The Harland Highway - 415: Harland Live at Improv, New pets, lip gloss

Episode Date: July 19, 2012

Harland does storytelling live on stage, new specie of house pet, cases of mistaken identity, lip gloss craze. Candy striped wheelbarrow!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, what a night. Late December back in 63. Oh, Charles, oh, Nelson, Riley. All right, enough. God. You know, it's going to be a wacky podcast when you have Charles Nelson Riley out of the gate. Welcome to the Harland Highway. I'm Charles Nelson Williams. And today we are talking about some really interesting, wild, cool stuff. Mistaken identity. Have you ever been mistakenly mistaken for someone else mistakenly?

Did that make sense? We're going to talk about that today. Lip gloss. Do you wear the lip gloss, boys and girls? Is it getting to be too much? And what about dogs and cats? Are you a dog person? a cap person, what if I told you

you could mix them both together? What? Uh-huh, brand new pet. And then for those of you that have been asking to hear me do some live performing, we have a real weird thing where I'm doing some comedy storytelling in front of a live audience

tonight, which involves a three-hour fire log, and it's pretty twisted. It's live. It's right here. It's the Harland Highway! Welcome to the Harland Highway All right, let's get this sucker going, huh? You're causing a major disturbance on my time. It's the Harland Highway.

What's up, Bra? If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time? I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you're doing? You just made a wrong turn. On to the Harland Highway. This is your fucking wake-up call.

You're riding down the Harland Highway with Harland Williams. In 30 seconds, you'll be dead. Then I'll blow this place up and be home in time for cornflakes. Okay, you pet lovers. Are you a dog person or a cat person? Fret no more, my friends. I don't know if you saw this on the news, but some dumbass in the backwoods or somewhere somehow managed to have cogs.

Okay. Yeah, I'm giving them that name. Cogs. Some guy's cat had puppies. Now, you know some redneck who was bored out of his mind on a Saturday night was doing something with a cat and something with a dog and throwing a turkey baster. And you got some kind of island of Dr. Moreau freak. You got a freak house pet, man. You got yourself a cog or a, what is it, a dat? a cog or a dat, call it what you will. It's half dog, half cat. Are you kidding me? I mean, how's that thing gonna know what's what? Can you imagine taking your cat to the park and it jumps up in the air and grabs a frisbee? Imagine your cat chasing a car? Imagine you shoot a duck and your cat swims out and gets it? Can you imagine a cat licking its owl? What about the other way around, man?

Imagine your dog curling up with you at night and purring. Imagine your dog chasing a mouse? Can you imagine your dog walking along the top of the fence? It'd be fun to see a Irish wolfhound getting all loopy on catnep. There it is, people. You can't decide get yourself a cog. It's kind of. and Williams

Rwra-R-R-A-R-W-R-A-R-Ewns to Murgatroyd. Even, heavens. Um, yeah, what a mix-up that would be. And, uh, speaking of mix-ups, uh, how about this, you crazy cream soda drinking crunch witches? Uh, um, you ever been in a store? And I think you have. That wasn't the question.

Have you ever been in a store? Okay, it gets deeper and broader than that. Do you ever been in a store? You ever been in a store like a Home Depot or a hardware store or maybe even your grocery store? And you're looking around for something. You need a new screwdriver. You need to find out where the cabbage is or the yogurt or you need a new hose or a shovel. and you're wandering around

and you can't find the damn thing and you turn the corner and there's the guy there's the guy with the shirt and the hair and the look and you're like oh thank goodness you're like excuse me sir can you tell me where the sprinklers are and they slowly turn and they stare at you and you're like um the sprinklers

hello uh sprinklers and they just stare and they go um uh i don't work here man what yeah i don't work here i'm a customer and you're like oh oh oh yikes yeah you know it's one of those weird things where um it's and it's an awkward mistake um because you know if you just happen to be wearing the wrong shirt or the right shirt as the case may be you know it's the right color of the store or it's just got the right look or the right feel or sometimes you're just

