The Harland Highway - 540 listener MAIL BAG, Harland reads letters from Pavement Pounders

Episode Date: December 26, 2013

Yes, today we read letters from YOU the listeners, always a treat! Also we discuss the bad side effects of winter weather. Happy holidays!!! 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

Hey, hi ho, he, holly, oh, whoa. Okay, I just tried to blend like nine Christmas carols together, and it just sounded like the elephant man with his face stuffed in a toilet. Hey, welcome, everybody. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Here we are in the heart of the season. And, you know, I know we're a day past, but what the hell?

It's just nice to say it. We're still close enough that you can hear it. We still got New Year's coming around the bend. So happy New Year to everybody coming up. And what a show we have for you today. We are going to be talking about the weather, the Christmas weather, the holiday weather, the cold weather, and what it does to our skin.

And then the rest of the show we are dedicating to you. It's the Harland Highway listener mailbag where we go into. to the emails that you guys send me. And I read them out loud and I have to deal with them. And a lot of toughies today, man. There's a lot of crazy emails coming in. But a lot of really cool ones, a lot of interesting ones. We always get a good collection of letters from people.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the funny, the silly, the smart. And we're going to be reading them. Thanks for sending them in. Let's go. Let's read your letters today. on the Harland Highway. Welcome to the Harland Highway. I will look for you.

Does your mother know what you're doing for a living? The Harland Highway. Hey-oh. And there's glasses. I will find you. My mom always said. You can't handle the truth. Many years of therapy.

Many, many, many, fucking years of therapy. I will kill you. lame brain let an expert show you how to do this the harland highway you never know what you're going to get it's the holland highway oh boy oh boy oh boy so so uh hey welcome back from uh the christmas holiday well it's not over yet i mean the christmas part is over um and uh that was yesterday and i by the way i hope you all had a great great christmas uh it's almost sad when it's over it's almost like oh man it seemed like it took so long to get here and now it's gone and no no no mr potter um but hope you had a good one hope you got some tasty treats

some nice presents time with your friends and families always a treat um and uh one of the the things that's weird about now is that it's that dead zone. Now it's like, okay, Christmas ended, and now I got like four or five days to kill till the new year. Um, hello, what do I do? I don't need to buy any more presents. That's done. Um, I can't yell Merry Christmas.

I can't go sing carols. It's like it's done. It's just this dead zone. So you get ready for New Year's. and you know what you can do while you're getting ready for new years and this is horrible but you can scratch yeah that you know what sucks about this time of year there's this cold dry wintery air and it doesn't seem to matter if you're in palm springs or in boston the air just seems to have a real lack of moisture in it.

It's just dry. And what you need to do is you need to understand that whole thing about how, I don't know what the ratio is, but they say there's like half or more of the dust particles floating in the air is human skin. Have you ever heard that? There's a human skin flakes floating in the air. God, Jeffrey Dalmer, you probably love that. When he went to see the doctor, Jeffrey,

I need you to take some deep breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. Why aren't you breathing out, Jeffrey? Because I just swallowed a bunch of human skin, and I'm not letting that stuff go. That tastes really good. In fact, I just, I just, I just, I just breathed in some more, man.

Oh, my God, that is really good. I think, oh, yum, I'm going to breathe in all day. So they say that a huge percentage of the dust floating around in the air is human skin. And I'm like, come on, no, it's not. But then here's what I want you to do. This time you're looking at your skin right now on your forearm, on the back of your hands. And just feel it, touch it, look at it. And don't lie, I bet it's drier than a camel's fart, huh?

And if you really want to test it, this is kind of gross. But put your foot over something dark. Like put your foot on a dark piece of hardwood floor, or put a dark piece of paper under your shoe or your sock or your barefoot, put a black sweater down, anything that's dark, okay? and then roll up your pant leg and just very gently with the nails on your fingers you don't have to dig into your flesh

just gently go up and down and scratch your calf the front of your your calf well I guess the calf is the back isn't it see I don't I didn't I'm not a surgeon the front part where the your shin that's what I meant to say calf shin don't make me late for day start scratching your shin up and down.

Just gently, you know, from just above the ankle to just below the knee. Up and down, up and down, up and down. What happens is it starts to itch more and watch the amount of little tiny skin flakes that fall off. It's like, if you were an ant and you were walking across the floor, you're like, everybody, hold on, there's a blizzard coming. His skin flakes falling like snowflakes. Yeah, and it proves the point. It's got to be that, you know, all that dust in the air is skin.

