The Harland Highway - 859 - AUNT RUTHIE calls in. VINTAGE candy. Hungry SPIDERS

Episode Date: April 10, 2017

Aunt Ruthie calls with scary news about Uncle Harry. Hungry, hungry spiders. Harland eats vintage candy. 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, hey, hey, hey, sports fans. Well, there's not really sports here, but, you know, that's a catchy phrase. But let me redo that. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, podcast fans. Welcome to the Harlan Highway podcast. Great to have you here. My name is Harlan Williams, your host. And thanks for being on visiting the show.

We have a great show today. Aunt Ruthie is calling in. Roger's telling me my Aunt Ruthie from Rochester, New York, has left a message for me. on the on the on the on the on the voicemail so we'll be listening to aunt ruth these message see what she's up to also i'm going to be eating a vintage candy right on the show and there's a reason i'm going to be eating it live on the show because it's it's a very special type of vintage candy from my childhood and you'll see why i need to eat it live on the show uh in a very few short minutes here on the tasty tasty podcast also

crazy news story, man. This has to do with spiders and their appetites. Wait to you find out how much spiders eat. It's going to blow your mind, man. It's going to freak you out. You're going to wonder why spiders aren't all a Jenny Craig, why they're not overweight fatties. I mean, they eat a lot.

Wait, do you hear this crazy news story. So let's do it. This whole podcast is crazy. This is, ladies and gentlemen, the Harland Highway. Sit down, strap in, and tighten your diaper. Come here, baby. You're about to go down the Harlan Highway. No!

I didn't bargain for this. Oh, yes, you did. Chick-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-chall. Oh, maine, baby. And the creature from all the space. Please don't stop. I got to feed an ugly face. This is the Harland Highway.

I hate you. Well, that's the way it goes. What do you say? We get down to business. All right. Let's do it. Let's do it. Do you hear this?

Do you hear this light, gentlemen? See if you ever see these shows on TV? I think they do it on America's funniest home videos sometimes where they'll play a sound and they say, can you guess what this sound is? So I'm going to see if you can, I'll give you like 30 seconds to guess. See if you can guess this sound.

Now, can you guess? I'm shaking something. 10. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four. Did you guess yet? Two, one. No, you didn't. It's pop rocks.

Do any of you remember pop rocks from when you were a kid? Have any of you had pop rocks if you're a kid now? Or even as you're older? Have you had pop rocks? uh well i got my hands on a bag of pop rocks i was um i was at my racquetball class and uh not my class but my league i do i'm in a racquetball league and my coach had some kind of weird type of candy some old kind of candy i forget what it was and it made me think of pop rocks and i told them the story about when i was in high school we had a theater arts

priest, brother Fazaklery, and this guy was really intense about theater. And we'd sit in the portable, and it was dark and stuffy, and we'd all be up against the wall watching this guy going, you've got to believe, people, you've got to believe. And he was so intense, and right around this time when I was in grade 10, pop rocks came out on the scene. And for those of you that don't know what pop rocks are, it's this weird candy that has a chemical reaction to your saliva

and it starts like popping around in your mouth. And so what me and my friends would do is we'd like down a whole bag of this stuff and be in our mouths and we'd smile so that our teeth were grinning. You know, you could see all our teeth

and you could hear the pop rocks smashing against our teeth. And our I remember our theater arts teacher couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from. All he saw were these, these, you know, faithful students sitting there smiling at him. He didn't realize that the pop rocks were banging off the back of our teeth, like they were making all this noise. And man, did we howl? It was one of those stupid things where me and my friends were just, you know, when you're not allowed to laugh, but you laugh?

And we were just like busting up between trying to keep our smiles going and why. Watching his eyes furiously dart around the room, trying to figure out what it was. Oh, my God. So fun. So I told that story to my racquetball coach, Bob. And the next week, he brought me a bag of pop rocks. Tropical Punch artificially flavored popping candy. Tasty explosion, it says.

And then on the back, it says, real popping action. because you don't want that fake-popping action. Listen to this. Entertainment for your whole mouth. Oh, yeah. This is better than going to a movie. And it has the ingredients here. Sugar, lactose, milk, sugar, corn syrup,

artificial flavor, artificial color, blue number one, processed with carbon dioxide. So I guess they injected some kind of hard candy with carbon dioxide, so it's carbonated, nutritional facts, 34 calories, and 2% carbohydrates. That's it, no protein, no stodium, no fat. So this is like a healthy candy, healthy pop rock. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put them in the old mouth, and I'm going to smile into my microphone

and see if I can recreate that hilarious sound that you guys might think this is the most boring segment you've ever done. But, oh, no, you're going to come around once you hear my teeth clacking against the microphone. So here it goes. I'm going to dump a mouthful in, and I won't say anything in the next minute

because I'm going to put my mouth right against a microphone and hopefully you can hear my teeth sizzling and clacking. Here I go. Can you hear it? Hold on. I'm having blastbacks. Oh my God. I hope you can hear it.