that person you know you're the Home Depot guy you're like you know average age like 35 40 you look like the average dude you got a little bit of a beer belly you know you got the haircut that's not really so modern it's just kind of like frizzy and you know there's nothing really you know that doesn't say you're not the home depot guy you know what i mean and so you make that mistake and you ask that person or you're like excuse me could you tell me where the celery is um i don't know i don't work here fuck up whoa you know you just you just nail the wrong person or even worse has it ever happened to you you're just wandering around and suddenly you're the Home Depot guy and people are like,

excuse me, sir, could you tell me where the lumber is? And I'm like, uh, well, you know me. I'm like, yeah, just go down to aisle 7 and take a left at the grass seed. Oh, thank you, sir. And then I get my ass out of there,

you know, but it's weird. It's weird. And it's not to say that it's a bad thing to work as a service person, as a Home Depot or a grocery store, but I got admit if it's not if it's not your line of work it's it makes you step back a little you're like wait a minute i've spent my whole life doing this i'm a doctor or i'm a car salesman or i'm a

physicist and you think i work at home depot in the lumber aisle excuse me excuse me um so you know Little case of mistaken identity, it happens. I recommend if it happens, have fun with it like I do. Excuse me, could you tell me where the roast beef is? Well, yes, I can. My address is 4229. You sick bastard. Ouch!

Ow! So there you go. The case of mistaken identity. Well, what do you know? A ham sandwich. Have you seen the girls wear on the lip gloss? Is it not enough that us men are turned on by a woman's beautiful, sultry lips? And then they come along and they put this lip gloss on.

Looks like they just finished like drinking nine gallons from a drinking fountain, man. Their lips are just all wet and frothy. Some of them too much, man. Some of them look like they got rabies or something. They're just all shiny and glistening. You can see the sun reflecting on them. Ruby red and some of them are crimson. Some of them are just like their own flesh color,

but they're just shiny, like an apple, like that wicked apple that the witch gave to snow white. Aren't you just tempted when you see those glossy, sultry lips? Ugh They're just so inviting What are the girls Trying to tell us With those wet pouty lips

You know what I should do I think I should get a towel From my bathroom A bath towel And cut it out Put it on my lips So the next time I see a girl

With those wet dripping lips I'll just run up and kiss her She'll go Ew, what was that for? And I said your lips were wet, baby. I thought I'd dry them off with my towel lips. Oh, okay. Yeah, in my dreams.

In my wet lip dreams. Owlowe! Harlan Williams on the Highland Highway. gloss my lips. I mean, after all, I use my lips to make my living. No, don't go there, please. I mean, I do

stand up, I talk, I'm a communicator. I'm a communicator, although you can find it very hard to believe the way I'm communicating. Yeah. At least I think I'm a communicator. You know, I do my stand-up,

I act, I do the podcast, blah, blah, blah. So I use my lips And And so because I use my lips A lot of the pavement pounders People listening right in or leave me phone messages And say, hey man

Where's more of your live stuff? Why don't you play more of your live stuff From the clubs and the theaters And the concert halls, dude? So that being said, Let me tell you about something new that I did I got a call from this guy who organizes these shows and he said hey Harland I'm doing this thing at the Hollywood Improv

right in the heart of Hollywood and it's a stand-up show but it's different it's not it's not like traditional stand-up like you know you up there telling your jokes I'm doing a special night it's called a storyteller's night and I go what the hell are you talking about he goes well we just want you to tell a story don't do jokes don't do your bits don't do anything you've ever done before just we're going to give you a topic and we want you to tell a story and you know me i like a challenge i like to live dangerously you know hell i i swim with sharks and scallops okay um so i said

you know what let's do it man so i go down to the improv and there's about five other guys on this show and there's a host and it turns out the topic is tell us a story about when you were completely drunk and I'm like, okay I can do that

and so I went up on stage and basically for about 12 or 15 minutes I just told a story I got to say it was a little freaky because I'm not used to doing comedy this way. I don't I don't sit on stage and tell stories, but I went up and I plop down on the stool.

