Speaker 1: Cutbooms.
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
Speaker 2: hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
Speaker 2: with Ben Maller starts right now in.
Speaker 1: The air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me Ben Mahler.
Speaker 1: It is produced by Danny G Radio. He hopefully will
Speaker 1: join us at some point over the weekend, but we
Speaker 1: are back at it. The weekend begins right now on
Speaker 1: a random Friday, a random Friday. So the way this
Speaker 1: works on Fridays, I do the radio show. I then
Speaker 1: walk out of the radio studio and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the Grandpa Simpson gift where you walk in and
Speaker 1: out and then back in again and the meme. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not a gift, it's a meme. And it's
Speaker 1: that scene where in The Simpsons where Grandpa the Great
Speaker 1: Abe Simpson enters the room. He looks around there's Bart
Speaker 1: Simpson sitting there at the dais and he promptly leaves.
Speaker 1: And so that's pretty much it. That's pretty god. I
Speaker 1: go into the studio, I go out, and I go
Speaker 1: back in again. And on this edition of the podcast today,
Speaker 1: the only available in the podcast format, we have the
Speaker 1: always Riveting Blue Flu, the South Park spin off with
Speaker 1: a twist, and the Phrase of the Week as well. However,
Speaker 1: today is the fourteenth day of November. There is a
Speaker 1: holiday today you likely did not know about. It is
Speaker 1: a food holiday. I will not be celebrating this holi
Speaker 1: the day I've taken a strong position against this particular
Speaker 1: food item. Today is National Pickle Day. Yes, National pickle
Speaker 1: Day from the old world. Now. I grew up going
Speaker 1: to Delis with my family. You know these motz of
Speaker 1: ball soup and pastromi sandwiches and all that stuff at
Speaker 1: the Delhi, and they'd always give you when you sat
Speaker 1: down a thing of pickles. My mom loved pickles. I
Speaker 1: didn't like the texture. I didn't I didn't like any
Speaker 1: the smell I was okay with. But in honor of
Speaker 1: National Pickle there, which is a big day I know
Speaker 1: for Alf the alien ol Piner, who, for some reason,
Speaker 1: because he's Alf, loves the pickle. The pickle though they
Speaker 1: dated back they being the supposed experts, they did it
Speaker 1: back to twenty thirty BC. The Mesopotamians would pickle cucumbers
Speaker 1: were native to India, and that gave birth to what
Speaker 1: has become. I mean, that's a long time Holy Canoli
Speaker 1: twenty thirty BC. But the Mesopotamians, you can thank them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the tenth century, according to the pickle propaganda,
Speaker 1: that dill became a central ingredient in many brine mixtures
Speaker 1: and all that stuff Western Europe and countries along that line.
Speaker 1: And then in the nineteen forties, the United States government
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, we're producing a lot of pickles.
Speaker 1: They produced forty percent of the US pickle output, was
Speaker 1: the United States government. And if you're producing pickles and
Speaker 1: you're the government, what do you do. You include pickles
Speaker 1: in the rations for the armed forces, is what you do. Okay,
Speaker 1: there you go. So it's National Pickled Day. But we'll
Speaker 1: begin with this. So I was not planning on talking
Speaker 1: about this, but I got a couple of emails from
Speaker 1: people who were looking for me to rant and rave.
Speaker 1: Interesting enough, not from Lucky Tony. Not from Lucky Tony.
Speaker 1: So the baseball season is long over. They had the
Speaker 1: GM meetings this week, they had the MVP awards given out.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing a ran about showy Otani. That's not
Speaker 1: what this is about. Apparently the Dodger nation is up
Speaker 1: in arms because Dave Roberts. How many votes did he
Speaker 1: get for Manager? He didn't win the award, I didn't
Speaker 1: win the word. How many votes did Dave Roberts get?
Speaker 1: You want to take a guess? You see this? No,
Speaker 1: you didn't see this. Okay, So Dave Roberts did he get?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you three options here. Did he get
Speaker 1: thirteen votes for Manage of the Year? Did Dave Roberts
Speaker 1: get nine votes for Manage of the Year? Or did
Speaker 1: Dave Roberts get three votes from Manager of the Year
Speaker 1: or the other option? Option D is none of the above?
