The Harland Highway - Podcast 45

Episode Date: December 4, 2009

Food, money, and oh yes, Dr. Ascot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, hey, all you groovsters, welcome to the Harlan Highway. I'm Harlan Williams, and what a show we have for you today, my friends. Today we're going to be talking about phone etiquette, right? What to do when you're calling someone, but you don't really want them to pick up the phone. You're going to be talking about the conundrum of the people that still say www.w before.com? We're going to have some call-ins. We're going to have some of you have called in to express your opinions about the Harland Highway, good and bad. We're going to be talking a lot about food.

You know, they've got the dollar burgers and all this cheap food going on. We're going to be talking about the pros and cons of cheap food, exotic food, how we kind of take food for granted in our society. Slipping a little commentary about IHOP and maybe get into the biggest loser, that reality show. there's a lot of food that happen there. Hello! And then lastly, regretfully, it is Friday, and I have

to check in with my therapist, Dr. Ascot. Oh, I hate that guy, but he'll be here too, so here we go. Are you ready? Are you ready to do this? Put on your seatbelts, folks. Come on. Let's get gone. Straight down the Harland Highway.

All aboard. You just made. a wrong turn. Heavens to Mercutroy, Gave them. On to the Harland Highway. You've got... Cancer's at the anus?

Why, George, I think he's got it. Stop it. Stop it! You're busting my heart. It's Harlan Williams. Hey, it's Harlan Williams. Here with you on the Harlan Highway. Hello!

I'm speaking of hello. You ever have to phone somebody or you kind of want to phone somebody, but then halfway through dialing their digits, you realize, wait a minute, I don't really want to talk to this person. Or you know you owe someone a phone call and you just don't want to talk to them, but you don't want to blow them off completely so you phone them back, but you pray they aren't there. You're praying you get the answering machine, right?

And it's like the phone rang. There's ring one Okay, nobody answered There's ring two Okay, they still could be there Ring three, they're probably running across the living room Ring four

Okay, I'm getting closer to that answering machine Ring five, there's no way they're possibly home Ring six, I am in the clear man, ring seven and... Hello? Oh, oh

Eddie? Yeah. Hi, it's Harlan. Oh, hi, man. What's going on? No, nothing. You know, I just phoned to say hi. Oh, and in your head, you're like, how did he pick up on the seventh call? That should have been his answering machine. And now you're stuck on the phone with them.

It's like a courtesy call, but they don't get it. And so they just keep talking and talking. Yeah, so then we went over to, uh, Bermuda. and we went snorkeling and saw a sea turtle. And Jenny got stung by a jellyfish, and we had to go over to the Bermuda Hospital. And she had to stay in there for two days, and she got the diarrhea.

And you're just like, uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, uh-huh. Meanwhile, you're sitting in your place watching, like, the deaf news, watching that lady to all the hand signals, and you're actually understanding it because you're so in another place. And then finally you put in your obligatory, like five, six minutes.

And you're like, okay, Eddie, I better go. You get into that kind of safety zone where you feel like you did the required time, right? So you're okay to say goodbye now. Okay, goodbye. And you get just about to take the phone away from your ear and they go, By the way, you want to get together and go to a movie? Let's get together. What do you got free, man?

And you're like, oh, oh. Oh, okay, Eddie, let's go to dinner. You just keep getting screwed, right? But it always pays to be nice to people, even though sometimes it's hard work. That's our motto here. Be nice. Eat some rice.

Don't think twice. Oh, yeah, good old phones and technology, right? Oh, speaking of phones and technology, the internet. Do you still know people in your life that use the WWW? You know what I'm talking about? People that they think they're with it,

they think they're all tech savvy and up to date. You know, they play a mean game. They have a good game face when it comes, oh yeah, I know how to program computers and design websites, I can do all that stuff, yeah. And you think, okay, they're pretty tech cool. And then all of a sudden they blow their cover and they go,

oh, yeah, why don't you email me at www. Bill Smith is a nerd.com. Did you catch it, the WWW thing? You don't have to say WWW anymore. You never did. The WWW pops up automatically, okay, people, computer nerds. It does? Oh, my God.

Yeah, it does. You just have to say Bill Smith.com or Ihoppancakes.com or travelagent.com or American Airlines.com. Don't give me the www. Okay, that's like giving me your phone. number and you know how the area code is in brackets and there's little dashes between the segments of your phone that's like going hey man call me I'm at bracket 312 bracket dash 557 dash 496 dash 47255 that's what it's like you

don't have to say all that just tell me your phone number 455-7-955 area code 213 boom you're done you're out hey man you want my phone number okay what is it it's uh w-ww bracket 45 stop stop what there's no w-ww in front of your phone number yes there is oh really yeah i just put it there just because That's what you're supposed to do, right? Oh, brother. How about idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot.com? How about that?