God. But it just blows that your skin gets so dry this time of air. So what you got to do, and I'm a dude, obviously, I hate to talk like this, but you got to slap on the lotion, man. You got to put on the moisturizing. You got to put on the Juergen skin lotion, man. And dudes aren't used to doing that. What dude out there?

Raise your dry, caked forearm into the air. Raised your dry, scaly arm high into the air, dudes. If you put a moisturizer on your skin. I bet, like, 90% of the guys don't put. moistureizer on their skin or body lotion or whatever it is. But this time of year, you almost got you, man. You turn into that green lizard monster that was fought Spider-Man in the last movie. Oh, God.

Let's do something. I want to clean out our mailbox before we get to the end of the year. So, Roger, let's hit the mailbag theme. and let's spend a big chunk of the show answering your emails today, ladies and nerdle bloggins. Here we go. The Harlan Highway Mailbag. Letters.

Oh, we get letters. We get your letters every day. Mailman, mailman, mail today. Reach right in and pull one out. Those letters. I love those letters. Let's find out what you've got to say. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. There we go. All right. Let's see what we got here. The old Harland Highway mailbag. And by the way, before we get into it, thank you for writing. Love hearing from you, Wildcats. Let's see.

Here's the first one. This comes from Jordan Despins. Despins. don't know how to pronounce it Never do I'm going to get all your names wrong Please forgive You know I have trouble speaking

Enough to begin with Talking Word stuff's saying So here we go This is from Jordan Hey Harlan I'm a huge fan of your acting And I love your stand-up routine Went and seen you in Edmonton this year

At the comic strip You put two onion rings on my friend head and called him onion ring Willie. We couldn't stop laughing at your jokes days after the show. Just wanted to send you this in support of all the things you do, including the Harlan Highway, which I'm a regular listener to. Happy to call you a fellow Canadian, keep on rocking in the free world, your friend Jordan.

How about that? Thank you, Jordan. What a kind and nice email. Wow, you know, it's funny. I do a lot of these stand-up routines. I do my shows, and I forget what I do, whenever I improvise or I make something up on the spot, and the fact that I bent down, picked up someone's onion rings,

and put them on a kid's head, and called them Onion Ring Willie, thank you for that memory, because I totally forgot it and makes me happy to know that Onion Ring Willie is out there in the universe, you know, existing. and doing things. So thank you, Jordan. Let's go to another letter right now. Here we go. All right, let's see.

This is from Alan. Alan writes me, says, Hey, Harlan, Merry Christmas. Well, it just passed, but thank you. Merry Christmas to you. And maybe I'm saying it now for next year. Because I missed, obviously missed this one by a number of days. So thank you, Merry Christmas.

He says, hey, Arlen, Merry Christmas. I was going to say, see if you can get George Michael on the show to sing a Christmas song. Oh, no. No, no, we had that. I hope you heard it. If you didn't hear it, Alan, you better go check out. I think it was like one or two shows before Christmas and good Lord. That guy called in drunk and sang about 10 Christmas songs. God, please don't wish that on me ever again. Oh, what a nightmare that was. Also, I love the podcast and hope your sitcom package deal comes to the states where I can watch it. Well, just so you know, Alan, we're working on that.

Hopefully, package deal will be down here before you know it. And also, is there anywhere I can get your movie Old Days? Thanks a bunch, Harland. Well, thank you, Alan. Yes, my new movie Old Days is available for pre-order. I believe you can go to Amazon or places like that and pre-order old days, or not old days, back in the day. The name changed.

It used to be called old days. They changed it to back in the day. And I think if you pre-order it, you can download it on January 7th, I believe, which is the same day I'm going to be doing Conan O'Brien to promote. it. So make sure you tune into Conan O'Brien on January 7th. We'll be showing a clip of the movie, and it's really funny.

So yeah, check out back in the day. You can pre-order. If you join my Twitter page at Harland Williams, you'll start to see clips and updates and links to where you can pre-order the movie. And then the letter concludes, it says, Thanks a bunch, Harland.

Well, Alan, thank you. I appreciate your support. Please don't wish George Michael on me and the pavement pounders ever again. But outside of that, great, great letter. Let's move on. Here we go into the mailbag. Let me open it up. Okay.