Speaker 1: All right? Reveal answers. Reveal answers. Turns out that Dave
Speaker 1: Roberts got as many votes for Manage of the Year
Speaker 1: as you and I did. None, not a single vote
Speaker 1: for Manage of the year. Bupkis squad douche. So let
Speaker 1: us address. We will dress together. We're going to address
Speaker 1: the snuffle of igus in the room. So you've got
Speaker 1: David Vasse, enemy combatant of this podcast, running around like
Speaker 1: someone stole his truro at a Dodger game, yelling disrespect, disrespect.
Speaker 1: Now we know Vassay is a legendary houseman for the Dodgers,
Speaker 1: that he is friends with all the players. He's a mouthpiece.
Speaker 1: He's been that way for years, and it's part of
Speaker 1: the job when you do that job. If you're too critical,
Speaker 1: you don't get to do that job. He's had the
Speaker 1: job for a while, which tells you he's the number
Speaker 1: one cheerleader around. He's got the blue pom poms and
Speaker 1: everything like you month. I had that job years ago.
Speaker 1: I didn't last very long because it's not in my DNA.
Speaker 1: It's baked into me to be critical. I can't be
Speaker 1: a fanboy. I wish I could. I'd get better jobs
Speaker 1: as a fanboy. You get better gigs. If you're critical,
Speaker 1: you do the overnight show. At least that's the way
Speaker 1: it's worked out for me. So let me help out
Speaker 1: Vesay because Insa used to be my producer in another life.
Speaker 1: So let me help out Vesse and all the Dodger
Speaker 1: people out there who are I'm a Dodger person. I'm
Speaker 1: happy they won the World Series. I love the fact
Speaker 1: that they're going to win several more World Series in
Speaker 1: the next ten years. It's wonderful. The question, is it
Speaker 1: a great injustice that the Dodgers Dave Roberts got no
Speaker 1: votes for Manager of the Year as the skipper of
Speaker 1: the Dodgers. Keep in mind, because they won the World Series.
Speaker 1: So I've got on this one. I've got beeswax, candle,
Speaker 1: RB's in honor of Danny g and Catholic Church, and
Speaker 1: we will combine all of these things together and we
Speaker 1: are going to make thousands of downloads. Thousands. Now, Remember
Speaker 1: I've ranted many times about bots and how all this
Speaker 1: stuff is inflated and manipulated. I never said I was
Speaker 1: against it. I just don't want to spend my own money.
Speaker 1: But if one of you knuckleheads has a bot army
Speaker 1: in Maldova, I'd be more than happy to have them
Speaker 1: just listen and enjoy the heck out of it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the point, So to answer the question, is
Speaker 1: this a great injustice that Dave Roberts did not get
Speaker 1: a single vote for Manager of the Year, My response
Speaker 1: is PULLEYE. Is my response. That is my response giving
Speaker 1: this a super duper eye roll. Credit comes from let
Speaker 1: me explain this to you. I know it's difficult for
Speaker 1: some to understand. Credit comes from exceed not doing average work.
Speaker 1: This is a regular season award. The playoffs does not matter.
Speaker 1: The Dodgers spent I believe the number is one point
Speaker 1: three billion. The last couple of offseasons they went on
Speaker 1: a rodeo drive style shopping spree. Sho Hail Tani, Yoshinobu, Yamamoto,
Speaker 1: Tyler Glass. Now they re signed ti Oscar Hernandez. And
Speaker 1: that's just the tip of the iceberg. And despite all
Speaker 1: of that, despite all of those amazing ballplayers, the Dodgers
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five underachieved. Oh my god, you can't
Speaker 1: say that, Ben, They won the overnight. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what voice that is. It is true they won
Speaker 1: the overnight, but they did underachieve that. Vegas had the
Speaker 1: Dodger win total at one hundred and five point five wins.
Speaker 1: The Dodgers won ninety three games. Now, if you do
Speaker 1: the malor math on that, it's minus twelve and a half.
