The Harland Highway - 577 - BOUNCE HOUSE hell, Death of a famous artist.

Episode Date: May 15, 2014

A bounce house goes crazy. A famous artist we know dies, more nutty crying. Baa baa black Jeep! 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

row row your face gently down your face row your stupid face down your stupid big fat face why why did I do that I don't know sorry I'm apologizing right out of the gate not a good sign but here you are on the Harland Highway with me Harland Williams welcome to the podcast I hope you're doing great so happy you're here We're going to do a little follow-up to something that's been a bit of a running theme, the last number of podcasts. We're going to continue our conversation about crying, not the whole show, just one little segment. We're going to do a follow-up to one of the pavement pounders who said he would cry for us next time he cried. So I'll fill you in on that once we get going here.

Also, a famous artist. has died. A very famous artist, sadly, has passed away, and you'll be surprised to know it's probably someone who had an influence on your life. Maybe his artwork inhabited your nightmares, kept you awake at night, very provocative artists. We're going to talk about his life and his work. And also a very scary yet funny and oddly humorous story about a bounce house that bounced a little too high in the sky. Let's get to bounce and have some fun right here on the Harland Highway. You just made a wrong turn onto 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, Chris Moore. I'm funny how? I mean funny like I'm a clown. I amuse you. Like I took the wrong week, quit drink. I make you laugh. I'm here to fucking amuse you. You're riding down. down the Harland Highway with Harland Williams.

I'd 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 to quit am fit of me. She's got a thought for Samantha thing to sign. Welcome to the Harland Highway.

I get the wrong week, quickness and blue. Well, it happened. A few podcasts ago, Lurtles and Flirtle Blurg. I put out the challenge to one of the pavement pounders. There was a young gentleman, young striking gentleman, statuesque in form, just a fine example of a human being. We had one gentleman that was calling in, and I was talking about crying, and what do men cry at, and do men even cry anymore,

and what makes people cry in their life? And this one gentleman, John, who was obviously very sensitive, was nice enough to share with us his crying stories and revealed to us very intimate details, which makes, he's on my top shelf of cool people for being so forthcoming. He shared details of how easily he cries. His trigger could be anything. A flower. growing a fly landing on a window a cloud changing shape things like this send him off weeping crying buckets of tears and and and uh he said you know movies make him cry having sex makes him cry well he didn't say that but he said crying could be maybe better than sex And I said to him, wow, I'd like to see you chopping an onion during sex and watching a sad movie at the same time. He'd probably dehydrate.

He'd start off as a full-fledged man engaging in intercourse, and at the end, he'd be a raisin with legs. He'd look like one of those California raisins. He'd just be sobbing so profusely, all fluids would drain from his body, and he just, that was pretty good, wasn't it? You want to go again? Let me go suck the swimming pool dry before we go again. Um, and although we've had some laughs and made some goofs, with all due respect to John, because crying's a sensitive area,

you just don't take crying lightly. Respectfully, I said to John, and I warned him, I said, look, we'll probably have a little fun with it. but we'll also respect, you know, the humanity of your emotions and the crying and the sharing and the revealing. I challenged John, I said, hey, man, you know, since you cry so much, I don't think anybody's ever recorded themselves crying and sent it into a podcast before. And I challenged John to, next time he cried, to record it, call the Harland Highway, call our answering machine the numbers on my website harlorn williams.com

and let us hear you cry now i don't want to bait you here he has not cried but he did respond in a letter to the harland highway which you you can write to us at harland williams.com but let's let's take a look at john's letter here yeah that's right his emails made of paper okay let's look at john's letter his email as i crinkle paper for a sound effect it says uh harland so you have challenged me to cry in to the show

yeah i i created a new phase i told them i wanted a cry in. Not a call in, a cry in. He says, so you've challenged me to cry in to the show. Wow, in capital letters. That was pretty funny stuff at the end there with part two of my call. He's referring to, I put some of his phone messages where he was talking about crying on the Harland Highway.

If you go back a couple from here, you can hear them. John says I played the episode for my business partner and one of our employees and they laughed their asses off well that's good they were like

man he is hammering you well again John as you know hammering you I hope it didn't come off as me being you know mean spirited or anything

