The Harland Highway - The NEW Harland Highway podcast #11

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

Harland riffs on Nature Shows, Dinosaurs, Self Discovery, and the Mona Lisa! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're riding down the Harland Highway. All right, hold tight on the Harland Highway Show. Harland Williams. Mm-hmm, that's right, I say. Here we go. You are on the Harlan Highway podcast. The only place you really need or want to be. And what a show we have for you today.

We're going to be talking about all kinds of groove-a-licious things. and I don't use the word Groovelicious lightly. I rarely pull it out. But today is Groovelicious. What can I say? I want to start with nature shows. I think we all love nature, don't we? We all love the critters, ladies and gentlemen,

we all love the kooky little critters crawling around in the bushes. and out on the plains and up in the trees and in the sky. I think we all love the cookie little critters. I know I do. I love me nature, and it's one of the things that is my go-to when I'm watching TV. I probably watch more nature shows than I watch anything else.

Like I'll watch a documentary about an anteater before I'll watch an episode of Breaking Bad. I'd rather see an anteater stick its five-foot tongue into a termite mound and suck those little bald, wood-eaten freaks out of the ground before watching a show about a school teacher has become a crystal meth dealer and hangs out in a trailer in his underpants. Okay, sue me. I like the real world a little better.

Although, sadly, crystal meth dealers are part of the real world. But here's where the rub begins with the nature shows. And, you know, I love seeing a nature show, especially in Africa, you know, where you see the herds traipsing across the great plains. And you see a pride of lions walking through the golden grass. There's some zebras down by a, you know, a marsh drinking some wah-wa with their kooky barcode striped fur. By the way, wouldn't you love to just grab a zebra

and run it over a scanner at a Walmart? Just to see what those things are worth. I mean, they're living walking barcodes. They've got all the stripes. And I would just love to just grab a baby zebra and beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, see a 50. This zebra is on sale, $49.95, beep, beep, or just drag a zebra into bed, bath, and beyond.

And can you get the scanner gun? Beep, beep. This zebra is on sale, $12.99. Well, this zebra was a lot cheaper than the Walmart zebra. But, yeah, just a running barcode. But I'm straying off a topic here. What I'm getting at is I love. seeing animals, beautiful animals in their natural setting, the natural surrounding their

environment, where they were, where nature intended them to be, right, where good God in heaven wanted them to be. He wanted mountain goats on the side of a mountain. He wanted wildebeest and zebra roaming the great plains. He wanted hummingbirds. He wanted humming birds humming in front of a tubular-looking plant to suck the nectar out. And so here I am watching these nature shows, and I'm noticing more and more and more the encroachment of us, us human beings, the homo sapiens, you know, the species that ruins it for all the other species, the parasites on the planet. you know, outside of the beaver altering geographical landscape and maybe ants,

I don't know that there's any other living organism that destroys the environment more than us. And we do it. What's even worse is we do it and we are aware that we're doing it. Any other creature in nature is naive to the fact. When a beaver builds a dam and floods a forest or a plane, it's just doing it out of instinct. It needs to deepen the water so it can have a place to survive and thrive

and build its lodge, etc. But us humans, let's cut down the redwood forest, the giant redwoods. Yeah, we cut them all down. Let's save 12 acres of them just to say we didn't totally decimate the whole species. Yeah, let's slash and burn the tropical rainforest of the Amazon. But we'll leave a few national parks just so we can tell our children we didn't wipe out everything.

But it's kind of gross. And this is, I got a freaking hair in my eye. Oh, oh, oh. I don't know. I learned that in beauty school. Never just like blatantly pull a hair. from your eye always do it with elegance like oh oh excuse me oh and like do the bobblehead thing I didn't go to elegant school I just made that part up there was a freaking hair in my eye

but I'm on camera so I got a I got to somehow parlay it into a comedy moment I just can't like start ripping hair from my eye like I'm the girl from the ring crawling out of the well so I had to embellish the whole thing and oh I go to beauty school and this is how they told us to drape the hair back it's just you know I got to think about these things when I'm on camera doing the Harlan highway podcast everything is caught on cameras so I have to be ready for it I have to be prepared I have to be professional So anyways, I'm loving my nature shows, but I've noticed more and more and more. And not only on nature shows, but on little snippets on TikTok and Instagram when you watch

the little film clips, I'm starting to notice it's like there's a beautiful herd of draft walking by, you know, there's seven or eight, nine draft and a herd with their, you know, they're elegant, like kind of slow motion, you know, just the way they kind of stroll around, looking around at everything, because their faces are elevated, like higher than a condo. And I'll be, look, I go, isn't that beautiful? Look at their bodies just undulating across the planes. And I'm like, wait a minute. What's that in the background?