Okay, so I'm going to cut in here. I'm still got my other thing playing in the background. but I didn't want you to have to listen to like three minutes of me with pop rocks in my mouth so I added an extra track here so that I could give you some running or listen to that some running pop rock dialogue

but it's so funny because I'm just I'm picturing I'm like I'm like how old was I 8, 17 16 I think maybe I was 15 or 16 and now I'm back in my high school school with my high school buddies i can just picture it we're sitting cross-legged on the floor picture a priest with these these really bright blue eyes and a black turtleneck sweater older guy

probably in his like late 60s almost in his 70s and he's a priest trying to teach theater oh my god oh my god it just got like blue goober all over my microphone gross I got like blue tropical punch pop rocks goober on my microphone great ooh let me wipe it off yuck so I don't know if you can hear that but it's still in there can still hear a few while I'm talking that should that'd be a fun thing to do with a girl on a date right Like, don't, don't tell her, like, just before the first kiss, like, don't tell her what you're up to and just take a little mouthful of pop rocks.

And when your mouth's connect and you open your mouth and she just feels these little explosions going off and it tastes like tropical punch and things are crackling and she'll be like, oh my God, I'm seeing fireworks. Oh, this is the best kiss I've ever had in my life. I'm having some more. The Harland Highway Crazy news story That's weird

That's strange stuff I think you're crazy All right enough about me eating Okay How about this crazy news story But this is something you don't think about Crazy news story Here we go

You think spiders are freaky Are you all freaked out by spiders? You think spiders are freaky? Wait to you hear how much they eat. That's the headline from today's crazy news story. Here we go. All the spiders in the world combined annually eat about 440 to 880 million tons of insects and other pests equal to the weight of more than 85 million elephants, according to a new study.

What? That's a lot of bugs. Holy jumping. Spiders? Let me and let me read that again. Spiders eat enough bugs equal to the weight of more than 85 million elephants in a year. Good Lord. In comparison, all humans combine consume an estimated 440 million tons of meat and fish annually.

Whales feed on 300 to 550 million tons of seed food. Well, the world's total seabird population eats an estimated 77 million tons of fish and other seafood. I had no idea all this. That's a lot of eating on this damn planet. We should just rename planet Earth. Take that off. Just call it Planet Golden Corral. Why are we calling ourselves Earth?

It sounds like we're just one big giant buffet for everything. Most spiders, of which there are some 45,000 species, did you know that? Forty-five-thousin species of spiders found in forest, grasslands, and shrublands, followed by croplands, desert, urban areas, and tundra areas. Lord, tundra, Jesus, bye. And the ravenous appetite keeps countless insect pests in check.

You know, I got to say, before I go on, here is that you know I often see spiders in my house and it's very rare that I kill them because I know they're kind of eating the other bugs that are wandering around in my house and I realize there wouldn't be spiders in my house unless there was a food source for those spiders they're not going to stay there if they can't eat so unless it's a big black crawley spider that I think 's like going from my bed I won't kill it like if I see a spider up in the corner in a web or behind the dresser or you know it's in a web i'm like okay that's its home that's its turf it it's not really going to wander far from the web because the web equals food

the web is a trap for other living bugs so i i don't think the spider's going to travel too far to get out of his own uh his own airspace and lose out on his food source but if there's just a random spider on the wall or near my bad those got to go so here's some more of their story the spiders served to protect plants and trees by eating the bugs that would feed on them especially in forests and grassland areas according to the study quote our calculations let us quantify for the first time on a global scale that spiders are major natural enemies of insects in concert with other insectivorous animals such as ants and birds They help reduce the population densities of insets significantly.

Spiders thus make an essential contribution to maintaining the ecological balance of nature. Or as I like to say, the ecological balance of Golden Corral, which is now the name of our planet. There's Pluto, there's Uranus, there's Jupiter, there's Mars, there's whatever else there is, and then there's Golden Corral. All spiders are carnivorous, feeding predominantly on insects, and to a lesser extent, on other spiders. Larger species of spiders are also known to chow down on frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, birds, and bats. Good Lord. How big are these spiders? Uh, yeah, listen, baby, can you grab the camera? There's a, there's a spider eating an ostrich in our backyard. And I'd like to get a YouTube video of that.

