The Harland Highway - 457: Shootings in the USA, Xmas poems

Episode Date: December 20, 2012

Most of today's show is Xmasy, but I felt the need to talk about the children who were shot in yet another school rampage. On the lighter side we have the question of the day and a very special readin of T'was the Night Before Christmas. Sulpher salt mines!!! 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

It's the Harlan Highway on an open fire. Hey, it's me, it's Harland Williams. And you are on the Harland Highway, and we have an interesting show today. We're going to be talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly today. We have some funny stuff, a little serious stuff today. And, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about that horrible shooting that happened, where the children lost their lives. It's something I feel like I need to talk about,

talking about guns in the United States and gun control and advocates of guns, the bad versus the good of guns. It's a little bit serious, a little bit heavy, but I think it's something that's on all our minds, so I thought I'd put it out there. But we're also going to have some good positive stuff. One of our pavement pounders has done a good deed

as I requested you do some homework and try and spread some good during the holiday season. We got a phone call from one of the Pounders, and he did it. We got the Harland Highway Question of the Day, and we got all kinds of fun stuff. So it's going to be groovy, and we're going to end the show with me doing Twas the Night Before Christmas in a very special way. It's a tradition here. So get ready. Here we go. It's the Harland Highway.

Oh, no! No! You just made a wrong turn. Would you kindly shut your mouth? On to the Harlan Highway. Oh, it's lovely. It's just lovely. The Harlan Highway.

Hi, Harlan. I'm Teddy Rapspin, and I'm your friend. Writing down the Harland Highway. I'm not your daddy. That's Just on an open fire Jack frosts nipping at your nose.

That sounds like it would hurt, doesn't it? named Jack Frost nipping at your nose I mean nipping is biting imagine some guy just walks up and start gobbling your nose hey man how you doing cold out isn't it yeah I guess so

hey man my fucking nose you're lucky that's all I'm nipping at dude um anyways Christmas music we're here we're close Oh, we're just days away from Christmas. And I put some Christmas music on.

I'm excited. Here's why I'm excited. I issued, you know, with a lot of nerve, mind you. I don't know if any other podcast, podcaster, cast potter, asks his listeners to do homework now and then, but I did. I put upon you the task of doing a little homework, and I said during this holiday season, regardless of your race, creed, color, or stance

in the world, I put the challenge out there to you pavement pounders to try and do something nice for somebody. Step outside of your box, go out of your way to extend some kindness, or show some love towards a fellow human being or animal or somebody or something. And boy, oh, boy, am I happy? I said, you know, if you want to share any of that with me, you know, I always give out the phone number here. And I'm very happy today because one of the pavement pounders called in, and it looks like he did some homework. And it just warms my heart, because that's what this season is all about. And I hope his story will inspire you to do your homework.

and reach out, go out of your way, whether it be something big like giving someone a dollar in the street or helping someone change a tire. Who knows? But I can't hold the elation in any longer. I want to share with you this pavement pounder's phone call, and I'll let him tell you how he stepped out of the box and spread a little kindness during the holiday season. Here we go. Oh, man, this is Jamie from Chicago. I heard the recent podcast about doing things good for people in the holiday season. I wanted to say a story that happened on Saturday night after the bars were closed.

I was jumping on the Chicago L train. And I got a burrito before I jumped down the train, and I open up the burrito while I'm on the train. And I take a first fight, and there's this homeless woman. and she's looking at me and I'm thinking to myself kind of rude to eat in front of her so she's probably hungry or whatever and on the next stop

the door is open and she gets all her bags and she's about to get off and she looked at me and she asked me for the burrito and I just gave it to her because I was like once I want this burrito right now

this woman needs it and I thought to myself burrito is actually a great food delivery method mechanism because it has all the food groups wrapped up and uh for all the pavement counters out there you want a good thing to do over the holidays he'll make a ton of burritos and cruise around and then hand them out and i guarantee people to love them heyley harland love you dude keep it up i love the harland highway you're the man see see there you go am i all tingley inside yes i am that is

uh that is fantastic thank you for doing that um um Unbelievable. A little gesture, a burrito, a Christmas miracle burrito, I'm going to call it right now, okay? A homeless lady in the night, alone, cold, probably has no friends, struggling to keep food, struggling to keep food coming to her, struggling to find a place to sleep. And let's face it, we all love our burritos, man. We all love our junk food. Okay? And for Jamie to sacrifice his delicious burrito,

and I'm guessing if you're out late hitting the bars, you might have had a little buzz going. And, you know, after you drink, you're always pretty hungry. Which I'm not saying you were drunk. I'm saying possibly, whether you were or you weren't, you gave it up, man. You saw someone that needed something more than you did, a complete stranger, and he handed over his delicious burrito. Good for you, buddy.

