Speaker 1: Kutbooms.
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 soul 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 the Clearinghouse
Speaker 2: of hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth
Speaker 2: Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Speaker 1: Maller and Danny g Radio a happy college football kind
Speaker 1: of a Saturday. Is the weather getting nasty, which means
Speaker 1: we should get some bad weather football today on this
Speaker 1: eighth day of November. Back at it. No World Series
Speaker 1: to recap. We don't have to do too much sporty stuff, Danny.
Speaker 1: Now that the World Series is over, we don't have
Speaker 1: to sit here and wait for a game to end
Speaker 1: and then sleep and then go into the studio and
Speaker 1: I we don't have to worry about any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: I know, but I kind of liked how those shows
Speaker 3: were just because our Dodgers won the Doyers. Yeah, anything
Speaker 3: like weird without baseball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not into the NBA. I tried to watch
Speaker 1: some games this week. It's just it's tough. I actually
Speaker 1: got hornswoggled by ESPN because I was watching the Nicks
Speaker 1: Timberwolves game. I had it on and it was the
Speaker 1: first half, and I was like, okay. So I looked
Speaker 1: at the time. It was like the second quarter. It
Speaker 1: was about five minutes ago, and I Doris Burke is
Speaker 1: on there. She's an instant mute button. When I hear Doris,
Speaker 1: I hit mute, right. I can't.
Speaker 3: She's almost as bad as watching Clippers games right now?
Speaker 1: All right, how about the Raiders pal anyway, So I
Speaker 1: hit the mute button right. I'm like, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear her, and so I'll turn it on
Speaker 1: at halftime. So I see the first half coming to
Speaker 1: an end, and then I hit the mute button so
Speaker 1: that the audio comes back up, and no Charles Barkley,
Speaker 1: no Kenny Smith, no Ernie Jonson. I guess the first
Speaker 1: week they worked, they had to take some time off,
Speaker 1: or maybe they're on for two weeks and they were
Speaker 1: not there. Some other you know, typical hack ESPN people
Speaker 1: were there and I saw immediately turned it off. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not watching this crap once and I saw Kendrick Perkins.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I'm good, I'm out, I'm done, to
Speaker 1: see you later, Bye bye and all that. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I did get fooled by I just assumed that
Speaker 1: they're on ESPN now, Barkley and Kenny Smith, so when
Speaker 1: there's an ESPN game, they'll be on a halftime No. No,
Speaker 1: what a sweetheart deal those guys got, right. I imagine
Speaker 1: that they get paid all that money. They don't have
Speaker 1: to deal with the ESPN bull crap, and they I
Speaker 1: guess they don't have to work that much. It's good
Speaker 1: living the high life, right there.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Anyway, on this podcast, we have the Twilight Zone on
Speaker 1: the Pitch, Burrito Mania and the Solitaire Shuffle, so we'll
Speaker 1: work our way through all this stuff and it's kind
Speaker 1: of hang out here and get ready to watch some
Speaker 1: college football, which is great. I love watching college football
Speaker 1: because I don't have to worry about doing monologues.
Speaker 3: Or things like that.
Speaker 1: It's just just my day. Saturday is my day. And so,
Speaker 1: as we know, the world a rather wacky place, and
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in life. You can plan for
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you can't plan for things you
Speaker 1: cannot predict. And one thing I've noticed, especially since I
Speaker 1: started doing the podcast, is I open my eyes more
Speaker 1: to the world when I'm out and about. I don't
Speaker 1: go out much anyway, but when I'm wandering around doing stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm always like, all right, let's see what I can.
Speaker 1: You know what's going on.
Speaker 3: This is because your wife made you take notes, yeah.
