Turkey Talk

big Thanksgiving weekend in the Magic Podcast studio. Yes, four hours a night are not enough. We do this eight days a week. I know. It's amazing. It's amazing. So on this edition of The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller, we have a staple of the holiday season, something that I knew three times a year. I do it on terrestrial radio, but I'm using it now on the podcast because I thought I'd be ahead of the game on

the podcast. And we will take a trip on the lazy River of sports talk radio, the lazy River of sports talk radio. We also have the screw job. We look forward to that. A gassy mass, a gassy mass, and we will get scientifical, assuming we have the time remaining the allotted time in this edition of the Fifth Hour, We thank you for finding this podcast. Has there been a new co host named? No, uh, there is not a new a co host, but there is supposed to

be movement in that direction. I have a pretty good idea of who the person will will be. And I know there's a lot of drama and a lot of people wondering is it gonna be somebody that we know, is it gonna be somebody new? Is it gonna be a big shocker surprise motherfucker. Well you're gonna have to

wait and find out. I cannot give that information out because the agreement has not been made, at least not official, official official, But once it's official, and then we go into the verbal octagon, which is the fifth Hour, and watch out. So we will have that information coming up as soon as we are allowed to give out the name, and we will promote, promote, promote. Until then, though, I still need this podcast to get bigger and better and bolder,

so we keep doing the podcast. Five stars, five stars, right, a little review, knock yourself out on that. That helps a lot. Now, I would say, and I've said this in the path I'll say it again for the new people. To me, it doesn't really matter, right. I mean, we have we have a good number of people that download the podcast. They're pretty happy with the way the show is going. But there are advertisers and people that are

in the audio game that read those reviews. And I would say that, but these people have a lot of time on their hands and they are going through everything and reading the reviews, and the people like you, do they not like you? What's going on and all that, and so there there is a lot that goes into that. So as long as we had a few reviews from time to time generally positive would help. Uh. And so as long as that continues, I think we're in good shape.

So let's begin, though, on this edition of the Fifth Hour with the handbook too Lazy Sports Talk Radio. This is done as a public service announcement. I have spent my entire adult life, entire time as a bloviating gas bag. Yes, that has been my gig. And over the years I have noticed, having worked a lot of holidays, that a number of my coworkers do not take the holiday sports talk radio very seriously. There's a couple of things that

I would advise you to look for. Now. This is assuming you are still consuming audio content that you might stumble across some radio over the holiday weekend. Many of the weekday host are not there. They do the old switcheroo, and some of the weekend people, some of the backup people get to come in. And having been a weekend host, having been a backup host, that is something that I often did. I worked the holidays. I would wax lyrical on holidays, and I felt like it was a big opportunity.

And and so of course, now that I have the full time job, and I've had it for several years, a number of years now, I still do not take the holidays off. Now there's there's reasons for that. Before I give you the lazy sports radio holiday, a couple of reasons I do not take, especially Thanksgiving. I do take time off between Christmas and New Year's, but usually

work on Thanksgiving for many, many reasons. Uh. And one of the big ones in the last like almost ten years and it's been eight years, is that Thanksgiving for me was always a trip with mom. You know. It was going to Mom's house, eating turkey stuff and the pumpkin pie, the cranberries. My mom loved cranberries. She always had good cranberries, uh, and she had yams. I hated yams, so I would eat the marshmallows on top. I enjoyed the marshmallows on top. Yeah. I know there's like horse

parts in the marshmallows, but they tasted good. And as a fat kid, I would brush aside all the yams and I would just eat the delicious, wonderful uh marshmallow stuff. So my mom has been gone for a while now, and you know I did. I did occasionally go to my in laws for Thanksgiving, but all my other family lives far far away. I've got a brother in Wisconsin, a brother in New York. I've got some other random

relatives that are scattered all over the country. I have some friends in uh old cousins of mine in Connecticut and New York, Arizona, Colorado. The the Mallard family and the other families associated with the Mallory family are all all over, some in Florida, you name it, but not a lot in Cali, where I live. So that's the first thing. The second thing is normally on Thanksgiving, there's a lot of people alone that don't have any anyone to hang out with, any family. That's it's important time,

