The Harland Highway - PODCAST 308

Episode Date: August 17, 2011

A surprise guest visits the studio, technology comfort, a long listener voice mail is discussed. Berries with cream M'lady?? 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

Sweet simmering side orders of Sicilian seaweed salad. Yeah, I threw a whole bunch of S-bombs at you, folks. And the only reason I did it is because I'm not well. Yes, I'm well. You're well, and everything is swell, because we are here on the Harlan Highway. Interesting show today. Okay, let me lay it down for you.

First of all, we have a surprise guest coming in. to the show. I don't know who it is. Roger the producer booked it. Hopefully it's somewhat interesting. Then we're going to have a little conversation about technology and how it's changing and fading.

And then, okay, a long, long listener voicemail, and I break it down. I break down the voicemail. I go off on the voicemail, but it's a good one. It's a great voicemail, and it's a lot of fun, a lot of surprises in it, and we'll check that out during the second half of the show. But right now, we're at the first half. In fact, we're not even at the first half.

We're at the very beginning of your favorite highway, the one and only Harland 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 Harland Highway. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth.

What a treat. Oh, wait. Was you a great big fat person? You just made a wrong turn. On to the Harland Highway. You need many years of therapy. Hey, Harlan. It's Stephanie from Bedford.

You might want to think twice before sticking your penis in there. Just do me. You're riding down the Harland Highway with Harland Williams. Hey, everybody, this is Harlem Williams, and you are rolling down the Harland Highway with me, the host of the Harland Highway show. you know from time to time we like to bring guests in to my show today we have a guy Dan McDermott is here and he claims to have a special ability a special talent I decided not to find out what it was I was just like hey let me just see what you got so here we go welcome to the show buddy hey oh hey well I'm glad

you're excited to be here. So what is this special talent you're going to do for us today? Hey-oh! I said, what is your special talent that you're going to be talking to us about today? Hey-yo, hey-oh! Okay, you got to stop doing that because we're doing a show here. What are you? Are you a juggler?

Are you a pet wrangler? a glass blower, do you walk on a tightrope? What is your special thing you do? Hey-o! All right, dude, you got to knock that off. Hey-o! Hey-o! Hey-o! Hey-o! Dude, stop saying hey-o, okay?

Let's just talk, all right? You ready to talk? Hey-o. All right. Out. Get out. I knew this was a mistake. From now on we screen everybody. This guy's a complete ass. Hey, heyo! Heyo!

Get out of here! Harland Williams. Heyo! Idiot. Wow. Really dumb way to start the show. And I must apologize. I don't approve. all the guests. I don't screen all the guests. They just reel them in here. What a doorknob.

Just when you think we're getting smarter in life, you get guys like that. And speaking of getting smarter, don't we kind of, you know, kind of relate technology, the advancement of technology, to us getting smarter? You know, don't the two kind of go together every time we create a new space age device, we're like, wow, humans are getting smarter. But what's funny is that the technology is so entrenched in our world now, at least in the big city, that it becomes shocking for people not to have it. Case in point, I was at the airport the other day, and I'm getting on a flight, and they go, okay, boarding all rows, everybody, please.

come and show us your boarding passes or whatever they say, right? So everybody lines up and, you know, a few people hand their boarding pass to the guy, and the guy, like, looks at it and writes it down and does a checkmark. And a few more people do it than I hand mine. He writes down like a number and then makes a little checkmark. And then the lady behind me was with her kids, and this lady goes, oh my god oh my god he's doing it manually oh my god how bizarre i can't believe he's writing it down

he's checking us in manually oh wow and i'm not exaggerate that's what she was like like she was totally like amused astonished confounded amazed all all in one breath And it made me laugh because, you know, it was almost as if, you know, instead of watching TV, someone pounded two rocks together like a caveman. Like she couldn't believe the primitiveness of a guy looking at something, taking a pen, and then relaying that information through the pen onto another piece of paper. It just blew her mind There was no keyboard and no scanning involved And it kind of clicked with me It was like, wow, so people are almost forgetting

What kind of the good old fashion way was all about They're kind of now when they see it It's amusing, it's comical, it's it's a throwback It's as if you, you know, saw someone pull up to you in their car, right, nowadays? Imagine this. Someone pulls up to you in their car and says, excuse me, excuse me,

do you know if there's a pay phone around here? And I bet every kid in your car would go, a what phone? A pay phone, is that the new iPhone, Mommy? What's a pay phone? We got to get that. Is that new? Is that the latest cellular telephone?

Mommy, why do we have a pay phone? Shut up, kids. So just another sign of the, the times credible stuff and um i don't know maybe one day i won't be doing my podcast on a computer maybe i'll just talk and somehow it'll get to your ear i'll be like a little annoying mosquito buzzing around your head like get it off somebody get the off i can't stand anymore this harland highway somebody not only get the off get the fuck off um so So there you go.