Oh, here we go. This is from Veronica. Veronica's the one that always corrects me. If I didn't have her, I don't know how I'd stay on track. God bless Veronica. She always corrects my little mistake. that I make on the podcast verbally or fact-checking or language-wise or it's it's it's quite hilarious and I love it so here we go this is from Veronica dear Harland the pods are awesome but you recently said dinosaurs came from birds and it probably evolved into a velociraptor get it right nature boy dinosaurs did not come from birds birds. Birds came from dinosaurs.

Oh, boy. Okay. Okay. Holy smokes. Well, it turns out once again, Veronica is right, and yours truly is wrong. And to back up her claim, she included a clip in her email, a YouTube clip. And it's a clip from one of these TED conferences. to TED conferences are where once or twice a year, they fly in some of the most brilliant minds from all over the world, and these guys give speeches and lectures and talks in front of live audiences.

And in this particular clip, Veronica sent me to correct me, she has a very brilliant scientist who's talking about how birds are actually dinosaurs. And what's even more interesting, and I'm going to play this clip for you, it's a little bit long. I'm only playing you a piece of the clip. It's a little bit long, but if you hang in there, I promise you you will be enthralled by this thing. Because it talks about not only how birds are dinosaurs, but this guy also talks about how they are genetically trying to turn a chicken back into. a dinosaur and this guy can explain it better than I can but if you're willing to hang in and listen to

I think it's about a five-minute clip I think at the end of it you'll be pretty mystified and impressed and it's kind of like how they took the wolf and they turned the wolf into all kinds of different breeds of dogs they altered the genetics of a wolf and created thousands of breeds of dogs. Well, this is similar where they're kind of going backwards and messing with the genetics of the chicken to make it appear more like a dinosaur. But like I said, I'll let him explain it better.

Veronica, thank you for the clip. Quite titillating. And here it is, gang. Take a listen to this scientist talking about birds being dinosaurs. Hey everybody, who wants to have better sex? No? Yes? Yes. The answer is yes. You always want to have better sex. That's what you want it to be better, not worse. Trust me. And Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about any item

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We have discovered that dinosaur DNA and all DNA just breaks down too fast. We're just not going to be able to do. what they did in Jurassic Park. We're not going to be able to make a dinosaur based on a dinosaur. But birds are dinosaurs. Birds are living dinosaurs. We actually classify them as dinosaurs. We now call them non-avian dinosaurs and avian dinosaurs.

So the non-avian dinosaurs are the big plunky ones that went extinct. Avian dinosaurs are our modern birds. so we don't have to make a dinosaur. So I already have them. I know you're as bad as the sixth graders, right? The sixth graders look at it and they say, no. You can call it, you can call it a dinosaur. But look at the velociraptor.

The velociraptor is cool. The chicken is no. not. So this is our problem, as you can imagine. The chicken is a dinosaur. I mean, it really is. I mean, you can't argue with it because we, you know, we're the classifiers and we classified it that way. But the sixth graders demand it. Fix the chicken. So, so that's what I'm here. to tell you about how we're going to fix a chicken so we have a number of of ways that we actually can fix the chicken because evolution works we actually have some evolutionary tools we'll call them biological modification tools we have selection and we know selection works right

I mean we started out with a wolf-like creature and we end up with a Maltese I mean that's that's that's definitely genetic modification or any of the other funny looking little dogs we also have transgenesis transgenesis is really cool too that's where you take a gene out of one animal and stick it in another one that's how we you know that's how people made glowfish you take a gene a glow gene out of a out of a coral or a jellyfish and you stick it in a zebra fish and they glow. And, you know, that's pretty cool. And they obviously make a lot of money off them. And now they're, you know, they're making glow rabbits and glow all sorts of things. And I guess we could make a glow chicken. But I don't think that'll satisfy the sixth graders either.

