The Harland Highway - 442: Buildings, Ass picking and funky food!!!
Episode Date: October 25, 2012Today I discuss the history of your building, people who pick their asses, and strange foods to eat in public. Crabble my Scrabble!! 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
Transcript
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Well, hello, everybody.
Hey, look, I know I'm a day late.
This is the Harland Highway. I'm Harlan Williams.
I'm going to explain the tardiness, the lateness.
Normally, I'm not a guy for excuses, but I think I got a pretty good one.
I'm going to explain to you once we get rolling into the show here.
And I think you'll like the reason that I'm late,
and I think you'll accept the reason that the podcast is a day late.
Uh, I'm excited and, uh, you'll hear all about it in a minute.
Also, we're going to be talking about buildings, your building, your building, your dwelling that you live in.
Uh, what about it?
What about it? Is it better than you?
We're going to talk about that.
We're also going to talk about, uh, well, let me just say it, ass picking.
What was the last time you picked your ass?
Okay.
I had a run in with an ass picker.
and I just got to talk about this.
It was absolutely mortifying.
It was befuddling.
It was bizarre aspicking behavior.
And then lastly, we're going to talk about,
I saw something out on the street the other day that was a little unnerving.
A little weird, little out of the ordinary, made me laugh.
I don't know.
Let's talk about it.
See what you think when I tell you my street story.
But for now, let's get rolling.
down the road, in fact, the highway, in fact to Harland, Highway.
Welcome to the Harland Highway.
Hi, I'm Chuckie, want to play.
Please go away and leave me alone.
You just made a wrong turn.
On to the Harland Highway.
Man, keep it going.
Love the show.
You're all over there.
My blanche and my blue blanket.
Give me my blue blanket.
Passing your seat.
You're riding down.
Harlan Highway.
It's the Harland Highway.
Okay, so here's the deal.
You're saying, where the heck is the Harlan Highway?
How could he miss a day?
Well, it's rare that I miss a day.
It's rare that I miss an episode, gang.
And I know I'm a day late.
I think this is the second time this year. God, I'm really slipping here, gang.
But let me tell you why. I think you'll give me a little wiggle room here, a little flack, a little slack, a little length of rope, hopefully not to hang myself.
But I started work on a new sitcom this week. And needless to say, a sitcom is a big,
endeavor it's a big undertaking there's a lot of getting your footing there's a lot of figuring things
out there's a lot of everything i mean you're shooting a tv show for gosh sakes um so this was our
first week and it's been a madhouse and uh i just did not have time to get to uh laying down
some magic for for you folks but uh here i am a day late nonetheless i have not
forgotten you and uh you know let me tell you a little bit about the show it's it's a show called
package deal uh it's a new sitcom and uh we're shooting 13 episodes of this thing uh great cast
and the premise of the show is it's these three brothers and one of the brothers has a
girlfriend and it's called package deal because the girl gets with the youngest brother but little
does she realize that in dating the younger brother, who she falls in love with,
she gets kind of sucked into the dynamic of the two other brothers.
So there's three brothers, and she inadvertently has to deal with all the hijinks and the history
between the three brothers.
And the brothers are very closely knit.
they've got a very tight long lasting lifelong relationship and needless to say whenever a different woman walks in between them then the other brothers have to vet her they have to figure out if she's worthy uh they're constantly testing her and uh you know they're seeing if she has if she has the the uh the metal to uh to um you know be part of the gang
And so the show revolves around this group of four, the three brothers and the girl, and how they all cope, how they all get along in various situations, and the comedy ensues.
But it's a lot of fun, a really good group of actors.
And I believe there's a Facebook page up.
Again, I don't have a lot of details.
I think there's like a a Facebook page for package deal.
As I said, this is the first week.
Everything's new, so I just don't have my footing yet.
But I play the oldest brother out of the three.
The youngest brother plays a lawyer.
The second brother plays a guy that's, I think he's kind of getting his footing in life.
He's recovering from a divorce, and then I play kind of a weird salesman guy who just can't seem to get his act together and we'll try and sell ice to an Eskimo.