Speaker 1: For the podcast, of course, So you know, some days
Speaker 1: I'll you know, I'll see somebody with a flat tire.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: I told the story yesterday. I was driving home and
Speaker 1: the fourth Street bridge was on fire underneath it in
Speaker 1: LA and that was quite the quite detail. But earlier
Speaker 1: this week I got one of those small moments, Danny,
Speaker 1: where it just happens occasionally in life and whatnot. So
Speaker 1: I was looking. I was not looking for this, but
Speaker 1: I was not. I was just I was going about
Speaker 1: my business, performing the most mundane of tasks, my duty
Speaker 1: at a local voting station. It was election day, which
Speaker 1: is like the worst election. There was one thing on
Speaker 1: my ballot in California. One thing. One thing on the ballot,
Speaker 1: which is like, why drag everyone into vote if there's
Speaker 1: one thing on the ballot? But whatever, So I went
Speaker 1: to cast my ballot. And of course the big thing
Speaker 1: about voting, Danny is the sticker. See, that's that's the
Speaker 1: big Now I am an absentee voter. But what I
Speaker 1: like to do is I like to drop the ballot off.
Speaker 1: I like to drop the bat off. It makes me
Speaker 1: feel like I wait till election day. It makes me
Speaker 1: feel like I've accomplished something. On election day, I don't
Speaker 1: bother sending it in. But so this time I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I got my stick or whatever, I go
Speaker 1: to drop the thing off. And when I went to
Speaker 1: park just off on the on there was a big field.
Speaker 1: There was a building we could vote, and then behind
Speaker 1: it was a park in the vast park lands of
Speaker 1: the north Woods. And something caught my eye off in
Speaker 1: the distance. There was there was a bit of movement,
Speaker 1: there was some rhythm, so I knew it was. It
Speaker 1: was on the the field, the big fielding a football field.
Speaker 1: And what I kept walking out towards these guys and
Speaker 1: there was a group of young men, all of them
Speaker 1: wearing the same uniform, and they were darting up and
Speaker 1: down the pitch with with the with the football at
Speaker 1: their feet. Danny, all right, and so not the kind
Speaker 1: we like, not the not the the duke, the NFL football,
Speaker 1: the round kind, the soccer, the full on MESSI and
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Were they all dressed alike?
Speaker 1: Well? They were? And so then I looked over to
Speaker 1: the parking lot and I saw a lineup of six
Speaker 1: vehicles that all had the same same logo. And it
Speaker 1: turned out that I had stumbled into a new episode
Speaker 1: of the Twilight Zone. They were all Amazon trucks. You
Speaker 1: got a picture this, Danny. Half a dozen Amazon delivery drivers,
Speaker 1: their vans parked, all lined up in a row in
Speaker 1: the parking lot near the park hazard lights blinking. It's
Speaker 1: perfectly synced. And the drive you know, those blue Amazon,
Speaker 1: the road Warriors, the Amazon. They're all out on the grass,
Speaker 1: laughing and shouting and sprinting and running around and having
Speaker 1: a great time.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is why my vitamins were delayed by
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 1: Exactly, That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: These were the men and women.
Speaker 1: It was all men. There were a couple of women.
Speaker 1: They sat in the truck. I guess they didn't want
Speaker 1: to play soccer, but they were. You know, these are
Speaker 1: the people that spent all day hurling boxes of dog
Speaker 1: food and phone charging cables and crap like that and
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that we get on Amazon. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like somebody trying to find their package.
Speaker 1: And here I am. I was the only one watching
Speaker 1: them play soccer. I was an audience of one. And
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you it was it was pretty It
Speaker 1: was pretty cool, Daddy. I was like, these guys are
Speaker 1: loving life. And they were there I didn't say the
Speaker 1: whole time. They were there well over at least an hour.
Speaker 1: And I don't think your breaks are that long on Amazon,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And these guys were really into it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing quite like a good pickup game.