But there's another thing. There's what we call atavism activation. And atavism activation is basically an atavism is an ancestral characteristic you've heard that occasionally children are born with tails and it's because it's an ancestral characteristic and so there are a number of atavisms that can happen snakes are occasionally born with legs and here's an example this is a chicken with teeth a fellow by the name of matthew harrisons at the University of Wisconsin and Madison actually figured out a way to stimulate the gene of teeth for teeth. And so was able to actually turn the tooth gene on

and produce teeth in chickens, which, now that's a good characteristic. We can save that one, right? We know we can use that. We can make a chicken with teeth. That's getting closer. That's better than a glowing chicken. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Dr. Hans Larson at McGill University, is actually looking at autivisms, and he's looking at them by looking at the embryogenesis of birds and actually

looking at how they develop. And he's interested in how birds actually lost their tail. He's also interested in the transformation of the arm, the hand, to the wing. He's looking for those genes as well. And I said, well, you know, if you can find those. I can just reverse them and make what I need to make for the sixth graders. And so he agreed. And so that's what we're looking into.

If you look at dinosaur hands, a velociraptor has that cool looking hand with the claws on it. Archaeopteryx, which is a bird, a primitive bird, still has that very primitive hand. But as you can see, the pigeon or a chicken or anything else, like a bird, has kind of a weird-looking hand. because the hand is a wing. But the cool thing is, is that if you look in the embryo, as the embryo is developing, the hand actually looks pretty much like the archaeopteryx hand.

It has the three fingers, the three digits. But a gene turns on that actually fuses those together. And so what we're looking for is that gene. We want to stop that gene from turning on, fusing those hands together, so we can get a chicken that hatches out with a third. three-fingered hand, like the archaeopteryx. And the same goes for the tails. Birds have basically rudimentary tails. And so we know that in embryo, as the animal is developing,

it actually has a relatively long tail. But a gene turns on and resorbs the tail, gets rid of it. So that's the other gene we're looking for. We want to stop that tail from. resorbing. So what we're trying to do really is take our chicken, modify it, and make a chicken osoros. It's a cooler looking chicken. I mean, but it's just the very basics. So that really is what we're doing. And people always say, well, you know, why do that? Why make this thing? What good is it? Well, that's a good question. Actually, I think it's a great way to teach kids about evolutionary biology and developmental biology and all sorts of things.

And quite frankly, I think if Colonel Sanders was to be careful how he worded it, he could actually advertise an extra piece. Anyway When our dino chicken hatches It will be obviously the poster child Or what you might call a poster chick For technology, entertainment, and design Thank you Wow, thank you

Thank you And thank you, and thank you, Veronica. That is pretty heady stuff right there, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if that captivated you or interested you, but, man, that is some pretty amazing and wild stuff. So, Veronica, thank you for that letter. What a wonderful treat. And let's do it.

Let's go to the next letter. Here we go. All right. What is this letter? Here we go. This is from Vince. Vince Benoi. Benoi. I think I'm saying it right again.

Like I said, and Veronica will back me up. I don't know how to speak. Let's see what Vince has to say. Vince, hey, Harlan, what's shaking? First off, I want to say I love the podcast, especially Charles Parsley. Well, who doesn't love Charles Parsley? That guy gets to the nitty-gritty. He goes on to say, I wanted to make a comment.

though, the majority of your commentaries are insightful and I agree with most all of them. However, I notice you take the middle of the road when it comes to focusing on touchy subjects, for example, race or sexuality.

When you make a personal opinion at the end you always say something like, I'm not lumping them all together or I don't dislike Asians when it comes to shark finning. Those who faithfully listen to you know how compassionate you are, and I think you should proudly stand by your convictions, and who gives a shit if retards that can't differentiate between hate or opinion are offended?

Hope I didn't offend you. See how I did the same thing? In brackets. See how I did the same thing? Good point. Keep on making us laugh, you crazy monkey. Well, there's an insightful letter from Vince. Thank you for that letter, Vince.

I won't dispute what you say. Vince is absolutely right. A lot of the times I do kind of put a disclaimer at the end of when I make opinionated comments about race or sexuality or touchy subjects. And here's the reason, Vince, and it sucks. It's kind of a bummer, but let me explain myself. Part of the reason I do it is because I don't want to be a podcast that necessarily pushes my opinions down people's throat. I don't want to be political to one side or the other.