So there's my excuse, and I'm not sure when the show's going to air, and I'm not sure where it's going to air, but it looks like it might be a mid-season replacement coming around in February, possibly.
So, you know, as this show unfolds, as I learn more, I obviously don't know a lot.
I will let you know, but we're going to have some great guest stars on the show.
I'm not allowed to tell you who they are yet, but some really good people.
And needless to say, we are working on the first episode, having a ton of fun, loving my castmates.
and let's hope it's a good show.
So that being said, let's kick it into gear a day late,
but, you know, it's podcast time, right, gang?
One cheeseburger with everything coming up.
Okay, and speaking of food, check this out.
I'm walking around in the street the other day.
You know out hunting for a hot chocolate?
You know how I like to prowl the streets like a hot chocolate?
chocolate night cat.
Hot chocolate.
I'm wandering around and I'm crossing an intersection.
It's a busy street.
I'm in the city.
And there's people walking here and there.
There's cars buzzing by.
It's the middle of the day.
Sun's up.
And I run across a light.
I land on the sidewalk on the other side.
And I look up and there's a guy sitting.
like on a big, the edge of a big concrete flower pot.
Okay, just kind of by himself, nobody around.
It's not a lunch area.
It's not outside an office building.
It's just a random, like, ugly concrete flower pot on a sidewalk.
And I look, and the guy's gnawing.
I guess eating and gnawing are the same thing,
but gnawing's just a different kind of eating.
The guy's gnawing.
On a cob of corn.
What the hell?
It's just an odd thing.
I mean, you don't normally just see someone out in public walking down the street or sitting on a corner.
You can imagine going by a Starbucks and you look out at the plethora of people sitting around
and they're just eating a cob of corn?
It's weird.
It's offsetting.
It threw me off.
it was this guy this was an Asian guy and you know young maybe I don't know 30 years old
28 backpack one of his legs was crossed no one around just sitting on the side of the
sidewalk goblin a cob of corn the hell's that all of what's going through that guy's mind
well I got myself a cob of corn here and I don't really really
really want to eat it all by myself in the house or up in the apartment.
I think the best thing to do would be go out into the street and eat this cobb of corn right out on the sidewalk where everyone can say me.
And here's the weird thing about a cob of corn.
I mean, you know, it's an awkward item to eat because you're not really putting it in your mouth.
It's not like an apple or a sandwich.
You don't put the thing in your mouth until it's gone, right?
With most food, you shove them in your mouth,
and they get smaller and smaller and then, bing, they're gone.
You've ingested them.
With a cob of corn, you just keep gnawing away.
You eat the corn, but the cobb's still there.
So all you've really done is scraped the surface of your food,
and you've still got the bulk of your food in your hand.
You've got the cob.
All the corn's gone, but you...
You still have almost the same mass you started with, right?
So it's very odd.
And then the other thing about the cob of corn is you always have to do work to it.
You know, a sandwich you pull it out, an apple you pull it out, right?
A cob of corn, you got to roll that sucker in butter.
You get to slide butter all over it, up and down, up and down.
and then you've got to put salt all over it.
Then you might even have to have those little corn grabber things.
You know, you stick those little prongs in each end of the cob.
And you use those if you don't want to get your fingers all buttery and salt.
You know, you eat enough cobs of corn.
Your fingers look like they do when you step out of the bathtub.
You've been in it too long.
You get like pruny skin.
You get corn on the car.
Cobb prunes.
And so it's just an odd piece of food.
And to see a guy just sitting out on a sunny afternoon with the bird singing
twirling a cob of corn in his face, just a little awkward, a little weird.
Made me laugh, actually.
I'm just like, look at this guy.
I got my cob of corn.
You ladies want to party?
I got me a cob of corn going over here.
What do you got going on?
Huh?
You may have a fancy car and a fancy office,
but I got me a cob of corn going on here.
Right?
So I don't know.
Maybe I'm just oversensitive to corn.
Maybe I'm being too picky.