Speaker 1: I'm not a soccer guy, but I used to play
Speaker 1: pick up football basketball back in the day. The midfield
Speaker 1: maestros out there and these guys, I'm telling you, Dany,
Speaker 1: they thought they were they were auditioning for the cover
Speaker 1: of FIFA twenty five or twenty six or whatever. They
Speaker 1: really into it, right, they were really into it. And uh,
Speaker 1: the imaginary defenders he had the goaltender. You know, it
Speaker 1: might as well have been these guys were playing for
Speaker 1: Manchester City or Real Madrid or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think those are the only two soccer teams I
Speaker 1: could name, but it was it was pretty cool. And
Speaker 1: so again I did laugh, though, Danny, because I thought
Speaker 1: there's somebody like you or my wife refreshing the Amazon app,
Speaker 1: and I like, the truck seems to be stopped, stopped
Speaker 1: at the park. I don't understand why. Part it makes
Speaker 1: no sense. And then then they can well, the package
Speaker 1: is delayed, the package is out for delivery is delayed.
Speaker 1: So now, Danny, next time, if I if I were
Speaker 1: something on Amazon, I usually don't want much. My wife does.
Speaker 1: But if we don't get something right away, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go down the park and say, what do you got?
Speaker 1: You got my package?
Speaker 3: If you are a regular on Amazon, you know the pattern.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it'll say expected delivery tomorrow between noon and two pm,
Speaker 3: and you're like, yeah, cool, And then you get to
Speaker 3: that point and it doesn't show up, and then it
Speaker 3: moves and it says new expected arrival time four to
Speaker 3: seven pm, and it'll keep moving. They just keep kicking
Speaker 3: the ball down the road. Now I know they're literally
Speaker 3: kicking the ball.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, it was It was crazy, man.
Speaker 1: I didn't really mind, you know whatever, these guys, you
Speaker 1: know They probably make crap money and they work their
Speaker 1: ass off and all this stuff, but these boxes will
Speaker 1: eventually get get delivered. The packages will find their way,
Speaker 1: and I just thought it was great. These guys are.
Speaker 1: You know, they probably spend all day driving in traffic
Speaker 1: delivering packages, and here's this one moment. You know, these
Speaker 1: guys just having a great And I love the fact
Speaker 1: that they didn't take off their uniforms. You'd think they
Speaker 1: might want to take off their Amazon shirts and just
Speaker 1: wear their T shirts underneath, but no, these the Amazon
Speaker 1: all Stars of the north Woods. I don't know who
Speaker 1: these guys are. I'll probably never see them again. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe they'll hear this somehow I salute them.
Speaker 1: They'll probably never never hear about this. But I sat
Speaker 1: there and I was like, wow, this is cool. Man.
Speaker 1: These guys love soccer. I'm not a soccer guy, and
Speaker 1: these guys are out there. Think about the coordination involved
Speaker 1: in that. Because these guys are they deliver they working
Speaker 1: at Amazon. They're not even though they're coworkers, Danny, They're
Speaker 1: not like side by side, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They're not driving by themselves. They're not with other people.
Speaker 1: So they had to coordinate and plan. Hey, let's meet
Speaker 1: at three o'clock at the north Woods Park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll do some Amazon. Yeah, if my packages are late,
Speaker 3: your packages are gonna be late.
Speaker 1: There you go, There you go exactly. Hey, they if
Speaker 1: we all do it, Amazon can't get upset. Right. If
Speaker 1: everyone slows down, then we're good, good to go. So now,
Speaker 1: one thing I did not see when I was watching
Speaker 1: them go back and forth and play little soccer thing
Speaker 1: the twilight zone of the pitch. I did not see
Speaker 1: any burritos, Daddy, I did not. Although you can't really
Speaker 1: go wrong with a burrito. You cannot go wrong with
Speaker 1: a brito.
Speaker 3: What's better than a burrito? A free burrito?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's freeze. Oh you're a lifetime radio guy. Free burrito?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding? You'd run to the front of the line,
Speaker 3: just like Iowa Sam, who's alumni from your overnight show?
