The Harland Highway - NEW HARLAND HIGHWAY #37 -HARLAND WILLIAMS, Christmas episode.

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Harland does a special Christmas themed episode featuring Harlvis Presley singing a Christmas classic! 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

You're riding down the Harland Highway All right, hold tight on the Harland Highway Show Harland Williams Mm-hmm Well, now that's right Mm-hmm, oh, now that's right Hey everybody, Harland Williams here and you are on

that's right the Harland Highway podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's Christmas. This is the Christmas episode. I've got my John Deere Christmas tree here.

Can you see it? I've got all the John Deer ornaments hanging on the tree. My John Deer I don't know why, but I love it. It's Santa's riding, John Deere. Gotta love it.

I don't know why. I just love John Deere. When you see them driving through the fields, what color are they? They're green, they're yellow. They're like little Christmas ornaments driving through the cornfields. They're like, they're Christmasy, and they're ornament-y, and they're John Deary and their Christmas, John Deary. Christmas Deary, John Ornament Dearies.

And so there I got a John Deary Christmas tree. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Holy God. Here we go. That's what today's episode is. The Characimus episode. Lots going on in the world today.

Avatar's come out for Christmas. Finally, the new Avatar episode. is out for Christmas and I don't know. I'm thinking about this avatar movie and I don't know. I'm seeing the trailers. I'm seeing tall blue people. And I'm starting to wonder,

could these just be the Smurfs? Could the Avatar people be the Smurfs in Waterworld? Is it just, did the Smurfs finally go into puberty? I mean, Smurps were always this big. You're writing down the Harland Highway. Maybe they went into puberty and found the way to a water park. Is this what Avatar Water World is? Harland Williams.

Is this what Avatar Waterworld is? Smurfs that have gone into puberty and snuck into a water park and they're just splashing around celebrating their new pubis, their blue pubis? I mean, God, it's traumatic enough when you're a kid. Okay, when you're about 11 years old, you're bald down in the nether region. And then cut to a few months later, suddenly you got a patch.

You got a big, juicy, hairy patch. You know what? Looks like the top of Kenny G's head. And it's one thing to look down and see fresh hair and be like, Whoa, what's going on down there, Mama? But when you look down there and you got a blue patch, I mean, I'd be worried about bears getting in there because it probably looks like a blueberry patch.

You're walking around some grizzly somewhere, big old gris come a lolloping over the mountain. I smell me some blueberries. The next thing you know, you got a gris riding into your groin and just tearing it up. You get a grist tearing up your blueberry patch. I don't know. I'm not blue.

I don't know what it is. But what is the avatar people? Who are they? Is it possible that I don't know. A truck was barreling down the highway and 18-wheeler carrying protein bars or growth hormones or something? Steroids? And maybe it hit a deer and it did.

veered and the truck flipped over and all the contents of the truck spilled into the forest and all the little blue smirps who have lived on a diet of mushrooms and fungus and inchworm poo heard the ruckus, they heard the crash and they come sneaking around the mushrooms. They come sneaking around the fungus. And they're like, like, oh, look, growth hormones and protein bars. Whatever they sound like when they eat. And so now these little blue freaks who've been hiding in the mushroom, suddenly get their little blue mouths around some protein bars

and some growth hormones and who knows what else. These things go full speed into puberty. and now we got the avataries or whatever they're called. I don't even know the name of the avatar people. The blue, the blue man group. Maybe that's all avatar is. It's the blue man group from Vegas and they've all gone to ClubMed. Waterworld my ass.

The Blue Man Group's over at Club Med, partying it up. Getting hammered, pretending they're seeing floating worlds. dragons and James Cameron holy god this guy just making a fortune off us we're just this is one of these movies you go out and see nine or ten times the the puberty smurfs avatar avatar the way of the puberty smurfs and James Cameron just raking it in he's just giving it to us right in the gargamel just right in the gargamel just right in the gargamel just right in the gargamel. Come see Avatar.

Puberty Smurfs at a water park. 15 bucks a shot. You'll probably want to see the movie three times because it's so spectacular. Let me give it to you right in the gargumel. So I don't know, man. I'm going to go see it. I'll tell you I love the Avatar movie.

I rarely go to a movie in a theater more than once. When the original Avatar came out. I went three, maybe four times, but three for sure. I was just blown away by the visuals, the action, the story was rich. I mean, James Cameron, the guy knows how to make movies. Way to go, fellow Canadian. If you didn't know, James Cameron, another Canadian invading your world. So I'm excited to see the puberty smurfs and water world. I think he shot like four. Four more. Four, I think he shot four avatars back to back.

So I hope I didn't ruin it for you. Now you're going to go see Avatar and all you'll be thinking is, Jesus, look at these Smurfs. Just be listening for their voices to crack. Just see how awkward they are going through puberty as a smurf. So enjoy. I'm going to go see Avatar and, you know, why not? What a, what a great Christmas treat.

