The Harland Highway - 697 - Harland survives BURNING MAN. A present from Daddy.

Episode Date: September 14, 2015

Harland recounts his BURNING MAN Festival experience. Harland's father leaves an annoying gift. Burn your urn!!! 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

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, we're back. Yes, we're back on the Harland Highway. No more flashback shows. Although I hope you enjoyed the flashback shows. They are fun. But now we got some freshies. Oh, we've got some freshies. Oh, oh.

I am Harland, Williams. This is the Harland Highway as we head into the fall. And on today's show, I'm going to tell you about how I rounded out the end of my... I still got dust in my throat. I rounded out at the end of my summer that Burning Man out in the desert and I'm still suffering the effects. I have silt and sand

it blew into my lungs. But a great festival, very unique, very eerie, very surreal, and I'm definitely going to run you through it kind of some of the events I went through some of the things I saw, some of the cool things I experienced. And I'll lay that out for you.

Burning Man, and then we're going to talk about a little gift my father left me. Yeah, my dad left me an unusual little gift at my house when he came to visit many, many years ago, and the gift is still with me, and can you detect I'm a little bit annoyed? Can you detect? I'm a little bit frustrated and upset about the gift. Well, you'll find out why, as we get into the show here. Good to be back. Happy fall. Here we go. This is. The Harland Highway Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce

The Harland Highway I promise you, I will please you all, believe me What is he like? What's he like anyway? Oh, he's an angel. He's an angel strike from nothing. You're going to need a bigger pose. You're listening to Harlan Williams.

Why don't you give me a name and a face and a reason why? Oh man, what do you expect the guy to jiggle-old? man it's over jenny it's over nothing is over you just don't turn it off

you just made a wrong turn onto the harland highway weird it's just plain weird you know what I mean I'm still alive I'll tell you what I won't give you you muckers

I won't give you the satisfaction of saying that I'm sorry welcome to the harland highway oh you get your money's worth believe me Oh, boy. So we're back. I did it. I did it. I did it. I ended my summer off by going to Burning Man. Oh, my God. Da. The Burning Man, a festival. I don't know why I'm saying, ah, after everything. Oh, my God. Okay, so Burning Man, you've all heard of the Burning Man Festival.

It's where 70,000 people truck up to northern Nevada, go into the middle of the desert for a week, and just who knows what? It's kind of like a mystery. Well, let me clear the mystery up. Burning Man is like Mad Max meets Blade Runner, meets, you know, You know, the pleasure island where Pinocchio went when he was a little wooden boy and he turned into a donkey. It's just a, it's a, a fantasy place. It's like, imagine one of your dreams that you have, your weird dreams where everything's disjointed. And you were literally walking around in your own dream for four days.

This is the Burning Man experience. I went in neutral. I thought, ah, is this going to be pretentious? a bunch of artsy fartsy weirdos or is it going to be amazing or is everybody going to be on drugs or is it a bunch of naked hippies and so i went in very neutral i didn't try to put cast any aspersions bring any attachments to the experience and that was the best move because i really ended up loving it um and i would recommend it to anybody put it on your bucket list if you have any sense of an artistic streak inside you.

Get to Burning Man. It really is like an alternate reality. I mean, I've been all over the world, and I've never been to a thing like this. It's kind of nightmarish. It's kind of dreamlike. It's like fantasy. There's a spiritual element to it.

There's a sexual element to it. There's a hippie element to it. There's a drug culture. a freedom culture it's just like i said it's like some kind of weird bizarre carnival and everywhere you look you see something new and stimulating whether it's people in costumes whether it's people walking around naked whether it's it's a statue in the middle of the desert some guys set his tent up like a like an all-night disco rave people skateboarding naked around a car that's 20 feet high that looks like an octopus with flames coming out of it

I mean it just never ends yeah you're there four days five days six days whatever you decide to stay and you're just wandering around in this bizarre artistic surreal landscape and you can you can kind of shut off the real world and you just kind of let yourself get immersed in this this weird this weird culture for however long you want and literally during the day i'd be walking along and i'd stop and go into a tent and see people doing weird yoga i'd take i'd walk another 80 feet and there'd be a giant DJ up on a big riser playing techno music or 80s music and I'd just start dancing in the middle of the sunshine and the desert. Then they have these things called art cars where people, there's like 7,000 vehicles

where they dress them up like dragons and skulls and octopuses and pirate ships and big purple breasts. I mean, you name it, man. One guy was driving around. He made an island full of palm trees. That was driving around. There's a guy that made his car look like a giant pug. You know, the dog, the pug. I mean, it's just never ended.