Are those high rises back there? just slightly out of focus in the background. I think I see like a condo, I think I see like a gated community back there. And then I'll be seeing like I heard of wildebeest going by. You know, they make all the grunting noises. And I'm like, wait, is that, is that a crane? Is that a construction crane?

Just kind of just off in the distance there. I'm seeing, hold on, hold on, look at that Pride Alliance. Look at them stalking through the grass, hunting out in the planes right underneath those power lines? What the hell? Yeah, this is what I'm getting perturbed about. I'm starting to see, I think they're running out of pure, wild, virgin space for these animals. Human beings were exploding our population and we're encroaching. on the animal's terrain.

And so it's becoming harder and harder to just see an animal in the purity of nature without some kind of hint of humankind. And it's really not making me happen now. I'm going to tell you that, and I'm going to tell you in a Cajun voice. It really not making me happen now. And then here's the other one.

I do not want to see a lion hunting a giraffe or a wild buffalo and I get drawn into the chase and I see the running and the stocking and the claws are out and he's diving on the things back and I'm going wait a second is that lion got a choke chain on? Is that thing wearing a leather necklace? What was it doing S&M last night over in the Pride? Did they have like bondage night? over with Sumba and Gimba, whatever the Lion King names are. Yeah.

Some of these lions now, and the nature shows they'll actually, they have the balls to show wild lions out in the wild. And they've got like a radio collar on. Apparently they'd been tranquilized and bagged and, you know, now they're tracking them. So now it's like the purity of nature, the wildness. the king of the beasts, the most savage of all animals. Here he comes, claws out, six-inch fangs,

and I'm sporting a beautiful Dolshangabana leather necklace. How do you like it? Before we eat, would anyone like to comment on my wonderful leather necklace, which, by the way, has some kind of radio contraption in it? Yes, I'm a very modern lion. and I have electronics around my neck while I gorge on the stomach of a Cape Buffalo. I mean, what the hell is this? This is like taking you out of the picture, man.

It's a nature show. We're not supposed to be seeing hints of humans and technology. And here's another thing. I think the guys who shoot these nature shows are getting lazy because it used to be you just see them in the wild. out on the grass, out on the rocks, out on a perch up in a tree. Now half the damn nature shows I see,

I swear to God, you'll see like a tiger walking down a dirt road. You can see the two lanes where the tire treads are. It'll be a full-on dirt road with a tuft of grass down the middle. And here's like the tiger just walking down the road. Okay. Yeah, gee, I really are.

I really feel like I'm in the wild when I see a Bengal tiger walking down, you know, Jefferson Boulevard over there. I mean, it's just, it just takes you right out of it, man. And it's like they're starting to knock hair. And now they're doing all these shots where sometimes I'll see lions and elephants and rhinoceroses like out on a pavement. road with lines going down the middle and cars are just going around them the same way we'd go around to squirrel here in north america oh there's a 17-ton rare white rhinoceros there's only three left

get the hell out of the way i'm trying to get to macdonalds i got to feed my kids you fat fuck and come on you endangered son of a whore why don't you go die with the rest of your buddies so i and get to the mall. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see these wild animals. You'll see a yellowstone. You'll see a giant buffalo walking, having a head-on confrontation with a station wagon.

You'll see a grizzly bear looking in the window of a minivan? I'm just, what the hell has happened to our nature? it's just it's not cool and in some instances you i've even seen nature shows where the animals are climbing up on top of the vehicles there's there's a few nature clips where you see a bunch of cheetahs just jump right on top and be oh hey how you doing what's going on it's shady up here i think we'll hang out up here on your land rover if you don't mind uh yeah and uh once we're fully rested. Would you mind turning on the air conditioner? We're hot. We just chased a gazelle. It didn't go well. We didn't catch it. But we're resting up for the next hunt. And, yeah,

if you could just turn those vents and let that air conditioning blast all over me and my brother and sister before we start running again at 90 miles an hour to take down a baby zebra. I mean, it's, it's, it's volatile. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's I'm incensed about it. I want my nature to be pure, man. And what are the animals thinking? What's going on in their heads? You know, think about it.