What a, maybe go with the family. I mean, I've been seeing enough advertisement for the damn thing. Um, and speaking of advertising, hold on, hold on. Let's, I just switched gears, like I was in an 18 wheeler. I'm switching gear. Advertising. Are you scrolling through the TikToks

and the Instagrams? Are you scrolling? Have you got carpal tunnel syndrome yet? Have you got fairy wrist yet? I mean, you're just you're just swiping. And it's enjoyed. to a degree watching the little clips on your favorite social media, but one thing I don't

appreciate is they're a little bit sneaky. The powers that be that run these things, they keep injecting advertisements, right? There's a little thing at the bottom. You watch four or five videos and they sneak in like sort of a commercial one. There's little subliminal things. they're always bombarding you with subtle advertisements or sometimes even blatant advertisements, but somehow they're putting advertisements into your head as you kind of do your thingy, as you're doing your viewing. And I got pissed the other day, man.

This is what happened. I'm sitting around scrolling. I'm watching my little clips on the TikTok. and I'm watching a video of a pack of hyenas ripping the fetus out of a living zebra. Okay, they took it down. You know these wonderful TikTok videos where for some reason they love to show animal mutilations. The hyenas took down the damn zebra. They rip the fetus out of the fetus out of the,

the zebra's gut. And I'm sitting here watching this and in creeps the advertising. I'm watching the zebra get eaten alive with its baby. And I'm like, oh, come on, man. I don't want to go to Arby's. Right? I see all this meat and I just want to go to Arby's. And I'm like, they did it.

They got, they subliminally got in my head, zebra fetus, Arbys. And I'm even more pissed off because, guess what? I go to Arby's. I get in the rig. I head over to Arby's. And guess who doesn't sell zebra meat? Hello.

Hello, Arby's is on line five. Hello. So now I got con by the advertisement. I get sort of subliminally injected in the middle of my zebra hyena mutilation. Now I got Smea craving for the Arby's because Arby's got the meats. But apparently Arby's don't got the striped meats, the black and white striped meats, Arbys don't got the zebra meats or the baby fetus meats. So now I'm all the way over at Arbys, you know, with the giant cowboy hat?

that's their sign a giant cowboy hat for some reason that's related to roast beef and now I'm waiting in line right and I'm not happy because they don't got the zebra meats so I pull up to the drive-thru window I got all this pent-up zebra meat frustration and what do I see at the drive-through window you know what's there gang you know what's waiting in that little rectangle the glass slides open it ain't the gatekeeper from the wizard of Oz it's the it's the Arby's kid and in this scenario this Arby's kid he might have come into work on the wrong day but this Arby's kid let's just call him pumpkin head I mean this kid's head was round like a swollen pumpkin that has been sitting in the pumpkin patch too

along with, got pumpkin fungus. I mean, it's, it's not good. This kid, I swear, almost had the triangle eyes. That's how pumpkiny this freak was. But here's where it really got wild is this kid, this Arby's drive-through freak, and many of them have it, and it's, you know, you can't fault them.

It's called, again, going to puberty. this kid had a Zit Field on his face. I mean, this kid was like Zitfield and Roy. I mean, we all got Zits when we were kids, but every now and then you got someone that looked like you were staring at a map of the Milky Way, right? This kid had zits all over his face. Oh my God, it looked like, you know,

a bunch of guys in golf shoes went for a jog around on his face, just bump after bump after crater. Oh, my God. I mean, good night, Nellie Frittato. This kid was zitted up. I'm going to call him what he was, a Zit-Face whore. That's all you can say to the Arby's kid.

Zit-face, pumpkin-eyed, pumpkin-faced whore. And I don't like to use that terminology on a hard work and minimum wage pumpkin whore, but I, you know what? This was a Zit-faced Star Galaxy, pumpkin-faced whore. And now I'm there. I don't got my zebra meat. Now I got Jacko Lantern Jim staring at me

with his fucking pepperoni pizza fucking pie hole. And I'm angry. Sure, I'm worked up. And so what do I do? I grab the kid by the ears and I yank him halfway out of the drive-through window. Just pulled them. right out right by the ears his big pumpkin head his teeth grinning and now i'm like this close right i'm this i'm face to face with more zits than donnie osman at a fucking olive oil party at uh

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Holy tomato paste, onion grease, and popcorn stink. Not to be confused with the lie and the witch in the wardrobe. So I'm at face to face with El Pumco, El Zito El Pumco. And right away, you know, you're not going to be this close to a Zit monster and not have some kind of visceral reaction. So what happens? All of a sudden, I'm this close to the Zits and it sparks a reaction. It triggers a memory.

