The Harland Highway - 553 - the "N" word, what to do when we die, and what's the deal with LOL??

Episode Date: February 10, 2014

Harland has a bad experience with the 'N' word, a guy is buried in the coolest way imaginable, and who the hell came up with LOL!!?? Blippy blabby blue! 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

Holy jumping crayfish. And I don't know why I said that because we're nowhere near a swamp or a river. Why do I not connect the dots? Oh, well, we're going to connect the dots here on today's podcast. I'm Harlan Williams. You are on the Harlan Highway. Great to have you here, gang.

My pavement pounders. Oh, let's give it up for the pavement pounders. We got a wild show today. A real funny story about a guy who got buried. He's dead and buried, but wait to you hear how he got buried. You're not going to believe it. It's amazing. Also, we're going to have a frank discussion about the N-word.

That's right, the N-word. I was exposed. I was showered in the N-word the other night. I went out on the town to some nightclubs, and the music playing, it was like it was raining, N-words all over me, and I was disgusted and appalled, and it really got my hairs up, and I'm going to talk about it during the show, and then let you hear my thoughts about it. Also, L-O-L. Do you know that term L-O-L when you're texting?

We're going to uncover who came up with it and how ridiculous L-O-L is. So N-word, L-O-L, lots of letters, fun. It's the Harland Highway You just made a wrong turn On to the Harland Highway I am out here for you You don't know what it's like to be me Out here for you

It's like I picked the wrong week We're smooth I'm funny how I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you Like I took the wrong week, quit drinking I make you laugh I'm here to fucking amuse you You're riding down the Harland Highway

With Harland Williams I buy that for a dollar What was it we had for dinner tonight? Well, we had a choice. Steak, fish. Yes, yes, I remember. I had lasagna. What do you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny? It's like I picked the wrong week. When I'm fit of me. She's got a thoughtful amount of things I decide.

Welcome to the Harland Highway. Get the wrong week, quit sniff and grue. The Harland Highway. Crazy news story. That's weird. Wow. That's strange stuff. Okay, this first story. is a little crazy, but I got to say I like it.

I kind of think it's cool, okay? It deals with death and dying, and, you know, when you die, you got like two choices. They can stick in the ground in a box, laying on your back. Fun. Or they can stick you in a box and shove you in an oven and burn you. Really fun. So either way, it's not. complimentary it's not a tribute to your life in any way you know you ran around for 80 years

doing this and that and this and that and at the end you lay on your back in a box how is that reflective of what you did in life in any way so here's a guy from ohio who was like you know what I'm going to die, you know, it sucks. But I want to go out doing something that I enjoyed, that I love, that I had passion for, that when you think about me, this is who I was, this is a big part of who I was, who I am. And so this guy, are you ready for this, gang? This guy got buried sitting on his motorcycle. Yeah, like a big fat like Harley, you know, with like two seats and the windshield and the little luggage compartment in the back.

Like one of those big ass Harleys you see older guys, you know, going on road trips down the highway. So this was the dying wish in Ohio motorcycle aficionato that he'd be buried astride. I like that word. How many of you buried a stride? A stride is beloved Harley Davidson. Oh, yeah. I don't want to be buried laying down. I want to be buried astride, man.

What does that even mean? I don't know. It's, look, who cares? It's better than laying down in a box. I want to astride me. Eric astride me. Chips me on my motorcycle. you don't hear that word a lot so the family fulfilled his wish they said it it wasn't easy

this guy uh billy stanley's and i guess appropriately his name last name is the word stand in it wouldn't that be funny of his name was billy astride stanley's pretty close though i mean because this guy's not laying down billy stanley's body was prepped by five and bombers or let's just call them what they are, taxidermists, taxidermists, you know, whatever the word is. They're stuffing you. So these five embalmers prepared Stanley's body with a metal back brace and straps. He was affixed to the top of his bike. There's another one.

How many people die and get astrided and affixen? I mean, this guy's already two big lumps ahead of the rest of us. 99.9% of us lay down on the back. This guy got a fixed and a strided. So he was fixed on top of his motorcycle, which was a 1967 electric glide cruiser, a Harley, a big hog, which was then placed inside a big plexiglass

casket he had a box that he kept in his garage for years for like five years I guess he was getting ready for it and so what they did is they they stuffed them and they put braces

and ropes or whatever and he's like It's like one of Madam Two Sads wax museum pieces. This guy, if you can see the picture, he's sitting in this big glass case on top of his motorcycle with his helmet on and his leathers and his gloves. I mean, he looks like a museum piece. You know when you go to the museum, the science museum or the natural history museum, and they've got display cases where, you know, there's a band. standing in the forest with a wolf and then there's a couple of polar bears and a muscocks and there's a lion with a little bird sitting on its ear.