Thanks for doing your homework. I hope you folks like that story, and I hope you'll follow his wonderful example and spread a little kindness. Give of yourself to other people this holiday season. Bravo, buddy. and how about that idea of driving around with burritos? That could be a new Christmas thing, man. Like Christmas Burrito Day. You know, there's a day somewhere during the holidays

where people have to go in their homes and make burritos and drive around and hand them out. It's Christmas Burrito Day. There's got to be a Christmas Carol in there somewhere. so wonderful job way to go and uh please if any of you feel like sharing your uh your homework stories with the rest of us we love to hear it and um which isn't to say if you don't do anything you're a bad person but if you do do something uh you know good for you and and uh feel free to share you can write me at harlem williams.com or you can uh call and uh you know leave your

story. And speaking at Christmas, later in the show, usually every year I somehow get somebody or something to record twas the night before Christmas. And this year I thought, you know, I would do it. I think last year Hannibal Lecter did it. And I'm going to do it this year, but I've got a special twist I want to put on it for you because, you know, I just don't want to read it we've heard it a million times but uh i think i'll read it with a little bit of a little bonus twist on it so a little later in the show we'll get to that uh but right now i think it's time for the harland highway question of the day the harland highway question of the day okay the question of the day is and this one's a little bit personal how often do you change

your underpants. That is the question of the day. Gentlemen, how often do you change your underpants? And ladies, if you're even wearing underpants, I have to believe that most women listening to this podcast wouldn't have the audacity to wear underpants. But if you do, wear underpants, how often do you change them? What is considered cool, what is considered sanitary, what is considered foul? I'll be honest, I'm going to share, I give a pair of underwear two days.

I get a fresh pair out, I put them on, I wear them, and then I wear them the next day, and then they're done. Is that wrong? Is that gross? Should I be wearing a fresh pair every day? Or am I not wearing them enough? Should I be wearing them three, four days in a row? I don't know.

What is the rule? There should be directions on the underpants. Please wear for 24 hours and then steam in a walk. And is it different for ladies? Ladies seem to be a little more finicky about, you know, hygiene and cleanliness. I wonder, you know, it's funny, I've never really asked after having girlfriends and being married once,

you know, how often you change your undies. Maybe I should be paying more attention. But to the gentlemen out there, how long do you give your undies before you're like, oh, God. And ladies, how long do you give them? I remember when I was a kid, man, I didn't understand, you know, the whole thing about cleanliness like that. I just thought, oh, it's a piece of cloth. It's under my pants. It can't get dirty.

There's no dirt touching it. There's no grass touching it. There's no outdoors. It's protected by my pants. My underpants can't be dirty. So I'll wear them for weeks. And this is going to gross you out, but I used to wear a pair of underpants.

And keep in mind, I went to boarding school for a little while, so my mother didn't have access to my laundry. I stayed at a boarding school, so no one knew this, but I just thought, oh, my underpants are protected by my pants, I'll wear them for two, three, four weeks. I swear to God, I started to develop a rash around my groin area, like little red pimples. Yeah, I know, I can feel you cringing. I'm cringing right now. I had little like red dots. It looked like zits. And it was probably just from the bacteria and the sweat. And, you know, when you're a little boy, you're running around.

and you're playing street hockey and you're playing tag and you're jumping on a trampoline. You're playing soccer. You're sweating. You probably should change your underpants once a day when you're a kid. Here's me not understanding hygiene and bacteria

and, you know, so I would literally wear these things for days and weeks. And then finally when I started to, I started, you know, I don't think there's supposed to be red, red little welts on my pubis, you know, the eight pubic hairs that I had at the time, you know. I don't think there should be little red dots. I don't think I should be able to see the big dipper on my groin. You know what I'm saying? So even at an early age,

without understanding the hygiene, I started to Nancy Drewitt. I put two and two together. I'm like, gee my white underpants that are yellow kind of have been in my pants for a long time they're the only thing rubbing up against my skin put two and two together yeah they're probably like if you threw these underpants on the ground they'd probably sizzle through the floor like you remember when that movie alien when they up in space

when they shot the alien and he bled acid. Remember that? His blood would, like, eat right through the metal in the floor and drip through to the next level. I picture me through all those four-week-old underpants on the floor. Just sizzling right through the wood, through the infrastructure of any building I was in, sizzling into the basement of my boarding school.

some janitor in the boiler room eating a submarine sandwich suddenly this white and yellow blob comes through the ceiling right so there it is there's the question of the day how long do you wear your underpants before washing them the harland highway question of the day and this isn't the question of the day, but this is a sad question we have to ask. We have to talk about. It's Christmas time. It's the holidays. And this maybe isn't the best topic for the holidays, but we have to remember that a whole bunch of families just recently lost their children. Hey, everybody, who wants to have better sex? No? Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. You always want to have better sex. That's a good.