And when I was a kid, when I was, you know, 13 myself, living back at home with the fam fam, fam, we had a little brother, Danny. Little Danny. and a wonderful kid, but, you know, not like the other kids. Danny was a blindie. Danny was a blindie. Couldn't see.

I mean, this kid was half bat. You know, sometimes I wonder if he walked around the house doing echolocation. Just like, peep, you know, bouncing sonar off the walls to see where he was, peep, peep, sometimes I swear I heard him peeping. But little Danny loved him to date. death, a little blindy, blind old Danny, we call them. Blindy the kid. And, you know, we all had to kind of chip in to help Danny along. He was blind. Couldn't see a bag of onion ring sitting on the side of Rosie O'Donnell's air mattress if he was right in front of it. And so

here's me, you know, trying to chip in. And at night, before bedtime. I would go into little Danny's room and I would read to him. But I, you know, I had to learn Braille. He's blind. I had to learn braille and Danny had the blindy books. And we had the, where the wild things are that, you know, the kids books, we had Curious George. Oh, we had, we had Curious George goes to the zoo. Curious George makes a pancake. Curious George goes to The circus, I mean, you pick which one you want from the George catalog. And today, probably more like by Curious George, but that's a different topic. But we had every George book, Curious George goes to jail.

That was a tough one. I mean, it's not easy to watch a monkey get stretched out. But here we go. We got Curious George books. and I'm teaching blind at Donnie how to read. And I get his little hand and I run it along the braille. And I've got my fingers. I'm running all the little bumps on the braille.

I've got to learn braille for blind for Danny. And now cut to all these years later, this guy knows braille, smash cut to I'm at the Arby's drive-thru, filled with zebra meat rage. and I am holding on to this pumpkin zit whore with a little microphone over his mouth, which made it even creepier.

And this guy's bumpier than a mouse-dropping festival down at fucking acne central. And so my first reaction, I see all the bumps on this kid's face, and right away I'm thinking, holy shit, braille. and I just had a knee-jerk reaction, and I started, I got my fingers, and I started, you know, touching all the bumps. I'm reading braille on this kid's face, and I'll be damned. I'm there for about three minutes, and I read the first four chapters of Stephen King's The Shining. Yeah, right on the Zit, whore, pumpkin freak, Arby's whore.

I mean, insane. The first four chapters, right up to where Jack Torrance is at the Overlook Hotel and he's just starting to chase Wendy with the bat. I'm not going to hurt you, Wendy. I'm just going to bash your fucking brains in. Remember that? Give me the bat, Wendy. Give me the bat.

I'm not going to hurt you, Wendy. I'm just going to bash your fucking brains in. And I'm reading this. I'm in the drum. People are honking, hurry up. And I'm like, hey, I'm reading the Shining here. Settle down. I'm reading the fucking shining.

Can I get to the ending and people, e, e, e, I mean, impatient people. A guy can't even read a book anymore. Guy can't even read a braille book on a pumpkin-faced whores zit mine. so I got out of there and I don't know maybe I'll go back and read a couple more chapters this week you know maybe I'll do you know just so I don't hold up the line I'll do you know maybe a chapter every other day or a chapter a week until I get to the end it's a fairly long book and this kid's zits are just going to keep popping it I mean he's working over a deep fryer I mean he's not doing anything to nurse these zits he's not any doing a

anything to tamp them down. I mean, this guy's growing Zit standing over the hash brown fryer. I mean, come on, man. He might as well be putting a Zit fertilizer on his face at that point. You don't get rid of Zits by standing over boiling oil and the fumes coming up. I mean, you're just feeding the star cluster. You're extending the Milky Way into eternity. I mean, you're building up more pus than.

Donnie Osmond sucking air out of a beach ball at one of Winota Ryder's dildo parties. Anyways, sorry, I'm getting a little confused, but anyways, that's, that's, that's, that's this, that's the story. God, just I feel a little traumatized or traumatized. I don't know how he's trauma, trauma. Just a lot, lot going on. Zebras, hyenas, zits, pumpkins, Stephen King.

I mean, life, life can be confusing and, and taunting and weird sometimes. But let's get back to Christmas. We got the snowman here. We got little chirpy, the choir school, uh,

chirp, chirp, chirp, and chirp, chirp, too, the Christmas caroling chirp, chirp, we've got the John Deere Christmas tree. Let's talk about family. That's what Christmas is, family time of year. I got my lights up. Get my lights up on my house, my colored lights.

Oh, I got my tree, got lights on my tree, colored lights on my tree. Not sure how colored lights have anything to do with the, The birth of Christ, I'm really starting to wonder about that choice right now. I don't think electricity existed when old J.C. was walking around. I don't know that anyone had Christmas lights on their house when Jesus Christ was wandering around, let alone colored lights. If they didn't know how to make glass back then, they surely didn't know how to make colored glass. But that's okay. I digress.