They only know organic nature. They know trees and rocks and the wind and the sun and the rain and the land. And then all of a sudden, here's a Dodge minivan. and here's a jeep land rover and here's a here's a greyhound boss and suddenly they go from the organic world the natural world to here's this giant metal object that's revving that's making noise it's like you know the engine's running and the air conditioning's running and maybe the radio's playing and the lights are coming on and this thing's moving around and it's changing gears and it's what are they supposed to

think did you ever see that that that's like us if you saw that movie the war of the worlds the Stephen Spielberg movie with Tom Cruise I don't know if you remember the very beginning scene where they first see the monsters and Tom Cruise is in his neighborhood and he's going to pick up his car and all of a sudden the the concrete starts buckle It's like, and all of a sudden, up from out under the ground in the middle of the street, this giant silver octopus-looking thing with big silver head and long, spindly legs and great big lights on its face, and it rises up and they're all looking at it. And then all of a sudden he goes,

and they're all like, everyone goes silent, it's like, and then it starts looking at them all. And they're just like, what the hell is this? What the hell is this big, shiny metallic thing making noise with lights on it? And don't you think that's what we've done to nature? Here's these critters that are living in the birds and the trees and the bushes and the grass.

And all of a sudden here comes a Ford tundra around the corner With the lights on and the engine What are they thinking? Like we've created a war of the worlds for these animals And I don't know man Even the guys who shoot these documentaries are I think are getting lazy too that they're stopping to care about the purity of the nature there filming. And I watched this one nature show.

It was absolutely spectacular. It was really great. It was about African wild dogs. And if you don't know what those are, they're like a species of wild dog. And they work in very intricate packs and they communicate with chirps and barks and growls and and they're very organized and they hunt and there's like 30 of them in a pack and then the babies and the puppies and it's an intricate little hierarchy in these packs because every every animal in the pack has its place, has its order and it's the way that they make it

function, they make it work and there's kind of like rules and all the animals kind of know their place within the pack. And so here's this documentary. I think it was like an hour long and somehow they're following these dogs and they got cameras tracking like almost at their shoulders. They're walking.

I'm like, this is amazing. How did they get this footage? How many nights did they have to crawl on their bellies through the jungle to get this incredible footage? And then at the end of the documentary that like five minutes of the other, And then he goes, please stick around to see how we made this wonderful documentary. And then the nature guys come on.

And they're like, well, lucky for us, the dogs just happen to be near a road. And so we were able to drive along the road the whole 24 days that we tracked the animals. And it sure made our life easy. We were able to drive right along with the wild, wild, wild. Oh, so wild dogs that live beside a road. And I was just crushed. I was like, come on. Really?

This is how you captured. Did you have to show me? Did you have to show me? Here I was this illusion that you were out in the middle of nowhere and you trekked through Africa and you had to battle off lions and tigers and werewolves and monkeys and mongoose and who knows what else. And the whole time you're just riding along,

sitting on the side of a road. And this is the point that I'm coming to, man. It's like not only are we encroaching on the animal's territory, but the animals in turn are starting to get used, are starting to get used to our, imposing on them and they're starting to become familiar and dare I say comfortable with all this human crap around and it's just not a good mix it's not a good mix you know there's people that could argue and go well it it's great that we can all

assimilate and man can live with nature and nature can live with man no we're forcing nature to live with us. It's not natural for animals, wild animals, to be rubbing up against cars and trucks and buses and creeping through people's backyards and looking for prey and food and people's garbages and hunting their domestic pets. I'm sorry, lions and tigers weren't meant to hunt chihuahuas and Siamese cats in the middle of the night. Okay? They were meant to rough it and try and take down a Cape Buffalo or a draft or something, something that can fight back. I mean, that's another thing.

How many of these videos have you seen on YouTube where you see a full grown, you know, leopard creeping through a suburban neighborhood and going to town on a poodle? Holy God. just that there's something not right happening here and and uh you know how animals are animals uh basically have babies and they train the babies they stay with the babies and and show them how to function and show them where they can go and where they can find water and where they can find shelter and where they can find food and and animal behavior is passed on through the generations so

uh yeah you know how long is it till uh you move into a neighborhood and you buy a house and you look out the window and you go honey is it just me or is is there a family of hyenas living next door to us look do you see them on the lounge chairs up by the pool that right the hair and the spots and one of them looks like he's eating a zebra's leg oh my god oh my god where's the kid Where are the kids? Kids? Kids? Oh my God, where's the kids?