I was more like having fun with you so I think you got that sense and anything I said about you and your crying was done kind of tongue and cheek and uh like i said i respect a guy who opens up about his crying and then john goes on to say i will be sure to call in i mean cry in next time i cry oh my god i'm so excited you heard it folks he said it i'm going to read it again i will be sure to call in i mean cry in next time i cry oh my god

he says it might be at the end of a good movie happy about my girlfriend or during sex chopping onions oh boy and you got to figure if you're chopping onions during sex where do you do that i i don't want to get too graphic but it i think you might have to do a doggy style and put a chopping board on your girlfriend's back and that's just a little i don't know that that becomes a balancing act that becomes a reality cooking show that becomes a little oj because you're going to have a like a big sharp knife there it's just there's a lot of weird elements happening john when you're chopping onions during sex but hey that's that's your option and then john concludes thanks for making us all laugh at my expense today again with respect of course he says have a great week and have fun

on the road sir until my next cry john and i'm not saying his last name because i don't want people looking him up and finding him on the internet and going hey cry baby john is john is more of a man than the rest of you for opening up about his sensitivity she's shame on the rest of you the rest of you make me cry for not being as open as john how about that right john john oh where is he he's crying in the bathroom so hey man thank you for your letter oh wait thank you for your letter john yeah nice email um and uh we hope you do it man we are all looking forward it it would be a first You would be the first to do it. I hope you don't get cold feet and back away.

And it can't be fake. It's got to be real. Can't make fake tears. You can't act the tears. We don't want that. We want to hear some real solid man crying. Okay, John. And yes, we will play it.

And yes, there will be me having fun with it, but also I will address the reality of it, the sensitivity of it. It will be really cool. We'll just see what happens. So thank you so much, John. And we look forward to your cry-in. Please follow through. And if anyone else wants to call in or cry-in,

the number is at my homepage at harlomwilms.com. It's just an answering machine. so there's never any fear of having to talk to someone or cry to someone. It's just all there. You can take your time. You can, you know, watch the end of a movie, whatever. So thank you, John. Look forward to your cry-in, the first ever in the history of podcasting.

And there you go. Raj, let's keep on motoring here, buddy. Well, what do you know? A ham sandwich. Well, here's a bit of bad news that may make you cry. I don't know, but it's an interesting story about an artist who died, who probably had an impact on your life at some level, and you might not know it, but there's a Swiss artist named H.R. Giger, or Geiger.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name properly. But you're thinking, who the hell is that? Why would I know H.R. Geiger? And I will say to you, have you ever seen any of the alien movies? I'm sure most of you have seen at least one of the alien movies. Those scary, terrifying movies about the crews lost out in space and that crazy alien monster with the claws and the elongated head. And he's got two mouths.

He's got a mouth inside of a mouth that comes out, and he bleeds acid, and he's got that big giant tail with the spike on it. And he looks half-skeletal, half-machine, half-creature from a nightmare. Incredible imagery. And all those alien creatures and kind of the matching design of all the spaceships in the alien movies and the interiors where you see a lot of it looks like twisted metal and bent shapes and a lot of the interior design of these spaceships almost look similar to the exoskeleton of the aliens themselves and so geiger was quite an influential artist in the genre of

spectacular sci-fiish post-modern erotic a lot of his works his paintings had a very erotic theme to them. He would intertwine kind of machinery with sexual imagery. And let me read a little bit about him to you. He passed away Swiss artist H.R. Geiger, who designed the creature in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror classic Alien has died at the age of 74. That's a little young.

I mean, that's a good life, but 74. you want to make it to your 80s, just a little note. He died from injury suffered in a fall, his museum said Tuesday. So he's got his own museum, and he fell and got injured. I wonder if it was one of those, like, you know, those things where you hear about a lot of older people, they fall in their bathtub, or they lose their balance and they fall, or I wonder if he fell out of a window, or I don't know. but that's a sad way to go.

They say that he died in the hospital, and you might know his work. His work's often showing macabre scenes of humans and machines fused into hellish hybrids. Well, that's a much better way to say it than I did. He influenced a generation of movie directors and inspired an enduring fashion for biomechanical tattoos. now this is a quote from the artist himself geiger says my paintings seem to make the strongest impression on people who are well who are crazy

geiger said in a 1979 interview if they like my work they are creative or they are crazy well i don't know about that i mean that's that's his opinion but i i think many people like your work it is it is crazy work but i think that's what makes it so incredible and stimulating. It's unique, it's original, it's, it's, it's, it's intricate. When you look at it, it's not just like looking at a bowl of fruit. There's a lot of intricate design work in Geiger's paintings. Hey, everybody, who wants to have better sex? No, yes, yes. The answer is yes.

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and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. So this guy was born February 5th, 1940 in the southeastern Swiss town of Chur. C-H-U-R.

He trained as an industrial designer because his father insisted that he learned a proper trade. His mother, to whom he showed a lifelong devotion encouraged her son's passage for art despite unconventional obsession with death and sex that found little appreciation

in the 1960s out there in rural Switzerland. The host of one of his early exhibitions was reportedly forced to wipe the spit of disgust neighbors off the gallery window every morning. So I guess his very first exhibition people were so upset or repulsed by his artwork, they spit all over the gallery. That's a good sign.