But let's stick with the theme of family at Christmas, the joy of family. You go home, many of you go home to be with family, be surrounded by your mother and your sisters and brothers and your uncles and aunts and your, your uncles and aunts and your cousins and your, your, your nieces and your wonderful nephews and your, you're, you know, Distant Cousins and your mother and your... F... F... F... F... F...

Father! It's... It's... F... Wow. Wow. What? That was tough for me.

That was... Father! It's tough to... Look, it's a family time of year and... I think you've just witnessed that for me, it's tough to say, Father, I get emotional. I get emotion. I don't know how much I should share on the Harland Highway podcast.

I don't know how much one opens up. I mean, we know each other. We're intimate. We're here. I've elected to do this show and bring it to you. and be open and discuss who I am and what I am with you. But sometimes I get trepidatious about opening the door too far and letting you in. But when I talk about my father, it's not easy.

He was a complicated man. he was he was perhaps a difficult man and I can't say that my upbringing with father was easy and I guess I should explain my father was a disciplinarian my father was a was a strict man, a stoic man. You played by the rules in my father's house. You didn't step out of line in my father's house. It was his way or the highway? Not the Harland Highway, just the highway,

the cold, dark tunnel into hell highway. And I think we, all as kids experienced the wrath of our fathers and our mothers, and they all had different methods of disciplining the children. Many of us felt the sting from the hand of the father. Many of us felt the lash of the belt. Many of us felt the pink pain of the wooden spoon. and my daddy decided that when we were born, before we were born, he was going to maintain control right from the beginning. And here's what my daddy did.

Daddy's a little harder, easier to say. I'm saying daddy because father is hard for me. So my daddy, in anticipation of rambunctious children and anticipation of children being energetic and out of control and needing disciplinary actions, my daddy preempted the birth. My daddy strategized before we slid from the milky loins of mother. And this is what my daddy did. As I said, many of you got the belt, the slap, the wooden spoon. My dad calculated a different route to maintain control with his kids. And for me, he saved my umbilical cord.

Most babies, you cut that umbilical cord and it goes into some kind of meat garbage can or they feed it at the zoo to drafts or lions. I don't know what happens to umbilical cords. But my daddy decided to keep mine. My daddy made a special request and asked the doctors to keep my big long umbilical cord. And daddy, in his foresight, took it, down into the basement when they brought me home swaddled in swaddling cloth my mother tenderly

carrying me and laying me in my crib placing my bulbous unformed head onto a little baby pillow and my father going directly down into the basement where the fireplace is unwrapping my umbilical cord meat, starting a small fire with kindling wood, hanging my cord, my umbilical cord in the fire for 12 days, smoking it, smoking like beef jerky but umbilical jerky. This is meat that I shared with my mother and my belly button. This was my meat. This was private sausage meat. This was the tube that I ate from.

Somewhere inside my mother, my umbilical cord plugged into whatever she ate. I don't know what she ate, but what, somehow it liquefied and I, I ate, I gorged, I ate with my belly button, my second mouth. I just sucked it in and grieved. and got fat, I looked like a lima bean, and by the end I looked like a bald mucous child. And here's my father smoking, as if he's out camping in Alaska, hanging salmon over a fire. My umbilical cord meat, just swaying ever so gently in the breeze coming down the flume. rocking back and forth

ever so slightly absorbing the smoke and slowly getting harder and harder and harder and drier like ambillical jerky and so now cut to me as a boy doing all the things boys do

drawing on the walls with crayons digging in the garings when you're not supposed to traipsing mud through the house with muddy boots, pulling your sister's eyebrows out, throwing the puppy into a ceiling fan, making a smoothie with slippers, eating your way through drywall until you tunnel into the next room and get fiberglass into your bloodstream and have to go to the hospital and get a complete blood transfusion so that the asbestos doesn't kill you overnight

when you pee your bed and get electrocuted. And so here I am, like any other growing boy, getting into trouble. And here comes Daddy. Here comes Daddy to say, no, you don't do that. No, you don't jump on your sister's head in the middle of the night with rubber galoshes on. No, you don't.

don't drink from the fish tank, you don't kneel on top of the fish tank and drink like a baby deer, every now and then scooping in a guppy. You don't sniff your sister's ears to see if they have earwax, all these things. And so, being the hard disciplinarian my father was, he had. to make sure that the house was in order. He had to make sure that his boy knew what was what and what was what. And I know I said the same thing twice, but I'll even say it again, what was what? That's three times. And you know what three times is. Three times is a lady. And that turns into Lionel Richie. I don't know where that math comes from, but it's very

Commodore. And so Daddy, in order to make an example of me to the other kids, not only in our house, my sisters, but also the other kids in the neighborhood, instead of just putting me over his knee, taking out the hard umbilical cord that I helped grow, and smacking my bare buttocks until they were ruby pink like Santa's alcoholic cheeks. my father had to be a little more dramatic. And perhaps this is why I went into the movie business. Maybe drama was beat into my veins.