How about out of touch, out of touch, out of touch, loser, loser, loser. Don't come. Stop doing it. Just stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Hey, this is Harlan Williams, and what a cool week. having here on the Harland Highway. I asked a few of you to call in to my answering machine and leave me a message and tell me what you thought of the show. Well, I got some great messages from

people who liked me and didn't like me, and I want to thank all of you for calling in. You're what makes this job fun. Here's one I think you'd like to hear. Boy, this one really stroked my ego. I mean, just when I'm thinking I'm so great, someone just says something that makes me feel even better. I mean, this is, oh, I love this stuff. Listen to this. I quite frankly think you're an idiot. Wow, I'm sorry. You think I'm a what?

You're an idiot. A what? You're an idiot. No, you got me mixed up with someone else. I'm a genius. You're an idiot. Genius. You're an idiot.

I quite frankly think you're an idiot. Yeah, but you're listening. to the show so what does that make you frank an idiot ha ha we're all idiots yes we're all idiots and you know why we're idiots because we do things like this we go to fast food restaurants and we eat food that's less than a dollar that immediately makes us idiots hey where are we going for dinner tonight let's see we got eight kids and we got granny in the back and we got granddad and then there's the two of us so let's see if we go to oh yeah if we go for fast food we can feed

everyone for a six ninety nine that wild isn't that they offer hamburgers for like 89 cents at Burger King and McDonald's and all these places. Have you not heard the saying you get what you pay for, people? Does that not come into play with you before you make your dining choices? I mean, think of it. Just to make the bun alone has got to cost a few cents, right? The bun, the bread, the harvesting of the wheat, the baking, the shipping, The packaging, okay, you've got to figure the bun,

each bun must cost at least five, six, maybe 10 cents, okay? So now you got like an 80 cent burger, take off 10 cents, okay? So now you're down to like 70 cents. And then you've got to think about paying the employees at your fast food restaurant. So let's take off another 15 cents, okay? so there's your uh now you're down to what 65 cents for a burger then you got to think about paying your rent and your insurance and your your uh your property fees and all that so let's

take off another uh 10 cents so now you're down to like 55 cents and and then you got to pay for you know, the cooking and the processing and the slaughtering of the cattle for the meat and the refrigeration costs for the meat and the advertising costs and yada, yada, yada. So let's knock off another 20 cents. So now you've got a big slab of meat sitting there

that basically costs about 20 cents That's what you're putting in your belly Now keep in mind a can of Coke is like a buck 50 If you go into 7-Eleven A slushy is a buck 50 Okay A pack of gum Is what 80 cents a dollar now

So you're eating like a piece of meat. What used to be a cow probably cost about 15, 20 cents for the fast food joint and you think you're getting a big deal. Oh boy, look at us outsmart in this system. I've been eating 80 cents burgers every night for three years. For the last three years, I've only spent

$329 on meals. I'm a genius. But I'm a genius. But I can't feel my legs and my spine bends sideways. So it looks like I'm a candy cane. Oh, yeah, and I quack like a blue heron. Oh, God. You know what? Save some pennies and go get yourself a lobster, dude.

Treat yourself. Yeah, you get what you pay for, man. Where the hell is that meat coming from at that price? Maybe think twice before you go for your old cheapo night. The, you know, 12-cent hamburgers here. Get your 12-pot. No, wait, five-cent hamburgers, five-cent hamburgers. Fully nutritional, only taken from the finest dead corpses we found on the side of the road.

I mean, dairy, fresh cattle. Creepy. Be careful. Get what you pay for. Man, oh man, I went out for a nice dinner last night. You ever go out for some fine dining? It's all fine and dandy dining until that moment when they kind of bring you something you didn't order, like a little appetizer or something, right?

and they plop down this little hors d'oeuvre or this little appetizer in front of you and it's a weird shape and a weird color and you're not sure what it is and you're like, excuse me, what is this? Well, this is a fig stuffed with Norwegian crab lips with terriaki reduction sauce

with a mango tarantula koala paste. Okay. It's just delicious. Try it. I'd like to. I'm allergic to koala paste and

tarantula meat. Oh, don't worry. This has been desensitized with a cinnamon butter reducer. Okay. I'll try it. And you're just terrified, right?

You're looking at this thing like, holy God, what was the chef bored? He just took all leftovers he could find and put a little clump together i better eat my clump and you're like oh you pick it up and your fingers and you you close your eyes and you're like oh this is going to be holy hell it's getting closer to your mouth oh my god oh my god that's delicious what did you say that was fingers and turtleneck lips and okay forget it just bring me another one bring me a dozen cancel my main entree i just want a whole bunch of those that's the fun thing about eating at weird places

or fine dining it's fun you get surprised you get new things new sensations oh what a treat so many flavors so little time here on the harland highway 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 life easy. They offer discrete shipping as your privacy is a priority. Plus 100% free shipping on your entire order. Doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy, all will be packaged and sent discreetly for free and fast. Don't wait,

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Don't throw your back out. Eating is such a weird thing, isn't it? I mean, you know, for us humans, it's weird. Like, think about every other living. creature on the planet. You know, picture a pack of wild hyenas, you know, roaming around for days in the plains of Africa, searching for a meal, right?