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and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. It's hard to estimate the number of spiders in the world. A British scientist speculated in 1947 that there are about 2.2 trillion spiders in England and Wales alone. Wow. That's just in England and Wales.

And that's a tiny little country and there's 2.2 trillion? Why don't they just take over, man? One day we're all going to wake up in webs. Sometimes just being a spider is scary enough to insects. In recent years, research have shown spiders not only eat bugs, they can also intimidate them to the point

where insects eat less in the presence of spiders. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be eating less. If I'm at the Golden Corral and I've got a big plate of food and there's a big fat guy over at Table 7 staring at me

licking his lips and he looks like he's going to eat me because he's already finished with the buffet. I'm probably going to dine and dash. I don't want to be cannibalized by Johnny Jellybelly at Table 12. Of course, spiders are just part of the food chain and are frequently eaten themselves. That's fair.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 predators feed exclusively on spiders. Well, spiders are also an important part of the diet of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 bird species. Aha! So eat away, spiders, lest you get eaten. Research has been studying spiders for 40 years. And they quote, say, we hope that these estimates and their significant magnitude raise public awareness and increase the level of appreciation for the important global role of spiders in terrestrial food webs. Yes, how about you ladies and gurgle norgans?

Do you, uh, do you treat spiders with respect? Are you spider killers? Are you like me? Will you, will you let them fly, pardon the pun? Will you let a spider off the hook? If it's, if you know it's not going to crawl across your face in bed. So there you go. A little, uh, little creepy, uh, little news for you there.

Um, save the spiders. Be nice because you kill the spider, then suddenly you got to deal with the, the mosquitoes and the ants, and then, then, and then, the, the, the mayflies and the jubugs and the deer flies and the deer flies and everything else. So, next time you see a spider, give it a great big kiss. Oh, it's lovely. It's just lovely. What you're talking about, doctor? I didn't win. I lost. What you're talking about dead? Okay, Rodge, what are we doing next here? Hmm?

Aunt Ruthie. Oh, she left another message. Do we have to play your messages? They're just always, I just always feel bad for her at the end. All right, Roger's giving me that stare through the glass. All right, play it, play it. Here we go. Another voicemail from my Aunt Ruthie who calls the show and leaves me message.

and I don't know what this one's about. So just let it rip, Rodge. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Hello. Hello. Oh, my God. I never know how the... There's something on here.

Hello, is there? Hello, Angel. It's your Aunt Ruthie calling from Rochester, New York. Oh, my God. I'm so happy that the winter's already over because my, you know, I get my arthritis and my joints get swollen up, and I look like the elephant man just got run over by a snowblower. You know, my knuckles are all folded up.

I look like a gorilla in the mist. I mean, you know, it's as if waiting for Diane Fawsey to come out of the woodwork and, you know, wax my eyebrows is something, Angel. And, you know, my knees are all buckled in. I walk like a crab that just had jellyfish sex. You know, the Caspian Sea, for God's sakes. But anyways, that's not why I'm calling, Angel. First of all, I miss you.

Your Uncle Harry and I are always thinking about you, Angel. I know you're down there in Hollywood doing your movies and your commercials and your televisions and keeping busy. Oh, we miss you so much. Anyways, I wanted to let you know before you heard it through the grapevine because you know how everyone in the family likes to chirp, like little birds with their beady fucking eyes, you know, bulging out of their heads.

Well, your uncle Harry was in the hospital for a quick little spell, Angel. Nothing serious. Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. You know, your uncle Harry choked and got food poisoning. What happened is, as you know, Angel, for many, many years, your aunt Ruthie.