And that may sound a bit flimsy, but hear me out. Now, if you watch Bill Maher, if you watch Bill Maher's show, you know, you watch his show, no matter what he talks about, he's always putting his own opinion on it, and it always leans a certain way. And for the first season or two, I really liked watching Bill Maher, but then I tuned him out because I realized no matter what the story was, no matter who was right or who was wrong,

he couldn't get past his own opinion. And excuse me, he pushed his opinion down the throats of everything, and it turned me off. And then on the other side, you see a guy like maybe Dennis Miller who has his radio show and he's kind of on the more conservative he's more on the Republican side and he kind of pushes his opinion down people's throats

and you know people like Rush Limbaugh and people like that and I figure there's a whole bunch of commentators out there who you know where they stand and so what I wanted to try and do for you guys is not particularly pick aside but be in the middle. middle, not because I don't have beliefs or convictions or I wanted to be flimsy, but I wanted to present topics and arguments and stories and at the end of the day, share my thoughts, but

not force them on you and let you guys decide, okay? And I get it. I get it. Look, I'm a guy that's proud of my opinions. I'm proud of my convictions. I stand by them when I'm talking with friends or whatever. I can get into a heated debate at a dinner party or over coffee. And I don't fluctuate, but I realize when I'm dealing with you guys, it's a wide audience, and I just don't want to be this guy, you know, on the airwaves going, this is what I think, and if you don't believe me, you're an idiot, blah, blah, blah. So I delicately try to find this middle ground for you guys, and I apologize if maybe it's perceived as flimsy or kind of weak, but I'm really not that guy.

I'm just trying to create a middle ground so that my conversation sparked. debate, maybe spark a response, maybe spark some insight without me shoving it down your throat based on everything I believe. But that being said, I do sprinkle in, of course, I have to, my own opinion about things, but I'm trying to do it in a way that doesn't overwhelm you. And maybe that's something I can work on. You're right. Maybe I'll try and, you know, be a lot. a little more assertive and maybe find a way to stand by what I'm saying a little stronger

so that it doesn't appear that I'm afraid to go one way or the other, which again, I'm not, but I'm taking into account all you guys. Now, here's the other part of the equation. And this is sad, and this probably plays into it more than what I just said. I'm a sensitive guy. I like to consider people's feelings. I like to not hurt people. I like to be kind to people and sensitive to people.

And, you know, I do things that are in the public. I speak in the public. I do stand up in the public. I do, you know, I appear on television, all these things. And there's been a couple of instances where I've begin to learn that sometimes people want to hear what they want to hear. No matter what I say, there are groups of people that sometimes want to bend reality or bend the truth because they just want to hear what they want to hear or they're waiting for you to say something where you make a mistake or you say something mean just so they can pounce all over you. And let me give you a couple of examples. A number of years ago I did a segment of Conan where I did a joke that involved the topic of homosexuality.

And believe it or not, I try to cater to all aspects of my audience. And so I wrote a joke about homosexuality in my head going, You know, I don't have any jokes about homosexuality in my joke, and I know homosexuals come to my shows, I've seen them, I've talked to them, I know they're there, I'm going to do a joke that I think they will have fun with, that they would laugh at, that they would find amusing, that if I was homosexual and I was sitting in the crowd with my homosexual partner, I could look at my homosexual partner and go,

he's talking about us, that's funny. Now, the joke was not intended to be harmful or intended to be mean-spirited. It really was a joke designed to cater to the homosexual audience. And I was proud of that. I was happy about that. I was excited to do that because I thought, well, I want to talk about everyone. And that's what I do in my act, you know. So what happened is I did it on Conan, and one guy, one guy in the audience, decided that he thought it was a slam on homosexuals.

He missed the point. He missed that the joke was for him. I mean, it was for everybody, but it was also for the homosexual audience, the homosexual community. And people who know me know I'm not negative towards any type of people. and so this guy decided to all of a sudden start putting he cut an actual video together and he started cutting in clips of celebrities talking about bullying and he just grabbed everything he could off the internet

and then he placed my joke into his little video montage where people like Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres and all these huge celebrities were talking about some distant case where a homosexuals kid got beaten to death just because he was homosexual. And so this guy manipulated my joke and my

segment and he tried to do this whole thing on the internet. And fortunately NBC was smart enough to see what this idiot was up to. And they shut it down. They took all the videos off. And this was, I don't know, this was like

six years ago maybe. And I was like, wow. You know, this one One guy decided to take this thing out of context and totally manipulate it and twist it to meet his own agenda. And so he took something that was, from my perspective, intended to be fun and silly for the gay community. And he twisted into this whole thing where it was like, I don't know if he thought it was hate speech or homophobia or whatever. but he missed the point, and he ran on his own agenda. And so another example of this is I used to do a segment for the Tonight Show