Speaker 1: So if you who were the skipper of a team
Speaker 1: that won twelve games less, twelve and a half less
Speaker 1: than they were supposed to. Would you be worthy of
Speaker 1: some kind of accolades for that? That's not Manager of
Speaker 1: the Year. That calls for a performance review. You did
Speaker 1: not meet the regular season expectations. Again, just to repeat,
Speaker 1: because I know I'm going to get some emails from
Speaker 1: you knuckleheads and a little slow. It's a regular season award.
Speaker 1: Are we supposed to light a beeswhack candle for poor
Speaker 1: Dave Roberts? Give me a bleep and break. Dave Roberts
Speaker 1: is not managing the Dodgers. He's play acting. He's an
Speaker 1: IKEA display model wearing a hoodie. It's a great gig.
Speaker 1: It pays a lot of money. Now page two here,
Speaker 1: So Dave Roberts is essentially the assistant shift supervisor at
Speaker 1: an Arby's and he reading whatever Andrew Friedman and the
Speaker 1: NERD Battalion print out the morning of the game or
Speaker 1: the afternoon of the game, the analytical menu. Imagine if
Speaker 1: you will, world where Dave Roberts is working the drive
Speaker 1: through at Arby's. Hello, welcome to the Dodger Stadium. Arby's.
Speaker 1: Can I take your preapproved lineup card? So Dave Roberts
Speaker 1: doesn't so much manage the games, he downloads them. Roberts
Speaker 1: getting zero votes for Manager of the Year. That is
Speaker 1: not a snub. That is a diagnosis. That is a diagnosis.
Speaker 1: You can't win Manager of the Year if your biggest
Speaker 1: managerial decision all season is whether to stand on the
Speaker 1: top step or to sit near the top step of
Speaker 1: the dugout. The industry knows it. The baseball writers who
Speaker 1: vote on this know it. Held the ushers at Dodgers
Speaker 1: Stadium know it. This isn't some kind of a anti
Speaker 1: Dodger conspira. It's not. This's not blow this thing out
Speaker 1: of proportion. This is the mafia of baseball writers, the
Speaker 1: BBWAA saying, yes, we see the snuffle upagus wearing the
Speaker 1: Dodger hat in the room, that the dude is a
Speaker 1: middle manager with a laminated card. Mallard prop guy knows that.
Speaker 1: Justin in Cincinnati knows that. Even Robbie the Mariner fan
Speaker 1: knows that. Right, they all know it. I don't know
Speaker 1: about Jed hu fled. Meanwhile, you've got Pat Murphy in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: The Brewers were rejected to win eighty two and a
Speaker 1: half games this year. Eighty two and a half games.
Speaker 1: They didn't go out and spend a billion dollars on
Speaker 1: free agents. Eighty two and a half wins, They end
Speaker 1: up winning ninety seven. They had the top record in baseball.
Speaker 1: If my malor math is correct, that means they were
Speaker 1: fourteen and a half games above expectations, which I don't
Speaker 1: know how much Pat Murphy's managing day to day, but
Speaker 1: it certainly seems like if you're gonna give an award
Speaker 1: to somebody, that would be the guy that wins it.
Speaker 1: That's actual value added. You take that roster, the brew
Speaker 1: Crewe roster, a bunch of mid tier guys, bargain bin pitching,
Speaker 1: slap together bullpen that was literally they used gorilla glue
Speaker 1: to keep the bullpen together and they went ninety seven.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you get the trophy. And again the other
Speaker 1: argument as well, I got the Dave Roberts. He wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna win, but he should have gotten a vote or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. Now, the last word here on
Speaker 1: this part of the Malar monologue, the bonus Malear monologue.
Speaker 1: Is it true? Here's the question, Is it true that
Speaker 1: the Dodgers are the only team in baseball where you
Speaker 1: can win the World Series and the reaction is okay,
Speaker 1: but we didn't get one vote from Manager of the Year.
Speaker 1: What's up with that? We did not meet the spreadsheet?
Speaker 1: And even in the year they win the World Series
Speaker 1: back to back, you know, two years in a row. Here,
Speaker 1: they want a regular season award at least a vote
Speaker 1: because the pr machine says that they needed a vote.
Speaker 1: They need the validation. And this has been a big
Speaker 1: part of what the Dodgers have become recently. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of whining over there at Dodgers Stadium, a lot
Speaker 1: of whining, right, they need that validation, always begging for
Speaker 1: the pad on the back and all it is that
Speaker 1: the Hollywood stuff is that Andrew Friedman, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And again I'm a Dodger fan. I don't like the attitude.