And finally they see like a stray gazelle and they chase it down to the point of exhaustion and then one grabs it by the head, the other one grabs it by the ass, and they pull and the thing rips apart in the middle and they dive into it like a, It's a fine lobster dinner or a nice steak from Ruth Chris. They're in heaven, right?

Or just picture monkeys sticking twigs down termite mounds, and they pull the twig out, and it's covered with termites, and they're like, oh, my God, delicious, oh, yes. Oh, my God, those are delicious. Back goes the stick. Another round of termites. Imagine like a grizzly bear, lumbering through the woods, and, oh, God, I'm hungry. I could eat, I could eat, I'm so hungry, I could eat a dead horse.

Wait a minute. There's a dead horse. Right, and there's just a carcass laying there crawling with maggots. I mean, bears are carrion eaters, vultures, and even insects, you know, the spot. Spider's got to trap a dirty fly in its web. You know, where do flies grow up on a loaf of poo? What you got for dinner there, Bill? Oh, you know, a crap fly.

Oh, that's going to taste like crap. Yeah, that's the idea, yeah. But then think of us, you know. Gee, where should I go tonight? Do I go to Subway? Oh, maybe I'll get some chicken, or maybe I'll go to a Boston market, Or maybe I'll go for seafood, maybe red lobster, or how about Ruth Chris Steakhouse, or Mortons, or maybe I'll go over to the Four Seasons and have that buffet that they have that goes for about 12.5 miles or, hell, let's just fly to Paris and go to a cafe out on the boardwalk.

Right? Eating is not a dilemma for us. And if we can't figure out what restaurant I go to, we get these giant Home Depot-sized warehouses just full of food. Oh, I guess I'll walk up this aisle and that aisle. And, uh, excuse me, sir, what aisle is the chicken breast in? Oh, that's aisle 57, past all the other stuff.

Like hundreds of thousands of food items. All right, and cut to the hyenas, chasing a little baby gazelle down through the grass for eight days trying to get a piece of bone marrow to chew on. And then we all sit down politely together and we actually say grace. Thank you, Lord, for this here, Jesus food, Lord Jesus.

Thank you for not making us have to run through the prairies and pull down a buffalo and chew through its bone marrow the way our cousins, the hyenaers do. Thank you, Lord Jesus. It's kind of funny how casual it is, and we don't even have to really think about it. But there was a time when man was primitive.

Man was part of the food chain. Man had to compete. There was no going over to the grocery store. There was no red lobster. There was woolly mammoth. You know, but they didn't have, you know, Sunday brunch at the woolly mammoth. You had to chase this hairy elephant down with rocks and sticks, and the whole tribe had to pound it to death before they could all eat.

It's kind of something we forget, isn't it? How easy it is to eat. Maybe that's why half the world is so damn fat. You know, forget. Get these fad diets and these books, the zone and the South Park diet and the protein diet. We should just send the fatties out to Africa to run with the hyenas. You want to eat, man, you're going to run with the pack and chase down a baby gazelle. Well, what do I do when I get it?

You just tear its head off and suck on some bone marrow, fatty. Oh, oh, okay. Is there a salad bar? My ass. right oh god yeah we got it pretty damn easy as a matter of fact i think i'm going to go hit the vending machine will you listen to this you ever go to i hop doesn't it sound like a uh the restaurant

that one-legged people would favor i hop yeah give me a give me a rim shot on that one but why do they call it the international house of pancakes it's not like they're all over the world you don't go to like turkey and excuse me my friend would you like to come to the iHop we have wonderful waffles and pancakes today you know it's an american chain so i guess what they're they're trying to imply at iHop is that they have pancakes on the premises from all over the world. When was the last time you're sitting there eating your scrambled eggs and you looked up and you saw

Tibetan monk? Or you're sitting there with, uh, you know, two eggs over easy and you look up and there's an Eskimo, chowing down on a ruddy-tootty, fresh and fruity. I don't know what he said. Apparently he said he wants more steel blubber with his, with his omelet. It's like that place in New York, the United Nations, man. Like all the nations came together and they discussed pancakes.