where we would go and it was called Harlem Makes a House Call and we would go and visit ethnic families. I would visit Irish families, Korean families, you know, Chinese families, East Indian families, Ethiopian families, all kinds of families. And what we would do is we'd spend the day, show up at their door. They hadn't met me yet, and we would hang out all day, and we would celebrate their culture. Keywords celebrate their culture, okay? We would go shopping, we would go

through their house, who would meet their relatives, we would talk about their culture, we'd look at pictures. It was a really popular segment on the Tonight Show. I think we did about 10 or 13 of these things. Really fun, and we did one, I think it was, I think it was a Korean family. I can't remember because we did a lot of them. But some guy started writing me really nasty emails calling me a racist and what was your comment about eating dogs and all this and that. And I realized that this guy was just looking for this argument.

And so I went back and I looked at the segment. The whole segment was hilarious. We're celebrating their culture. And at one point in the interview, this dog comes running out. And the dog comes running up to me. And I go, oh, is this your dog? And one of the girls in the family goes, yeah, but we don't eat them. Okay, so she made kind of a racist stereotype joke.

And I rebuffed it. I went, oh, we're not going there or something like that. But this guy didn't want to see that. He started writing me going, oh, what was your joke about eating the dog? and you're a racist and well you got to make fun of my culture and all this stuff and I don't usually get into it I don't usually write back to people like that but I wrote back to him and I said dude you are so off the mark I said you've got to look at it again and realize that we're celebrating your culture we're having fun with it we're exposing people to

your customs and you know blah blah blah and that whole dog thing was something you didn't even listen to it you just heard what you wanted to hear So anyways, the guy actually wrote me back and apologized once he had actually looked at it from the right perspective and he realized how wrong he was and how he was jumping to conclusions and how he was trying to twist things because that's what he wanted to hear. So I was glad I wrote to him and I was glad that he kind of got the fog out of his eyes. So anyways, I know this is going a long time, but in the position I'm. in and a lot of people who do this you know it's like you have to be careful because people people take stuff out of context and think you're trying to be mean and cruel and attacking them and it couldn't be farther from the truth they don't look at who you are as a person they don't

look at your whole body of work at what you've done of what you've said and so you got a lot of a lot of cruel, mean people out there who try to twist your words and twist your intentions and things like that. So in conclusion, I've become very sensitive to that. And so I try to make sure that if I target an ethnicity or a group or whatever, if I have something to say about it, I make it clear that, you know what, that's my opinion, but I'm also compassionate. I'm not a hater. I don't hate this group of people or whatever. Unless it's like a group of murderers or, you know, people that slaughter, like, you know,

hit seals in the head with baseball bats. Yeah, I hate those people. So I hope you get a sense of what I'm talking about here and that it's a bit of a dance. And it's not as easy as you think to just speak open. about things when you've got people that want to hurt you for speaking openly about things. So I don't hold back on my opinions, but I do try to put them in a neutral realm where and people can make their own decisions about what I'm saying. Wow, long-winded. This is longer than the lecture the guy gave about the KFC dinosaur turkeys.

So there you guys. go there you go thank you for the letter and uh you know i hope you're not put off by me having to deal with it but that's part of my reality you know that's part of the dance i have to do in doing this and uh i could be like bill mar and just be like up yours and you're an idiot and you know but i don't know i'm just i'm more sensitive to people i'd rather let people form their own opinions than push my opinion down their throat that's it that's all i'm gonna say on that Let's go to another letter. Thank you for that letter, though.

And I hope you'll hang in there and that I, you know, shown a little light on, you know, your concerns. Let's do another letter, though. Come on, gang. What are you nuts? Here we go. Sorry, I didn't mean to say you're nuts. You're not nuts. I'm just kidding.

I'm kidding. All right, what do we got here? Let's see. All right. here we go, Brian Rosenbaum. Here we go. Let's see what he has to say. Have you given the jerky boys a little credit for Aunt Ruthie from Rochester yet?

Ouch. Whoa, whoa. Brian. For those of you that don't know, Aunt Ruthie is a character I do on the show. And Aunt Ruthie is, she's my aunt that calls in on her cell phone and always seems to have problems. and she talks to me, she leaves messages on my answering machine. Many of you love the character.