Technology coming at you. And speaking of pay phones. Hey, Harland. I'm an avid listener to your podcast. Love it. Most all of it. The only little thing, I'm actually catching up. Today I'm listening to March 2nd, 2011.

And you're talking about how people should get over using books and move to the digital age and all that. And I don't know if you've thought this all the way through, but, and, you know, I'm not Mr. You know, mocking encyclopedia here either, but I would think that the iPads and the iPod, and the PCs and some of the Macs have been claimed to have benzene and other materials emitting from them that are filling our landfills. I mean, people just, you know, iPods are throwaway devices.

You can't change the batteries. Apple, you know, likes it that way. And these things just get thrown out, dude, and they're not biodegradable, whereas paper is totally recyclable. And, you know, most citizens these days are into recycling. I'm not so sure that the digital way is the way to go, you know, until we get a really solid recycling policy on these devices that are basically just throwaway devices and non-biodegradable. One other little thing, you know, and I'm sounding. like, you know, a jerk here, but so be it.

Again, I love your podcast, laugh my ass off all the time, love your characters. But I can't help it, and I think it just is probably part of your act, is when you, you know, go up on a topic like the, you know, get over the books, people, you know, the romantic part of the books. And I do like the kind of the smell of the ink and the paper myself a little bit, even though I do have a Kindle. But you'll get on a topic and you'll start arguing against your side as one of your listeners. You'll say something like, I know there's one of you out there saying, what the hell are you talking about, Williams, I want, you know, whatever the topic may be. and um you know um sometimes i just feel like that's a little bit maybe degrading to your listeners um you know i think everybody tends to think oh he's talking about somebody else not me but you know and i'm also

noticed that you kind of pick on the fatties harland and uh you know i'm guessing that that might be a good there might be you know some overweight people that are a good portion of your and I don't mean literally I mean you know number wise of your listening population

sorry for being such a jackass but I don't know I just felt like I had to call but I do love your podcast listen to it all the time it's awesome you're funny you're cool you're down earth. I think other people have mentioned, I can't believe you live in Hollywood. You just

don't sound like the Hollywood type, but I hope you keep on doing it forever, man, because it makes my day, every day, and work is hard, and, you know, this is my, it might break from work. I, you know, get away from work, sneak away at lunchtime and listen to another episode of the highway so keep it up dude uh hope the negative comments are okay bye oh whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa wow wow wow what a voicemail i kind of just got it handed to me but let me say something you know this this gentleman's voicemail uh as you could clearly here he was a little bit trepidacious so let me clear the air right now and say excellent voicemail great voicemail no need to be trepidious no need to hold back everything you said was

incredible and i uh i applaud you for that uh that voicemail because you said what you needed to say you said what was on your mind and that's what the voicemail box is all about and i know i did a thing the other day where I said, don't do any long, rambling voicemails. Well, this voicemail was over four minutes long, and the difference between long and rambling is big. This guy had some very intelligent points to make. He was, you know, very clear about what he wanted to say, and he wasn't rambling just about nothing.

So a great voicemail And I would just say in the future to this gentleman You don't have to hold back You know you should stand behind your convictions You should be confident with what you're saying And I get you were trying to be respectful and not hurt my feelings But you know what I'm a big boy I can take it And that goes for all you listeners

You can say whatever you say Now that being said I don't want everyone calling and ripping me in the show apart. That's not what it's all about, but if there are things or elements or things I say that you're not on board with or you don't like, whoopie do, throw it at me. I can handle it. So let's, this voicemail also made me laugh quite a bit.

And not disrespectfully, but just because some of the points this guy made, which he went into detail about, and I thought were great, great points. I'm going to break them down, but somewhere along the way, in his points, he kind of counteracted his own points. And I'll show you how, and it wasn't done by design.

It was just by accident, but outside of being a great, intelligent voicemail, it was also, it was kind of a subliminally comedic as well. So let's start with the first point about the books and the digital age and all that. And I hear you, man. I hear you. Look, some people don't want to lose books. They don't want to let go of books.

Maybe they're scared of the digital age. And your point was more about, you know, books being made out of paper and being biased. degradeable versus, you know, technology like the iPad and iPods and things like that that are full of mercury and toxic metals and batteries and things that are not biodegradable. Hey, everybody, who wants to have better sex? No? Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. You always want to have better sex. That's what you want it to be better, not worse. Trust me. And Adam and Eve is offering. 50% off just about any item plus free shipping. And more than that, Adam and Eve wants to make your

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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 discreet. count and a hundred percent free shipping code harland have fun don't throw your back out and uh you know my argument for that and i'm not going to say i'm right but uh my argument for that is um a there are specific areas where you can uh dump uh old technology there actually are companies that collect and harvest, you know, monitors and computers and things like that, you'd probably have to search around to find them.