Usually I'm standing, and I just got comfortable with the crowd. I still was riding a little bit of a cold, so my throat's a bit fried. But this is the story about how an East Indian guy could not say the word fire log. Okay? I know it sounds weird, but instead of saying fire log, this is. this East Indian guy could not pronounce fire log, and he said fire large. All right? He pronounced it fire large.

He couldn't say log. He said large. And so this whole story stems from an East Indian guy, not being able to say fire log. Let's stop talking about it, and let's go right to it. Here it is. Storyteller Knight, Harlem Williams. at the improv live in Hollywood, California. This next guy is absolutely hilarious.

You guys have seen him and loved them for fucking two decades. Give it up for Harlan Williams, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice, thank you. It's nice. Thank you.

It's nice. Three weeks ago. I was in a horrible car accident. I was killed. Not the reaction I wanted, but it still hurts when you're dead. I don't know you guys can't see me, but I'm going to try and spin a story here for you, so even, you know, if you can't see me, you're transfixed and taken away. I got two drunk stories, because that's what this is about. This is drunk night.

And I hope that this sets an example for the young folks out here. The first story is just a tease. The drunkenest I ever got, I was living in West Germany for about a year and a half, doing some computer animation. And it was right around the time when the Berlin Wall came down. In fact, it was right... and Wall came down with him. And I was in a nightclub.

I was in a German nightclub in Cologne, or as they say in Germany, Coon is pronounced. K-O-L-N. And on top of the O, my friends, two little salamander eyes. Germans love salamander. I'm in Kuhn, and here I am as the drunkenest I've ever been, I'm wobbling. I'm wobbling on my feet.

It really happens to me. Never has happened to me. I don't drink irresponsibly like that. But on this night, I must have been in a celebratory mood. The wall came down. That country was free. And here I am as drunk as I've ever been. Who wants to have better sex?

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motherfucking me now that's just the tease you don't can hear that story I'm going to tell you another story that I think you're like that happened, good old North America that involves a three-hour fire law

that's right I said three hour, fire log. This story has a couple of layers to it, so hang on to your fallopian tube. I don't know how many of you know this, but I'm a Canadian boy. I lived in Toronto. I grew up in Toronto. And, you know, just before I moved down to the good old USA, I lived in a crappy old apartment building with my cousin. Our cousin's a guy named Kevin Murray, he's about six years younger than me.

And some of you might know him, he's the keyboard player for the bar-naked ladies. He's a very, very, very talented musician. We're really tight. We like to sing together and play together and we live together. And we ordered a lot of junk food. We order pizzas and chicken and all the things young, healthy Americans eat too. Well, my cousin was in another band before the Fair Day Good Ladies, and you know, the lifestyle of guys in a band, they play hard all night, they sleep most of the day, right?

So I was up, it was lunchtime, I ordered pizza from this place in Toronto called Pizza Pizza Pizza, 9, 6, 7, 11, 11, that's their chinkgo. You can try it later, but it might not go through because it's in Canada. So, I ordered a pizza. Kevin's asleep and bad. And being Canada, I don't know why. It's a forested area. Okay?

I ordered a large pizza. The guy goes to me, sir, we're having a special. We're going to be special. With every large pizza, you get a free, three-hour fire log. And I go, good. I'll take the fucking firelock. I live in an apartment building.

I don't have a fireplace, but there's a balcony. Maybe we can light it out there. So this place prides itself on 30 minutes or it's free. So I'm like, great. I ordered the pizzas. Kevin's asleep.

I'm going to go out of a shower. I'll eat the pizza. I'll go do what I got to do. I'm in the shower, unbeknownst to me, the phone rings. It wakes my cousin Kevin up out of a beautiful slumber, right? He picks up the phone. In those days you had one of those old-fashioned answering machines, you know, the ones that record on an actual piece of tape?