Speaker 1: It's weak sauce, is what it is. But let me
Speaker 1: put it to you another way. If you gave me
Speaker 1: a roster of Sho Hail Tani, Mookie Bets, Freddie Freeman,
Speaker 1: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glass Now and all these other cats
Speaker 1: a payroll that requires a private equity firm to audit it,
Speaker 1: and if I don't win one hundred plus games. If
Speaker 1: I don't reach one hundred wins, I would expect zero
Speaker 1: votes for Manager of the Year. I would expect someone
Speaker 1: to take my key card. If this was the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: you'd be excommunicated for that. Dave Roberts is not getting robbed.
Speaker 1: He didn't get robbed. He's getting graded fairly, honestly, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen that often. Like he's a robotic manager.
Speaker 1: He gets well paid. It's big check and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's corporate baseball, it's push button, Hamburger, helper, all that
Speaker 1: pr approved quotes, and the voters finally said, they said
Speaker 1: it out loud is what they did. So I don't
Speaker 1: have any kind of beef, any kind of issue with
Speaker 1: that at all. Now turning the page to something completely different,
Speaker 1: a show that I have not watched in years, South Park,
Speaker 1: And no, this is not about South Park, but in
Speaker 1: many ways it is. It's a South Park spin off.
Speaker 1: For years on that show, the most famous catchphrase I
Speaker 1: guess they actually finally whacked this guy was, oh my god,
Speaker 1: they killed Kenny. We can update that they did kill Kenny.
Speaker 1: Finally they killed them off. We can update it though
Speaker 1: through the magic of the cartoon. Oh my god, they
Speaker 1: killed penny. That's right. Leave it to the federal government
Speaker 1: to accidentally give a struggling overnight gas bag who moonlights
Speaker 1: with a gambling entertainment hybrid one of the great marketing
Speaker 1: boosts in history, at least the history of this show
Speaker 1: and the number of you were reached out. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, the penny's going away and tell me you
Speaker 1: don't get it without telling me you don't get In fact,
Speaker 1: Gascon who used to work on this podcast, he was
Speaker 1: trolling me, and I was like, dude, this guy really
Speaker 1: doesn't understand how this works. I felt bad for him.
Speaker 1: I've been living in Florida. He's semi retired there, shame
Speaker 1: on him. But this week the US Mint in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: hammered out its final final addition. Circulating of the Penny
Speaker 1: dun skis finished. No more, no more naa no no
Speaker 1: naa Hey, good bye. Yeah, after two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight years, two hundred and thirty eight years of making
Speaker 1: a coin that for most of that no one wanted
Speaker 1: and no one used, and no one bent over to
Speaker 1: pick up unless they were already on the ground tying
Speaker 1: their shoe or they were completely hammered, laying in a
Speaker 1: gutter somewhere. Well, the people in Washington have finally pulled
Speaker 1: the plug. Now to give you an idea, how crazy,
Speaker 1: how absolutely bananas, two hundred and thirty eight years is.
Speaker 1: Let's do some spur of the moment, mall. So a
Speaker 1: generation is twenty years. So if you divide two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty eight by twenty, that equals almost twelve generations,
Speaker 1: just to share under twelve generations of men and women
Speaker 1: that have entered the world. And the penny has been
Speaker 1: part of the world two hundred thirty eight years, and
Speaker 1: they say bye bye. And doing so, they've turned Benny
Speaker 1: Versus the Penny, which is available right now on YouTube,
Speaker 1: our long running radio segment which turned into a TV show,
Speaker 1: which turned viral video on YouTube. That creation because we're creators,
Speaker 1: and it gave us something that we did not ask for,
Speaker 1: unintentionally immortal. Seriously, Oh, you're just full of crap, bad, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Let me explain. The penny has been decommissioned,
Speaker 1: put out the pastor given the pink slip, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Benny versus the Penny has been promoted like ships passing
Speaker 1: in the night the government killed the penny and made
Speaker 1: our little YouTube show a cultural time capsule. And that's
Speaker 1: how things wors Oh, that makes money. This is how
Speaker 1: things work. Number One, we ignore something for decades or
Speaker 1: longer than that. Number two, the government bans it, ends it,
Speaker 1: or shuts it down, whatever you want to say, and
Speaker 1: suddenly it becomes iconic. It's called the Streisan effect with
Speaker 1: a copper plating. In terms of this little ditty that
Speaker 1: we're talking about right now. The second the mint in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia stopped making pennies, this became a story that was everywhere.