They're all stuffed and prepared and you can look in. It's like a frozen zoo. Well, that's what this guy looks like, except he's on his motorcycle. In fact, he looks a lot like me from that scene I did in Dumb and Dumber, the motorcycle cop. It's a little creepy now that I look at it a bit more. That could be me. so they put him in this big green box with plexiglass and there he is and apparently had to buy additional burial plots you know so they could you know give him a double wide hole in the ground um and uh they could lower the guy in

um and it turns out he'd been planning this thing for years and sadly the poor guy died of lung cancer but he lived to be 82 years old. So there you go. Billy Stanley, ride on up into heaven. Well, everyone else is walking up the stairway to heaven. Step aside, Angels. Billy's riding up. Straight into the pearly gates, man.

But don't get going too fast, Billy. You don't want to, like, jump right off the end and go over it and then come all the way back down and crash into hell or something. So maybe a sign that we should all get a little more creative. I did a bit, I did a podcast, I don't know, a while back where I talked about, why don't human beings get taxidermied? It's like people when their dogs die, their cats die,

they taxidermium, and they have like a real-life replication of their pet and I'm like is it that morbid that we would do it to our loved ones is it worse that we wrap them up in their best suit

and put them in the ground and just let them rot isn't it horrible that we stuff them in a box and put them in a flaming oven I don't know I'd rather have like a viewing area like people are allowed to have like, you know, a separate garage or like these storage lockers.

You know these giant storage lockers? They should make ones that are storage lockers only for the dead. And you can set up a little shrine because I don't think you want your dead loved ones in the house unless you're Jeffrey Dahmer and, you know, you can eat one while you're watching the Super Bowl. You know, most of us sit there and eat a bowl of chips. Dalmer would have his like uncle and his mother there and oh there's what a great game snaps a finger off you know he's eating fingers and toes like chicken wings you know grabs an ear dips it into the guacamole scoops it you know no we don't want we don't want the deadies in the house

but you start these storage locker facilities and they're not as industrial looking as the ones we have with the orange doors and you shove your old couch and your lawnmower in there. These would look a lot more tactful. And basically, you have this room, you know, a small room or a big room, whatever you can afford. And you set it up almost like a set on a soundstage for a sitcom or something. Maybe you have the living room. You have the furniture from your old living room or the bedroom or the kitchen. and you set it up, and you put your loved ones,

you put dad in his favorite chair, you put mom, maybe she loved to make soup, she's standing over the oven, stirring. Um, you know, there's your, your hippie brothers laying on the couch with a duby in his mouth. What's up, man, I'm dead. Like I'm dead, Scoob. Ruh-oh.

Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I don't know it'd be like a giant dollhouse with your dead family too soon that just went quiet there

I don't know you could go and visit them and you could look at them and you could I don't know it's like when they're dead in the ground it's over they're forgotten you don't really commune

with the dead when they're you stand over their cold gravestone and you know that the inside their coffin is like meat soup and bone and insects and maggots and ugh but how about you walk into a nice warm like locker facility or whatever you call it and you've got the possessions and the belongings of your loved one it kind of smells like home because you know you've got their their clothing and then their their furniture and I don't know they could be wearing their favorite outfit

they could be wearing their jewelry you could probably sit there and talk to them okay is this getting too weird I mean people would probably do it think about if this was real I bet you'd go in you know when you pray when you pray for the dead you're kind of

talking about them or to them you're like dear Lord please please be good to my father he was such a good man and Daddy, if you're listening, I just want you to know that I'm still out here in the world trying to do good. You know what I mean?

You're talking to nothing. I mean, you're talking to God or the spirit or the energy or the spirit of your family member, but what's the difference if you're sitting at your old kitchen table and there's your mother perpetually frozen at the end, you know, or fork in the air with roast beef halfway to her open mouth frozen. just frozen that beef's been in mid-air halfway to her mouth for eight years

and you just sit at the other end of the table and you're you know mom I really miss you it's so good to see you I hope you're doing good up there in heaven it's so oh you know I don't know maybe it's too creepy but maybe it isn't I think the whole concept of graveyards and stuffing people in boxes is creepy Can it be any creepier to do what I'm suggesting? I think you'd maybe connect with it more. I don't know. I guess the problem is you just know

you'd get the wacky guys that would turn into Norman Bates and start dressing up and start, who knows if they'd start doing weird things to the corpses. And, you know, my sister there looks a lot like a blow-up doll. and I am in this closed-off locker room. I mean, there's too many creeps in the world. Maybe it won't work. But maybe it would work.