especially being on overnight. I don't know, man, I just it's somebody to keep your company. That's one of the great things about radio is that you can really get a connection that no other media gives you. As great as the internet is, as wonderful as social media is and television and all of that, there's just something about being by yourself late at night, kind of on the edge of your seat and listening and having someone talk

to you and you don't have to talk back. It's just somebody trying to entertain you, and that that becomes even more important now. To be fair, we also have a lot of drunk people that do have family and do have people that love them, and have decided that their family is so annoying, their in laws are so annoying that without reservation, they run out and get as boozed up as they possibly can right and just start going for it and having a wonderful time. Yeah, and

but then they have no care in the world. So we'll get a lot of drunkards that call up on Thanksgiving. And then the third part of this is my wife usually ends up working on Thanksgiving also, and I think it's because I usually work on Thanksgiving. But she works as a nine on one operator, and so my wife works at the police station. And much like radio, although much more important the police, when you work at a police station, they don't close the police station down because

it's Thanksgiving or whatever. So you still have to work and and still have to do your thing, and so she knows I enjoy working. And it's a little easier now because I have at home studio, so I don't have to drive into the radio station. I just kind of hang out in the home studio. So it doesn't

really change. The schedule doesn't change, and Thanksgiving is always a great day to work because they're from a sports radio standpoint, Uh, there's a bunch of football and there's a bunch of different storylines in the NFL's brimming with content that's right front and center, and it's it's not like you have to put a lot of work into that,

and so that's another added bonus. Like so many times during the periods of the year where there's not a lot going on, you kind of muddle around and you're throwing Feducchini Alfredo against the wall scene if any of it sticks to the wall. Uh, So you can put

together an interesting program. You don't have to do that much. Uh. You know, in comparison to a June sometime in June when there's just a couple of random baseball games going on, the NBA Finals are over, and you're depending on the second wave of free agency, and you're like, that is what I need right there. That's gonna drive me through. And it's there are times that you're really putting your neck out. But Thanksgiving ing, uh is not a time where you hear here that you don't hear that very

much because there's games. We got game action, a lot of game action, and maybe it will be some kind of wardrobe malfunction or something like that that we can walk down memory lane and break down the singing performance during a random, random halftime show on Thanksgiving and knock yourselves out. Now, as far as that's concerned, let's let's get to the actual handbook for lazy sports radio. So this is a public service, and I'm not out here to to out anyone. I am doing this much like

I do the NFL book them. I am doing this to encourage my fellow brothers and sisters in sports talk radio, to put some work into it, to make some effort out of sports talk radio that do it, do it the right way, don't do it the lazy right, don't float on an inner tube on the lazy river bed, or do better. Don't set our profession back. Okay, that's all I ask is for an honest effort. That's it. That's it. Why do people tune in to radio shows? Uh,

there's different reasons for that. Boredom is usually right at the top of the list, right, boredoms at the top of list. Uh, you're looking for some entertainment. I would say that's a pretty good reason. Also, you're looking for something. Maybe you're working and you have a very boring job and you're like, boy, this job sucks. Man. I need something to make the time go faster, and a good radio show will do that. I can still work, I can listen with one ear and and then get the

show going the other. You know, good getting the work done with the other ear. Yeah, I understand that. So anyway, Thanksgiving weekend his historically the beginning of the worst sports talk radio you can get. Now, what is lazy sports talk radio? Thanksgiving weekend. Typically it is along the lines of this, what in sports are you thankful for? And then they give out the number and then the list. The host will list some of the things there's thanking

they'll thankful for in sports. Thankful for Tom Brady playing for the Buccaneers. I'm thankful that Russell Wilson is back with the Seattle Seahawks, and a lot of random things. I'm thankful Tiger Woods did not die in the car accident. I'm thankful that, you know, whatever it might be, you know, kind of hokey cornball stuff. So if you hear that, you know that the host has not done any proper

preparation and it's just going out there it didn't happen. Yeah, it could do the same thing that they did in seven, the same generic topic. Now the answers will a little different, but the topic the same. Another trope of Thanksgiving weekend sports talk radio is who's the biggest turkey in sports? Who's the biggest turkey in sports? Always fun to rattle off some athletes that got in trouble with the law,

or Kyrie Irving, you know, things like that. So biggest turkey in sports a sign that you are listening to a lazy sports talk radio host. Also, who would you like to invite the Thanksgiving dinner? All right, who do you want to come over the Thanksgiving dinner? Sit down there and have a wonderfully deliciously prepared meal. Eat the bird, right, have a little turkey and a little stuffing on the side. They're more turkey, and eat some cranberries. Eat more turkey.