Speaker 3: Who you know? Chipotle is a popular spot to go,
Speaker 3: although their prices are a little outrageous right now for
Speaker 3: what they serve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is it cheaper on the app? I haven't been
Speaker 1: to the Crazy Chickens, you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know because I don't go to Chipotle very often.
Speaker 3: But there was this story circulating this last Wednesday saying,
Speaker 3: hey tomorrow, don't miss it. In the greater Los Angeles
Speaker 3: area Thursday from four to eight pm, it's buy one,
Speaker 3: get one free burrito or burrito bowl if you are
Speaker 3: wearing anything Dodgers. Okay, So Dodger fans started passing this around, like, hey,
Speaker 3: make sure to go to Chipotle on Thursday to get
Speaker 3: your buy one, get one free. At the network, everybody
Speaker 3: was rocking extra Dodger gear that day, not surprisingly because
Speaker 3: as I say, and as you probably know by listening
Speaker 3: to the Fifth Hour radio, people love free food. So
Speaker 3: Sam the editors had on some Dodger blue and they
Speaker 3: were all set and ready to go get there buy one,
Speaker 3: get one free. I told my wife, I said, hey,
Speaker 3: when I get home, you know, i'll watch CoA. You
Speaker 3: go get a burrito bowl or vice versa. So I
Speaker 3: get home and he's kind of set in with her.
Speaker 3: They're in the living room, and I told her it's
Speaker 3: all right, I'll go run down there and get two
Speaker 3: burrito bowls. I'm not gonna say that I don't see
Speaker 3: lots of Dodger fans in my neighborhood, because I do.
Speaker 3: I mean My next door neighbor is a big fan.
Speaker 3: There's even some car flats in our building. I see
Speaker 3: car flags on the freeway on my way into work.
Speaker 3: Obviously work with Dodger fans, but maybe this is a
Speaker 3: product of the World Series and back to back championships.
Speaker 3: There was I'm not kidding you, there was a line
Speaker 3: wrapped around this damn building. There's a Panda Express next
Speaker 3: door to my Chipotle. Poor Panda. Yeah, they were blocking
Speaker 3: the entrance and exit to Panda Express. This line literally
Speaker 3: went into the parking lot. There had to have been
Speaker 3: fifty people in this line, all wearing Dodger gear. Wow.
Speaker 3: I looked at the line.
Speaker 1: Is take it for it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, I you know, and now Iowa. Sam tells
Speaker 3: me that the one in Sherman Oaks or Van Eyes,
Speaker 3: maybe fifteen minutes away from our studios. He only waited
Speaker 3: a half hour. Jay Stu reported in at his local
Speaker 3: Chipotle after his show Doug Gottlieb. He went. He said
Speaker 3: it took him forty minutes at his Chipotle. This had
Speaker 3: to be a good hour, right, I mean, there's no
Speaker 3: way you've been in line at Chipotle before. There's no
Speaker 3: way they could take fifty people and get you out
Speaker 3: of there, even in an hour. That was a huge
Speaker 3: I haven't seen a line that long since I was
Speaker 3: at Disneyland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy. I would not I love free stuff,
Speaker 1: but your time is valuable. Do you really want to
Speaker 1: spend your man? That's a long time to stay online.
Speaker 3: The best part of the line, it was good. It
Speaker 3: was great people watching. Even though I decided not to
Speaker 3: stay in the line, I looked at I looked at
Speaker 3: other people in the line. It was all ages, all nationalities.
Speaker 3: It was a great mix of Dodger fans and maybe
Speaker 3: some people that were just taking advantage of the special
Speaker 3: and didn't even give a shit about baseball. There. Have
Speaker 3: you ever been to a mall or a store and
Speaker 3: there is like a group of special needs kids with
Speaker 3: a couple of instructors with them. It's almost like they're
Speaker 3: on a field trip.