I don't know what I'm doing,
but just keep your car.
cob and keep your cobbing to yourself i don't know if that's even the term when you're eating
a cob a corner is that is that called cobbing are you cobbing it up hey man you want to come over
and cob it up yeah okay man let's cob it dude let's grab a cab let's cab it to the cob
and cob it after we cab it okay man sounds cool so there you go keep your cob in your pants or
Are you just happy to see me?
Hello.
Here we are, children.
Come and get your lollipops.
Lollipops.
Come along by little ones.
Lollipop.
Ice cream.
Jopmet, all free today.
All free today.
Uh, I want to talk to you about buildings.
This is kind of sad.
This makes me sad.
And I'm kind of mad at buildings.
I'm kind of mad at architecture.
Do you live in an apartment or a house?
Do you live in a...
You know, you've got to live somewhere, right?
You've got to live in some kind of building.
And it occurred to me the other day that I'm pissed off at buildings because they outlast us.
You know, think about when you move into a new house or you move into a new house.
or you move into a new apartment or whatever.
You kind of move in there with all your dreams and your aspirations
and all your foreshadowing into the good things that will happen.
This will be the place where I raise a family.
This is the place where I'll, you know, lose my virginity.
This is the place where I'll write my first best-selling novel.
And then within all those dreams,
and aspirations, these things become reality.
You do.
You put in time with your building, with your house, with your dwelling.
You live there.
You get into the walls of the place, right?
The place actually takes on your scent.
The walls and the carpet and the flooring,
they inherit the scent of your chemical makeup.
and you adorn the walls with your personal artifacts
and your paintings and your keepsafs
and you hang your clothes in the closet
and you snuggle on the couch with your significant other
and you watch movies and you laugh and you fight and you cry
you open Christmas presents
and you carve Thanksgiving turkeys
and you do all these things
that make that dwelling
that place that you live a part of you.
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Don't throw your back out.
And you get a connection with that building.
You get a feeling for that building.
You get this place that you call home.
You get this place that you think maybe just maybe it's going to be there forever.
It's going to see you have children and raise children.
And it was there when you had your dog.
And your cat stays there when you go to work.
You know, every nook and cranny, you know, the way the doorbell looks.
And you know the way the door knockers crooked.
You know, the doors that squeak and the floorboards that creak.
You know, the faucet, the drips, you know, the way the water goes around in the drain, you know, the way the rain sounds on the windows, you know, which rooms are the coolest and which rooms are the hottest when you put on the air conditioning or the heat, all these things.
And here's why I'm mad at buildings, because I was driving around the other day, and I passed some buildings, some nice-looking town.
house condos, some homes.
And I realized that just like the people living in them, just like me, one day we would be gone.
Me and you and our kids and our dogs and our dreams and our novels and our aspirations
and all the things that we took into that house that lived under that roof with us
are just gone.
Maybe you packed up and you moved away
Or worse yet
And this is probably what really struck a chord with me
As we die
We pass on and those buildings just stand there
Cold, emotionless
Bring me the next dweller
Bring me the next victim
Bring me the next dreamer
Bring me the next novelist
The next genius
Whoever I don't care
as long as they pay the rent.
I'll let them live inside me.
And so it made me sad that these things that we built,
these walls, these roofs, these ceilings that keep us,
they're really not, you know, organically part of us.
They are, for the time we're in them,
but then we're just gone and all the memories are gone.
All the things I talked about are just gone.
Did they ever exist?
That fight you had with your girlfriend,
that night you lit a fire and got down on your knee and proposed to her.
Where is that?
Where did those moments go?
The first time you had to get up out of your bed
and walk to the baby room and pick up your brand new baby
because they were crying in the middle of the night.
Where is that?
Where's the flat screen you had when you watched your favorite team in the Super Bowl
and you and all your buddies were laughing and having beers and eating chicken wings?
Where is all that?
The house doesn't care.
The townhouse doesn't care.
The condo doesn't care.
You're just gone.
Take your crap off my walls.
Get your car out of my garage.
Open the windows.
Soon your scent will be gone.
There'll be no trace that you ever existed, that you were ever here.
And I know it sounds a little depressing, doesn't it?
It's kind of like, you know, people spend huge chunks of their lives in these places.