It's probably easier to throw something in your garbage can, but they're out there if you want them, so they can be recycled, and they are being recycled. And I guess my thing is that you have to look at it in terms of damage, okay? Sure, paper's recyclable, and you made a point that more and more people are doing it, sure, but out of six and a half billion people on planet Earth, including underdeveloped countries and even developed countries, what percentage of those people really recycle paper? And how many of those people really recycle a lot of the paper? Do you think they really pick through every piece of paper and sort it?

I don't know that I know anybody. Okay, I recycle paper, but I don't, you know, pick every little Dixie cup and Kleenex and put it in a thing. You know, I put newspapers and magazines and stuff, and yeah, I could probably do a better job, but I don't. And I bet most people don't do anything. So then you take the billions of people in China and India and places that aren't as developed.

You think they got a little blue box sitting in their, Their apartment or their mud hut or their little Chinese townhouse or whatever? I don't know. I don't think so. So then you've got to look at, okay, what is the damage that, you know, these little clusters of technology are doing versus clear cutting, okay, areas the size of, you know, 10 professional football fields every four. Do you ever hear those statistics?

The Amazon rainforests, they clear nine football fields an hour. And you know what? I was a park ranger. I worked up in the forestry industry, and I've been there firsthand. I've walked through and watched them slash and cut and strip the land, strip virgin forest and just leave it. a barren wasteland. I've actually been one of the guys that went back in after the fact and planted new trees

to try and bring these areas back to life. And I'll tell you what, a sad statistic out of every tree we plant or every hundred trees we plant, only a portion of them make it. And out of every area we get to go in and plant, there's tons, tons of acreage. that never gets replanted. So I got to go, okay, what's a landfill site full of iPods worth to me versus, you know, hundreds of thousands of hectares of primitive and ancient

and, you know, just old wood forest being ripped down and animals being displaced and species being eradicated and river systems dying because there's no more trees on the banks? to hold the sediment and goes on and on and on and everything through the pecking order suffers. I feel like at least with technology we can contain it. We can contain it to a landfill where, yes, I know, some of it may seep into the groundwater, but guess what?

It's probably going to seep into the groundwater closest to where humans live. And, you know, if I got a pick, maybe they bloody deserve it. not going to wipe out nature. But I think we're getting better at disposing of technology. So there's my counter argument to you. Okay. I'm a nature guy. And as far as the smell and feel of books, okay.

You know what? If you really need that, keep an old Bible in your drawer. Or keep an old, you know, episode of, keep an old volume of Mark Twain on your bookshelf beside your bed and sniff it put it on your face before you go to bed or ruffle it in your fingers but here's the comedy element of of uh the callers uh call and again i respect it and uh i thank them but here's the part that made me laugh after the uh the whole rant about uh you know the books and the technology and him him against the technology and in favor of the books, he dropped this on us.

Yeah, part of the books. And I do like the kind of the smell of the ink and the paper myself a little bit, even though I do have a Kindle. So there you go, long rant about holding on to the books. Just the way he said it, it was just so nonchalant, even though I do have a Kindle. Even though I do have a Kindle. And again, not making fun, just appreciate that there's just some natural organic comedy in here.

Now, let's move to the next point. And the next point you made was in reference to how I sometimes, you know, I don't know, rebuff my own statement. You know, I kind of, if I'm getting on a roll with the topic, I kind of pull the old. Now, I don't want you people. thinking that I'm this or I'm that and blah, blah, blah. And I guess I kind of do that because, you know, I, people always want to argue two sides of things. And I guess the reason I do that is because I'm not looking for an argument.

I just want to throw my opinion out there and leave it there for you to decipher. And I always kind of say at the end of my bits, I don't believe I'm right. Nothing I say, I stand there and go, I'm right, you're wrong. Screw you. I know everything. So I kind of throw out the, hey, I don't want everybody to, you know, so that they don't think it's an argument. I'm just throwing an opinion into the air. You can take it or leave it or flush it down the toilet or adopt it and think it's great.

Who knows? So it's kind of a way of downplaying myself a bit. You know, I can get it that that's annoying. Could be annoying, maybe, maybe not. I'll watch it. Point taken. Thank you. But speaking of which, and again, I just went through your message again, and guess what I heard.

You'll get on a topic and you'll start arguing against your side as one of your listeners. I don't know if you've thought this all the way through, but, and, you know, I'm not Mr. You know, walking encyclopedia here either. But one other little thing, you know, and I'm sounding like, you know, a jerk here, but so be it. Sorry for being such a jackass, but I don't know. I just felt like I had to call, but I do love your podcast. Listen to it all the time. Keep it up, dude.