Speaker 1: The coin became cooler, it became rarer, it became more nostalgic,
Speaker 1: more American, became a talking point at parties and social
Speaker 1: events and whatnot, and on the Ben Maller Show and
Speaker 1: the other platforms that we partake in, like this Fifth
Speaker 1: Hour podcast where the penny was. We did Benny Versus
Speaker 1: the Penny on the podcast here flipping pennies metaphorically. For man,
Speaker 1: it's been almost twenty years and now we can say
Speaker 1: that my co star on Benny Versus the Penny has
Speaker 1: now entered the national archive, alongside the cassette tape, the
Speaker 1: rotary phone, the floppy disc. The pager finds out old
Speaker 1: you are. If you're old, you've used all this stuff.
Speaker 1: The VHS tape shout out to our friends at Blockbuster
Speaker 1: Video back in the day, and every other relic Americans
Speaker 1: suddenly can't live without. Once it's discontinued, the penny is
Speaker 1: now part of the Remember when industrial complex? Remember when
Speaker 1: I love that, Remember when we used to use typewriters,
Speaker 1: Remember when we used to use blah blah blah film,
Speaker 1: And Benny Versus the Penny gets to stand right next
Speaker 1: to it, right right next to it, industrial complex that.
Speaker 1: Remember when a show built on a coin and is
Speaker 1: now part of history. You can't buy that kind of branding.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank the boys in DC, the
Speaker 1: people that made this decision. And Benny Versus the Penny
Speaker 1: now has what every show wants, a story the media
Speaker 1: doesn't have to invent. And there are networks we worked
Speaker 1: at NBC last couple of years. There are networks that
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money, millions and millions, trying to
Speaker 1: manufacture bus. Media companies just in general, whether it's TV
Speaker 1: or radio or podcasting, they spend a lot of money
Speaker 1: trying to create buzz trying to make something important, something
Speaker 1: out of nothing. And I just happened to wake up
Speaker 1: one morning and my phone was filled with messages about people.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so sorry. Oh that sucks. What a bum
Speaker 1: what a bum ride that is for you and I
Speaker 1: And then I was like, well, wait a minute here,
Speaker 1: well that's not bad. I wake up and I discover
Speaker 1: that our little mascot friend is trending because Congress finally
Speaker 1: figured out how math works. It's pretty crazy that it's
Speaker 1: lasted this long. That's one thing about big government, the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Things never get changed right away. Another great example is
Speaker 1: the clocks, which I don't know anyone that thinks it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to change the clocks in most states
Speaker 1: in the United States, right, you go from daylight savings
Speaker 1: time and all that, and you change the clocks. As
Speaker 1: everyone complains about it, there's more access. More people die
Speaker 1: every year because of the time change. They don't get
Speaker 1: the right amount of sleep, and their bio rhythms are
Speaker 1: all messed up. And the government doesn't care. They talk
Speaker 1: about changing, but they never do. And the penny it
Speaker 1: costs three point seven cents to make a penny. It
Speaker 1: has a face value of one cent. So someone in
Speaker 1: DC apparently saw the deficit, looking at the coin and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we can at least stop losing money on this. We're
Speaker 1: going to continue to lose money on the frivolous pork
Speaker 1: barrel spending. We're going to continue to do that unchecked,
Speaker 1: and the bridges to nowhere. Now the result of all this,
Speaker 1: every headline about the penny all over the interweb, the
Speaker 1: retirement of the penny is inadvertently a headline that is
Speaker 1: about benny versus the penny. When people search on YouTube
Speaker 1: for the penny, they'll see benny versus the penny. Every
Speaker 1: feature story about the end of the penny production suddenly
Speaker 1: serves as free advertising for a radio bit that became
Speaker 1: a TV show that became a YouTube channel. This is
Speaker 1: what you call falling up and the penny. The death
Speaker 1: of the penny actually strengthens the gimmick. A gimmick is
Speaker 1: only as good as the icon it leads on, and
Speaker 1: before this week, the penny was, let's face it, the
Speaker 1: penny was a nuisance for a lot of people, that
Speaker 1: annoying loose change that you can't buy anything with, right
Speaker 1: stuck between some bubble gum and the rappers, and there's
Speaker 1: like Kawan rolling around. Maybe it's in your glove compartment
Speaker 1: now again. Conversation piece, collectible taxpayer subsidized relic of Americana Maracana,
Speaker 1: which is also a shopping center in Glendale. And every
Speaker 1: time someone says remember those pennies that we used to have, yeah,
Speaker 1: the answer is now, hey, yeah, benny versus the penny?