Speaker 1: Mama, wake up. Yeah, yeah, I've seen that, sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah at the Burbank mall. I used to see this
Speaker 3: in the food court and the kids.
Speaker 1: To go out and get out there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They wo took him to the food court and let
Speaker 3: them run like crazy in circles the food court. Well,
Speaker 3: there was a group they looked like they were on
Speaker 3: a little mini field trip and half the kids had
Speaker 3: blue clothes on, not all the clothes said Dodgers. And
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, well, this would be interesting because
Speaker 3: when those special needs kids get up to the line,
Speaker 3: is the uh you know eighteen year old work in
Speaker 3: the counter there at Chipotle gonna make a fuss about
Speaker 3: there not being any Dodger logo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can't well with that, You can't, right.
Speaker 3: No, you'd get suit especially in California. But how viral
Speaker 3: that would go. So they didn't serve the ball to the.
Speaker 1: Kid because you didn't have the Dodger logo, you know.
Speaker 3: I was like, wait a minute, no, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right. Free food is great. Besides getting a kick
Speaker 3: out of that line and people watching, I did a
Speaker 3: U turn and I left and we wound up getting
Speaker 3: some l Poyo Loco drive through for dinner.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, no, I would. I would not wait in line.
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I would I stayed. I waited
Speaker 1: in line. I've talked about this. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: there was a Howard Stern book signing and I camped
Speaker 1: out all night to get his autograph, and then everyone
Speaker 1: was just smoking weed all night and they didn't care
Speaker 1: it over there. But I now, would I camp out
Speaker 1: all night for someone to hang out. You know, he's
Speaker 1: get an autographed no way, not even free food. But
Speaker 1: you know there's somebody, Danny, some opportunistic person in the
Speaker 1: Greater LA area that started out when that promotion began
Speaker 1: on that Thursday and hit ten fifteen restaurants to get
Speaker 1: all the different food they could possibly get, and it's
Speaker 1: all in a freezer somewhere and they're gonna be eating
Speaker 1: like kings.
Speaker 3: This is like when the Chick fil A finally opened
Speaker 3: up in Burbank, California, and I was living there at
Speaker 3: the time, and I told you remember there were people
Speaker 3: with pop up tents who spent the night there in
Speaker 3: the parking lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I I There was a point when Raising Canes.
Speaker 1: I talked about this two years ago on the podcast,
Speaker 1: when Raising Canes came to LA. I had found Raising
Speaker 1: Canes in Vegas and it was It's the only place
Speaker 1: I'd ever seen it. It's from Louisiana. It's a chicken
Speaker 1: fingerplace Raising Canes, so I'd never never been there before
Speaker 1: I went to Vegas and then I kept going on
Speaker 1: their website. When did they come in to La the
Speaker 1: LA area. So I remember they had their first location
Speaker 1: and they announced the date it was going to open.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Okay, maybe i'll maybe I'll just
Speaker 1: go down there and i'll camp you know, camp out
Speaker 1: and get some free I figured they'd give like a
Speaker 1: free thing or something if you're first in line, and uh.
Speaker 1: And so I did contemplate it, and the night before
Speaker 1: the opening, I was like, let me drive down there,
Speaker 1: see what's going on. I drove down there and there
Speaker 1: was already a line of people and I said, screw that.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not sitting there with those people. It
Speaker 1: was like it was like it wasn't even that late
Speaker 1: at night, Danny, and there were already people lined up
Speaker 1: online waiting for the morning after to get whatever free
Speaker 1: stuff they're going to get from the restaurant. But any
Speaker 1: other Dodger promotions we needed to know about, I guess
Speaker 1: probably not. The World Series ended last weekend. Usually these
Speaker 1: guys all go away and all that stuff, and.
Speaker 3: I think this is when everyone turns the page and
Speaker 3: everyone I'm talking to businesses who are trying to take
Speaker 3: advantage of their local baseball team Excelling Costsco. I went
Speaker 3: there I think it was Wednesday night, to grab some
Speaker 3: eggs and a few things, and they had a table
Speaker 3: of Dodger championship shirts. Oh my god, it was torn through.