But my daddy would take me out front, and in front of our house there was a power pole with the power lines. And daddy would take my shirt off and strap me with my arms up to the power pole. or sometimes he'd use the cedar tree that was growing on our lawn and strap me to the cedar tree. I don't know if you've seen the movie 12 years of slave or Passion of the Christ.

But my father would take my umbilical cord harder than Lassie's last snow turd. And he would whip me. He would whip his own child, just whip. Whop-pish, whew-pish, whew-pish, who-pish-w-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-pitch, up and down. Lash after lash after painful lash. Ah, daddy. Ah, nasty.

Oh, nasty. Oh, daddy, father. I'm drooling. And so, and my back at a very early age would be flayed. I would have incisions in my back. that hardened umbilical cord slashing through my tender young adolescent flesh tender like priest priest uh hungry flesh the type of flesh a priest would love to just and i had lines down my back it looked like

someone laid me on a on a grill at Fatburger. Just grill marks on my back from the whippings. Woo-ch-sh! And that was a scar or series of scars that I had to carry with me through my life. They're still there today. And yes, I would go to school to Fizzad class and have to disrobe in the locker room with the rest of the boys.

and they would point, and they would stare, and they would laugh, and eventually one of them would say, What the hell happened to you? Ew, you're deformed. What the hell happened to you? And I couldn't tell them what my father did. I couldn't tell me that daddy flayed me with my own umbilical cord. And so I thought, what can I do to turn this tragedy into a,

victory. What can I do to use the scar tissue on my back to help stop the pain and begin the healing? And so I did what probably most of you would do. I told my fellow students, my friends, my teachers, anyone who dare ask, people at the beach, I told them, yes, in fact, I was attacked by a mountain lion I was attacked at an early age by a mountain lion crawling with rabies I was walking through the forest whistling sometimes skipping

unbeknownst to me a wild predator stalking me in the underbrush And as I tread through the forest, happy, go lucky, innocent in my youth, a wild mountain lion with full rabies, jumped on my back, sprang on me the way that these agile hunters do and just raked his retractable claws right down my back, right through my priest, juicy flesh, my pig.

My pink ripped my shirt open And just clawed down my back Shew Just using me like it's a human blender off I fought this wild animal off with my bare hands I even used my teeth I bit into its neck And I overcame this vicious stalking predator of the forest,

this mountain lion with its emerald green eyes and its beige coarse fur and its long tail whipping back and forth as it tore strips out of my flesh. And after I told them that story, many of them were afraid to, mock me or tease me or taunt me ever again. In fact, in high school, they called me Lion Boy. You could hear them whispering in the hallways as they were standing by their lockers. Here comes Lion Boy. Don't say anything.

The guy was attacked by a lion. He fought it off. They got rabies. Shh, here he comes. Here comes Lion Boy. Don't look at him the wrong way. And so despite the pain and suffering, my father put me through.

I survived. I'm a survivor. I'm an umbilical cord survivor. You hear about survivors all the time. Overcome alcoholism, heroin, drug addiction, spousal abuse, abuse, murder. Well, I don't know if you come back from murder, but some do.

but I was an umbilical cord survivor and I remain an umbilical core survivor today and if any of you out there are suffering from umbilical trauma the way I have we have a group called umbilical umbilical trauma center umbilical and we meet every Saturday and we do group therapy. We sit around in circles and we talk about our umbilical cord trauma and we even have a fake rubber umbilical cord that we had made at a special effect shop

and we pass it around the room and we wrap ourselves in it and we do group hugs, lassoed in umbilical meat. And let's change topics now, shall we? You know what? It's Christmas. It's Christmas, and what would Christmas be, my friends?

What would it be without a Christmas carol? And I'm not going to sing to you. I mean, I want to sing you a Christmas carol, but I'm not much of a singer. But you know who is a good singer, Elvis Presley? Elvis Presley, that guy could sing. And so as my Christmas present to you, I don't have Elvis Presley here.

But I do have Harvless, which is a mixture of Harland and Elvis. And without further ado, as my special Christmas gift to you, the pavement pounders here at the Harland Highway, may I present singing a Christmas classic from me to you, Harvless. Hey, everybody, happy holidays. This is Harvless. And let's wish you a merry, merry Christmas. I'll have a blue

A Christmas without you. I'll be so blue just thinking about you. Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree I won't feel the same dear if you're not here with me And when those blue snowflakes start falling Oh, and the blue memories come calling.

