The Harland Highway - Podcast 105

Episode Date: April 30, 2010

Museums, being a kid, tying ties, and of course... Dr. Ascot! Thundering fudge barnacles!! 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, me's ake and head. Oh, Popeye. Okay, why am I doing Popeye and olive oil impressions right out of the gate? Oh, what is wrong with me? Well, whatever is wrong with me, hopefully it's not wrong with the show, because I think we have a good one today, people. We're going to be talking about museums, the trips that you take to the museum. Is it fun or is it boring?

We're going to be talking about neckties For all you guys that have had to tie ties There's going to be a whole segment about that We're going to be talking about what it's like to be a kid again Going back, regressing, being childlike. Is it good for you? I think so. And lastly, something that's not good for me, I don't think.

It's Friday. I got to visit Dr. Ascott. But nonetheless, I'm glad you're here on the Harlan Highway. You just made a wrong turn. Would you kindly shut your mouth? On to the Harland Highway. Oh, it's lovely. It's just lovely. The Harlan Highway.

Hi, Harlan. I'm Teddy Rapspin, and I'm your friend. Writing down the Harlan Highway. I'm not your daddy. Captain, I think we've hit something. What is it, man? I think it was an iceberg. Yeah, that was the fate of the Titanic. It looks like some people are planning to start an exhibit around the country.

They're going to bring up 300 items that they got from the ocean's floor. They've got a whole bunch of relics and artifacts from the Titanic. You're going to bring them to museums all over the country. I don't know, are you guys lining up for that one? Look, Mommy, it's a soggy hairbrush. Oh, boy! Look, children, look at the seaweed on that chair. Ooh, have you ever seen a chair with seaweed children?

Ooh! Look at that propeller. There's barnacles on it. I've never seen barnacles like that. What a treat! What a museum-time treat! Can we go get some popcorn now, Daddy? and you can grind it in my face?

Seems like a stretch to me. How about just throw your kids' dinky toys in the bathtub and go diving? Yeah, the whole museum experience can be kind of weird. You know, to get that museum fatigue when you go to like the Smithsonian or you go to an art gallery or you go, any exhibit. it's like you kind of have that burnout period where the first like 20 minutes you're just kind of like in awe you're like oh my god look at that a stuffed saber tooth tiger oh my god a mummified corpse from ancient egypt oh my god a tyrannosaurus wrecks all its bones it towers over me

Oh my God, it's about 40 feet tall. Look at the size of its teeth. Where the hell's the cafeteria? Right? As fascinating as it is, you kind of hit that museum wall. It's almost like there's too much stuff in a museum. You know, it's like anything. When you get to a mall or an antique store, at first you're like, oh, my God, look at all this stuff.

Oh, my God, I can't absorb enough of it. More, more, more, more input, more input. And then, oh, does this museum have like an ancient sleeping bag and a pillow from the pioneer days that I could just maybe curl up in for a little bit? Right? It's weird. It's like you're around these dinosaur bones that, you know, are millions. of years old.

Somehow we figured it all out. We pieced them together. People spent years in the desert under the blazing sun excavating these almost impossible to find bones. And you're standing in the shadow of a brontosaurus.

And you're like, God, is that French fries I smell from the cafeteria? Huh. I better get moving. So it is fascinating, but it is hard to sustain sometimes. I was at the Smithsonian Institution last year, and that place is just, it's almost like you don't have time to look at what's in front of you.

You're standing there looking at, you know, the Spirit of St. Louis, you know, the famous airplane. And all of a sudden out of the corner of your eye, you see Apollo 3.3.3. And then out of the corner of another eye, you see the world's biggest collection of butterflies. And then out of the corner of your other eye, you see some hot milf. Wait, no, what? Hold on. Sorry. Then out of the corner of your other eye, you see, you know, a stuffed giant elephant. So you never dedicate the time to something. You don't really absorb the magnificence.

The Magnificance. Learn to speak, Harlan. Okay. You don't really have time to absorb the magnificence. Oh, God. I'm stuck on a word, folks. There it is. Magnificance.