And you could jump on one of those at any time and drive around. You could walk around. Most people had a bike there, a mountain bike as an option. You could ride your bike around. And it's just constant moving, 70,000 people, and they all set up their little camps and their little tents, and a lot of them are themed. They set up like bars and pubs and nightclubs, and there was an orgy room where people could go if they wanted to participate in an orgy. There was places where you could go get a massage. There's places where you could do nude life drawing.

There was places you could go and get people painting on your bodies. I mean, it just never ended. And daytime was a spectacle because you can see so much. You can see everyone in there. And, you know, nobody dresses normal. Everyone's in weird costumes and outfits. Some people see guys walking around looking like Cher. You see people walking around looking like Mad Max.

I mean, you see people dressed up. You know, most everyone has, like, reflective ski goggles because you're out in the middle of the desert and the wind comes up. You're out on this big flat plane, and the wind comes and, you know, whips up the dust storms and suddenly you can't see 10 feet in front of you.

So you put on these ski goggles, and it looks even more madmacks, and everyone's hair's dusty, and their bikes are dusty, and everything's dusty. And it's kind of cool because the dust kind of washes over everyone and everything, and makes everyone kind of warm,

there's no keeping clean a burning man trust me you you uh you can't get that dust off of you it just keeps coming but it's it's really unique it's what adds to the experience it's what made it very bizarre and surreal you know it'd be a perfectly blue sky then the wind would come up and you couldn't see uh you know 20 feet in front of you and then it would slowly settle down You'd start to see bodies and bicycles and vehicles emerge out of the dust cloud like ghosts. And then 10 minutes later, it'd be clear as day again. But you're still covered with all this dust in your hair and in your pores. It sounds kind of grubby, but it's actually quite charming.

It added to the whole experience. And then, of course, they have the Burning Man, which is really good. cool it's it's symbolic of anything you want it to be uh the burning man is a giant like uh you know i guess it's about a 60 foot tall wooden man they construct this this shape of a human a man out of wood and he just stands right in the middle they put him right in the epicenter of the whole event and everything's kind of built around him in a horseshoe shape and he sits right in the middle of everything and people go out there and get spiritual or whismical or whatever they want to get and they can place whatever meaning or importance they want on the man as they call them

and you can go stand underneath them you can touch them you can pray by them you can do whatever you want and on the second last night they burn the man they light this giant wooden thing on fire and uh it was incredible it's like 70,000 people all kind of slowly move out to the middle of this desert. And they all form a giant circle of humanity around this wooden man. And the drums start pounding and people start standing up and twirling fire around. And it was very tribal and primal. And it reminded me very much of the seating King Kong where they tie the beautiful girl to the front gates of their

fortress in the jungle and they start beating the drums in the middle of the night and we're waiting for King Kong to come through the trees and suddenly he emerges and grabs the girl and burning man was a lot like that you just sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting you know burning men's lit up with neon lights and all of a sudden you know after sitting there for an hour his arms rise up into the air i guess they have them automated somehow they rise up into the air and everybody cheers and then all of a sudden some fireworks starts shooting out of them and like 10 minutes later he just starts to burn they light him on fire and it's like the biggest bonfire you've ever seen in your life and people are just like entranced by this thing some people are crying some Some people are cheering. Some people are, you know, as I said, you put whatever you want onto the man. And I think the idea is to kind of burn away all your baggage and move on. So it can be a very spiritual and moving moment.