Do you know what tape is? So this thing clicked on just as he picks up the phone and he's coming out on a slumber, he's like, hello? He's like, hello, some East Indian guy from pizza pizza. And he goes to my cousin who's in this drunken haze. He goes, hello, sir. My cousin goes, yeah. He goes, we're all out of the large.

And my cousin goes, what, the large? He goes, yes, sir, we got no more fire large. What, the fire large? Yes, we got all, we're all under the fire large, sir. We got no more large. The large, the fire large. The fire large. What? We got no more fucking fire lards.

Oh, my cousin's just, okay, the large. I got it, the large. Hangs up. That's me setting up the story. I need a drink. My thorax is dry. Now comes part two. And it all ties in game. A few months later, time. gone by and me and my cousin listen to this recording a thousand times. We love it. We rehearsing each other at any time we have.

You got the large? I got the what? The large? I got the fucking Bible large. We're addicted to it, right? We almost burnt the tape right out and created the first digital down while we played it somewhere. So cut to a few months later. We're a few months later. We're a fire large heaven. Kevin says to me Mysterious loader. He says...

Kevin says, he goes, all right, I got this gig, man. I got this fucking gig. These people want me to, uh... They want me to, uh, play at their at a rap party for a movie. And I go, what with the band he was in a different band and it was called the look people and he

goes no they just want me to do it alone what should I do I don't know man he goes he goes can you help me and I said shit yeah he goes well what do we do it I said why don't we do this I said I'm gonna dress up like a check and I'm gonna call myself peanut collada and you're gonna be my keyboard player the greasy little skin all right so I dress up dress up in this beautiful dress I bought at the Salvation Army store. How about this beautiful white blonde wig? I don't know if you can see it. I mean, I'm a hot-looking check.

I mean, I know a lot of you have seen me in sorority boys. I'm a fuckable check. I mean, I don't have hard features. I have no chin, right? You can punch me and you'd always miss. So I get the wig on, and I put the lipstick on, I got the eye shadow, the fake eye I got the fishnet stockings, and I was a little lighter then, and I looked pretty smoking on. So we show up at this rap party, and there's a stage, and before we go up on stage, you know, we're mingling.

We don't have to do our songs yet. So I'm sitting there, and guys are asking me to dance, and they don't get it, and I'm this hot fucking dude. So I actually got up and danced with a couple of them. And I'm talking slow dancing, right? I even went into the girls' bathroom to look at my makeup, but one of the chicks asked me if she could borrow my lipstick. And I lent it to her. I was drinking. I started drinking.

I needed to cope with me a woman's eye. And I got drunk and I looked so hot. I was making out with girls. I made out with more strange women that night than I ever have, even more than last night when I was at your house. So we get up on stage, and the greasy little skin has his keyboard, and he introduces Pina Colotta. And I come strut down on stage, and I'm doing a falsetto voice, and I can't do it now because I got a sore voice, but I was like, Hi, everyone! And I was singing, like, really lousy songs like Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks, you know.

We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. With the wine in the song, like the seasons have all gone. And that's an uplifting song, because it's about a fucking loser that commits suicide. Number one hit on the radio. Welcome to Depression Mell Fuck Off, You Fly. So I'm doing a set in the Lord of the Rings forest over there. So here we go. We have this great night, Peter Claus up there doing these horrible songs,

the greasy little skit he's playing. And I'm like, play it better, you greasy little skid. He couldn't play good enough. And my cousin's like a genius keyboard player and everything he'd have. Better, you little fucking skin. So we're having a blast. The night ends, we go back down on the dance floor. I'm making out with more girls.

One of them had garlic breath, I don't care. I'm peanut fucking collada, man. The night ends, we walk out and we hustle out onto the cold streets of Toronto, man. It's bare, and we close this fucking joint. Peter Collada and the greasy little skin closed the joint. We walk out onto the street. We're looking for a cab.