Hope the negative comments are okay. Bye. See, buddy, see, you made my point for me. It's weird. It's weird when you throw or express your opinions out into the open for the world to hear. You get sensitive about it, right? And you obviously were sensitive about hurting my feelings, and I guess that's what I'm doing because I don't know who I'm going out to.

I don't know who's listening. I know it's a lot of people. and so sometimes with my opinions, I guess I like to express them, so I'm like, okay, here's what Harlan Williams thinks. But just in case it's too much for you, come on, don't get all doop-doop-doop-do-do-do-do-do-do. And so without knowing it, you did the exact same thing here. And again, not making fun of you, just pointing it out. I think it's a great, a great voicemail.

And I hope in the future it helps you, as you are helping me, just to stand behind the conviction more, and you don't have to put up a disclaimer type of thing. Just state your case, let people interpret it, interpret it, and make their own decisions, and let the chips fall. where they may. And speaking of chips, fat people like to eat chips. And you made a comment that I was, you know,

hitting the fatties over the head a little bit. And you know what? You're absolutely right. I have been a little unfair to the hefty. Some of my earlier shows probably more than I do now. But going back and listening to my shows, I kind of picked up on that too. If you notice, kind of as the podcast has evolved, the derogatory remarks towards the weighty have, you know,

dropped off a little, they're not going to go away forever. You know, because I poke fun at fat people, skinny people, smelly people, tall people, short people, all kinds of people. There's fat people in the world. They're going to get joked about just like, you know, a guy like me with no chin. big ears and a lanky posture gets made fun of too. I think people know enough to take it tongue and cheek,

but you're right, there is a point when maybe you can go too far, so I keep my eye on it, and I thank you for mentioning it. Again, this plays into what a great voicemail this was. But, as with your other points, you accidentally put your foot in it. take a listen to this you actually in the middle of defending fat people being joked about made a joke about fat people kind of pick on the fatties harland and uh you know i'm guessing that that might be a good there might be uh you know some overweight people that are a good uh portion

of your uh and i don't mean literally i mean you know number wise of your uh listening population oh boy see even you couldn't resist the fat joke buddy they kind of just fall in your lap don't they oh god this is an entertaining voicemail and i got us i'm going to say for the last time it was entertaining i cut it up a little but it was a great one i i really appreciate you calling and stating your case, making your points, and that's what the voicemail is there for. It's also there for silly, crazy, nutty stuff, too, whatever you want, but it's nice to hear someone say

what's on their mind about things. And as far as your comment about me not sounding Hollywood, well, you know what, buddy, I mentioned earlier that I spent many years working out in the bush as a, you know, working in the timber industry and lumberjacking and fish and wildlife. And it was there that I got a sense of the real world. It was there that I got my perspective on the world, I believe.

And yes, I do circulate here in Hollywood, but I tend to always stand on my little rock in the middle of nature. And look at Hollywood from that vantage point. And I feel, if I'm being honest, it's kept me grounded and kept me safe and kept me centered. And, you know, I'm eternally grateful for the time I spent out in nature because it certainly, you know, plugs you into the real world. So if that was a compliment that you gave me, I appreciate it.

Thank you. I try not to be to Hollywood. I know I, and here I go, laying it on you, but I do lay down the celebrity stories now and then, but that's because I get excited about it. It's fun. Oh, so there you go. Look at that.

I dedicate, how about that, buddy, huh? I dedicated the whole show almost to your message. Hey, oh, get out. out of here hey oh up yours up yours um so there you go um good job appreciate it and uh you know folks keep your uh your voicemails coming 888 500 2090 uh don't forget we want to hear from the ladies let's see what the ladies have to say or if you're too shy to call you can write me at harlow williams.com but i got to admit i like hearing your voices i like hearing the inflection i like hearing the tone i like kind of hearing what my listeners sound like it's

kind of fun it's kind of fun um so there you go um an interesting podcast to say the least and uh we are out of time good lord we are out of time And these things just get thrown out, dude. But we will be back. And, you know, we never got the name of our listener who gave us the voicemail. But let's not forget the most important part of his call. And the reason why I do this and the reason we all come here to the Harlan Highway. It makes my day every day.

and work is hard and, you know, this is my, it might break from work. I, you know, get away from work, sneak away at lunchtime and listen to another episode of the highway. So keep it up, dude. I will, dude. And thanks again for a great phone message. You rock. And again, once again, if you want to call 888-52090, go to Harlan Williams. Check out the store.

Check out the comedy schedule. I will be in Seattle, Washington at the parlor. Thursday, August 25th through the 27th. Great club. You will love it. So if you're in the neighborhood, drop by. And, you know, if you don't have a date, bring your Kindle, your iPod, or your landfill site,

whichever you want. And that's it. Until next time, I'm going to put a bowl on top of my iPad and warm up a nice big bowl of chicken. Chau May, baby. Keep it up, dude.