Speaker 3: It was madness there. There was just a few shirts,
Speaker 3: all crumbled up in balls, all the same size, extra large,
Speaker 3: and the material of these shirts were junk for eighteen
Speaker 3: dollars and ninety nine cents hard pass.
Speaker 1: So I have not seen the championship shirts. Do they
Speaker 1: say back to back on them?
Speaker 3: Or is it just no? They're pretty big, Yeah, they're
Speaker 3: pretty generic because these shirts at Costco are not made
Speaker 3: by a reputable brand.
Speaker 1: So I know pat Riley owns the trademark for three pete.
Speaker 1: Does somebody own the trademark.
Speaker 3: For back to back?
Speaker 1: Is that why they don't? I've not seen. I've been
Speaker 1: out about this week and I've not seen anyone has
Speaker 1: a shirt that says back to back champs.
Speaker 3: Or that's good bar trivia. I don't know. We're gonna
Speaker 3: have to look that up.
Speaker 1: We'll do a search. We'll do a search. People trademark everything,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure somebody, if you're allowed to trademark it,
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody trademarked that somewhere along the way. On
Speaker 1: that note, as we try to go do the deep
Speaker 1: dive the solitaire shuffle, Danny, it's time for these solitaire shuffles.
Speaker 1: So I've played these games. I'm sure we all at
Speaker 1: at some point have played these games. And years ago
Speaker 1: I started. It was really mostly during the pandemic. I
Speaker 1: blame the pandemic. But you play those win money while
Speaker 1: you play games on your phone. You know, they pop
Speaker 1: up and you're sitting online like you're at Costco or something.
Speaker 1: You're waiting to return the toaster oven that you bought
Speaker 1: that you don't need, and the ad pops up and
Speaker 1: it says, hey, real freak win real money, real cash.
Speaker 1: And if you play a few rounds of some you know,
Speaker 1: word puzzle or solitaire, whatever, you think, Okay, it's harmless.
Speaker 1: It takes a few minutes a day. And then at
Speaker 1: some point, when you play these games where you win
Speaker 1: real money while you play, you realize that you have
Speaker 1: watched the same exact ad for some off brand TMU
Speaker 1: thing thirty seven times. You're now stuck in some kind
Speaker 1: of digital guantanamo Bay. And I bring this up because
Speaker 1: I saw a story this week that several of you
Speaker 1: idiots sent me involving stephen A Smith, and it triggered
Speaker 1: my memory of my experience. Now Steve and A are
Speaker 1: former Morning guy who is now apparently the face of
Speaker 1: a Solitaire app, the World's Solitaire Championship. If you please
Speaker 1: saw that, you want to moment to process that. So
Speaker 1: this is all because steven A was so bored watching
Speaker 1: the Thunder and the Pacers in the NBA Finals that
Speaker 1: he was playing on his phone while the game was
Speaker 1: going on. Somebody recorded it and it became a viral thing.
Speaker 1: And so of course the World Solitaire Championship, not the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl, not the not a charity bowling event. Solitaire,
Speaker 1: which I believe danny as an introvert, is a game
Speaker 1: design for people like me, introverted people who don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone. And yet this week the story
Speaker 1: came out stephen A had signed on as the official
Speaker 1: ambassador for the company behind it, the same company that
Speaker 1: now is being sued sued for allegedly rigging the Solitaire game,
Speaker 1: claiming it's a game of skill, when really, when you
Speaker 1: get to a higher level, you're going against unbeatable bots,
Speaker 1: unheatable box, and it reminded me of the famous Larry
Speaker 1: David commercial. I don't think so, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So the lawsuit I started diving into this, Danny, because
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is interesting. Here, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: So the lawsuit accuses the company behind the game, the
Speaker 1: folks behind the app, of creating unwinnable situations while advertising
Speaker 1: cash prizes. So think about that for a second. We've
Speaker 1: evolved from casino slot machines to slot machines in your pocket,
Speaker 1: wrapped in skill competition. And here we are. It's late
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and this is the new three card MONTI.