When you can get such a visceral, emotional reaction from people by hanging your artwork, I think that's good. It lets you know you're doing something. A collection of his early work, Ain Friesen Fjöde and Psychiatur, I don't speak Swiss or German, or it translated a feast for the psychiatrist, used mainly ink and oil, but Geiger soon discovered the airbrush and pioneered his own freehand technique.

He also created sculptures using metal, styrofoam, and plastic. And this goes on and on, but, you know, just a real, a real, you know, iconic artist that probably found his way. into all our lives because we've all enjoyed the movies and who wasn't scared the first time they saw that damn alien when that alien

first made its appearance in the original alien movie it was quite quite striking imagery that I think has stayed with all of us and as a testament to that you know they've done like what seven sequels to alien

So, you know, it's R.I.P. to Geiger. It goes on to say Geiger was pleased that his idea of machines with human skin became a popular motif in body art. And here's another quote from him, The greatest compliment is when people get tattooed with my work, whether it's done well or not, to wear something like that your whole life is the largest compliment someone can pay you as an artist well that's true man um and i can relate to that because uh without taking away from geiger's thunder

i've had a couple of people actually tattoo um drawings that i've done you know i'm a bit of an artist myself and uh i remember i've over the years i've had people come up to me after my shows and go, hey, man, check it out. And they roll up their leg or they roll up their sleeve. And lo and behold, one of my doodles or one of my sketches is there emblazoned into somebody's flesh. And I think I even, I think there's one gentleman who even burned my signature onto his leg. So I can relate to it.

Geiger says it is a huge. compliment it's a little mystifying it's a little freaky but i gotta tell you when someone makes the commitment to burn an image that came from your mind onto their body that's that's almost like marriage that's almost like tying the knot right there um so yeah man it's uh it's a pretty tragic passing there's a guy that contributed some really cool artwork um and if you don't know who he is check him out on the internet check out some of his works uh geiger and uh rip to him i hope he's up in heaven i hope the all the aliens that were killed in his movies are not up in heaven with him can you imagine you get to heaven and the nightmare monster you created is there i mean how

how does a how does that alien go over in heaven i mean you got a lot of people flying around with wings big white fluffy wings and here comes the alien flapping up to you what do you say to that what do you say to that little angel I mean how do you address the alien angel get away from her you bitch who is this my mother is dead Okay, and now here's a story that's probably scarier than bumping into the alien itself or herself or himself, whatever that alien is. This is so scary. It's kind of funny, but tragic. A bunch of kids were playing in a bounce house. You've seen the bounce houses, right?

They're like they look like little tree forts or little, you know, fift. fake houses. They're all made out of rubber and plastic, and they inflate them with air, and the kids go inside, and they jump up and down like crazy, and they bounce. Well, here's a story where some kids went into a bounce house. God love the little tykes, and they started bouncing up and down, and old mother nature decided to whip up a wind and ripped the bounce house right up out of its moorings, and the bounce house flew like 20, 30, 40, 50 feet into the sky and started

dropping kids like a pepper shaker. Kids were falling out of the sky bouncing off of cars and into parking lots and into bushes. Holy smokes. Someone took pictures of this thing flying through the sky. Perfectly sunny day. No clouds. A fluke wind came and lifted the little tikes up into the air. And you know, you know the kids were like, oh my God, look how high we're going. This is the best bounce house ever. And we're still bouncing high. And we, boy, I can see the roof of the houses down below. Are we passing the clouds? And we almost got hit by a jet. just there I mean can you imagine

like kids at first would probably be this has got to be the best feeling in the world we've never bounced this high and then that that elation probably eventually turns to a little bit of like panic

and then fear and then total like petrified like good lord we're bouncing towards the sun we are going to bounce into the sun and be fried alive in this freaky rubber house filled with air so just a terrifying moment for the onlookers and for the kids and stuff like that listen listen to the local news channel tell the story it's it's pretty crazy a small bounce house lifted off the ground while

three children were playing inside it first thing i thought is that that was my sister falling through through the sky. All I saw was arms and legs going. Taylor Seymour's 10-year-old sister was one of the children. She suffered a minor injury to her shoulder. Police say the other children, a five-year-old, and a six-year-old boy were dropped from the bounce house when it reached a height of 15 to 20 feet. It whipped like this, and then it dropped off the first little kid in the middle of the road. Then it came the other way, like passed over my apartment, and it dropped the second one. He hit his head on the back of my car, and then he fell to the ground. Police say the man who owns the Little Tykes brand Bounce House, but is not the father of the injured children, did use plastic stakes to keep it in place, but the stakes were apparently no match for a strong gust of wind.