It'll be doing all right on a Christmas, oh, white. But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas, everybody. From me to you, here at the Harland Highway, hoping you and your loved ones have a joyous holiday season, gathered round the Christmas tree, gathered around the pretty lights, holding each other's hands, giving each other love, and got that special, special twinkle in your eye. So, enjoy, embrace.

And from me to you, here at the Harland Highway, Have a very, very, very, a very merry Christmas. I'll be doing all right with the Christmas of white. But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas. So out of tune. So out of tune. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Christmas just kicked into gear. Harvless, ladies and gentlemen. Wow. I'm feeling a little emotion. really good really good stuff really great stuff um okay uh hope you enjoyed that i tried my best to uh hope you like the fake guitar and all the other stuff but you know trying my best to spread the joy of the season to y'all a little painful to sit here and sing but but

But I thought, what the hell? I got to. I want you guys to feel the Christmas spirit or the holiday spirit, whichever way you go, whichever way you lean, happy holidays. I think Christmas, too, is a time of remembrance. You know, we think about the people that have come and gone in our lives, the people we wish we could share the special holiday with. And I think maybe in closing I'll tell one final little story.

This one's a tough one, but sometimes we have to talk about the tough ones, the emotional ones, because the people that have come before us and may have passed on are still lingering in our memory. And I think at Christmas time, they often come back into our thoughts and our celebrations. and so I'm going to tell you a little story, and it's not an easy one to talk about. I don't know how many of you have ever killed a nine-year-old boy. But I sort of have. And I think about this child every Christmas

because I do feel that my actions led to this boy's past, But I'll let you judge. Remember, let he who hath not without judge, judges not the judges, for thee shall pass forth in this life. And thou judgest, when the judges come judging, thou shan't judge thine shan't. So judge thou shant not, but judge carefully, thou should thou shan't. judge so here's here's the story and I hope I hope you'll give me some forgiveness for what happened I've spent a long time learning to forgive myself for this unfortunate event but let me share it with you because I think of this boy and wonder what it would be like if he was still here with us on this earthly plane and could share Christmas with his family. The story begins several years ago where I was up visiting friends in San Francisco, which is about a six-hour drive north of Los Angeles where I live now.

And I decided to drive home just as it was turning towards darkness. And I began my journey out of San Francisco where it's quite congested. There's a lot of traffic and urban sprawl. But little do people know the drive between San Francisco and Los Angeles, as you get more towards the middle of it, is quite empty. You're driving through a lot of farmers fields and open land and wide open space. It's quite beautiful. It's quite scenic, although it's very vacuous.

There's not much there. Maybe the odd cow, maybe the odd gas station. And on this night, I was driving along, as we all do, we've all driven at night, and sometimes we don't have the best vision at night. And as I was driving down this sort of tedious, endless highway, all of a sudden something darted out into the road from the shoulder. I identified it immediately as some kind of furry mammal, but I didn't have time to react. I didn't have time to swerve. I didn't have time to swerve. I didn't have time to slam on the brakes. I'm on a highway. I'm going 75 miles an hour. And this creature, whatever it was, ran across attempting to make it to the other side. And I'm like,

and I'm like, oh my God, I hit something. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I hit something hairy. Oh, my God. I hit something furry. I had something hairy. Oh, my God. I didn't say it like that, but that's what I was thinking. And it's dark. and I have no way of knowing what it was, and I have no way of turning around because there's a median in the middle of the highway. I can't go back. If I pull over, I'm probably going to cause an accident.

I'm thinking there's not much you can do once you hit an animal. And so regretfully, I just kept going. But in that inertia that I kept, you know, keeping on the highway, I noticed just by fate or fate, flew to the left of me on the other side of the highway, I noticed because it was an anomaly in the dark landscape was a diner. It was Big Hal's House of Pies. And it was a cute little looking diner with a big sign, with a picture of a big, looked like a blueberry pie or a

raspberry pie. And I thought, in the midst of just hitting an animal, I thought, oh, what a charming place. But then I was past it, the lights, and then again, I was immersed into the darkness, and I continued my lonely, dark drive home and spent most of my journey thinking about that poor animal. And was it dead? Was it alive? Did I maim it? And I was riddled with guilt, and I was riddled with concern, but there was nothing I could do. And so I get home, I finally get home, it's like, you know, one in the morning. I make it to my destination. I park. I get out of my vehicle. And as I'm walking to the door, I hear a noise. It definitely sounds like an animal in distress, agony. And I go back to my car and I pinpoint the noise and I realize it's coming