Speaker 1: This is the new shell game on the corner, except
Speaker 1: this time the con man is the algorithm. And yet
Speaker 1: again it's the celebrity pitchman yelling about how you listen.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I'm a stay at home mom with
Speaker 1: four kids, but I play Solitaire and I'm like five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week, you know? Is that kind of crap?
Speaker 1: And so I totally get why Steve Any would do it.
Speaker 1: He loves the bag, you know, He'll we'll all hore
Speaker 1: ourselves out. Steven a one of the great wars and
Speaker 1: media advertising of all time. He's got dozens of side hustles,
Speaker 1: so he's all about it. Get that money while you can.
Speaker 1: At some point people are gonna hate steven A. Smith,
Speaker 1: so you might as well make the money. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. To me, it's not even about steven A
Speaker 1: or the company. It's the it's a whole, this digital
Speaker 1: underworld that we're living in. I guess I'm the old
Speaker 1: guy crying and screaming at the crowds, clouds because it's
Speaker 1: it's the lawlessness of it. The frontier with push notifications,
Speaker 1: a world it's like the wild Wild Western. We've seen it.
Speaker 1: Play for cash, win fifty dollars right now, no risk,
Speaker 1: you know, compete with real players and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And then of course you're not competing with real people.
Speaker 1: You're competing with bots who never blink, Danny. They never
Speaker 1: go to the they never go to the bathroom, they
Speaker 1: don't take a lunch break. That the house isn't in
Speaker 1: Vegas anymore. It's inside your phone while well, you know,
Speaker 1: you're sitting there. It's got a smiling avatar and it's
Speaker 1: you know, some its claims to be some woman from Michigan,
Speaker 1: and you know it I again I got hooked on
Speaker 1: one of these things years ago. I've talked about it
Speaker 1: long ago. I'm sure Lucky Tony's heard the podcast. It
Speaker 1: was many years ago and during the pandemic, and it
Speaker 1: promised me one hundred dollars. All I had was a
Speaker 1: word game. All I had to do was get to
Speaker 1: level one hundred. So I played a little bit every day.
Speaker 1: I played before bed, i'd play a little bit after
Speaker 1: I woke up, and I made it. I made it
Speaker 1: to level ninety nine. I then got to level one hundred.
Speaker 1: Now you have to get past level one hundred. I
Speaker 1: played this game for months. I watched every effing ad everything,
Speaker 1: So I finally got there. I met the finish line.
Speaker 1: I've run the New York Marathon. I've gone twenty six
Speaker 1: point one miles. I got to go one more point
Speaker 1: of a mile and I'm there. And I saw that
Speaker 1: glorious level one hundred thing flashing, and I started playing.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't win. So then I played again.
Speaker 1: I didn't win, and I kept playing, and I kept playing,
Speaker 1: and I kept playing. I never won. I never won.
Speaker 1: I kept seeing it. I never won. It turned out
Speaker 1: that I was the Mark Danny. I was the stool pigeon.
Speaker 1: I was the sucker. It was a total scam that
Speaker 1: I fell for. I was the rube, and I learned
Speaker 1: my lesson. I do play solitaire. I've played against some
Speaker 1: of the people that listen to this podcast. A lot
Speaker 1: of you guys have quit playing Solitaire because I kicked
Speaker 1: your ass. That's fine, but they don't. They just put
Speaker 1: pop up ads on there and I don't who cares.
Speaker 1: I just put my phone down when the ad comes up,
Speaker 1: and then I picked the game back up. But we've
Speaker 1: seen this movie before. I mentioned Larry David. You remember
Speaker 1: Larry David, Shack, Tom Brady. I think Steph Curry was
Speaker 1: involved in that. The celebrity Mount Rushmore of bad crypto endorsements.