Speaker 1: I remember, Benny versus the penny I do. The gimmick
Speaker 1: didn't get weaker, it just gained gravatas, and we love
Speaker 1: the word gravtas. The penny is no longer pocket lint.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's a legacy object, is what it is.
Speaker 1: Like the Yellow first down line, first down, the Red
Speaker 1: Sox Curse of the Bambino, which so many people have
Speaker 1: forgotten because the Red Sox have been really good over
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years, and the Cubs Curse of
Speaker 1: the Billy Goat. Shout out to our friend Doc Mike Darno,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so our show is now the last major
Speaker 1: remaining national stage where the penny will perform during football season.
Speaker 1: The TV, the radio, the YouTube versions have all had
Speaker 1: the penny, but they'll all benefit on the radio the
Speaker 1: bit carries historical weight. It started on the radio, gave
Speaker 1: birth to it years ago, and there's a sense of it.
Speaker 1: We're keeping alive something the government declared dead. That resonates, right,
Speaker 1: that resonates why not right? The classic crowd that we
Speaker 1: have of rebels, misfits, traditionalists, good guys, bad guys who
Speaker 1: think the world has moved too fast. Now on TV,
Speaker 1: the story sells itself, and there's been some rumblings the
Speaker 1: show will eventually return to television. But producers love a hook,
Speaker 1: and now it's Benny versus the Penny has a built
Speaker 1: in hook. It's obviously as shows starring a coin that
Speaker 1: no longer is produced. It's nostalgia with a current events twist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And on YouTube Rocket Fuel YouTube lives on algorithms and controversy.
Speaker 1: Penny discontinued The Final Penny, the last penny ever minted.
Speaker 1: Every search term spikes up the numbers. It leads to
Speaker 1: people subscribing to our channel, to the Benny Versus the
Speaker 1: Penny channel, which is all good and so it's not
Speaker 1: a marketing gimmick. It's marketing luck or destiny delivered by
Speaker 1: a bunch of bureaucrats in DC so the penny, while
Speaker 1: it is not being made and it'll eventually be gone,
Speaker 1: it is still very much in circulation. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of pennies out there and will be around for years,
Speaker 1: and Benny versus the Penny will be around forever. Of course,
Speaker 1: forever is as long as I live. And once I'm
Speaker 1: no longer around, that's forever. That's the end of time.
Speaker 1: Americans love nostalgia, love tradition, wrap yourself in the flag,
Speaker 1: love old things that won't die. How many documentaries have
Speaker 1: I seen about Root sixty six? Get your kicks on
Speaker 1: Root sixty six, jukeboxes, you name it. The Chicago Cubs
Speaker 1: and the Braves on superstations back in the day, the
Speaker 1: NFL insisting that fans sit outside for four hours in
Speaker 1: a snow flurry in Buffalo. Things like that that just
Speaker 1: continue on now. The penny belongs in the penny pantheon,
Speaker 1: and as the keeper of the penny, the man yelling
Speaker 1: into a microphone in the middle of the night or
Speaker 1: here early in the morning on a Friday that just
Speaker 1: happened to fall into the coin flipping situation. We were
Speaker 1: originally going to do Benny Versus the Monkey, but we
Speaker 1: couldn't get a monk, couldn't get a monk. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well how about Benny versus the parrot?