from the grill. And I get down on my knees and I look up under the grill, and I see a clump of hair. I'm like, my God, there's something under here, and I can tell it was sort of meandering in and out of consciousness. It was groaning, and I thought, this is the animal I hit. Oh, my God, I reach up, and with a little maneuvering, I was able to free the animal and pull it out and lay it down on the driveway. And if it wasn't, the smaller cousin to the mountain lion, a bobcat my god a glorious specimen a bobcat with this tanned coat and its big green eyes and its tufted ears and its distinguished whiskers just laying there rolling in and out of consciousness and i thought my god thank god i didn't kill this magnificent creature But in my admiring of this beautiful specimen, I noticed on its belly it had swollen

teats, giant swollen puffy teats, almost as if Dolly Parton had been in a UFC fight and taken a few roundhouse kicks right to the eyes. These teats were swollen like rotten pomegranates at a fruit stand run by Donnie Osmond and his demented brothers and sisters. Swollen teats, dribbling, so overfilled with teat milk. They were dripping like a faucet at a motel six crack room in Bakersfield.

Just that dripping faucet. You can't shut out. There was bobcat milk dripping from the teats. And I realized this was a female. who was probably just given birth to a litter of kittens. And I listened closely. I put my head next and I could hear. And I realized my stomach was growling, and I needed a cheeseburger.

So I went in the house and made a meal and then came back out. And I thought, somewhere. There's a whole bunch of kittens without their mother. There's a whole bunch of hungry kittens wishing they were sucking teat milk right now. And I thought, my God, what a conundrum. I have a duty. I have a duty to bring this bobcat, this bobcat mother with its swollen milk jugs, back to its starving kittens.

and I thought, but how, how will I know, where, where are these kittens? How can I went, oh my goodness, Hal's, House of Pies? Of course, I must take them back to House, House of Pies. I turned into William Shatner all of a sudden, and I concluded I must get the lactating bobcat back to the House of Pies. that was fucking weird so I load this wounded cat but still alive thank God into the back of my

car and I go damn my sleep deprivation damn the 300 miles I have to drive be damned any discomfort or displacement I must suffer I must return mother

to her children. So I put that cat in the car, I put the pedal to the metal, and I sped all the way back up into the night, only to arrive at Hal's house of pies, just as the sun was coming up. And people were starting to stream in for their morning breakfast and their slices of pie.

and I pulled up, I had the cat, the bobcat in the back of my car, and I thought, this is the point of reference. This is where I struck the defenseless animal. This is where the babies must surely be hiding, somewhere in the bushes around this vicinity. And as I was about to open the car and free the milk-dripping cat, All of a sudden, a family, a beautiful family, came out of the front door of Hal's House of Pyes, a man, a wife, two girls and a little boy, red curly hair, freckles on his face,

surely Scottish, his teeth fangled up like a parrotfish that just ate a bag of rocks out of Fred Flintstone's underwear. And I went, oh my God, look at that beautiful little Scottish family. But I didn't linger on it long. The cat needed to get to its babies, and I looked in the back window, and I could see that the cat had recovered someone. It was fully alert. It was crouched, looking up out the window, eager to get back to its domain. I pulled the door open.

The cat came rushing out, and now a fury in its eyes. It was confused. It was disoriented. It was angry. It was in pain. It didn't know where its children were, unlike any wild animal, that gets separated from its infants. It wants to lash out, it wants to protect, it wants to attack.

And the first thing it saw when it looked up, that little Scottish boy, and I later learned his name, Scotty McCracken, that little Scottish boy standing there with his family, holding a box with a pie in it. I don't know if it was the red hair on the child, but that bobcat locked in on that flaming red hair the way a bull, an incensed bull would lock in on a matador waving a red cape.

And in the blink of an eye, that bobcat with all its muscles and fur sped across the parking lot and lunged and dove through the air and landed on the face of little nine-year-old Scotty McCracken, tearing up his throat and his eyes and his forehead meat flying in the air clumps of red hair shooting through the sky like comets on a clear clear dark October night lemon meringue pie flying through the sky the stink of crust permeating the air The family watching in horror as chunks of meringue flew into their eyes and blobs of lemon hit them in the face. Their sun being shredded before the very eyes by an enraged wild bobcat with milk tits squirting all over the place,

mixing in with the pie and the lemon and the meringue. It's almost as if the air was filled with chef Ramsey's dessert menu. and in the blink of an eye little Scotty McCracken lay on the ground bleeding out his throat torn open the bobcat his deed be done her deed be done and his little Scotty McCracken lay there lemon meringue pie and his red creepy hair his his rotten Scottish teeth that looked like he could eat through a meteorite, gasping for breath, final breath. Bobcat and milk all over his freckled face. It looked like a creme brulee that had been left out in the Louisiana heat in the middle of