Oh, I hate talking about this. I've had the psoriasis. You know, I had the bad psoriasis. where my skin gets all dry and flaky and little patches. It looks like, you know, it looks like I've got band-aids on my legs that are made out of, you know, human mucus membranes or something for God's sake. So, you know, I don't like to flush my psoriasis scabs down the toilet

because they'll clog it up. And, you know, I don't want to put them in the sink. So, well, I keep a baggie beside my bed, you know, when my psorias scabs get hard and crunchy and I can't take them anymore, I slowly peel them off, and I put them in this bag beside my bed, you know, so usually I can wait until it's full before I throw it out, because, you know, they're always talking about recycling, you know. If you don't recycle, the planet's going to blow up, like, you know,

Doris Day's last hairdo or something, you know. So all of a sudden I was sitting there. there watching TV with your Uncle Harry the other night. We were watching Bonanza. You know, he likes to watch the Cowboy Westerns for some reason, you know, and I noticed Harry crunching away

on some chips, and I'm like, I don't remember buying any chips at the store, and Harry's just, you know, crunching away like a fucking Brazilian sea turtle at a, all you can eat to fucking French fry

fuckstick convention, you know. He's just chomping away, you know, smacking his lips, licking his fingers, you know, and I'm like, God damn it, I want some goddamn chips. I go, Harry, when did you buy the chips? And he's, you know, Harry just waves me off, like, shut up, woman. I'm trying to watch my, you know, my westerns. And so I just sit there watching the westerns, and all I can hear is hair like, you know, he sounds like a Galapagos tortoise eating his way through a gloat. at the shelf station, for God's sake. So finally, I said, Harry, where did you get those potato chips? And he goes, I found them beside your bed. And I said, beside my bed.

I don't keep potato chips beside my bed. And then all of a sudden I grabbed my right tit. Well, because that's because my heart's underneath my right tit. So I was grabbing my heart, of course, little angel. But I had to get to my heart. I had to grab my old crony right wrinkle. tit, you know. It kind of felt like a cup of pudding or something.

It's really mushy. Next time you're around, I'll let you squeeze it. But anyways, I realized, oh, my God, Harry, the dumb shit, he's eating my bag of psoriases scabs. And he's just chomping away, and I go, Harry, stop, stop eating. And he's like, shut up, woman, I'm watching my westerns. And I'm just sitting there, Harry, please, stop eating those on potato chips. And he goes, what do you mean to not potato chips?

They said, you're eating a bag of my psoriasis scabs, you dumb fuck. And all of a sudden, Harry's eyes go wider than the glory hole at the BP station down the street. And he said, what did you say? I said, you're eating all my psoriasis scabs from the bag. I keep beside my bed. And, you know, there's 50 or 60 of them in there. They're real winners. And he's like, oh, my God, I thought these were salt and vinegar potato chips.

I said, well, they're not. Surprise, Harry, you might have asked me before you grab the bag beside my bed. So Harry, you know, he grabbed his stomach and his skinton's green. I mean, he looks like Sigmund the Sea Monster just, you know, came out of Shrek's swampy little asshole, for Christ's sake. And I'm like, are you okay, Harry? And he goes, get me to the hospital woman. If I'm going to puke up my complete stomach, all my intestines, my colon, My spleen, my kidney.

I mean, this man was about to, you know, puke like he was having a backwards, you know, I don't even want to say it. Oh, my goodness, little angel. So anyways, I rushed your uncle Harry to the hospital, and they started to pump his stomach, of course. And, you know, my psoriasis flakes are very hardy. They're crunchy and they're thick, and they've got texture. And I guess one of them got stuck in the end of the vacuum, of course. now, you know, the vacuum backs up and starts smoking, and Uncle Harry's coughing, and he's got psoriasis flakes in his stomach, and he's cussing up a sailor storm, you know, fuck shit,

fuck shit, I don't even like to say it. I don't, you swear, a little angel? I'll never forget the time, Angel. I'll never forget the time when you were playing in your sandbox with your little friends, and you had a hammer in there. Do you remember this? You were about five or six years old, your little freckled face, and one of your little friends, I think it was Bobby Knoxworth from across the street. He smashed your hand with the hammer, and you started cussing like a sailor that just walked out of a Korean whorehouse backwards. I mean, you were like, fuck shit, damn it, fuck. And I'm sorry, Angel, I shouldn't say these things over the message machine, but and your uncle Harry came flying out of the house and grabbed you by the ear. Do you remember that? And

you were screaming like a little school girl who put a foot in a bear trap and chewed her own fucking schoolgirl leg off, for Christ's sake. Oh, you're so sweet. But anyways, Angel, I just want you to know your uncle Harry's going to be okay. All right, Angel, they were able to pump my psorias the scabs out of his stomach, the old farts at home, and here's the kicker on the way home from the hospital, and then I'll let you go, Angel. On the way home from the hospital, your uncle, who's so stubborn, he wanted to stop in at the 7-Eleven, and you'll never get what that old bastard bought. You guessed it, a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Are you kidding me? This man, that's why I love him. That's why I married him. That's why I stayed with him. Isn't that nice?

