The Harland Highway - PODCAST 291

Episode Date: July 6, 2011

A summer music festival, hi fi wiring, interview with actor Tom Green, who's got my money? A golden oldie (song). Mushy mump lumps!! 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

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Harlan Highway. Hey, may I take your hat and coat, please? Okay, what the hell am I a creepy butler at a mansion? No, I'm not. I'm Harlan Williams. The host of the Harlan Highway, and why was I being so creepy? Don't get it, never will. Never want to. Uh, holy God, what a show.

and yes, God is listening. Holy God is listening. You're listening. I'm listening. I'm talking. Soon I will shut up so you can start listening and I can stop talking. But we have incredible ground to cover today. We're going to give you some high-fi advice, some wiring advice.

We're going to be talking about. CDs and records and all the gizmos, and then I'm going to play a song for you, an oldie that is free and clear of all the technological magicry that they put on songs these days. We're going to be talking about an incredible music festival that happens every summer. We're going to be talking about your money. And, speaking of the green stuff, Tom Green is here for an interview. So hang on to your toenails. It's the Harlan Highway

Welcome to the Harland Highway You fellas been doing a bit of booze and have you? Sucking back on Grandpa's old cough medicine There's an element of uncontrolled chaos The Harlan Highway Serving everyone from presidents and kings To the scum of the earth What a treat

Oh wait, was you great good back person You just made a wrong turn On to the Harland Highway You need many years of therapy Hey, Harlan. It's Stephanie from Denver. Just do me. You might want to think twice before sticking your penis in there. Just do me. You're riding down the Harland Highway with Harlan Williams.

This is comedian Harlan Williams. How are you doing, buddy? What's your name, friend? You, sir, I'm looking right at you. Told me what a treat, what do you do, partner? I go to school and work a lot, man. You go to school and work a lot, so you're the janitor? How are you there, buddy? What a treat to have you here right off the front?

What's your name, son? I'm Dave. You're Dave. All right, what do you do, my friend, little friend? Working a warehouse. You work in a warehouse. There you go. See, buddy, that's what I'm talking about. What's in the warehouse, David? What are you keeping there?

Produce. What kind, buddy? All kinds. All kinds. Well, like what? Uh, yeah. Keep apples in there. Some nice oranges and lettuce.

You could have just said food? What do you do, my dear? I teach. You teach good for you. What do you teach, my love? Fourth grade. Fourth grade. What do you teach? little jenks, just about everything good.

Were you ever teaching how to climb up a fidget's ass? Oh, yeah, that's me. That's me. I'll take the credit for those. That's me live, uh, spritzing with the crowd. Something I love to do. Um, if you want to hear more of that, by the way, uh, I have a whole CD filled with me just doing crowd work.

The CD's called Harland Williams Crowd Control 2. It's actually the second volume. And it's an aspect of stand-up comedy that, you know, I just love. Not a lot of comedians do it. Some of them don't have the confidence to do it. Some of them aren't good at it. Some of them do do it. I love it.

I love just throwing it out there. The crowd throws it back. And then I'm kind of the guy putting his head. on the chopping block. I've got to come up with zingers really fast and it's something I love. So if that's something you love just that energetic in the

moment, back and forth with the crowd, pick up Harlow Williams crowd control part two, volume two. It's at harlorems.com in the web store and it's a whole CD of

me going at it with the crowd. Hecklers, drunks, idiots, smart people, dumb people. It's just a whole buffet of crowdwork. Yeah, that's how Daddy makes his money. And speaking of making money, I've been thinking about this. Did it ever occur to you that we don't really make money?

I mean, we make money, but we don't keep money. I've realized in life that money is as transient as a hobon. riding a train car across the country. You know, we have money, and then ultimately we just make money to give the money to someone else, right? You have, you know, let's say you have $2,000. Suddenly, there are a pipe burst in your house.

Up comes the plumber, up comes the tile guy, up comes the mold guy, up comes the contractor. Here you go, $2,000. This was mine. I got it from the place I work. They gave it to me. It's sitting around with me for a while, and I'm passing it off to you. And then those guys will pass it off to the people that, you know, provide the lumber or the chemicals or the tile.

It's almost like the waves in the ocean. It just keeps moving. It's like a rhythm. It just keeps moving and moving and passing hands, passing hands. And I think our whole lives, we trick ourselves. into thinking, oh, we have money, we hold money, we possess money. I think we give away money more than we do anything else. We just pass it on.