And the buildings don't care.
They just watch you walk away.
They don't weep.
They don't cry.
They don't miss you.
They just stand there.
And so it made me mad in a way that they outlast us.
You know, maybe we should all live in igloos.
You know, think of an igloo, right?
Family of Eskimos all rosy-cheeked and frost in their beards.
They literally bend down into the ice, carve up some giant cubes of ice, stack them, form them, meld them together.
climb inside, and they go inside, and they drink Eskimo whiskey,
and they boil up some seal meat and some walrus flap flippers.
They sing songs, and they laugh, and they do chants.
They knit caribou hide together.
They smoke salmon.
They sleep.
They make love.
They bond, they share hunting stories, and then when it's all over, they leave, they walk away, and their house melts into the ground.
That house doesn't win.
That house is organic.
That house melts back into the ground and all the memories and stories and events, Eskimo intercourse that happened.
And you've got to wonder if they do it.
caribou style or doggie style i don't know how does an eskimo do it walrus style i don't know
but at least the house doesn't win the house goes away when they go away and then for what
it's worth those memories all all that stuff just kind of melts it melts back into the
ground and maybe somehow becomes part of the organic earth it doesn't just stand there and
more cars go by and let new tenants come in that's done only one owner only that's it so
maybe Eskimos have it figured out but you know I know it sounds dumb to be mad at a
building but I wish we outlasted the buildings that's all I'm saying I wish I
wish we could walk away from the building and go oh thanks building you served your
purpose well but you know I got a life to live so sorry bye right because that's what the igloos do
they just they're gone once the eskimos are gone the igloo's gone so there you go now that I've
totally depressed you about where you live um you know get a flamethrower and melt your apartment
hello what we've got here is
failure to communicate.
Well, here's a little story about a guy who picked his ass.
He was talking to me, and he started to pick his ass.
I was standing there, and he was talking to me,
and the next thing you know, he's picking his ass right in front of me.
Yeah, that's a true song story slash fable square dance.
Yeah, have you ever had this happen?
This happened to me, you know, I go around when I tour,
when I do stand-up comedy, I visit a lot of radio stations and I do interviews.
You know, every city you've got to go in and do the interviews and talk to the folks and
yuck it up and let people in the community know you're there.
And I was in a place recently.
I won't say where, but, you know, I meet a lot of DJs and on-air personalities.
And I was doing this one station not too long ago recently.
And, you know, the guy came out to greet me and, you know, one of the on-air personalities
and he couldn't have been nicer like, hey, man, how's it going?
And, you know, shook his hand.
And then he started talking to me.
And actually, there was another person there, the publicity agent that drove me over to the interview.
We were standing there talking to the guy.
And all of a sudden, in the middle of the conversation, you know, we're just shooting the breeze.
talking about the weather the guy reaches around and starts picking his ass and and i'm going to like
wait a minute did he just do that like like like as if he scratched his chin he just reached around
and like really like got in there and was like you know like digging a couple of claws up there
into the honey hole right and it was a little weird and then we we keep talking and i didn't got to know what to do
And then, like, about three, four minutes later, honk, he does it again.
The old koala claws go back in the old eucalyptus branch or whatever it is.
I'm like, wait a second.
So this guy goes, hey, man, we'll have you.
We'll have you in just a few minutes hang tight.
And I'm going to go get everything set up and blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, great.
So the guy leaves.
I turn to the publicity person.
I go, did you just see that?
And he goes, what?
I go, was it just me or was that guy picking his ass?
Well, he was talking to us.
He goes, yeah, I saw that too, man.
The guy was totally picking his ass right in front of us.
I'm like, who does that?
And this other person I was with who I was with was just as befuddled.
They're like, I don't know.
Who does do that?
And I go, didn't we just shake that guy's hand?
And we were like, yeah, we did, man.