And then he said, what are you doing in my Yeah, that's what are you doing my table? Actually to be the question there? So who would you invite the Thanksgiving dinner? And the and they usually do dead or alive? Dead or alive is almost always the way that goes. And you so I want to have Babe Ruth. I'd like to have Hank care and he just died. I'd have handcare in there. And let's go. I'll have Joe name if he's a lie, but he's getting older there, so

I have Joe come in there. How about go down the list here, let's see any mean any my name Bill Walsh. He's dead, he can be like the head of the table. We'll have Bill Walsh the old fort.

It's like it's that kind of thing, you know, it's like, yeah, come on, we don't need to be sure to catch live editions of the Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio ap Also, this is something that's relatively new for the lazy river of Thanksgiving weekend sports talk radio, and that is, let's have a Thanksgiving weekend draft.

With the first pick, my plate picks Turkey. We with the second pick one Thanksgiving weekend draft, I'm going with in an upset Cranberry sauce. Anyway, Needless to say that this is a sign that the person doing the show is not putting a lot of effort into the show. And you're listening to lazy sports talk radio, so you know that drill. If you're in the Mallary militian, you've listened this far into the podcast, then you understand that we do not approve of this kind of radio. We

don't do that. I work every Thanksgiving, just about I've been here for twenty years, Ploss on Fox Sports Radio, working Thanksgiving, with the exception of one time when I had a six month day vacation. But actually in reality that year I got let go January of that year, so I actually did work. I was back by the holidays, so by the time that the bird was served, I was there bloviating into a microphone. So yeah, I was. I was there doing my thing. But I've never done

any of those topics on the radio. Now. Some people have pointed out that, hey, hey, Ben Uh, you realize that when you bring up the Handbook of Lazy Sports Talk Radio, you are actually doing lazy sports talk radio bias Moses when you are discussing this, And there is some truth to that. There is some truth to that, but I believe it's for the better good. It's rare and appropriate that I bring this up. And I'm doing it this weekend, on this satur today, because this is

the Saturday before Thanksgiving week. I could have waited. I could have done this Thanksgiving weekend. I don't even know if we're gonna have new podcast on Thanksgiving weekend. I have not figured that out. I just take it one day at a time. My man take it one day at a time, is their boss likes to say. And this is in my wheelhouse right now, so I'm focused

on today. I will completely forget about this podcast and we'll move on to the Mailbag podcast, and then we'll do that, and then we will forget about that, and we'll just keep going step after step, right one step in front of the other, and just keep your head down and then eventually you will get where you need to go. But I will let you know if I

post something on the show Facebook page. That's a pretty good indication if I post something on Tuesday for the mail Bag that I am planning on doing a full weekend of the podcast. Otherwise I might might not. Management doesn't care about do the podcast on Thanksgiving weekend. Uh they say the downloads go down on Thanksgiving weekend and

all that. Alright, Moving on to the screw job. Now, this is not the Montreal Screwjob, the famous w w E wrestling situation where people were screaming bloody murder because of a rip off, and there have been many documentaries made about Vits McMahon and the old Switcher rou that was done. This is not that, but the life of Mallard, the life of Mallard, and this the screwjob portion of

the story. So I made a small upgrade to the Mallard mansion home studio in the North Woods, and I am happy to report that a couple of eagle eyed p ones in the Mallar Militia sent me email they noticed from Mallard monologues this week that something was a little different, and they pointed out what it was, which tells me these people have less of a life than I have. You know who you are if you sent

me a message. So, after many years sitting in the same chair, the same big chair, I bit the bullet. I moved recently and I brought my old chair with me, and I said, you know what, this thing's got a lot of wear and tear on it. I've sat in it for so many hours, so many different radio shows that were so blah blah. I need a new chair. And so I went out there to the store and I shopped around. I shopped around. Now, in this studio, I get a lot of work out of it. I