I'll take that $4 Starbucks coffee. Here's some more of my money. I need some gas in my car. Here's some more of my money. I need a fast drive-through cheeseburger. Here's some more of my money. It's not really mine. I can't seem to hold on to the damn stuff.

here you go everyone else just have my money oh god it's kind of sad really you know you just keep passing it around and then you die you know that old saying life's a bitch and then you die how about life's just passing around your money and then you die maybe that's what i'll do maybe I'll have like a suit, a three-piece suit, like pressed and glued together made out of like $20 bills just to show the money who is in charge. And when I die, put me in my money suit. And I want to have an open casket so everyone can see me lay in there in my suit made of $20 bills or $100 bills or whatever I can afford at the time before I die. And then bury me. There I go.

At least I took some of it with me forever. That was a few hundred bucks that I didn't pass on to someone else. Until, of course, you know, people remember the economy's bad. A couple of my aunts and uncles know where I'm buried, you know, sneak up to the graveyard in the middle of the night with the old Home Depot shovel and, you know, water cooler and those little helmets with the minor lights on them. They're like, oh, yeah, we be digging. Hey, Harlem was a great guy.

We loved him. He was our nephew. He was, you know, he was our brother. He was our son. But screw that. That guy's wearing a suit worth four grand. Dig! Dig!

Dig! Get that money! Oh, boy, it never ends. It never ends. People just want your green. If you got green, they want it. And speaking of that, here's a segue. I wanted some green.

Yeah, I wanted Tom Green. And I asked Tommy to come down and visit the Harland Highway and tell us about some of his fun time fishing experiences. So here we go, ladies and gentlemen, Tom Green on the Harlan Highway. How are you doing, Tom? Squat. Now, wait a minute.

You were fishing recently, buddy. Uh-huh. Now, I can't... Oh, I've had injuries. I've had a lot of bad injuries. But what is Tom Green fish for? You don't go for bass. You're a nut.

What do you fish for sea cucumbers and salad shooters and stuff? I was fishing off a rock recently. I was fishing not for a salad shooter. Okay. But you were fishing in a rock. on a rock on a rock oh i'm sorry oh okay rock and a huge wave came along and it hit me and knocked me off the thing and i busted a couple of ribs ouch dude and then that that's been sort of my year and i've been i've been hobbling around and i've been getting massages do you get massages yes i do a lady that comes up

and is working on my back now because i've broken ribs is it a lady or be honest is it your friend fabio with the i can't believe it's not a lady no you're right it's a fabio no it's a A whore. Yeah, that's Fabio. See you, Tom. See you. Yep, kind of a mini interview with Tom. You know, he had to run off and go fishing, folks.

So please, he's gone fly fishing probably. And speaking of flies and bugs and ants in particular, it is summertime, folks. And guess what? Ant Fest, okay? You know what I'm talking about? You know how we have, like, our outdoor festivals, like, you know, like Woodstock, and, you know,

what's the one for the girls? There's some festival, outdoor festival for girls. There's blue grass festivals. There's, you know, farm aid. There's all these outdoor concerts all over the country. You know, Lelapalooza and Coachella and all, you know, all these big outdoor music festivals. And Lilith Fair is the one for the girls.

And have you ever noticed that as soon as the weather gets warm, the ants, the ants throw like a woodstock? You know what I'm talking about, right? You're walking along a sidewalk or you're sitting on your porch having a lemonade. and you look down and for some reason no other time during the year you look down

and all the ants have come to the surface they've all left the nest and they're all like piled up in a crack on the sidewalk like millions of them they're pretty much crawling on top of each other and then all the winged ants come with the wings on them like what

suddenly we got flying ants what and it's just a huge, it's like ANFEST. It's like outdoor ANFest and all the ants are like alright man, hey man, you're going to Anfest this year? Oh yeah

man, you know I am. I've been carrying grains of sand all year. I look forward to this every summer, man. Yeah, Enfest. Yeah, let's go to Amfest. Yeah, man, I'm going to get ripped at Amfest. You're bringing any grasshopper legs? No, man, I got

a ladybug. I'm bringing a ladybug. I'm going to pig out and just party at ant fest man I'm gonna be drinking some aphids and it's got me to get wasted on aphid juice man right and then you look down on the sidewalk and you can almost

hear like the Jimmy Hendrix and the Janice Joplin and the doors and all the ants are just partying and you know wiggling around and gathering together like hey man here come the winged dance dude this party's really start now here come the fly

tires dude isn't it bizarre what the hell's going on with anthest look around your neighborhood you'll see as the summer wears on as it gets warmer one day you'll be walking and just be like oh my god it's ant fest and do what i do man just get down on all fours and crawl in it's free man the ants are cool they don't charge nothing so you just like lay down with them and they're cool it's like an orgy man they just crawl all over you and you know it's it's just it's awesome it's an ant fest dude oh man i'm going to ant fest oh oh oh i'm so wasted at that fast am fast let's go to am fast oh god so i'll see you there man put your headbands on and your uh bell bottoms and slap some wings on and dissect your body into three segments.