Oh, I really like that, the flapjucks, the buttermilk flapjacks. You know, I really like them, too. I like blueberry pancake. I'll be liking the Belgian waffles with an extra butter. I be liking the sweet, sweet blinces that they serve at the International House of Pancakes. Ha ha ha. i hop i hop my ass out of there every time i make the mistake of going in oh actually i like it i'm lying i go to i hop all the time it's delicious but that's just between me and you okay

don't tell any of your friends from finland or denmark or tibet i wouldn't want them to get that wrong idea that i'm too sophisticated and i'm a real pancake man All right. See at IHOP. Speaking of eating, do you ever watch that reality show The Biggest Loser? And by the way, what a name for a reality show, right? Just to be called Loser right out of the gate? I mean, I know it's all about the biggest loser in terms of the biggest loser of calories, of pounds, of weight.

But I don't know. Is it ever a positive reinforcement to call a big fat person the biggest loser right out of the gate? Man. But you ever watch that show? It's probably one of the only good reality shows on TV where it's actually about doing something positive and altering people's lives for the better. These morbidly obese people clocking in of 400 pounds and up come on this show. And, you know, there's a lot of crying and there's people crying about cakes and people sobbing about marshmallows and stuff.

But at the end of the day, it's actually an uplifting show that deals with transforming people not only with their physical appearance, but their spirit, their psyche, their mindset, their mental health. It's actually a pretty moving show. but I got to admit I do something that's a little devious when I'm watching the biggest loser and I don't know if this is bad if this is a sand if you'll like me less but sometimes

and this might sound mean when I'm watching the biggest loser I'll purposely go and eat like a cupcake or fry up an egg sandwich or you know have an apple turnover or eat some cookies. It's almost empowering to sit there and see these 400-pound beasts.

You know, they're scared to even eat an olive. And I just sit there going, yeah, you keep doing them crunches, chubby. Well, I chow down on another Oreo. Ah, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, that is mean. Okay, I don't know why I do it. They can't see me. They don't know.

it's just my own little intimate home style power chip okay like you've never done anything like that oh great that's probably the biggest loser calling me right now hang on okay yeah that that was them in case you didn't notice i had to shut everything off to answer that phone call and uh that was a 420 pound contestant from the biggest loser who said, Harlan, shut your pie hole. I'm going to come over there and roll you like fresh sod. You ever see when they put fresh sod on a lawn, you know, those strips of grass, and then they water it, and then they bring in that great big, round, heavy thing. it looks like a steel drum

and they push it like a wheelbarrow and they just flatten out the grass. Yeah, well, that's the threat I just got. Oh, what's wrong with me? Wait a minute, what's wrong with me? Well, it is Friday, and, you know, maybe we can find out what's wrong with me because you know what happens on Friday here

on the Harland Highway. Oh, God. Hey, it's Friday, and you're listening to the Harland Highway, TGIF for most of you, but for me, not so fun. Every Friday, the radio station makes me sit down with this therapist, because they think I got a nut loose. I got to sit down and talk to this guy, Dr. Ascott, who's always here on Friday. Hello, Doctor. Hello, Holland. God, you creep me out.

Harland. What are we doing today, you freak? Holland. I'm, what are we doing? Arland, today I want you to get in touch with your feminine side. What? Your feminine side, your girly side, Holland. I do not need to get in touch with my feminine side.

Why would I need to do that? So you can be softer and gentle. with people, Holland. Oh, boy, I don't need to be softer. Holland. I don't need to be soft. Holland. Would you stop interrupt?

Holland. Don't interrupt. Holland. Stop interrupting. Holland. All right, what do I have to do? Let's get this over with. I want you to talk like a little girl, Holland.

Oh, no, you don't have. Scott. No way in hell. Holland. A little girl going to school. No. Holland. No, I'm not going to be a little girl going to school. Holland.

What do I have to do? Talk like a little girl going to school, Holland. Hi, I'm Sally, and I'm going to school. Okay, there, I did it. No, Holland, I want you to start skipping down the street. Oh, my God. Hi, I'm Sally, I'm going to school. I'm skipping down the street.

La la la la la la la la la. Good, Arland. La la la la. There. Okay. Keep skipping. I regress to my feminine side. Get out of my office.

Holland, I want you to play some hopscotch. I'm not going to play hopscotch. How about some skipping rope? I'm not going to do skipping. How about some more singing, Holland? No. Hopscotch. No.

Skipping rope. No. Playing ball. No. Holland. why don't you get out of my office what are you doing holland get out of my office ew you're creepy holland stop it oh why is your hand on my leg mister holland just stop it now oh what are you doing mister i'm scared what's that white van for allan stop it you better get out of here right now mister we could you could be in big

trouble. I'm going to scream. Holland. Holland. Okay. We are done for today. Yeah, we are. You come back around here again. You're going to be wearing a collar on your ankle, buddy.

Oh, out of here. I'll scream. Holland. Okay, Holland. I'll see you next Friday. I hope not. Holland. Yeah, I'll see you next Friday.

Get out of here. Oh, things I have to do. Have a great weekend, everybody. We'll see you next week here on the Harland Highway. Now, if you're in a receptive state, I'll recapitulate.