Forget it. You know what I mean. All right? I just picture me running down the track in the Olympics, jumping the hurdles so fluently. so fluidly and then boom i hit a hurdle and just go tumbling down to the track that word just tripped me up but anyways you're absorbing everything there and you you just go oh my god that's really great but i got to get to the next thing and oh this is amazing but what what what what what what's that

over there oh my god oh my god oh my god so yeah that's called uh museum ad d syndrome i guess And sometimes you ever go to an exhibit, you're kind of excited to see it, and you get there, and it's a disappointment. Or even worse, it makes you feel sick. Let me tell you about an exhibit I went to. I don't know if you've seen this. I'm sure you have because it's a traveling exhibit. And what it is, it's a bunch of cadavers. It's a bunch of corpses, real human bodies that have had their flesh peeled away.

So you rate down to their anatomy. You can see their muscles and their tissue and they've been preserved somehow. I think I talked about this before on an earlier podcast. But it's just one of these things when you first get there like, oh, my God, look at the, look at the cadavers, man. And then by about, you know, after you've seen about seven of them, your mind's going, wait a minute. These are real people.

These aren't even like waxed dummies or fake. These are like real peeled bodies. Who the hell set this exhibit up? Predator? Remember a predator in the jungle? He just peeled the skin off of his victims? You know, I'm just waiting for some guy with giant dreadlocks. What the hell is that clicking noise, man?

Won't you come this way? But anyways, there you go. Museum fatigue. And I certainly hope you don't feel that when you're going through the Harlan Highway archives and are listening to previous episodes. Please don't get highway fatigue. You know what happens if you get tired while you're driving down the highway, you'll roll off the road and hit a baby deer.

But maybe, maybe that's what you want, you sadistic freaks. Well, if you're going to hit a deer, just make sure you peel its body and hang it over your fireplace. What? Hi, this is Harlan Williams from the Harlan Highway. And for those of you who have never tied a tie or forget how to tie a tie, let me run you through the process now so that you know, need never worry about this process again. First of all, put the tie around your neck. Fold the right side over the left side. Now the left side back over the right.

Pull the right side up through the back, bend and push through the loop in the front. Flip the backside up over the front, twist the backside, pull tight, and flip the left side through the hoop. twist both sides around, tie in a knot, twist them back through the hoop, and pull tightly. Congratulations, you've just re-learned how to tie a tie here on the Harland Highway. Yes, tying a tie. I don't know about most of you men out there, but, you know, I was one of these kids that had to go to boarding school when I was a kid, and I had to go to Catholic school when I was a kid. and we had to learn how to tie a damn tie.

There's just something wrong about a kid that's 11 years old waking up every day and putting on a tie. What am I a Wall Street guy? What am I a banker? Why the hell would you put a kid in a tie? It was torture, man. And then, of course, you know, there's always the kids, you know, their imaginations run wild.

So, you know, who just wants a tie? How can I get creative with this thing? How can I cause damage? How can I hurt someone with this tie? Right? That's what kids think about. So inevitably, we'd always undo our ties, and we learned out to snap them.

We learned out to snap our ties the way you snap a whip. We're like Indiana Jones, man. Ha! Ha! We get into tie fights. We'd be there in boarding school in the back hallways. Guys are like Clint Eastwood, you know? Meeting in the hallway of the boarding school.

Bo-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-boo-boo-woo-wa-wa-wa-ha-wa. Take off your tie. You take off your tie. Let's do this. Bamban-a-b-a-ha-ha-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. Kids would all gather around, watch the tie fight. Snap! Ow!

Snap! Ah! The guys are cheering. Woo! Get them! Whip them! Whip them! Snap them!

Ah! It was unbelievable. So that's what we did with our ties. You probably used to do it with your towels. You know when you snap someone with a wet towel? That's what the ties were like, man. That's what kids do. You can't have a kid pretend to be an adult and make them tie a tie.