I don't know. But anyways, kudos to this guy for being a stride and a fixed instead of taking it like a chump and laying on his back, going to heaven. Who is this? My mother is dead. The Harland Highway, question of the day. Okay, this is a good one.

And, God, I think I know the answer, but who the hell came up with when you text L-O-L, which is abbreviation for laugh out loud? I mean, I get L-O-L on all. almost every second text, I get from people. L.O.L. Hey, I'm going to the store. I saw an old lady with a wig on.

L.O.L. I mean, come on, man. I mean, here's one I got a few weeks ago that makes no sense. Okay? This is from a girl. Won't name her. And at the end of her text, she goes, okay, have a great super.

Bowl L-O-L-O-L. So if I'm to translate that into real-world talk and speech and sounds, basically it would sound like this. Okay, have a great Super Bowl. Like, isn't that laughing out loud? It makes no sense. It's killing me, man I just can't take it anymore

It's like it's like who the hell came up with the LOL thing It's just and everyone uses the hell out of it man I just I just don't know if I've ever heard that before Here's one where I got kind of a kind of a kind of a sexy text from a girl. I'm not going to name her. And her line is, uh, okay. Now I'm hot all over. L.O.L. So if I'm to take that into the real world, you got to assume if you're saying something sexy like that, you've probably got a sexy demeanor. You're in a sexy mood. You probably have a sexy voice. So here's what I'm hot all over. L.O.L would sound like.

Oh, I'm hot all over. Mm. Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, okay, it just doesn't work. Stop it. And you got to wonder who came up with it. It can't be anyone sane. Here's one I wrote to a friend who was driving and thought they had a flat tire.

And I said, oh, I hope you didn't hit a moose, you need help. And the response was, I don't know. Hello, L, in capitals. So you're in distress, you're driving, you might have a flat tire. I'm going to come and assist you. Do you need some help? Well, I don't know. Well, I don't know if I need help.

I've got a flat tire at the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night. Good. Lord, and it just goes on and on. But what happened, where this originated, I think it came from, we all have that nutty aunt or that nutty relative who laughs at everything loudly, who talks loudly. It could be like, you know, your mother's talk to them. It's like, oh, I went into town today and I picked up some new towels for the bathroom. Oh, my God.

God, those towels are so fun, aren't they? I bought some new towels once. They were really nice. I got them on sale. You know, that horse laugh, that piercing grating, everyone can hear that laugh sweeping up the Grand Canyon. Across the ocean and over the Taj Mahal. Yeah, that's who came up with LOL.

Laugh out loud because they, that nutty aunt, that crazy aunt who laughs so much and laughs at the wrong time and the wrong place and laughs too loud. That's your nut, L-O-L. Okay, that's probably who first wrote it. L-O-L. She was like talking about going to church. I'm going to church with the girls in half an hour. Oh! Hey, everybody.

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your back out. That's just that's where it's from. So everyone else knock it up. You're not laughing out loud. What are you? What if you're sitting in a church or you're at a restaurant or you're texting me from a crowded bus. Are you telling me you're laughing out loud? People would look at you like you're a crazy, nutty ant. So stop it. I'm okay with the emoticon or whatever those things are called. They're like Japanese robots.

I am a modicon. I am here to destroy you. Beal-le-le-pe-be-pe-peep. I can handle the smiling face because that's quite. it. That's like, okay, you're smiling. I appreciate that. I said something. I texted you. It gave you a warm, fuzzy feeling.

You're amused. You're happy to hear from me. Smile. Smile. Real easy. Buable. Doable. Good stuff. Okay?

The LOL. Save it for Aunt Hazel. Save it for Aunt Florence. Save it for Aunt. Barbara, whoever, just leave the L-O-Ling up to them and get back to the real world of texting? Oh. Okay. Well, I tried.

Okay. Okay. I personally find not funny. This is not L-O-L. Okay? And again, this comes down to expressing words with just a letter. And how about this one? The N-word.

How about that one? I find nothing L-O-L about the N. Okay. And let me tell you what happened. I went out to a little place last night. I don't go out to the class. very often. It's not my deal. But a buddy of mine, it was a Saturday night, and he's like, hey, man, heading out to this

club, you know, we'll go have a beer, you know, just stand around, have a laugh. And I'm like, yeah, I love hanging out with this buddy of mine. So I'm like, for sure, man. I had nothing going on. I was chilling out. Hadn't been out on the town for a long time. I was like, yeah, man. So I go to one of these hot Hollywood nightclubs, okay? And we stop at this other one first to get like a little beer. Before we go to the big one, we stop at a little one. It was more like a restaurant that had a little dance floor. It wasn't very loud.

