.
On where certain players are going to go, So we'll have some of that and we'll just have a good old time.
Let's have fun.
That's what the show is all about. It's about gambling, but it's about fun. It's about having a good time. And there will be a video up later today. Another video will pop up from our final trip around Universal Studios in Hollywood.
In the rain.
And it doesn't rain in La unless occasionally it does, and not that un complaining.
It could have been worse. It could have been ice, could have been snow.
But it's been very rainy the last couple of days in the Southland here, and we whizz through the rain. I did bring an umbrella. I noticed that on I almost never use an umbrella. The wife was like, you got to use an umbrella. Use an umbrella, so.
She owed me with the umbrella.
But I'm kind of a tall guy and lost a lot of weight, but I'm still very tall, and I've noticed that to have the proper umbrella coverage, I need to fully be covered by the umbrella, and I need a tall, big and tall size umbrella he blew me off at.
A hotel near lax I'm sure they sell those things.
They're probably very expensive, and I don't feel like spending a lot of money on big and tall umbrellas because, as you know, umbrellas last about five minutes and then they fall apart the first big gust of wind. That's it. That's all. So I think I'll just stick to the smaller umbrellas. But the problem was we were walking. We had to walk up a hill. I'm really happy with where we went for the final video at Universal Studios. I think we'll be impressed. One of the great sets
in the history of Hollywood. And we were there just hanging out in the rain schmoozing. Now, Looney, I got a sorry about Looney. So Looney, the knucklehead I do the TV show with. We call him Tell the Prompter, Tom, So Tell a Prompter, Tom. I said, Tom, this is our last show. This is it, right, this is the climax farewell performance. You know all that the finale, And I said, listen, we're gonna be walking in the rain.
Bring an umbrella. He said, bring an umbrella. Okay, So we do the show.
We then go down to put some of our stuff in the car to walk to where we need to walk. So we're in the Laurel and Hardy parking garage.
I said, all right, let's go grab your umbrella and tell a prompter.
Tom says, I'm good. I don't need the umbrella. I bet you have the umbrella. I don't need the umbrella. I said, it's raining. It's not raining that hard. Bring the umbrella.
I don't need the umbrella, I said, Tom, we're going to be walking up a hill.
Is maybe it's not raining right now, but it's going to be raining a lot. Then he gives the whole lot from New York, you know, that whole thing. I'm from Elmyra or where he's from. And so he's going on. I'm like, okay, fine.
So we walked and start walking and we're walking in puddles, and I mean, it was it was interesting.
It was an interesting walk, and you know, we do the whole thing, and we both ended up soaked. But the umbrella, because it was so small, the water was pouring off the sides and onto my pants.
Like the top of me was not getting wet.
Really, my head was fine and the top of my shirt, but everything lower was getting soaked. I did want to mention this now, this being the finale of Benny Versus the Penny season number two, we will not know the ratings until next week. And this is not a list, by the way, Terry in England's listening, This is not a list, Terry. This is Big Ben's Big Board of
the most watched season finales or series finales. Now, this is keep in mind, we don't know what's going on with Benny Versus the Penny season three, but we'll get to that in a minute, but focus in on the series finale. Now, the top ten Big Board, Big Ben's Big Board, number ten, Number ten, that would be Home
Improvement nineteen ninety nine, Tim Taylor, Home Improvement. That is the tenth most watched, tenth most watched show in a finale, thirty five point five million people watched in nineteen ninety nine. You imagine getting other than football or sports, getting someone or a group of people to watch that big show. Good Luck, Family Ties another old show nineteen eighty nine,
Michael J. Fox teen Idol thirty six million. All the Family That's in the nineteen seventies had forty million people watch. Archie Bunker forty million people as the curmudgeon Archie Bunker professed his love to Edith in the season finale, and yeah about that. There was a spin off that came shortly after that, so that was kind of like, we're closing the show, but we're coming back with another show, The Cosby Show. Oh that's taboo. Good old Bill Fio
graduated from NYU and that was nineteen ninety two. Forty four point four million people in nineteen ninety two watched the final Cosby Show. And Bill's never been the same since Magnum Pi. Now I walked by them. One of the magnum Pi cars at Universal Studios it's parked, was getting absolutely soaked in the rain. The top was open and all that stuff. And this show back in the All these shows are like in the nineties and the eighties because that's when people did not have the Internet
and everyone was watching a handful of chanels. But fifty million people in nineteen eighty eight, fifty point seven million people watched as Magnum P.
I think he got married. If I remember, did he get married? I think he got married or I don't know.
Anyway, I was fifty million people, Friends that was in the two thousands. It's already been twenty plus years though. The season finale of Friends with Chandler and Monica and all the other knuckleheads on that show, fifty two point five million. Seinfeld very controversial ending, very controversial, the show on NBC where they ended up in jail, and seventy six point.
Three million.
Viewers for Seinfeld nineteen ninety eight, The Fugitive, and this goes way back. This goes back to the nineteen sixties the TV show called The Fugitive, and in nineteen sixty seven they estimate seventy eight million people watched that show.