get a lot of work. I do twenty hours of original terrestrial radio, four hours a day, five days a week. So I put some hours in on the terrest Or radio, and then we do about three hours, give or take of original audio content here in the podcast of it. So I spent a lot of time in here, and I'm prepping a lot of my days spent in this chair, so I didn't want a short change. I didn't want to buy a crappy chair. So I started shopping around and it's it was like Goldilocks in the Three Bears

when it comes to the chair. Now, if you know the story of Goldilocks, just think of me as the person that sat down in the first chair but it was too hard. And then I sat down in the second chair, but it was too soft. And then I sat down in the third chair and it was just right. So I bought it. I bought the chair, and it wasn't a cheap chair. I spent a little bit of money on the chair, and you know, it came in a giant box, and the wife helped me out there.

We pulled it up to the Mallard mansion and we brought it inside there and we had to build it and to build the chair. And so I started building the chair and I followed the instructions and then everything there. They had a little thing at a twist, the screws in and you had to build the whole thing, put it together. It wasn't that hard. I've built chairs before

and everything's been fine. Everything's been smooth sailing. And so I'm building this chair and I'm doing my thing, and I'm just you know, la la la la, la la la. I'm building the chair and nothing really out of the ordinary. Put the chair together, got the you got the bottom part. You start with the bottom and you kind of work your way around. You connected two big pieces together, and you're doing your thing there and everything's going great. And then I get to the final step, well, the next

a lot. It wasn't the final final step, but it was the next to last step, and I, for the life of me, I cannot get the arms to go on the chair. So here I am at a fork in the road. I've got this problem. The screws. We're too small, so they wouldn't go into the proper slot, and they wouldn't the tread of the screws wouldn't lock in. And it's like, I'm almost a percent sure that I got this right here, but it's not working. And this chair was kind of pricey, and what am I gonna do?

And so I'm going through my head and I'm like, all right, what what's the move here? What's the play? Do you return the chair? And then I'm looking at the chair, and it says right at the bottom there it says, do not return the chair. And at that moment I started I was laughing. Yeah. I was like, come on, man, I I can absolutely return the chair. No, no, I could return the chair. But but then it it

said again. I kept reading this and it said right there, in bold yellow and black, it said, do not return the chair. If you have a problem, call this number. And so I'm looking at that and I'm like, all right, it really wants me to call this number, but I don't want to call it. I don't want to deal with anybody, but I want I want the chair. It was the top chair that I found. I spend a lot of time in the chair, so I would like

to have this chair. So I said, you know what I'm gonna do when when that customer service line opens up, I'm gonna call the number. And I've never done this before. So I did, and UH explained everything and they said, okay, no problem. Uh. They said, hey, you're very special. Yeah, well thank you for that. They were very kind to me. And so they said, here, just give me your address, send a copy of the receipt, and we will send you out all of the screws you could possibly need,

and you will be able to fix that chair, no problem. Alright. So at this point I'm like, all right, I'm excited. I'm excited. They said, with seven to ten business days, we will have this and we will be good to go. And so, uh, I forget about it. And then a couple of days later, all of a sudden, turn up, Uh, there they are right there in the mail. I get a package from UPS and it is all the screws, all the screw So I'm very excited, and I'm like, here we go, all right, here we go. We're gonna

put the arms on. I'm gonna use the new chair. And so sure enough, I put the arms in, got ready to go on that and much to my surprise, much to my surprise, even with the new screws, it was a screw job. It didn't work. Yeah, So I said, that's it. I tried. Then we took it to the store. We explained what happened, and the person at the store was really did not want us to return the item because if you return something, it screws everything up for

the store. I imagine. I've never worked retail at that level, but I'm guessing that if you return the item, based on what we know from our friends who listened to this podcast, they are involved in like Amazon returns and all that that. You know, typically if you return an item, they can't resell it, and so then people are losing money right and left, and that's not good for anybody. And am I right? I think I'm I think I'm

right on that. And so the guy's story was very nice, and he thought he knew what had happened, and so he said, give me like a couple of hours. I think I can play around with it and get it to work. And because he had built this type of chair before, and so sure enough, gave him a couple of hours, got a phone called ring ring, right, the phone's ringing there, I'm like, I wonder who that is. I don't recognize the number, and sure enough it turned