And let's party at Amphist. Thinking of putting in a home theater system. Getting behind your TV and dealing with all that wiring. Don't. Roll your TV and all your audiovisual equipment off the side of a cliff. And then take a deep breath, relax, and go to. to the movie theater. Just another friendly tip

from your friendly radio show host Harland Williams here on the Harland Highway. And speaking of high phi, okay, I want to roll something past you, people. Let's see how tolerant you are. Let's see how patient you can be.

and look, this may not work or it may work. I just don't know. But I want to try this with you. I hope you like this. This is kind of a little experiment, but it plays into, Hey, everybody, who wants to have better sex? No, yes, yes. The answer is yes.

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That's Harland, H-A-R-L-A-N-D at Adam and Eve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast. So be sure to use this code Harland so you get your discount and 100% free shipping, Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. All the high-tech gadgetry we have now, the MP3s and the CDs and, you know, the THX sound

and, you know, everything's so immaculately clean. It's like someone went into the music industry and gave it like an enema with bleach. Yai! And what's missing, what's missing from the music, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, okay, but maybe it's something that's a little nostalgic, something that you miss, that maybe you can tolerate now again. And I'm talking about old school listening to a song that has a little bit of scratch and pop on it. In other words, something that was recorded from a record, a good old-fashioned disc, a record. a record disc which are hard to find anymore

and a lot of you listening might not even know what they are a lot of you may have never heard one believe it or not I guess I'm showing my age a little bit here but when I grew up I listened to records on my record player and even though we get the scratching and the popping there was something just a little bit comforting about it so here's my experiment and I hope you see it through If you want to jump ship, go for it.

You know, it might not be for everyone, but let me tune you into the experience. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play you a recording. I'm a very romantic song, okay? It's a song called Flamingo, and I don't have the name of the artist, but she's just got such a wonderful voice. It's a little old school. I'm guessing this thing was recorded like in the 40s or the 50s. maybe the 30s I don't know but it's a throwback to the days where singers were singers

there was limited music it was a singer and his or her microphone there was no pitch modulation there was no reverb there was no technical magic put on to a person's vocals it wasn't like the days of today where you got brittany spears and you got you know every band in the world that can tweak their voice and put stuff on it so that it's not really them a lot of the time. I mean, there's some great singers, but a lot of them, you know, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors is what I'm saying. So this is an old record that I pulled from my parents' record collection a long time ago before they kind of got rid of it. Believe it or not, they threw a lot of their old records away,

and I think this was one of them, but before they threw it away, I was just, you know, sifting around through the record collection one day, stumbled on this song, and it's kind of beautiful if you give it a chance. You can really hear a singer working her instrument, working her vocal ability, which is very refreshing. So it's a beautiful song, beautiful singer, it's tropical, it's romantic. You're going to hear all the crackles and pops from a record player. And as I said, you wouldn't want to hear it all the time, but it's kind of a nice piece of nostalgia.

So here's the last bit of the homework I want you to do, okay? Wherever you are, I want you to go to a quiet place. I want you to close your eyes. Or if you're in your house, I want you to go lay down on your bed, turn the lights off, and just listen to this song. It's about three minutes long. it's called Flamingo and just focus on it. Just hear the singing, hear the words,

here the inflection in the voice. And yes, hear the kind of scratches and pops in the old record and see if it takes you away to another time, another place like it does with me. So without further ado, get to a quiet place close your eyes and here's

Flamingo Flamingo Like a flame in the sky flying over the island to my never nearby Flamingo

In your tropical you speak of passion undying And a love that is true The wind sings a song as you As you go A song that I hear belong The murmuring poem Flamingo

When the sun meets the sea Say farewell to my lover And hasten to me The Yeah, and the other, and the other, and the other, I'm going to be. Oh, we'll sing the song to you as you go A song that I hear below The memories of memories

Flamingo When the sun meets the sea Say farewell to my lover And hasten to me Oh, my God. Blah! God, what a beauty. What a beauty.