But everyone kind of does it communally. And as I said, it's very tribal and weird. They also have a structure they build there. It's almost the size of a giant cathedral. and it's called the temple and this is another big structure they plop right out in the middle of the desert and everyone can visit it at any time

and you can go in there and you can you can leave pictures of loved ones of a dog of a brother, a sister, a lover, a husband, a wife, whatever you want. You can leave anything in there and the idea is to kind of leave your emotional baggage in there and it was a very intense place

I mean, people walked in there. As soon as you walked in, you can feel the powerful emotions of people crying, people sobbing, people celebrating, people in anguish. It was very, very heavy. And people had plastered pictures of their loved ones and deceased people and sick people and their pets and all over the place they'd written on the walls and Sharpie and little notes and messages. and it was very, very moving. And I went in there and I was a little overwhelming

and I got lucky there was a guy in there who was with his girlfriend and he was just sitting there playing the didgerie do, the Australian like windpiece, you know? That old... In fact, I'll play a little clip of it right here. This was me like sitting in this temple or people were getting very emotional all around us,

hundreds of people. and this guy was offering up this real kind of spiritual music that really fit the scenario. So I was just sitting there with these two this guy and his girlfriend. She started chanting. You can hear her chanting.

And some of you're listening to go, oh God, how flaky, how hippy. But it was very spiritual and moving. The did you do is a very haunting. Listen to it. And I was just bobbing my head and enjoying it. People all around me crying and sniffling. And they were just very accepting of this guy who just plopped down and started playing.

And it seemed to fit the mood. As you know, the didgerie do is a very spiritual instrument developed by the Aberystru. original peoples of Australia. So that was really cool. And then on the last night of the Burning Man, they actually burned the temple down. The idea being that everybody's hurt and pain and baggage and everything that they placed in the temple gets burned away

and cleanses them and lets them get over it and move on and start fresh. So that was a very powerful and spiritual element of the Burning Man Festival that I wasn't really privy to. And then when I got there, it was very, very strong. 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.

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item, it could be an adventurous new toy, or anything you desire. Just enter the offer code Harland to check out. That's Harland, H-A-R-L-A-N-D at Adam and Eve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast. So be sure to use this code Harland so you get your discount and 100% free shipping code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. So I ask As I said, just a real carnival of the mind, a real obscure and eclectic place. If you ever want to just step outside of your own reality for a week, this is the place to do it. Like I said, I've been all over the world, and I guess in a way I'm kind of proud to say that this is like an American thing because it really gives people a chance to let down their inhibitions and be free.

And, you know, I'd be walking around and, you know, I'd be walking around with girls with no clothes on. I'd be dancing with naked girls. I'd be, you know, I'm walking by and all of a sudden there's like six guys naked skateboarding. They built a skateboard ramp in the middle of the desert. It was crazy. Just a real freeing environment. And everyone's like, oh, everyone's on mushrooms. and heroin and no no there's there's that there if you want it like there isn't any place

but um you know i wasn't watching people falling down in the street and out of their mindstone you know a lot of people i think if you if you got that way you would kind of miss the event you would be too baked to really absorb the artistry and the magic of the event so uh yes did people get lit up here and there did i see a couple of people like a little over the edge Sure, but in a place filled with 70,000 people, I would say most people were very well behaved and in control of themselves. You know, people enjoying a drink. Some people were high, stoned, whatever, but it wasn't like a, you know, some kind of 1960s opium den where people couldn't even like pronounce their names. It was very functional, very, I'd say more artistic than druggie. And, you know, nighttime was a whole different animal.

Nighttime all of a sudden a place lit up like Fantasy Island. You had neon lights and laser beams and, you know, vehicles blowing fire and fireballs blasting into the air and clothes sticks and flashing lights. I mean, it's really something, man. It was really, really cool, really cool event. So glad I did it. and definitely worth your while to try it out. You know, try and put behind you all the things you've heard about it

that maybe make it seem too out of the box for you and just go in with a neutral attitude and let it be what you want it to be. And basically you've got to be ready to be dirty, you've got to be ready to camp. I took the easy way out. I drove up in a RV. I rented an RV.