out to be the guy who said good news, good news. Uh, yeah, it's not it's not Howard there. But I said at the uh, the chair had been fixed. We're good to go. So I wasn't picked it up. And that is the screw job, which had a happy ending. It had happy and it's kind of a rocky road, but the chair is good to go, and this thing should last hopefully for another ten years, but you never know, you never know, Like I use this thing so much, I I think

this is more like a five year chair. But we'll try to take care of it, try not to pour any food on it. I have not had any real food in the studio. Very proud of that. I used to eat a lot in the other home studio when I had the W E I studio and I was doing shows for EI and this podcast. I uh, it's food I eat from time to time, but I have not had any food. The food is not in this part of the house. Uh, in the whole mansion here and I have I have water, that's it, which is

probably worse than food. With all of the equipment that is in this studio, I have a whole podcast. On the right side is all podcasting equipment. The left side is all for terrestrial radio to hook up to the Fox Sports Radio mothership. And so there's a lot of stuff in here, and I'm pretty confident, I'm pretty confident that none of it, none of it deserves any kind of water. And if it gets water, then things are

going to go very badly. So I but I, but I am pretty careful with the water right moving on to the gassy mess. The gassy mess. Now, since I relocated deep at a secret location somewhere in the north Woods, I have not had to drive nearly as much. As I point out, don't make here at the home studio, and I still drive on the weekends, and I have to make some trips around town where I live during the week but being at the home studio it has

cut back on my mileage tremendously. It's been a wonderful thing. But my wife has to drive much further than she used to have to drive to her work, and she drives a car that, you know, it's not a gas guzzler per se. It's a car that gets pretty good gas mileage. But even with that, when you drive a long distance four or five days a week, it adds up and you start feeling it in the wallet. And so the gas prices, like everyone else, are completely out

of control. Now. Living in Cali, I don't have effective public transportation where I am now, and I lived in downtown Los Angeles, live in Lincoln Heights, and I lived an apartment in Hollywood, but I lived in Lincoln Heights, living near Dodger Stadium, and there was the Goldline, and I used to take that thing quite a bit when I was bachelor. I loved In fact, I lived pretty close to a gold Line station in Lincoln Heights, and

I I drove. I drove those subway cars all over I take that thing, you know, if you know the geography in southern California, I take it all away from where I lived in Lincoln Heights, right near Dodger Stadium to Long Beach. I go out to the ocean down there, have a great time. They've they've added a lot of rail lines since I lived there, But I don't live near that public transportation. And even if I did, at this point, I don't know that I would take it

because things have not gotten better. They've gotten worse in terms of crime, and the fact that petty crime like robbing people of two items on a subway car, I don't think they prosecute that. So it's a criminals dream come true to to rip people off on those subway cars, which even when I was riding the years ago, happened a lot. I can't imagine what it's like now. But anyway, this is not about that this is about gas. So being in cal Fifornia, don't have a public transportation, that's great.

That that is great rather and so you have to drive or else, which brings me to the rage of the week, the price of gas. This week, gas prices sword it was over four sixty a gallon, a record high and likely will only go higher. We are going to cross the five dollar threshold here before you know it. California has the highest gas prices in the country, up an average from of a dollar fifty a dollar fifty a gallon. It has gone up in general. Now I

know the cost of living is out of control. I buy the groceries for the house and I look at the price of bread, the price of chicken and different items that I eat, and I'm like, holy crap. So they say gas, electricity, food, everything through the roof. I haven't missed anything this Joe Biden administration. They haven't missed anything. So the gas thing, though, that really is a pet peeve. It is completely out of control, and I would like to get into the reason now, the reason it's even

more expensive in California. And this is a teachable moment, and I'm big on teachable moments. And so hopefully this will reston me. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir that if you listen to this podcast that we we we share a lot of the same views. I think that's probably the case, based on the fact that most people today, because of tribalism, only listen or consume media of people that are of a like mind. So this will likely fall on death ears because you already

agree with me. But where I live, every couple of years they have a proposition on the ballot, and the proposition is to raise the gas tax by half a cent or less than half a cent, and that's it, and it'll fix all the roads, and everything will be great, and you're going to live in this amazing utopia. It's gonna be wonderful, Oh my god, the Garden of Eden. Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Miller Show week days at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.