Seventy eight million.
Cheers went off the air in nineteen ninety three, they had eighty point four million, and then everyone went out in Boston and got hammered, and they brought back I remember Shelley Long had left the show. They brought her back. They brought back some of the other characters, but eighty point four million. And if I remember correctly, the Tonight Show, which was very popular back when people watched late night TV with Jay Leno that that show went out of Boston.
They just interviewed all the characters from Cheers.
And then the number one, which will never be beaten in my lifetime.
And I'm going to go on on a limb and say your lifetime.
For the biggest TV audience by a TV show in their series finale, that would be Mash Mash nineteen eighty three, Alan Alda the Goodbye Farewell, see you later, bye bye. And not only was that the most watched series finale ever, it had been the most watched television event ever until twenty ten. And if you look at the super Bowl now this we just had the super Bowl this week. They said one hundred and twenty seven million people watched the super Bowl.
Okay, that's a lot of people, but nineteen eighty three, one hundred and five point nine million all tuning in to watch a show about the Vietnam War. I mean that is I mean just war in general. But there it was. It was a big part of everyone's life and this, that and the other thing. Anyway, so there it is.
And we we'd like Benny versus the penny to slide on in. We'd be happy if we got the thirty six million of family ties. We'd be very We don't even have to be in the top ten. I don't want to be a douche because Fraser was number eleven, so we could beat Fraser. That was a popular show, the Cheers spin off where everybody loves Raymond. Our show like that. I think that would be fine. But listen,
thank you, Benny versus the Penny coming up tonight. Check it out and we move on, and we move on to this, and this would be the soap man cometh. So keep in mind as I am talking to you here on this Friday morning and Valentine's Day and all that the TV show hasn't really aired. It started airing last night, but it hasn't aired all over the place, and I'm already getting emails they're gonna bring the showback?
Is the show going to come back? What's gonna take for having another season of the show? And I was like, listen, I want to address that right now. A thank you.
I appreciate you reaching out, all right, it's wonderful. I know you're racking your brain and trying to figure out how you can help. And here's the way I will describe the conversations I've had with management at NBC. They've been very good. They love the show. You know, I don't think they just say that to everybody. The show's evolved over the last couple of years. I'm proud of the show. As I said, things are going pretty well.
I feel like for what the show is, it's getting to where we want it to be week in week out. You know, it's kind of like McDonald's and Starbucks. You know, you can go to a Starbucks in any single country anywhere. You get that venti coffee there at your Starbucks.
And the quality is the same. You know what I'm saying.
You know what you're gonna get. And I'm not a coffee drinker, but the consistency, the dependability of those big company like McDonald's.
You know what a big Mac tastes like.
If you're in Minnesota, and if you go on a road trip to Maine or something like that, or you go to California, it's gonna taste the same no matter where you are in the world. Right you know, you go to the Golden Arches, they will be consistent. You might not like it, you might think it's shit, but you know that you're going to get the same experience in terms of the basic menu and the wrapping, the design, all of that. So there's consistency and Starbucks it's pretty much the same.
Right, They're pretty much the same.
And it's push button coffee machines.
You know, there's not a lot different.
My wife loves Starbucks and so we've been to Starbucks all over the United States in our travels. And yeah, so it's depending. So that's the point, right, there's some studiness to it. It's like Ron pop Peel with that Showtime Rotisseri thing. The infomercial said it and forget it, And so that's where we are. I feel like the show's in that good spot there, set it and forget it. I mentioned the soap man Cometh because I learned actually
a very very valuable lesson. I learned it on this podcast from someone we had on, the old voice of the New York Yankees, John Sterling, a great John Sterling who's still to this dip. I called John Sterling up right now. He'll answer his phone.
He'll say hello John here and he'll talk and if he's available, he's got a few minutes, he'll come on and do the show. He's retired now.
But John Sterling famously said the most important thing is to sell the soap. You gotta sell the soap, and that's the key to season three of Benny Versus the Penny. It's all based on advertising. So as long as we have a title sponsor and someone that's going to be paying the freight for the TV show that will bankroll season three, we're good. So if you want to help the show out and you know someone that wants to sponsor the show, let NBC know or let me know, and I'll let NBC know.
We'll work some there. It'd be a lot of fun. It'd be great, it would be wonderful. But wait, there's more.
As I pointed out, and I'm a man of my word, if the TV show gets picked up for season three.
I did a Mallard meet and greet the very last minute.
Blind Scott came down and we got to meet Masshole Mickey before he passed away, and there were a couple other folks that showed up very last minute in the rain in Boston on the North End. And so we will do another Malard meeting. I don't know if it's going to be in Boston proper, because I feel like we have a lot of you guys that listen out in.
The Springfield, Worcester area. And so we'll figure it out.
I did want to complete the mission for Masshole Mickey mass Ole Mickey had planned he'd send me a bunch of emails about it doing an event where I threw out the first pitch at a baseball game there in Worcester, the Wusacks, I believe they're called, and I'd love to make that happen. I would love to go out there and hang out with you guys at a baseball game.