It's just whistling wind and crickets and dolphins blow up. and farm pumbles in the river. And all of us, from out of nowhere, this white rape fan comes screaming down the street. Just a white, it's like the mystery machine with all the paint scraped off of it, right?

Scooby-Doo's laying in the pack with a battered anus, you know? This fucking thing screeches to a stop, character. I'm fucking hair. I'm peanut collia. His recent little skits got his bacon grease hair.

These two Canadian hosers, like tough guys, like oil rig workers slash lumberjack slash steel clubbers slash fucking Arby's workers, right? They screeched to a halt. They go, hey man, their fucking eyes

are spinning around like the opening of the Twilight Zone. Like, hey man, do you know I get to the fucking highway? and I had great character and I just went, No, what you do? Is you working her? And the guy goes,

you're fucking knock it off or I'm going to punch your fucking head. And in my mind, I'm like, no one talks to peanut colloquia. Especially not in front of the greasy little skin. So I just keep going. I'm like, fucking, I'm wasting. I go, what you do is wrong with him? Fuck you!

And he slammed on the guy. the guy fucked off into the night like to cover a meatloat pan out of hell out, all right? So here we go, we see one lowly cab coming down the street, right? Headlights in the distance, a little bit of Canadian fog blown across. Some guy in an alley making wind noises. So we're fucking tank, we get in the cab, and Toronto's a very ethnic city. We get in the cab, lo and behold, it's 2.30 in the morning, a Chinese guy, 32 years old, big glasses, kind of got a little bit of the buck teeth going, happy go lucky dude.

We start driving, and we got a ways to go. We got about a 12-mile cab ride to get to our fucking dump. So we start driving, and we get about two minutes into the ride, and I go to the guy, go, Hey, buddy, you got the large? What you say? I said, you got the fire large. What are you talking about?

You think we know this here? And we spent the next 12 miles teaching that guy the fire large run. Word for word, like we were at a Stanis-Sklovsky acting school. By the time this guy got us back to his dump, he had the whole fucking rundown. And we were like, And I thought, I got no more large. And he's like, what the lodge? No, I got on my fire lodge

And it was like an East Indian and a Chinese guy With a fire alarm, John One of the best nights of my life Completely hammered Folks, tell that story to your kids this Christmas God bless you This guy's got the war Right here

There it is. There it is. There it is. Me telling stories. I don't know if you like that or not. You know, it's a different style for me. You might have been like, yeah, whatever. Or you might have been, hey, cool. I don't know. I got to tell you, I enjoyed it. It was weird. It was different. I was out of my element, believe me. But I have. I have. had a good time. I like being out of my element. I like the danger zone. And, you know, there's a lot of facial expressions and kind of animated looks I was giving in there. So sometimes you're like, why are people laughing? He didn't even say anything. Well, that was probably me given a little look or whatever. Um, so there you go. That, that's my little, uh, live storytelling episode um and you let me know what you think harlowe williams.com you can write me or call me at uh 323 739 4330 and uh you know nice to get your feedback and uh you know if you like it maybe i can do some more of that stuff for ye as they say in merry old england um but that is

it that is it that's all i have for now folks uh that kind of have exhausted me. Not really. But I've got to go put some lip gloss on. So don't forget, you can hook yourself up at Harlan Williams on Twitter. If you want to join in, I always post goofy little fun things that might brighten your day. We're at a, we have the Facebook page, Harlow Williams' Facebook page. You can join up there.

what else what else that's about it go to the store at harlan williams dot com and pick up your merch if you want keep the laughter coming and that's it that's all we have time for there will be more storytelling

on our next podcast thank you one and all for joining great to have you here tell your friends your family your deceased whoever and get them on board the harland highway and until next

time, my furry little friends, chicken. Chalemain, ba-b-b-b-b-bab, baby. This guy's got to start the war, say here. Thank you.