That's not a tie. That's a whip. Okay? So just be careful what you give the kids as you try to, you know, make them seem older and more grown up. Trust me, kids will always find a way to pull it back and bring it down to their own level. Oh yes, kids are so inventive. of destruction.

Gotta love it, got to love it, got to love it, got to love it. And I guess eventually we all have to grow up, right? And you balance, you know, you balance the immaturity that you had as a kid with what you're going through now as an adult, as you deal with adult-style problems. And you look back and you go, Man, how simple was life? You know, a tie fight.

I meet a guy in the hallway who's got a tie. I've got a tie. We have a tie fight. We snap at each other and we go on our merry way. That's what happened during the day of a kid. Nowadays, you wake up and you're like, oh, God, do I say anything to my boss? and, uh, I'm having problems with the girlfriend, and, oh, man, I don't have quite as much money as I was hoping to have saved up at the end of the year. And, boy, oh, boy, I wonder if I should go to that social function, uh, because you know who might be there.

And, uh, you know, if I show up, what's that going to say about me and, uh, oh, man, how come that guy has a better cell phone than I have? And, ah, you see where I'm going with this? Wasn't it great being a kid? So here's what I'm going to say to you folks, okay? I've been giving you a lot of homework lately, but I'm going to do it again. Do something this week, do something today, maybe do something every day that reminds you of being a kid. You know, just shut off all the crap I just mentioned, the cell phones and the jobs and the social functions. and, hey, everybody, who wants to have better sex?

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so you get your discount and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. Try and regress your mind a little or simplify your mind and think of something kind of childish and innocent. and playful that you can inject into your day or even into your week, just to lighten the load psychologically and spiritually. And you know what? I think I just found the answer. Listen to the Harland Highway.

Because if you haven't figured it out, that's probably half the reason I do this podcast. It truly lets me just have fun, be kind of like a kid, talk about goofy things, and I hope that's part of why you're riding along with me because I hope the humor and the silliness helps take you a step backwards and helps you think of a simpler, funner, more innocent time

and lets you shut off all the other crap three days a week for half an hour. So there you go. Look at that. We're doing it together. But outside of this, you know, try and find something in your immediate environment that allows you, affords you the time to just roll it back a little, roll back the clock and find the simple things and enjoy. Because as we get older, as you know, our problems stack up and then you end up like me every Friday in therapy. With this idiot, Dr. Ascot.

Hey, everybody, this is Harlan Williams here on the Harland Highway. It's Friday. Happy Friday for you. Not so much for me, because every Friday I have to do this therapy session with the in-house therapist. Dr. Ascott powers the bee think I have a nut loose, so it's a mandatory job requirement. Hello, Dr. Ascot. Hello, Arland. So what do we have to do today?

Holland. What? Holland. What? I'm asking you what we're doing today. Arland, today I want to delve into your deepest, darkest fears. What's that going to accomplish? Holland, by acknowledging our deepest, darkest fears. fears we release them and it opens us up to be freer to the things around us arland okay that sounds

a little bit hokey to me arland don't just say my name all the time what allan stop it look what do we have to do tell me your deepest darkest fears arland all right i'm still still scared of the dark, okay? I, I, I still don't like a room with all the lights out. I don't like the dark. What was that? What, Holland? Were you just laughing at me? No, Holland, that wouldn't be good therapy. Well, what were you? I was clearing my throat, Holland. Please continue. Well, I, that's all there is. I don't like the dark. What are you doing? I was just clearing my throat, Arland. You were laughing at me.

Alland, tell me about the darkness. Look, I said it. When the lights go out, I get nervous. I don't know why. I don't like a dark room. I need a nightlight. Stop laughing at me. Holland, I'm just clearing my nostrils.

I have hay fever. You don't have hay fever. it's not even allergy season yet Holland okay are we done yet Holland I'd like to do one more thing oh and what's that I'm going to go over to this light switch

and click off the lights what are you doing don't touch that lights where is everyone Dr. Ascoe where are you stop laughing at me I can't see stop it

Why did you turn those lights off? I didn't touch them, Holland. You did so, you went right over there and turned, and I could hear you laughing in the dark. Holland, I was clearing my sinuses. Get out of here, Ascot. Holland. Get out.