I actually watched the fellow that put it up, and he staked it, and he did everything correctly. All the kids were having fun until they screamed to me to come down, and I saw that. As the children lay injured in the street and the parking lot, witnesses say the bounce house drifted off 50 feet into the sky before coming to rest on the field. near Oliver Wynch Middle School. It's raining kids. Hallelujah. Raining kids. Hallelujah.

Oh, my God. Is that horrifying? Can you imagine if that was your kid up there? I mean, what do you? On all levels, that's just crazy. If you're a citizen walking your dog and you see a house float by with screaming children in it, you're like, oh my God, is that a house floating by? And then just before you can finish your sentence, kids start falling out and it's like bombs dropping at you.

Rope for your lives. Kids falling from the sky. Oh, my God. And then this thing just kept gaining altitude. It went from like 15 feet to 20 feet. This thing flew up to 50 feet high in the sky. That's a long way, man. that's a long way up i mean you try i try jumping from 10 feet up without a net that that's not

good for your legs or your knees that's that's a big drop 10 feet up is hefty you know that's like climbing up your ladder in your yard and jumping off the top of it well take that up to 15 20 30 40 50 feet oh my god so pretty scary times for those kids uh it sounds like nobody died no one was uh no one was killed thank goodness but holy smokers and you know those kids are just going to be traumatized like big time man okay i mean they're going to never want to go on a ride or go to a theme park they're just going to stay at home i don't want to have fun no i want to stay inside I want to stay inside and watch the shopping network.

I don't want to go outside. No, I don't want to go on the rides and the swings of the Ferris wheel. I don't like it. I don't like it. Yeah, I don't blame you, kid. I'm surprised you'd even be afraid to go home to your house. I don't want to go in the house. Billy, you live there.

I don't want to go inside. House is going to go up in the sky. No, it's not going to go in the sky. Well, the last house I was going up in the sky. You've got a point. you're going to sleep on the front lawn um so there you go it's raining kids hallelujah and uh like i said i'm glad every kid uh survived scary man um well that brings us to the end of the show uh kind of a kooky story but uh i want to uh make a clear up an error here uh for the last little while i've

been telling you guys that the phone number for the Harland Highway, if you want to make a call into the highway, is on my website right on the homepage. And unbeknownst to me, I guess one of my tech guys went in and was fiddling around with my website and removed the phone number. I got an email from one of you pavement pounders going, help me, I can't find the phone number. So I did a little follow-up And I went and looked And sure enough, the phone number For the answering machine,

The Harland Highway Hotline, is not there anymore After I'm telling you it is It's like I got hitting the head of the bouncing house So here it is And like I said, I always love to hear from you guys Leave me messages Maybe you'll get on the show 323-739

4330 Here it comes again the Harland Highway hotline is 323-739, 43330. Please call in and leave your voicemail for me, and it might get on the show. You can talk about anything you want. And you don't talk to anybody. It's just a voicemail. So you don't have to worry about anyone listening to you, sitting there screening.

You don't have to worry about going through a receptionist, anything like that. it's just a voicemail box so uh call in love to hear from you guys and also uh if you do happen to get to my uh my website check out my stand-up comedy schedule i'm going to be in ireland at the cats laugh comedy festival uh at the end of may here um i'm going to be doing some shows in kill kenny at the cats laugh comedy festival haven't been back there for like 10 10 or 11 years, maybe 14 years. So if you're over in Europe and you want to see me do some stand-up in Ireland,

that's the place to go, man. Also, check out my web store. If you want to buy some Harland Highway merchandise, T-shirts, DVDs, artwork, music, you name it, books. It's all there. What else can I tell you? Check out all things comedy, the podcast network where you can also find this particular show. And what else? That's about it. That's all I got.

I'm just wrapping up the end of my sitcom up here in Vancouver. If you're wondering why you haven't heard a lot of my characters lately, it's because I'm podcasting from a remote location where I don't have access to all my tools to do all the work I need to do to make the characters and so on happen. So I will be getting back to that very shortly. So the podcast has taken a little bit of a different turn. It's been more talky and conversational, I should say.

And some of you are probably like, good. I hate those stupid characters. And some of you're like, man, I don't lack when Harlan talks. I just lack the characters. So we're going to get back to a minute. once I get back into my studio. And thanks for your patience. I hope you've been enjoying these other shows.

And that's all we got for today, gang. Keep your letters coming, harlandwilions.com. Like I said, you can phone me 323-739, 433, and leave a voicemail. And that's it, man. Till next time, watch out for aliens and chicken. Chau-Main, baby. Get away from her, you bitch!