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That's Harland, H-A-R-L-A-N-D at Adam and Eve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast so be sure to use this code harland so you get your discount and a hundred percent free shipping code harland have fun don't throw your back out during the holidays and they're gone from their lives due to that insane maniac shooter that you know shot up that school and killed like 26 year olds not 26 year olds but 20 the number 20 you know five and six year old children that were just you know learning to walk and talk and think and learn and it's just such a tragedy and uh you know i don't usually like to delve too deep into uh social and political issues i do it from time to time and i guess with this one it really

struck struck a chord with me as i'm sure it did with you uh to know that these innocent kids who never really got a chance to live out their lives are gone because of some idiot. And it brings up the whole debate on the gun issue, which you almost roll your eyes at just hearing it. Like even hearing myself say it, I'm like, oh, here we go again. Oh, boy, the gun issue. But at some point, you know, I feel like you just take it off the table. It's not an issue anymore.

It shouldn't be an issue, I feel like. It should be, you know what? It's time to do away with guns. It really is. There's no debate. There's no NRA. There's no Hunter's rights. There's no Second Amendment rights.

All that to me is just shields. That's excuses. That's hiding behind a reason to perpetuate the ownership and the acquisition of firearms and guns. and the reality is we don't need them society doesn't need them you know we don't go hunting for our food anymore nothing really good comes from guns I was talking to a friend the other day who had an uncle

who had a collection of guns she was telling me this guy had like like 30 or 40 guns he was an ex-Vietnam guy and he kept them in the basement locked up and I'm like really guns You're collecting guns. Like, what do you do with a gun collection? Do you take them out?

Do you look at them? Do you hold them in your arms? Do you sniff them? Do you rub them? Do you hang them on the wall? I mean, it's, they're weapons of death. Guns are built to end life. That's what guns are built for.

You know, you can say, well, I like to go to the target range. Yeah, but that's not why guns. guns were made. They didn't create guns because there was an outbreak of target ranges. Okay, they didn't create guns because clay pigeons were filling the air and shooting on people's cars. They didn't create guns to hang on walls and be collected. Guns were built to kill things and primarily other human beings. And you could step in at this point and start all your arguments and your, you know, this and that. And as I said, your Second Amendment rights and your NRA BS. But you know what? Let me end the argument here and say, do we really need guns? And for those of you

that say we do, I would like you to look me in the eye and say we need guns when one day you come home and it's your six-year-old child that's on the news laying on a curb eyes rolled back in their head tongue hanging out in a pool of their own blood dead and how strong is your argument for guns at that point it's just i don't think you have an argument when you're the one and anyone listening now who has a gun you can be oh come on screw you it's not gonna you know that's just that was a weird weird rare occurrence and but it's not it's not a real a weird rare occurrence it's it's happened over and over and over not just in schools but in banks and and political rallies and you name it it's just And it's a vicious, vicious continuing cycle of senseless death and murder.

And I think the day that it becomes your child, your six-year-old kid, that got shot up by a gun, a Second Amendment NRA gun, where's your argument then? What leg do you stand on as you put your child's cold, lifeless body into the ground? Is that the point where you go, gee, do we really need guns in society? Do I? Do I really need to collect one? Do I really need to keep one in my drawer? And if nobody had guns, wouldn't society be a lot more peaceful

and there wouldn't be gun murders? And if you won't prove, look around the world at countries that don't allow guns. Look at the statistics. You'll be shocked and alarmed at the difference between the death rate with guns in Canada and the United Kingdom, in Australia, in most civilized countries versus the United States. The difference is massive. We're talking about gun deaths that number in less than the hundreds versus gun deaths in the United States. states that are up in the thousands every year. So I don't want to be lecture guy. I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, drag it out. I don't want to, I don't want to do the pros and cons,

because in my, in my mind, there are no more pros and cons. Any argument for guns is an argument for ridiculous. You know, if you're worried about protecting yourself, pick up a canoe paddle take a karate class but uh until until we until we all as a society go you know what we really don't need these guns around um this stuff will keep happening so it's hard it's hard to talk about this because it's like i have to push my opinion on you but it's it's it's this is something that i'm passionate about because of those poor children and earlier in the year we had those poor people in the movie theater and uh you know there's columbine and there's all these school shootings and you know the list and you know we're going to have some more of them in