You're a freak. Now I'm scared of the dark and the light, because I have to look at you. Out! Holland, would you like to go into the closet and stab in the darkness? Get out of here! God, I hate Fridays. Harland Williams here on the Harland Highway.

Stop laughing. It's Harland Williams. Oh, that guy is a freak. I don't know when I'm going to be through the therapy window. And I don't have to see that nut job anymore. But can you believe he turned the lights out on me? Dillweed. How about you?

Are you afraid of the dark? Does the dark freak you out? Are you one of those people that have to leave the door open a crack Or keep a nightlight on or you make sure your closet is closed Before you go to bed I'll be honest with you as an adult man There are sometimes when my imagination gets away with me in the dark And I still kind of go

I wonder if there's something under my bed right i'm afraid to put my foot down i'm afraid to look under the bed even as an adult now i'm not saying this happens every night but every now and again if you start to think about it you always think there's something under your bed and you don't know what it is is it a man is it a creature is it a half man half monster it's probably the most ambiguous

entity there is i mean next to trying to figure out what God looks like, I wonder what that thing under my bed looks like. And then, you know, in the end, I finally bend down and, yeah, it's as scary as I thought. It's a pair of my old dirty underwear. Hello. But it's funny because I'm not really afraid of the dark. In fact, I used to challenge the darkness. Now, this is scary and this is idiotic.

I'm going to share a story with you. Like many things in life, I like to challenge things. I like to push the boundaries. I like to challenge my fear. You know, thus the stand-up career, the acting, you know. I overcame the terror of public speaking and being exposed in front of a room full of strangers. But this is what I used to do when I was younger. We used to have a cottage.

We still have a cottage up in northern Canada. And me and my cousins, we used to go up to the road at night. And when you're in cottage country, when you're anywhere outside of the big city, man, it is just pitch black. I mean, we would go up to the dirt road at the end of our driveway, we had this long dirt driveway at our cottage, led away from the lake and up to this dirt road.

And we would go up there without flashlights, and we would just walk. would walk down this road. You can barely see your hand in front of your face. And we would pretty much terrorize ourselves. But after a while, you get a little bit used to it. And believe it or not, the human eye actually adjusts pretty good to the darkness once you give it time. It needs about, you know, 15, 20 minutes.

But according to some stuff that I read about it, our night vision is not that bad. considering all the critters in the animal kingdom. Now, we don't have the night vision of an owl, but our night vision is not as horrible as you'd think once your eyes do the adjusting. But nonetheless, it's scary when you're out in nature and you're walking around in the pitch black and you hear things rustling in the leaves

and you hear movement and wind and, you know, the human imagination, not only are you thinking about animals coming out, but you're thinking about Freddie Kruger, you're thinking about Jason from Friday the 13th, you're thinking, oh, there's just going to happen to be a murderer hiding in these bushes waiting for me in the middle of nowhere, right? Okay, so that wasn't that bad because, you know, I had my cousins with me, and, you know,

You know, we were living in a place, our cottage, you know, probably the most dangerous thing around would be a black bear. And black bears, you know, aren't really known for attacking humans, and we were in a group. So there was always that possibility, but it never freaked us out that much. Now, here's where I get stupid, okay? I got even a little older. I was in my 20s, and I moved to British Columbia for a little while to be with my girls. friend at the time. We lived in a little shack out there in British Columbia, and literally, you know, about a five-minute walk from my front door, I could be in the middle of, you know,

just incredible Rocky Mountain nature, okay? We were in the shadow of these jagged, towering, Rocky Mountains with permanent tons of snow on the top. We had turquoise rivers winding around behind us. It was incredible. It was full-blown Rocky Mountain nature, okay? As beautiful and full of nature as you can get. So, you know, pushing myself to the limits of conquering the fear of darkness, I would go out at night by myself

and do about, I guess it was about a three-mile walk and I would literally walk away from any semblance of civilization. I would walk away from any segment of the town or where we lived. And, you know, when you live out in the mountains, it doesn't take long until you're in the wilderness. One minute you're like at the corner store, and five minutes later, you're in the wild, believe me. So I would do this.