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, that's not going to work either,
Speaker 1: And so there you go. Franchise that we've made out
Speaker 1: of spare change and the penny may be discontinued, but
Speaker 1: the show it inspired will outlive it. The coin is gone,
Speaker 1: the brand is eternal, and for once, I want to
Speaker 1: thank our political class. They made something more popular by
Speaker 1: ending it. Yeah, so Benny versus the penny becomes the
Speaker 1: Penny's final and greatest revenge. I couldn't do this rant
Speaker 1: about the penny without mentioning my dear old father. When
Speaker 1: my Pops passed away, he left behind at least five
Speaker 1: or six jugs of pennies pennies. I talked about that
Speaker 1: on this podcast when we lost my pops, and the
Speaker 1: thing about that time, I kept thinking, hey, Dad, why
Speaker 1: couldn't you have collected quarters or at least nichols give
Speaker 1: me something more than pennies, because we had so many
Speaker 1: pennies and it ended up getting us like one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars or two hundred dollars. This was hardly anything and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh man, that is just wacky, wacky, wacky
Speaker 1: all right. Time now for the phrase of the week,
Speaker 1: if you're unburdened by the phrase all the week. So
Speaker 1: it's back by popular man. I want to thank Scott
Speaker 1: and Florida, who is from Cali but has lived in
Speaker 1: Florida for a while now and Scott is a big
Speaker 1: consumer of the audio content. We thanks Scott for that,
Speaker 1: and he said, we got to bring that phrase of
Speaker 1: the week back. So I'm gonna give you some phrases.
Speaker 1: I want you to do a deep dive on. The
Speaker 1: phrase of the week today is tough as nails. Tough
Speaker 1: as nails, So it comes from Scott in Florida and
Speaker 1: toughen nails short, straight verbal scrapyard, toughest nails now. The
Speaker 1: origin the phrase toughest nails dates back to the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred. It's been a minute, first appearing in a
Speaker 1: marria in English. At that time, nails, the literal metal
Speaker 1: kind were considered one of the most durable, one of
Speaker 1: the toughest, most unbreakable, everyday objects people handled in the world.
Speaker 1: Their technology was not anywhere close to where it is now.
Speaker 1: Why would it be at that time, and so this
Speaker 1: was a very powerful thing.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: They didn't bend easily. These things didn't snap. They could
Speaker 1: take a pounding and kept going and all that souff.
Speaker 1: That was pretty cool. Now. The metaphor caught on quickly
Speaker 1: because early America loved these simple physical imagery. If someone
Speaker 1: was hard, unyielding, gritty, moxie, able to withstand punishment, comparing
Speaker 1: them to a nail was perfect. And so by the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century the phrase was firmly part of the lexicon,
Speaker 1: and these things called newspapers, frontier slang, boxing vernacular. It
Speaker 1: became part of boxing. So tough as nails emerged in
Speaker 1: Britain with the same meaning as hard as nails. It's
Speaker 1: just a trade off there tough, resilient, not easily overcome
Speaker 1: or defeated. By eighteen fifty seven it had gone from
Speaker 1: Britain to Australia, and then eighteen sixty one it became
Speaker 1: somewhat popular in the United States, and then it was
Speaker 1: really the eighteen nineties, so another thirty years the thing
Speaker 1: took off. There was no Internet, there were no viral
Speaker 1: videos at that time, and some other related phrases other
Speaker 1: than the aforementioned tough as nails and hard as nails.
Speaker 1: You have tough as shoe leather and tough old bird
Speaker 1: as well. It's a great homage to the blacksmith bench,
Speaker 1: the carpenter pouch, big parts of the early American jobs
Speaker 1: that people had to have that are now done or
Speaker 1: will be done by robots and AI and all that
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff. So there it is the phrase of the week,
Speaker 1: tough as nails. Thanks to Scott in Florida for that.
Speaker 1: Have a wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have
Speaker 1: a new episode of this podcast on Saturday, and the
Speaker 1: mail Bag on Sunday. And until then, Rivadev J. Hello
Speaker 1: what else? Oh yeah, that's right. Asta pasta tastes like
Speaker 1: a touchdown in your mouth. I gotta say that, Arlse.
Speaker 1: Danny's not going to put the podcast up, so I
Speaker 1: gotta say asta pasta got a murder. I gotta go