And reading this letter, it is triggering. And by the way, I know the jerky boys. I'm friends with the jerky boys. I did a movie with the jerky boys called Big Money Hustlers. Great guys. And it never occurred to me that Aunt Ruthie might sound like maybe a couple of voices that the jerky boys do. Because I'm not a guy that likes to rip people off, and I like to consider myself very original and keep things authentic.

But since I read your letter, if I'm being honest, in the back of my head, I can remember listening to the jerky boys. Maybe, I don't know, when did their album come out, 15, 16 years ago? Their crank calls. And as soon as I read your letter, I remember hearing, Okay, he must be referring to one of the jerky boys did a voice where he was, yeah, what are you fucking doing there, dingleberry? Something like that.

I can't even remember it. But I can see where you got the association. But that's as far as I'm going to give you credit for. My voice has just come out spontaneously. And listen, nobody has a patent on a voice that sounds like an old lady from the Bronx or from Jersey or whatever. Now, if you're thinking, I went, oh, that jerky voice is good.

I'm going to copy that. I'm going to steal that. Now, when I came up with my voice for Aunt Ruthie, the concept of a jerky boy's reference being in my head is 0%. You know, I'm not that type of guy that does that kind of thing. So the Aunt Ruthie thing just came out of my head. I think I explained it once. I was leaving a message for a friend one day,

and I just slipped into this voice. And I do a lot of voices, as you know. And somehow I went into this stereotypical kind of Rochester, New York, Jersey-type old lady. And that's just the way she sound. Look, when you've got a man's voice and you try to do a woman's accent, there's only so many fluctuations and variations you can do on that voice. So if I asked you to do an old lady from Jersey, Brian, considering you have a man's voice, I don't know that your interpretation would be that much different from mine or the jerky boys or anyone else.

So, again, I don't know the jerky boys material enough. I didn't sit and listen to it. I probably heard it once when I was, you know, 15 years ago. So I think in a roundabout, way, you're accusing me of ripping off the jerky boys and can't say I like that accusation, but you're entitled to your opinion. But the answer is 100% no. Aunt Ruthie is just a character that came out of me very spontaneously one day, and I liked it.

I remembered it, and I started doing it. So I hope you like Aunt Ruthie. I hope you'll give me credit for creating it myself. And on a similar note, the jerky boys, I think, are hilarious, and like I said, I know them. I'm friends with them, and I'm sure if any of the jerky boys had a problem with it, they would tell me right to my face. So, long live Aunt Ruthie. I'm not going to stop, Brian. I'm not going to stop. Aunt Ruthie is mine.

She lives inside of me. Brian, Aunt Ruthie lives inside of me. I can't get rid of her. Okay, Angel. Brian, little angel I just want to come over to your house Brian and I want to rub my fingers through your hair

I want to put plum sauce on my fingers Brian and I want to rub your hair and make your hair all plummy Brian Rosenbaum as I live and breathe I remember when this little bastard used to throw rocks through my front window son of a bitch whore

this little guy little freckle-faced little fucking whore this guy but I love them to death I'm going to bake some cookies and put them on your forehead, Brian. Okay. There you go.

You just got Aunt Ruthie, dude. I hope you liked it. I certainly did. But thank you. You know, listen, you have a legitimate call. I'm not going to dispute that there's a similarity. But please, give me some credit for, I would never rip anybody off.

That's not my wheelhouse. dude um let's do one more letter thank you for the letter uh brian and uh let's do uh one last letter before we close up the uh harland highway mill bag all right let's see what we got here let's close with a doozy uh let's see okay this is from doug mclaw mcclaude mcleod why can't i say names veronica Doug McLeod Hello Harland I love your sensitivity

Peppered with Absurdity Well I think that last letter Probably exemplified that I don't know whether to stroke my goate In deep thought Or dip it in the pretend bowl of tapioca I keep near me at all times in my mind I digress

I adore your podcasts I walk through Misty Mountain Hoops Listening to them and looking for Jimmy Page One thing I've noticed, and now I can't listen in the same way, this is not a critique, just a friendly observation, A? You have a pattern of adding at least three extra and unnecessary adjectives or definitions or examples to everything you say. Uh-oh, I'm not complaining.

Well, but I haven't noticed it with other podcasters, speakers, humanoids. In general, for example, I might say, I woke up on the subway with no pants last night, and a hooker was asleep with her head on my junk. And you would say, I woke up on the subway or the tube or the cross-town runner with no pants or slacks or adult jumpers on, and a hooker or a lady of the night or a bramble-bushed money honey was asleep and not awake and counting sheep on my junk, and my business, and my whistle of joyful tomb.