I would go out and I'd do like this three-mile walk that cut around behind a mountain and through the woods and right down by a raging river. And I'd be like, oh, right, man, I'm pushing myself. And I would take these late night walks. And I realize now looking back at it how insane that was. I mean, I was in the middle of grizzly bear country. I was in the middle of a mountain lion country. I mean, I still to this day wonder how many eyes were on me when I did that walk.

And believe me, when I was doing it, I felt invigorated. I felt alive. But let's be honest, a mountain lion comes pouncing on you out of the darkness. It's going to be like a shadow. You won't even know it's there. Your chances are nil. And I still can't believe I pushed it. But that's what you do when you're young.

You're just invincible and you're taking on the world. And it was crazy. And I did this a number of times. And one night I did it. I actually, my girlfriend's friend was there. She was living with us in this little cabin that don't let your imagination run away. It wasn't like that. and one night my girlfriend had to work so I asked her friend if she wanted to take one of these walks with me

and she's like okay so what made it a little easier is it was a full moon that night so you know that that helps but when you're in a place where there's zero lights it's still not a lot so we walked all the way up it must have been about two three miles it was a different route and it was getting late in the season it was September the rut was starting to happen which is when, you know, all the giant hoofed animals in the forest start to mate, all the male deer and elk and moose start to gather up their harem. So we walked all the way out to this little lake that I knew about. We sat on the shore of the lake, the full moon reflecting.

It was very nice. It was enchanting. It was wonderful. And then walking back on this trail, all of a sudden we hear all this commotion and we hear howling and we hear stomping, and all of a sudden, right in front of us, probably about 60 feet in front of us, just a herd of female elk start flying across the road. Okay?

And then up comes this giant, massive male bull elk with a full rack of antlers. And if you've never seen a full-grown bull elk, they are huge, they have gigantic ant, their antlers must sit, five or six feet high on their head they're probably the pointiest the sharpest and the strongest of the deer family and next to the moose the elk is the largest of all deer they're the second largest in the deer family and this thing walked up and then walked to the other side of the trail right in front of us and the rut was on and he was protecting his harem and he just started smashing trees with his with his antlers just as his rack was going back

he's just and we're like trapped okay now if that wasn't intimidating enough cut to there was a pack of coyotes there had to been about seven or eight of them who were following this pack of elk and so now they're running around they're in hunting mode they're excited they're all jacked up I can see their eyes glowing in the moonlight and they're like Right? So there's this hunt going on. I'm in the middle of the hunt.

There's a pack of female elk. The male elk is trying to protect his harem. He's smashing the hell out of trees. And here's me and this white girl from the suburbs of Canada standing in the middle of it, no one around to help. And she's like, what the hell do we do? And I said, you know what?

The coyotes are interested in the elk. I don't think they're interested in us. The elk is focused on smashing the hell out of that tree. Let's walk right through the middle of it and see if we get to the other side. And that's what we did. We just confidently, I said, don't show any fear. Just think confidence, animals sense fear. We walked right through the middle.

of basically a National Geographic special. And it was terrifying. But it was fun, and it was interesting, and that's my darkness story. And thank God that's as bad as it got. Because you know what? In the end, I could have been attacked by a grizzly bear. I could have been mauled by a cougar. And worse than anything else in the darkness,

I could have been assaulted by Dr. Ascot. Holland. Yeah, that's right. I said you, creepy. Holland. I'm going to turn the lights off now. No, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Holland? No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. No. Ah! Where are you? Where? Hey, who just touched me? Holland.

Hey, who was that on my ass? Holland. Ah! I'm whipping you with my tie, Holland. Ah! We gotta go. We gotta go. This is Harlan Williams. in the dark on the Harlan Highway. Until next time, chicken chow main. Where are you, Ascot?