That would be awesome. And also I want to meet Alf, the alien opiner.
I almost met Alf at the one we did last year, but Alf was unable to make it because the weather was horrific and I don't think he had gone to tire Rack yet to get his new tires, and so there was a problem there and that was that. But anyway, so there it is a soap man, come with you. Gotta sell some soap and then we'll get season number three. Now, ring the bell. Got to ring the bell, Ring the bell, So I think we'll get out on this so ring the bell. It is very rare in life that you
will come across someone. Now I don't know this person like as a friend, but I've met them a couple of times over the years and their life, their life story gets turned into a movie. That's kind of cool, right, that's kind of cool. Actually found this out. Mike Harmon sent me this message because he's aware of the history of the Premiere Networks. So years ago, we used to have these Galla Christmas parties.
I mean they just kicked ass.
We were the showboating around there and open bar, fine food, Beverly Hills Hotel, black tie type event, just first class.
All the way. Premiere knew how to do it. Now, they stopped doing that.
Years ago because I guess it was too expensive and they had to give people that money. But we loved it. We were treated like royalty and it was so much fun. And I remember when I was a young young lad, I worked in radio for a few years, but I got hired for Fox Sports Radio, which is part of the Premiere now it's called the Premiere Networks, And so I got invited to this Christmas party and everyone of their uncle was there. But they flew in all of
the top radio talent. So we're talking about like doctor Laura.
And she was there.
Matt Drudge, who was living in floor at the time, he was part of that Rush Limbaugh. I mean, these are big time people in radio, and they had Art Bell was there as well.
And that's the name right there.
Because according to the Hollywood Trades, Dateline says that there have been multiple bidders for a radio biopic.
Amazon and Warner Brothers.
Have put bids in for a pitch that is making the rounds from the team called It's Radio Silence is the team with Paul Giamatti is going to be the headliner. And this Paul Giaomanni, the son of Bart Giamanni, the old commissioner of baseball who was there and died and Pete Rose that whole era and Bart Giomonni and Pete Rose never gott in the Hall of Fame. And those two things are connected anyway. The sales pitch is a
biopic about the host of Coast to Coast DJ Art Bell. Yeah, and he did his show from Perump, Nevada, which is about sixty miles as the crow flies from Las Vegas. I've talked about being in Perump, Nevad. I've been there for an event my wife's work had and Perump is where all the whorehouses are in Nevada.
It's legal.
Prostitution is legal in perump I don't know if that's why Art lived there, but Art was a legend. And I got to meet Art a couple of times at those holiday parties, and that was really cool because I was a listener. I was a listener to Coast to coast. My parents always stayed up late. I was always a late night guy. And there was nobody that did it better than Art Bell.
If you wanted to hear about keemtrails, you wanted to hear about some kind of time travel or mind reading or lizard people. He had it all. He had it all, and it was great.
And Art Bell and his wife, they apparently they they moved out to the desert.
There. They had one hundred and fifty foot long triangle craft. They saw at one point.
They saw a UFO. They saw a UFO supposedly, and that that helped inspire Coast Coast. But they lived in like this small little house in promptivout. It was like there was really nothing, nothing magical or anything like that. But back in his salad days. Art passed away a number of years ago. I think he passed in twenty eighteen, I believe, but it doesn't really matter.
It's been gone for a while. But Coast to Coast and George Norrey does a great job. But in its day, they got about ten million people listing to Coast to Coast ten million and they were on overnight ten million people in the middle of the night. Can you imagine, my god. I mean, that's what a legend is.
Anyway, So this movie is in production and we'll see see what it's about.
I mean, it's obviously about Art Bell, but how they're gonna make it?
Are they going to make it where it's art just sitting there in a dark room talking about area fifty one?
How far are they going to go in?
He I guess at some point he worked in city government in Perumpt that's his hometown, and it's a fascinating tome.
I've read a little bit about Art. There's not too much out there about his life. And we'll see what happens. But I would love to have a little, small, small role in that. Somehow.
I'm sure that will not happen, but you never know. I'd like to go see it at the red carpet thing. That would be kind of neat. As someone that worked at the company back the day the Great Art Bell, and we'll.
See what happens. Hugh ends up with it.
But Warner Brothers in Amazon bidding on the Art Bell movie. The radio trades all about it. Love it, love it, love it art. We'll get out on that. Have a wonderful. We'll save the phrase of.
The week till tomorrow, and we'll get some other stuff. Danny G should be with me.
Tomorrow, Have a wonderful, glorious the rest of your what. Valentine's there, It's Valentine's Day, Oh my god.
Enjoy Valentine's Day.
And we'll yap about all that and who knows what else tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow is another day. Don't forget.
Watch the TV show and listen to this podcast and also the overnight podcast. It's all there, right there on the magic audio device that you listen to right now. And as Danny G would say, later, skater hoo MEI asta pasta. I think that's how it works, right Yeah, sure, why not? That's the ticket right now?
Yeah, that's it. Got a murder. I gotta go