But we're standing there having a beer. We're all in there about maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes, having a beer. And these rock videos are playing. And it's African-American guys, and they're dressed up with the typical, you know, the grills and the braided hair and, you know, just looking like tough guys and gangsters. And I'm like, I got nothing against that. Whoopi-do. It's a fashion statement. But their songs repulsed me.

Their songs were, in my opinion, just vile. and in the songs they kept repeating the N-word over and over and it just like it repulsed me right to the core right to the bone it made me feel sick and I'm like

look we know through history that that word is a vile word it's a derogatory cruel word against a race of people and no one's allowed to use it. But yet somehow a fraction of the black community has found it endearing and cool

and somehow to their benefit to use it. And I'm just like, why are you doing it? So then we go to the next club, the big club, And I'm going to tell you what, it was probably 95% white people, okay? And this is the middle of Hollywood. There were black people there, mostly white people. I was looking around. You know, I like to stand around.

I really love to observe people. I love to people watch. I don't really go to dance. I used to when I was younger, but now I'd really get off on just watching behavior and stuff. And so it's a lot of young people, a lot of young girls, a lot of young dudes. and a real mixed crowd of ages and stuff, but leading more to, like, I'd say, like, 21 to, you know, 30 crowd. And all of a sudden, this music comes on once again,

they got a DJ there, a white DJ, playing these songs, and this is like quadruple. Like, I can't even keep count of how many times I heard the N-word, man. and I see all these like white girls and tight dresses and these white dudes with long hair they look like they just crawled out of Black Sabbath's tour bus and you know all they're all freaking posing and they're all throwing their hands up and throwing signals and you know that thing where you're going to put your hand in the air and pump to the music and you got like three fingers out and you're you're acting like for lack of a bad

better term like black like you're trying to kind of emulate kind of some of the natural ways that that the African American folks like kind of dance and find their rhythm so you're trying to like kind of copy that stuff and I'm just sitting here going I swear there was one song playing where I think 85% of the lyrics was just the N word and I'm just sitting here going like, why? Why, why are they doing it? Why, why bring that word up? And you're a black person yourself. Why are you, why are you using that loathsome, lowly word? I don't think there's any excuse where you can go, oh, well, because I'm black, I can use it, or, you know, well, we use it because, you know, it was a derogatory term, and we use it because it shows that we've overcome it,

and we use it as a, you know, a term of adoration towards other black people. It's almost like saying, hey, buddy. And I'm like, get over it. Lose the excuses. Lose the BS. It ain't cool, man. It really made me sick. It's like, what was all the fighting for?

What was the civil rights movement? What was people, good people, white people, and people of other cultures, joining in the civil rights movement, fighting for the black population to crawl out from under that type of stigma and that bold crap and that horrible type of language and everything associated with it.

And you're going to bring it back and flaunt it as an African-American person? You're going to shove that in our faces? You know, I'm insulted as a white person. I wasn't even raised in the, United States. I'm Canadian, and so I was too young to understand the civil rights movement, and I wasn't part of it because I didn't live here, and Canada didn't have slavery. But I'm insulted that you push that word onto us. And I'm even more insulted, you push it onto

yourself, man. Get over it. Stop using it. It's horrible. It's just, I don't know, man, I don't see the upside of it. And what made it more disturbing to me is that the term, the N-word term, is lost on the youth of today. They think of the N-word as no more than a lyric in a song now. It's the same as saying, oh, I got a new low-rider, or I got a, you know, I got a new, some new bling, or I got a purse or I got I got some pumps I got a grill in my teeth

it's like the N word is just another term an ethnic urban term which is a damn shame because there's too much attached to the N word for it to just be thrown off like that am I overthinking this

am I oversensitive am I being like a nerd or a square I don't know I'm just telling you I had a real emotional visceral reaction to hearing this word I was I was so offended by it and I don't like it and so to see these white kids like singing it I could see them like lips they knew these songs these these songs were part of their vernacular they were like they were lip singing and singing out loud and singing the N word and I'm like do you goofy white kids in your frigging Melrose place friggin fashions, even understand the implications and the history, the pain and the suffering behind that word, that a, the world together and the African-American community in particular

drug themselves out from under that word, that they rose up over that word. so that they could be standing side by side with other people with different colored skin than them so that they could be there and not be denigrated and have a term that almost referred to them as like whipped dogs or something. And for those of you that are going, oh, relax, Harlan, you get with it, get with the times, man. Don't be such an old stick in the mud.