Octoberfest, even though that's not where they celebrate it. And then in the blink of an eye, the cat's deed be done, he turned and he ran. could hear little baby bobcats crying from the underbrush on the other side of the road. And without a moment's hesitation, without any credence to the dead child, the wild bobcat followed its motherly instincts and darted out across the road towards its babies on the other side, only to be squished by an 18-wheeler halfway across. the babies running out to their mother, crying, helpless, half blind, and then pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,

all of them getting run over by another 18-wheeler, just like human cat bubble wrap, pop, pop, little kittens popping, like bubble wrap on the middle of the 105 southbound, under the wheels of an X-7-9 Mack truck 18-wheeler, hydraulic brakes, big rig, rear-end posse, reverse inverted transmission uphaulers, reverb, Corinthian popcorn shifters. That one of those trucks, the guys know what I'm talking about. And alas, there lay 12 dead bobcat kittens, a flattened,

mother, a puddle of bobcat teat milk, and in the parking lot of Hal's Pies, a lemon meringue bobcat tit milk, Scottish freckle-faced freak, caveman, brontosaurus-toothed, red clown-wig, freckle-fucked, Scotty McCracken. and me standing there with horror in my eyes eyes as big as fried eggs thinking my God what have I done and then I got in my car drove home because I didn't do it the bobcat did it

I may have facilitated it I may have been the instrument of Scotty McCracken's horrific throat ripped open, carotteride artery ripped out death in front of his whole family after a nice, wonderful meal of delicious home-baked pies. But am I supposed to carry that around with me? Is it my fault? That they happened to walk out of the door

while I was releasing a rabid, wild-eyed, Meat monster bobcat? No, I've let that go. And it's Christmas. But I do want to say if the McCracken family's listening, Merry Christmas to you and yours. And if you're standing around the grave of your parrot tooth, freak freckle fuck boy child,

please wish him a Merry Christmas for me if you're standing around his grave. And maybe one day, when I find out where he's buried, on a hot spring morning, I'll go up there and place a fresh blueberry pie rated as gravestone. Little Scotty McCracken. Merry Christmas. Okay, well, I think we should probably wrap it up. I mean, I don't know if it gets any more Christmassy than this, although I do want to mention y'all, if you're looking for a cool little Christmas present, and you probably might, I don't know if you'll get these in time for Christmas, you might.

Christmas is still like a week away, but I'm going to recommend a Christmas present. I'm going to recommend my books. I write short stories, believe it or not, and this one's called Journeys. There's three short stories in here. They're very twilight zonish. They're kind of weird and scary and mysterious. I kind of try to write so you don't predict what's coming. You don't predict what the ending is.

So the first one's journeys. This one's called Crave. This has a zombie story in it amongst a few others. There's three stories in here. And they're thick books. These stories aren't just like 12 pages long. They're all about, you know, between 50 and 120 pages long. And then here's another one called Don't Look Under the Bad.

There's a really cool story in here about a taxidermist, speaking of animals. A taxidermist where things go really wrong for them and things get a little scary. So check out my short story books. You can find them on Amazon.com. Just type in the name of the book. Don't Look Under the Bad, Crave or Journeys by Harland Williams. and Amazon will take you right there to the books. You can order a hard copy like this,

or if you want to read on your Kindle or your digital device, you can download a copy of the books. And I'd love to know what you think of them. You might hate them, you might love them, you might be somewhere in between, but if you want to leave a review for any of the books on Amazon.com, that would be totally appreciated. And I hope you really like them.

There'll be another book coming later this year, so I really enjoy writing these, and I hope they bring you lots of entertainment and insight and whatever else they may bring you. We have a lot of cool shows coming up in the new year. We're going to keep the Harlan Highway rocking and rolling down the road, and I want to thank all you guys for being here. in all honesty, this first half of the year that we got the podcast up and started has been

kind of the learning curve for me, learning how to do things right and learning how to turn the sound on and not let the cameras crash. And so we're kind of up and running now. I feel like we're in a good slip stream. And so the new year should be a lot smoother and we'll really bring it to you, is what I'm trying to say. So I want to thank you guys for being here, for subscribing to the show, for all your wonderful comments, and please spread the word. If you have a friend, just send them the link, tell them about the podcast. We want as many people as possible to be able to sit back and enjoy quality ambyllical cord stories and bobcat tit milk stories and just things like that, zebra meat stories, zits.

Don't hog this gift to yourself. Let everyone you know, know about the Harland Highway. And beyond all that, beyond all that, sincerely from my heart, Merry, Merry Christmas. This is my favorite time of year, and I couldn't resist doing like a little Christmas special, dedicated Christmas podcast for everyone.

So Merry, Merry Christmas. Have a great time with your family. and if you don't celebrate Christmas, a very, very happy holiday. Whatever you do or whoever you're with, have a wonderful time full of love, warmth, and happiness. And it's great to be here with you guys. And until next time, happy holidays, happy John Deer Christmas tree, and chicken.

Chaumain, baby? What's that? No, I don't want to go get a pot. Why? God! You know what, little Coco, go suck your umbilical cord. Creep!