You're not going to hear that at Ann Fest. Okay, so what did you think? For those of you that stuck it through, I mean, doesn't that song just transport you? You don't get music like that anymore. And how many of you found the crackling and the popping annoying or you kind of found it to be almost kind of like, you know, like you go into an old house and the doors creek

and the floorboards creak, and it gives it that lived-in feeling, that lived-in sound. It's almost like comfort food, all the crackling and popping. Now, as I said, you listen to a whole album like that. You'd probably go berserk. You'd probably start hearing secret messages and the crackles. Must kill parents. You know. But just to put it in context, I don't want you to think I'm an old fogy who sits by the fireplace

with an oval teen and a pipe and a red leather bathrobe. Look, I'm a guy that listens to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden and, you know, okay. So this is something that, you know, just pops. If you listen to it again and you just, you listen to the voice and the music, all the subtle flows of the saxophones and the trumpets you can hear in there. it's just a real beauty. So here's what I want you to do. Some of you might just be like, whatever, Bill.

I want you to give it one more chance. And maybe give it a little rest. And maybe tonight when you go to bed, okay? If it's the last thing you do when you turn off the light, here's what I want you to do. Because I'm saying this because I think you'll love it. I think it will transport you. I think it'll be a great experience for.

You heard the song once. Maybe you're a little shocked. Like, yeah, kind of. slow kind of so here's what i want you to do tonight the last thing before you go to sleep either have your speakers set up or your earphones or your ipod or whatever it is and i want you to picture yourself on a white sand beach with a sweet soft warm tropical wind blowing you can hear the ruffling in the palm trees there's aquamarine aquamarine Aquamarine water in front of you.

You can hear the surf coming in, the sun setting, and put yourself on that beach with the love of your life. Someone you've always wanted to just gaze into their eyes. You picture yourself on this beach holding their hand with your arms around each other, maybe laying on a blanket, maybe just sitting on the sand, but put yourself with your lover, whether they be real or imaginary, and play the song one more time as you roll off to sleep

and picture yourself there and be there. And keep your ears open for my favorite line on the whole song, Flamingo, where the sun meets the sea. Oh, I love that little line in there. So there you go. Take it away. Go to bed with it.

And I hope you get something out of it. I hope it relaxes you. It sends you on your way. It relieves all the stress of the day of the moment. And transport you to a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful. tropical, romantic place. Oh, wow. I feel like we all just had a group hug.

But I'm interested to know what you think, because I know a lot of you are probably rockers and, you know, DJ spinners, and, you know, maybe you'll listen to heavier stuff or softer stuff. This is old school. I want to hear if you liked this moment. I want to hear if you actually live,

laid down in your bed and drifted off to this song and what the experience was like. So if you want to share 888, 52090, just another one of my wild and wacky experiments here on the Harlan Highway. Always trying to push the boundaries of your experience here, whether they'd be wacky, wild, or romantic. Be interested to hear your thoughts. And you can always write me at Harlan Williams.com. uh and don't forget everybody don't forget please this weekend i will be in pittsburg at the improv

i'll be there friday saturday sunday july eight nine and ten come and have some uh comedic hijinks with me and don't forget you can pick up the harland highway at stitcher dot com for your cell phones and don't forget you can go to Harlem Williams.com, as I said at the beginning of this show, if you want to pick up a CD of me working the crowd, just crowd work, pick up Harlem Williams

Crowd Control Volume 2. It's not your standard comedy CD. It's all off the cuff in the moment. And if you appreciate that kind of thing, I think you'll get some good laughs out of that CD. So there you go. Wow.

I'm getting all emotional. Flamingo Don't ruin it, Harland. So there we go. Time for me to say goodbye. I hope you have a wonderful sleep. Enjoy the Flamingo song. And until next time, I'll enjoy a big, delicious bowl of chicken.

Chalmane, baby. Hey, man, where's Jim Morrison, man? It's Ant Fest. Hey, we want the doors Yeah, we want the doors. We want the doors. We want the doors. It's Ant Fest. Bring on the doors, man.

Ladies and gentlemen, from Los Angeles, California, the door. Goards. In-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, En-Fest, Fis. Fass! Foss! Fug! Fugging you are on the road. You hand upon the wheel

I'll keep your eyes on the road Your hand upon the wheel Come to the road I'm going to have a Rio A good time Thank you.