Maybe not a great example, but now I can't help but hear your plus twos or threes. Again, not critical or complaining. You are amazing. Love the show. Love the harp behind it. Thanks, man. Love Canada, too. Cheers, Doug.

Wow, I'm getting it from all sides today, ladies and gentlemen. But I'll tell you what I love it. I actually love getting these letters because, you know, I love hearing from you guys. and you're probably not wrong, and it's the way I tweak. It's the way I get feedback from you guys. But, wow, I'm getting nailed today, gang. Holy mailbag.

You know what? You're absolutely right. I think I am guilty of, like, adding extra add-ons to the add-ons. And I don't know. I guess it's just a habit of the way I speak or the way I let this stuff flow out of me, maybe I'll have to watch that or keep an eye on it or observe that.

See, I just did it right there. I just did it. I just did it. Oh, my God. Oh, sweet Lord. Oh, baby Jesus. See, I just did it again. I just did it again right there. It is a weird pattern. You're absolutely right. Maybe I wasn't aware of it, or maybe I just like to add stuff because it's kind of fun for me.

You know, it's like, you know, I went to the store. I bought a flat screen TV, you know, the skinny tube, the flatsy. It's like I think I get excited about talking to stuff and I don't want it to end. So I'll ramble on and add two more words of the same thing. Yeah, maybe it's damn annoying or aggravating. or repetitive. Just did it again right there, ladies and gentlemen. In case you're wondering,

I just did aggravating, repetitive, and annoying, but don't tell them. Don't tell them what I did, because I kind of like it. And I'm not going to stop it because I don't care. So anyways, I'm going to keep my eye on that, buddy, friend, pal. Whoops. It is weird.

I don't know if I was a little. aware of it or not. But something to keep my eye on. And again, look, this is what the mailbags for. You can criticize me. You can point things out. You can say nice things. You can say happy things. I like the debate. I like talking to you guys about it. I like hearing your observations about what I'm doing because a lot of this stuff, maybe I'm not picking up on it or I don't know that I'm saying it or doing it. And it's your forum. The mailbag is your form. You get to say what you want and ask what you want and uh i just have to deal with it man i signed up for this to ride down this highway and so did you and so we got to ride down it together and pick my face

whatever that means um so we're going to end on that one we went a little long today but i think it was kind of an interesting uh mailbag today um feel free to keep your letters coming gang uh you know the address uh you know the address uh you If you go to Harlan Williams.com, you can send your emails through my website. There's a forum there. If you go to Harlanwiams.com, you can just click on or you can, you know, you can always call me if you don't want to leave a, if you're not good at typing, you can always leave a voicemail at 323-739, 43330. That's always doable, ladies and gurgle nargans. And, yeah, I love to hear from you guys.

So that's it. Let's do a few announcements before we go here. Let's get some info, important info out there for you guys. By the way, I just want to say, I hope you had a great Christmas. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Day holiday. I hope your holidays are going great. Looking forward to the new year. We'll be doing the New Year's show on Monday.

And it's a great time of year. So thanks again, everybody, for being part of it. And I love being here with you guys. The Pavement Pounders. If you want to see me live, my first show of 2014, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be in Orlando, Florida at the Orlando Improv. That's happening January 2nd through January 5th. uh that is going to be a lot of fun and then if you want to see yours truly on conan o'brien again

uh look for me on uh january 7th i'm going to be promoting as i said my new movie back in the day it's going to be a lot of fun and then uh if you're in uh if you're in the west coast in uh california i'm going to be at the irvine improv january uh 9 to 12 uh get your tickets you can get your tickets for all these shows at harlem williams.com. Remember to listen to All Things Comedy, all things comedy.com, where my podcast is also featured. It's a great podcast network with Bill Burr and Al Magigal and Jake Johansson, some really funny comedians on there as well. And wishing you all the best in the new year, gang.

And that's it. We are closing up. Let's close up the mailbag. I probably should have closed it up before I did all these announcements, but let's close up the Harland Highway mailbag. Happy New Year to everybody. And don't forget, chicken. Chalmayne, baby.

Roger, close up the mailbag. Another letter from our last year day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.