And so, what happens every time one of these things pops up? People say, yes, it's only a cent or a half a cent or less than a half a cent. What kind of tight wad are you? What kind of of cheap skate are you? What about the roads? What about this, that and the other thing. Well, this is the results. Here, we are the result of all of those little gas increases. California. The state gas tax in California is over sixty cents per gallon. It is the

highest the state gasoline tax per per state Cali. Fournia is numberrow number one with a bullet sixty three point one cents per gallon in California goes to pay for tax. Now, that is by far the most in the country, leaving everyone else in the dust. Only five states are over fifty cents a gallon. To give you a comparison on some states, we have a lot of Mallard militia. In Iowa, our friends in Iowa thirty cents again, so you're paying thirty three point one sense less per gallon in tax

than in California. In Kansas, our friends in Kansas are typically the lowest states, with the exception of Florida, where their gas taxes pretty high. Pretty much all the other low tax states are in the southern part of the United States with except right, with a few exceptions that have sneaked in there. Now, do you know the lowest gas tax state? Just state gas tax? You know what that is You gotta you have a guest in your head,

and they're fifty states. Go ahead. I could hear Marcel right now saying I think the the cheapest state for gas. Marcel would say is Zimbabwe or Uzbekistan or who? No. Uh, the correct answer is not a southern state. It is not a southern state. It is Alaska, Alaskans, the great White North North North, which I think of as Canadian

land that happens to be using American currency. But but our friends in Alaska thirteen point eight cents per gallon, so they are almost fifty cents cheaper, forty nine cents cheaper than in California. Hawaii, another state far away from continental United States, forty point eight cents. And everything in Hawaii has to be shipped in right there, not producing gas in Hawaii, at least not to my knowledge. Now, the lowest gas tax in the entire continental United States,

forget Hawaii and Alaska. Uh, the lowest gas tax is in Missouri. How about that? Here he goes a little bit of surprised. You're surprised by that, missoo, Missouri has the lowest gas tax seventeen point four cents in the continental United States. Now, keep in mind all of these numbers, all of these numbers on state gas tax totals does not include the federal gas tax of eighteen point four cents per gallon, So that means in California eighty one point five cents per gallon is on tax. It's almost

a dollar a gallon. And as far as the state tax thing, I'd be okay paying fair attacks if all the roads were perfect and there were no potholes and everything was great. There's a lot of crappy roads considering how good the weather is in California. And I've driven around Boston a lot over the years, and some New York and some other cold cold weather places where it gets nasty and the roads get pretty beat up because they pour salt on the roads to clear the snow,

and it's a hole to do. You don't have that in most of California. Outside the Mountain territory. It's not snowing in Santa Monica. There's no snowfall coming down in Oakland. Uh, this does not happen and on, you know, and once in a blue moon it happens. But yet the roads are pretty pretty messed up. So anyway, that's that's my rant. I just remember that the next time the gas tax thing comes up, and everyone, so, what would you not vote for the gas text? Okay, because this is the

end game. This is the end game, is that you end up paying sixty three cents because you can't vote no on a proposition. And they also say these things often will only go for a limited amount of time, and you know, after a couple of years, we'll pull the gas tax away. And I don't recall, I don't recall that happening. I recall reading stories about politicians saying, we found a new use for that money. The revenue. They don't call it tax hack. Politicians call it revenue,

so less less angry word. Revenue, right, revenue, they don't call that anyway. My goodness, my goodness. Well, we will put the baby to bed. Have a wonderful rest of your Saturday. We do have the mail back. Don't forget to listen to the Friday podcast, our interview podcast and one of my radio pals stopped by a long time friend. A weird friend though, because I've never actually met the person in real life. But anyway, you canna hear that and we'll catch you next time. Don't forget cameo dot com.

Email the podcast if you would like to send us a question for a future mail bag. Very simple to send a message across. You can email the program Real Fifth Hour at gmail dot com. It's f I F T Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com and also on the Facebook page Ben Mallard shall like us on Facebook, follow me on there, and we will have all of that, all of that coming your way in future editions of The Fifth Hour. We'll catch you next time. Aloha and goodbye.