Speaker 1: Remember that, Yeah, FTX and they said it was the future,
Speaker 1: and it turned out the future was bankruptcy. That that
Speaker 1: was the future. But at least FTX they gave us
Speaker 1: that great Larry David ad remember when he was questioning everything,
Speaker 1: every invention in history and I already used the line,
Speaker 1: but he said, I don't think so. And it was
Speaker 1: like supposed to be ironic. It ended up being accurate,
Speaker 1: not ironic. What was iron It was accurate and so
Speaker 1: here comes stephen A shuffling digital cards promoting a game
Speaker 1: that may may have been stacked against everybody from the start.
Speaker 1: And it's the same story, new packaging, and you mix
Speaker 1: celebrity technology and then people that are looking for the
Speaker 1: quick fix, and it's like, there you go. And I
Speaker 1: picked those footballs out at that point, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: they're perfect, exactly, they're very perfect. So, because I know
Speaker 1: I sound like a dinosaur here, Danny, I apologize, But
Speaker 1: you listen these kids on their phones, Danny, I just
Speaker 1: I look around and I see the stuff that we've
Speaker 1: seen here. And the thing about it, too, is there
Speaker 1: really are no watchdogs, like the people that are supposed
Speaker 1: to keep track of the stuff. I guess the FTC
Speaker 1: they're not going to keep up with ten thousand new
Speaker 1: apps a month. And the app store is the homeland
Speaker 1: of the wild wild West, and there are no sheriffs.
Speaker 1: They laid off the sheriffs and all that stuff. So
Speaker 1: if the same company promised you a skill based stock
Speaker 1: market tomorrow, how about your half of America would download
Speaker 1: it and they wouldn't read the fine print and all
Speaker 1: that stuff and so, and they'll likely shut this thing
Speaker 1: down and then they'll move on to some other hustle
Speaker 1: and all that. So, hey, Steve and A got a check.
Speaker 1: He triggered me, and you know he'll likely say, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I need the money. They are I didn't read the
Speaker 1: fine print whatever. But when the game's rigged and the
Speaker 1: players are bots, Okay, when the game's rigged the players
Speaker 1: at bots and all, it's not business. It's like a
Speaker 1: con dressed up with celebrity cologne and all that. So
Speaker 1: somewhere in the digital casino there the dealer just smiles, Hey,
Speaker 1: would you like a new deck? Would you like a
Speaker 1: new deck? Of of course, so there you go, Solitaire,
Speaker 1: knock yourself out on that. All right, on that note, Danny,
Speaker 1: we will put the baby to bed for this Saturday.
Speaker 1: We will have the mail Bag on Sunday, actual questions
Speaker 1: by actual listeners. We want to send a question in
Speaker 1: for a future edition of the mail Bag, send it
Speaker 1: care of Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's
Speaker 1: Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com, and we may
Speaker 1: use it on a future episode. I also want to
Speaker 1: thank all the people that sign up when I give
Speaker 1: out the email, Danny. Many people think it's fun to
Speaker 1: put my email in accounts where I get a lot
Speaker 1: of spam email for all kinds of products that you
Speaker 1: can imagine the things that I get. I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate that that you love the podcast so much that
Speaker 1: you share my email address with people that just bomb me,
Speaker 1: carpet bomb me with spam email. It does mean a lot, Danny.
Speaker 1: I might sound like I'm being sarcastic, but seriously, I
Speaker 1: do appreciate the fact that I get so much email
Speaker 1: that I have to sort through to find the people
Speaker 1: that actually ask questions. You know what I'm saying. All Right,
Speaker 1: have a great rest of your Saturday. We will yap
Speaker 1: with you tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you enjoy the college football games and the NBA
Speaker 3: asta pasta viopulation