We just did like an ass.
ass shake we did like a pick shake man we did like a crack shake
I mean that ain't right man that ain't right you you know and it's not like we're just
like some Joe's rolling into the you know we're not we're not like some local kid who
found a skunk in his basement or you know some mother who's a kid won a you know some
mothers or kid won a cheerleading competition or something okay we're coming in as like a guest
celeb you know the the funny comedian guys coming in to do some schick and uh you know i'm i'm
representing and i'm in a town at the big comedy club doing doing some shows
and uh this guy greets us by uh shoving a couple of digits in his uh
his glory hole.
What the hell, man?
It was just creepy.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know what to think of the guy
because the next thing I know,
I'm in there and the guy's interviewing me.
Right?
He's like, so, Arland, tell us about your life.
Tell us about your movies.
What's going on?
And I'm surprised I didn't blurt out.
Oh, well, you know, I've just been picking my ass.
I mean, no, I've been cutting the grass.
You know.
Um,
And I've also been picking my ass.
I mean, dating a fine lass.
You know, all I could think about was this guy grinding.
I could think about was this guy standing there with a smile on his face
talking about the weather where one of his hands disappears.
And you know the body language when you start picking your ass?
You kind of your spine twists a little, right?
and your ass kind of goes on an angle,
get a little crooked,
it's like one leg goes up a little bit, right?
You kind of like, you kind of get up on the balls of your feet on one foot
because you're kind of propping that one ass cheek up.
And then your elbow goes out really weird
because you're like, you know,
you kind of got to reach back there
and stick your fingers into the mud pie.
So your elbows like sticking out
It looks all weird
I mean it's just a weird pose
I don't think Leonardo da Vinci ever did a carving of that
I don't think if you go to Rome and you're driving around
And you see statues standing in fountains
I don't think you ever see the guy with a picking his ass statue
But it feels like it's kind of the type of pose a statue would have right
Like the ribs sticking out a bit
the back arched a little, the elbow sticking out.
Like, it kind of looks like it's sticking out of the spine, like a fin, like a shark fin.
And then one of your feet is kind of up the heel is off the ground.
And then sometimes you're like, you actually pull your chin back into your neck.
You're like, oh, okay, I got, ooh, there it is.
Oh, oh.
Right?
So this guy was doing all that, and here he was chatting me up, and I'm like, Jesus, dude.
What's your chair smell like, dude?
God.
You know, have a little etiquette.
We've never met, and you think we can sit and talk about the weather,
and you can have a couple of your fingers in your heiny hole?
No, thanks, dude.
You know, I'm not that comfortable with you yet.
I don't even know your name, dude.
You're standing here shaking my hand and then going for your, uh, your trap door?
No, thanks.
So that's my etiquette tip.
Okay, gang, that's my etiquette tip for the day.
Don't pick your ass.
You can pick your friends, but don't pick your ass.
Creepy.
Just creepy.
So there you go
That's all I got for today
I'm going to end it on the old ass-picking
Good old ash
Ash picking
Ash-picking dog
So there you go
I guess we'll end it there
We got to end it there
Like I said I'm excited about this new sitcom
I'll keep you posted
As that goes along
Here's some other announcements
And don't forget I have a brand new app that's available.
It's a free app.
You can get it at harlandap.com.
Or you can go to iTunes and get it.
The Harland app, it's fun, full of ringtones and goofy stuff.
Should put a smile on your face.
And my new comedy special will be coming out January 15th.
I'm going to tell you more about that.
November. I'll give you the name of it. It's called Harland Williams, A Force of Nature. I can't wait to tell you all about it. I'm going to be posting some sneak pictures, some sneak clips. It's really, really one of a kind comedy special. It's a lot different. In fact, it's more different than any comedy special you've ever seen. I promise you that. So we'll get into that early in November.
and don't forget check me out at
at Harlan Williams on Twitter
don't forget to check out the new
podcast network we have going all things comedy
you can find me on there now
where you can find all your comedy needs
postings listings
other funny comedians with their podcasts
and that's it
Go to harlainwilms.com for more info, and we're going to sign out because I'm getting a little itch,
and I don't want to, ooh, I don't want to be talking to you while I scratch, if you know what I mean.
Oh, there goes my elbow.
So there you go.
Harlem Williams, we'll see you next time.
And until next time, my friends, chicken.
Chalmayne.
baby