So I had my own bathroom, shower, bad, kitchen. But that being said, there was probably an inch layer of dust in the trailer. The dust is so fine. The silt is so fine in this playa, this dusty desert basin that it just, the wind blows it through any little crack no matter where. So even in my sanctuary of my RV. that was just dust on everything. But as I said, that kind of added to the charm, in my opinion.

So there you go. There's my little review of The Burning Man, 2015. And, you know, there's so much more. You know, I mean, I can't even describe it all to you, but that's kind of my overview of it. And a very positive experience. I definitely think about doing it again, taking some friends that I think would appreciate it

and yeah man if you ever decide you want to do it I think you might like it and here's the thing if you don't like it you can drive away it's not like you're locked in a prison for a week if after 24 hours or five hours or two days you're like ah this isn't for me you just drive away but I think you might want to stay

it's quite quite the event so there you go Harland Williams, taking the Harlan Highway straight into Burning Man. And what a freak show. Oh boy. Oh boy. What am I boeing about? I guess it's because, sadly, I have. have to acknowledge that summer is over. Oh, can you believe another summer has gone by, flirtal Nurgans and goblargoblaggans?

What the hell? How does time go by so fast, man? Unbelievable. And as you know, as you faithful listeners, you pavement pounders know, I was away for a lot of the summer. I had to play quite a few flashback episodes to fill my absence. I was in Mexico, I was in Canada, I was in Florida, swimming with manatees, I was at Burning Man. I mean, I moved around a lot this summer, and I was thinking, ah, this summer I'll just take it off. You know, I'll try and just sit at home.

I don't want to fly around and move around. But man, I ended up fishing for bass and pike and diving for scallops and swimming with manatees and going crazy at Burning Man and doing stand-up comedy festivals and all kinds of stuff. Going to Mexico with a bunch of buddies, swimming in the ocean. You know, it's been a crazy one, but it's sad when it's over. Gosh. Another summer. Another summer out of your life.

Another summer of time. I sound like the cowardly lion. The summer's gone. No more tanning butter, even. No more campfires and marshmallow sticks. Wait, is that the cowardly lion or is that Charles Nelson Riley Oh, oh, oh!

Maybe the cowardly lion was his kid. But here's one thing I'm glad is over. Okay? Let me crinkle up this box. See if you can hear this. I'm crinkling up a cardboard box. This is a clean. box. And you tell me if this has happened to you guys. Years ago, years ago, my parents came down to

visit to Los Angeles. They came down from Canada. And my dad's one of these guys who loves boxes of Kleenex. Like, that's his thing. You know, it's like, ever since I was a little kid, a box is a Kleenex in every bathroom my dad was just a Kleenex guy the boxes of Kleenex and it's amazing all the different colors and styles they have for Kleenex okay so when my parents came to visit you know they were I put them in the guestroom nice big comfy bed their own bathroom their own shower all that stuff and my dad either if I know my daddy brought the box of Kleenex with them from Canada, but probably not. But at some point he must have gone out and bought a box of Kleenex.

And this was, I don't know how many years ago. This could be upwards of 10 years ago, maybe six, something big. So, you know, this box of green Kleenex, the ugliest box you've ever seen. And I guess the box stands about five inches tall. maybe four or five inches tall. And so this thing's been sitting in the guest bathroom. And every time I go in there, people go, they take a damn Kleenex.

And so every time I went in there, I go, okay, this thing's been in here for a couple of years. Surely this is the last Kleenex. Oh, well, there's another one. Oh, there's another one. So, you know, I'd go about my life. I'd go on with my business. One day I wander into the guest bathroom.

do a little tinkle. Oh, there's the Kleenex. Oh, blow my nose. That's surely got to be the last... Well, now that's got to be the last... Where the fuck is the last Kleenex? This box has been sitting in my house. It's something I would never buy.