Well, let me tell you this. I've always been offended by that word since I was a little kid when I heard people saying it. But here's the scenario. How about this? How would you feel if you're standing around singing that stupid song and yelling the N-word and Martin Luther King walked in the room? Okay? Martin Luther King himself walked in the room and just stood there.

could you imagine his jaw-dropping his skin going pale as he just stood there in disbelief after he gave his life for the civil rights movement to see black people using that word in excess so that white people could dance to it and drink and have fun Can you imagine the ghost of a black man that was hung up by a tree because of the color of his skin, rising up out of the grave and wandering into a club and standing there with the rope burn around his neck,

watching everyone having a good old time with the N-word. Proposterous. You know, you guys that throw it around, maybe I'm an old fogey ma'am out of touch but you guys got to grow up there's a lot you know go find a dictionary there's there's hundreds of thousands of words I think maybe it's time to put that one in the ground and leave it there with all due respect to the black community the black people all over the world

it ain't cool it ain't fun and and don't give me this BS that you're using it because It's part of your culture and you're allowed to use it and you've got a new purpose for it. Making money off of rap records. Making money so you can live in a giant mansion and drive a Lamborghini. If that's your excuse for using that word, shame on you. Shame on you. And I certainly hope black leaders, and I know there's some out there, believe me.

But I hope more black people rise up against this word and just get it abolished. I mean, it's all right to reference it in literature and things like that, where it has a significant historical reference point, and it's used for learning purposes, etc. But as a casual, like, I don't know, slang word in everyday lingo, done and done, thank you. Oh, boy.

All right, that's it. I just, you know, obviously I had an emotional reaction to what I heard and I had to get it out. And I hope people, you know, I don't know if I can, I'm not going to change the world, but I just, my wish is that people would wake up and stop. So there you go. Let me ask you this before I go. If there was a derogatory word that had a stigma for white people, people or Asian people or, and, you know, for most races there is.

You know, for the Japanese, they're referred to as Japs and Chinese have been called chinks and white people have been called honkeys and crackers. And, you know, Mexicans get wetbacks and Polish get Pola. I mean, everyone's got one. But do you hear other races dragging those words out and using them on themselves? Do you hear other races propping those phrases up? Do you hear Chinese people running around going, Yo, man, what's up, my chink?

Yo, chink, come on now. No. I think because they have too much respect for themselves, and they know it's inappropriate and harmful. I don't know. What do you think? Maybe I'm overreacting, but God. I just don't like it, man.

Anyways, enough on that. You know, if you have a comment about it, you know, maybe if you're African-American and you're listening, I'd love to hear your perspective. Because maybe there's something I'm missing. And you're like, whoa, Harlan, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, you're missing. The reason we use the N-word is dot, dot, dot. And if you do give me that phone call, you better back it up real good.

because I ain't buying it already but if for some reason you can convince me and the pavement pounders listening I'll be really surprised but you know again I'm a white person so maybe I'm missing something

but even as a white person it repulses me so if you want to weigh in on this one 323 739 43330 323 739 43330 and you want to leave a comment

or make a note or add to what I've said, I'd love to hear what you guys think. Because sometimes I feel like I'm just, like I said, like this kind of fuddy-duddy guy who's out of touch. I mean, who doesn't say the N-word anymore? I mean, come on, man. My priest said it during sermon the other day. And when all you end, you know, it's like, good Lord.

So give me some feedback on that one. 323-7394330 or you can write me at harlewilms.com and we're going to end the show right there I'm going to leave it with that kind of open-ended question I wonder if you're passionate about it or you couldn't give a crap I think the world my closing thought I think the world would be a better place if that word just stopped being used by people period and so casually so there you go um anyways let's get to some fun announcements be sure to listen to atc all comedy uh that's the podcast network where you can also find my podcast uh jacke johansen bill burr al magical all have podcast there it's a great setup go over and check that out that's atc dot com

um and if you are in uh why am i talking like a vampire all of a sudden me if you You are in Ontario, California, February 13th to the 16th, please come and see me. I will be at the improv in Ontario, California, February 13th to 16th. Haven't been there for a while. It's going to be good. So come out and check that out. And then at the end of February, the 27th through March 1st, you can catch me in San Diego at the American Comedy Company.

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so anything you can do to help hey appreciate it tell your friends about the highway and uh like i said if you want to drop me a phone call leave me a message three two three seven three 49 4330 great to have you here gang um you know keep riding that stairway to heaven and uh until next time chicken chameen baby