2013 how many you're going to die in the new year anyone want to lay down a wager as morbid as that sounds it's it's horrible and so as i say here in my somber voice it's it's time to get over all the rhetoric and the excuses and hiding behind various reasoning for having guns. And maybe now it's just time to acknowledge it's, you know what, let's just put them down, put them away. Let's carry on as a society without them. Maybe give that a shot and see how it goes. I think you'd be very, very surprised at how many less people would die, innocent people, children. So a tough one, you know, tough thing to talk about, but it's the holidays and to think that these people lost their kids on top of that during the holidays. And it's a hard one for me

not to talk about because I think it really slapped all of us in the face. And so I wanted to chime in on it. And those are my thoughts. But, you know, I don't want the show to be sad. It's It's just a conversation, food for thought, things to think about. And let's get back to something a little more uplifting. Let's get back to something a little more fun, as I said earlier in the show. I promised you that we would have our favorite Christmas poem, twas the night before Christmas. And I would read it this year, but there's going to be a special,

treat a special gimmick uh to that this year so so let's get into that and we'll say a prayer for those poor children that passed away and move on and uh and try and laugh and uh you know hope that um that uh laughter can bring joy to us to those families to uh maybe those kids if they're listening up there so here we go twas the night before christmas and uh a very special version of it and you're like well why is it a special version and here's why i'm gonna read twas the night before christmas to close out the show but this year i'm gonna do it i'm gonna put some underarm deodorant roll on on my tongue i'm gonna roll on some uh ultra ban underarm deodorant right here on my tongue

and I'll try and, you know, say the poem, classic twas the night before Christmas poem with underarm deodorant all over my tongue. Let me rub it on here. Hang on. Okay.

Here we go. Here we go, everybody. Ready? Let's get started. Here we go. For the night before Christmas, when off of his house, not a reason they're spinning, not even enough. The stocking grew hung by the chin in his hair and hope that same little of us soon to be there.

The tell them were mettle, not smoking their beds, well riddened their silicone plants in the hedge. In many in their cases, an eye in my cap, had just settled down for the long winter's map. When out on the lawn that arose such a clatter, I sprang from the dead, which we got the denada. Away to the window, I threw like a blast, tore open the windows in the sudden and threw up the shaft. The moon blinks of the new fallen snow gave lust of the middle of the middle of all, up of the low. And when at my wandering, I should appear, but a minute to stay and each tiny reindeer.

Now dashing, now dancer. Now planter and licton. On karma, on Cupid, on Dondon and Blitzin. To the top of the part, to the top of the wall. Now dash away, dash away. That's the way, I can't do anymore. My mouth has stopped. I can hardly breathe.

I can hardly breathe. Okay, let me do the end of it. Let me just do the end of it, please. He sprang to his stay, for his team gave a whistle. And away they all flew like the down of the stifles. But I heard him explain as he drove. out outside. Have a Christmas show.

And from all the good night. I got to take a break. Roger, I got to take a break. We'll come back. I got to drink of water or something. Yeah, I need some water. Okay. Wow.

Okay, we're back. I had to go get some water and some turpentine and some WB, WD-40. God, my mouth is like a cotton swab right now. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, okay. Well, I hope you liked that version of T'was the night before Christmas.

And, you know, I don't know why I did it with underarm deodorant in my mouth, but I did. So there you go. And there we go. We are at the end of our show here as we come up on Christmas. Our next episode is going to be a flashback show. It'll be episode three, the third Harland Highway ever done, and that's at the request of you guys. Many of you pavement powders have called in and said

the first 42 episodes aren't on the air. We want them. And so I'm slipping them in kind of conveniently here and there as we go along. So episode number three will be the next one. And that's it for today, folks. Don't forget to check out all things comedy. That's the podcast network that my show is on. You also find a bunch of other great comedians on there,

Jake Johansson and Bill Burr Al Magigal and get a lot of good solid comedy news from that site. Also check out my new stand-up comedy special Harlan Williams A Force of Nature will be debuting January 15th on iTunes. You can download it digitally. I'm very excited. This is a special that I shot out in the middle of the desert up on a hill. And it is kooky, man. I think you're going to dig it. You can join me, Harlan Williams at Twitter. The Harlan Highway pavement pounders are congregating at my Facebook page, the official Harlem Williams Facebook page. And don't forget

Harlan Williams.com. for all my tour dates and uh you know video clips and things like that and don't forget my app harland app.com you can get ringtones for your phone crazy uh crazy voices crazy messages all that kind of stuff so uh check it out gang um happy holidays thanks for being here today and uh we will catch you next time. And until that time, Ticken, Talman, bad, da. There's quite a vocabulary.