Anyways, Angel, I know you're busy. I'll tell Harry you send your love, and I'm sorry if this news upset you, but he's going to be just fine. All the psoriasis is flakes have been sucked out of his 85-year-old bottomless gullet. I don't know why I'm getting upset. But anyways, everything's good. We miss you, Angel. We love you. We hope we hear from you soon, Angel.

It's your aunt Ruth. He'll talk to you soon. Hold on. Harry's calling me. Hold on. Okay, Harry. No. No.

That is not an English muffin. Oh, my God. Harry just ate well. I'm not even going to say. I'll be, but goodbye, Angel. Oh, my Christ. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

And Ruthie, yuck. Oh, God. I feel a little queer. The things that old people get into. I mean, in what part of me feels, really sick. And the other part of me is like, well, that's what happens with the old people. You know, they start to the body parts, start to degenerate. And, you know, they have to deal with the strings that as young people don't have to deal with the pretzels. All right.

Suddenly I broke into Rabbi Papenheim there. What the hell is that all about? Anyways, I don't think any of us can stomach any more podcast to you. I think maybe we got to like, we got to let the water out of the tub right now. Hopefully the drain doesn't get plugged with psoriasis scabs. Yes. All right. So let me tell you what's going on. We got some announcements here tonight.

Yes, tonight. Or actually, sorry, not tonight. This Thursday, this Thursday, April the 13th. I will be on Conan O'Brien. That's this Thursday, April 13th, Conan O'Brien show. We're going to be plugging my new Disney Puppy Dog Pals show, which premieres the following day, April 14th. So make sure you go to my website, Harlow Williams.com,

and you can play the promo trailer, promo clip, for Puppy Dog Pals, and get all the dates and information, time i think it airs at like 10 10 in the morning or something please devr it and watch it i hope you like it i know it sounds like it's like a kid show because it's on disney junior but i really want to watch this because even even as an adult i think you'll really enjoy these characters and we did not make the show all kidsy and talking down to children and like oh isn't that cute little kid. It really is kind of just a real fun kind of silly adventure show with these two puppies.

And I think anyone who watches it won't feel that it's like too kidsy, even though kids are going to love it, I think. And then at some point this week, it might be tomorrow the 11th. I'm potentially going to be on the Adam Carolla podcast, which is a great podcast. I've been talking with the producers and I think at some point this week so check out, tune in tomorrow to Adam Carolla or go on his website or whatever and find out if I'm on this week

and me and Adam always have a blast, okay? And coming up with my stand-up comedy, I'll be in Connecticut. I will be at the Indian casino out there in Connecticut at comics, C-O-M-I-X, great comedy club. Get your tickets online at Harland-Williams.com. And then later on in May, May 11th through the 13th, that will be in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,

at Yuck Yuck Yuck's Comedy Club. Yay! My hometown player! So that should be a lot of fun. So hopefully you can get there, get tickets, go on hollow williams.com. Click on my stand-up comedy tour link and get your tickets. While you're there, you can also write to me at hollow

williams.com on our contact link or you can call me. Leave a voicemail 3-23-739-43-3-3-3-3-3-3-3. And you can also hit our store. We have a wonderful store on the page where you can buy some fun merchandise. You can also go on to the app page or the podcast page and get our free app for the Harland Highway. It's absolutely free.

Just go into your app store and type in the Harland Highway. And if you want to become a premium member, go to the website Harlan Williams.com. And for 20 bucks a year, you get the whole library plus special bonus material for the Harland Highway. It's a great deal. and it supports the show. So thank you to all my premium members.

Also, please check out our new rock album. When I say we, I mean me and my cousin, Kevin Hearn, from the Bare Naked Ladies. We have a brand new album out called Rattlesnake Love by The Cousins. And we have a website, the cousinsband.com. And you can go on there and watch videos and look at pictures of the band and see video clips of me and my cousin hanging out. You can download, there's links to lead you to iTunes or you can download the songs. Or if you want to avoid the website, you can just go to iTunes and get songs off our album there.

So hopefully you'll check that out. We hope you like it. And that's it. Again, make sure you check out my new animated show, Puppy Dog Pals, on the 14th. And Conan O'Brien on the 13th. So thanks for being here, everybody. hope you had a groovy time watch out for spiders

watch out for psoriasis flakes and all that crazy stuff so until next time that's it thanks for being here pop rocks and chicken chameh baby he's like oh my god

I thought these were salt and vinegar potato chips