I kind of don't want to throw it away because it's got sentimental value now because my dad bought it. Even though it's annoying as hell. I'm like, well, you know, it's my dad how often is my dad at my house how often does my dad leave a present even though it wasn't really a present he just left it i guess i should keep hold it surely that Kleenex will be gone very very soon no there's another one it's it's like these magicians that have a hanker chip up their sleeve and they just keep pulling them out there's another one

Whist-wist-wist-wist-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-th. Holy crap! This is like the bottomless box of Kleenex. So I take this thing with me to Burning Man. I throw it in the... I go, oh, you know what? It's going to be dusty. I'll use it up at Burning Man.

Where the fuck is the bottom of this clip? Where is the last fucking Kleenex? Holy God. What is this? The 10, 12 years I've had this box of Kleenex? What is this a curse? Is this a joke? Who gave these to my dad, Harry Houdini? So guess what? This morning, and, you know, as you can tell, I'm a little stuffed up because it's hay fever season. I'm a little nasally. And so I brought the Kleenex into my studio where I podcasted.

I thought, well, maybe I'll, guess what, this morning, thank you hay fever. Even though I hate you hay fever, I thank you because guess what? This morning, no more Kleenex. I got the last freaking clean. And this is me, listen, this is me tearing up this damn Kleenex box. It drives me nuts. This big green, stupid. ugly ass

Kleenex box. Dad I love you, but take your damn Kleenex box and stick it where the snot rag don't shine, man. God, I'm still ripping it up. Disgusting. Ugly.

So there you go. If you're going to buy Kleenex, don't people just grab a little stitch of toilet paper now and blow their nose? You really want to ugly, cumbersome box cluttering up your bathroom. Maybe you do. But I recommend you just buy those little tiny pouches, a little disposable pocket-sized Kleeneck packs. Because these Kleenex boxes are like the unwanted guests. They will not go away. Holy God. So there you go. I got a fresh start.

Summer's over. I'm sad, but I'm also glad that the Kleenex is over. and I can just move forward into my fall and not have to deal with it and look at this, now I'm getting emotional and I'm getting weepy and now I need a goddamn Kleenex. Great! God!

Oh, for one of those green Kleenexes right now. Really? Just to wipe away the tears. The summer's over tears. If only I had one more green, ugly-ass Kleenex. You were right, Dad You were right

Oh Not Not So there you go Oh Kleenex Don't be such a fucking pussy So anyway

Summer's over I appreciate you guys hanging with the show You know It's rare that I Step away and don't have episodes but, as I said, just such a busy summer. And now we're starting off fresh here in the fall

with all new episodes of the Harlan Highway. And some exciting news. I talked to you earlier. I told you September we would have a new app ready to go. Oh, we are right there at the edge. We're putting the final, final touches on the Harlan Highway app. Hopefully by the next episode, I will be able to tell you all about it how to get it the special features that will be on it um it's exciting so uh hang in there for that

very very soon within the next week or two weeks you are going to know about the harland highway app just for y'all um so that's cool yeah yeah yeah but that's all we have time for today i i used a big part of the show to talk about burning man but uh hopefully it uh It gave you a little insight onto that incredible event. As I said, I had a blast. So we'll leave it there if you want to write me, Harlem Williams.com. Go to the website.

There's a phone number there. If you want to leave me a phone message, 323-739-4330. Or you can just write me an email there. Check out our store while you're there. And if you want to catch me doing stand-up comedy, I'm doing a one-night show. It's kind of my only show this whole September. I'll be at the Melrose Improv.

This is coming Saturday. It'll be September, Saturday, the 19th at 8 o'clock. And it's going to be cool. It's going to be Harland and his friends. I'll be headlining the Melrose Improv on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. Eight o'clock, come on down. Bring your friends, bring your dog, whoever. We'll see you there.

But that's it for now. It's good to be back. Thanks for hanging in there. Summer is over. And let's have some fun as we go into the fall here and have a blast here on the Harland Highway. Keeping it spiritual, keeping it groovy, keeping it didgeridooy. And until next time, chicken, chalmy, baby. Thank you.