I mean, it's not pretty. It's not a pretty look. Oh, the sweet bubbly. The sweet bubbles, the volcanic bubbles of the seven-up. Gurgling down me throat like a parade of air wrapped up in silicone. eyeliner grease. Don't even know what that meant. Was trying to be poetic,

trying to keep the flow going, and sometimes I just have to let the words roll. 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.

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and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. How else am I going to retain your attention? Oh, yes, I know. Fresh beef. Bubbles and beef. And that's the way we do it here on the Harland Highway. Hey, everybody. Let's take a little moment here so I can remind you that this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. That's Better Help, H-E-L-P. We all know life is full of twists and turns, and it's important to show up for yourself through

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And now let's jump right back in to the Harland Highway. But now let's go to a next level of nature show. This is where we're at now where I'm even more riled up. So now they've got these versions of nature shows Where it's like dinosaur nature shows They've got these dinosaur nature shows that they do And there's CGI and Apple and the BBC have a new one out I forget what it's called when prehistoric monsters ruled the earth or something

And basically what they've done is they've filmed some beautiful natural footage of the real world, you know, the Amazon River and mountain ranges and great plains and all this stuff. And they've CGIed in dinosaurs. And this is nothing new. We've seen this before, but up until now, the CGI dinosaurs looked a little bit off. You know what I mean? Like when they walked, it's like it looked like they were missing the ground or there was a space between their feet in the earth a little bit or they kind of looked like they were doing the robot dance at a disco.

Hi, I'm a stegosaurus. Doot-do-to-do-to-do-to-do-to-do do-to-do do-to-do do-do do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ppum. You know, correct that whip. Give the Brontosaurus a slap. We can whip it. You know. The CGI was a little bit off. is where I'm going with this.

And now, whoa, you get, check out this new series. The CGI is more real than real. Okay, I'm watching this show. And by the way, the footage they've shot is with like the best cameras you can buy. So, so the natural rivers and the landscapes they're shooting. It's like breathtakingly stunning. You're like, wow, look at that. And then all of a sudden a CGI Dallopadon wander.

in and you're like, you just go to the next level of reality. You're like, wait a minute. Look at the detail on that thing. Look at the skin and the creases and the wrinkles and the divvets. And you're just like, that thing's more real than real is real. And all of a sudden, I'm kind of like, wait, I want to go there. How do I get to that place where things look more real than here where it's real? what what's happening i mean it is it is incredibly real is what i'm trying to say and it's almost

mind-blowing even to the point where they got little cgi flies on the dinosaur's skin and dust and little little hairs coming up hairs that if they turn the right way into the the sunlight You can see little really finite hairs on the dinosaur's skin. It's just unbelievable. On the eyes, it's almost like you can see the liquid running over the eyes and the shading and the toning. It's absolutely a masterpiece. But it's created this fake reality that looks more real than where we are.

And so what they've done is. is they've kind of embellished history and they've decided to make a nature show where they talk about the dinosaurs as if they're really here or we're really there filming them. And it's that old British guy, that David Attenborough guy. You know, the guy's face looks like it's made a wax and he's been in a hot room too long and it's just starting to drip. and he's doing the commentating. I mean, this guy could talk about anything, and you'd just be like, really?

I mean, he could be like, today I pulled some jello out of the fridge. It wiggled, it whibbled, it wobbled, and then I put some whipped cream on the jello. I brought it to my mouth. It jiggled and wiggled and jiggled and juggled, and I put it in my mouth, and I ate the jello.

I mean, you know this guy, right? This David Richard Attenborough guy or whoever he is. And so now he's on there, and they've created like this animation of these dinosaurs. And I guess they kind of have decided to fill in the blanks. Like, I'm not kidding here. There's one scene where a Tyrannosaurus Rex mother is with her like six pups or baby lizards or whatever they are. and she takes them into the ocean, and they're all swimming. And Richard Attenborough there with his melting face is like,

the T-Rex was a fantastic swimmer. It could get in the water and swim for hours and hours. And I'm like, wait a minute. How do you know if the T-Rex could swim? Did they ever find a T-Rex skeleton at the bottom of the ocean? I mean, they're pretty clunky-looking animals. If you're like 90 feet tall and most of you is leg and your arms are like, you know,

the size of Kentucky Fried Chicken chicken wings, are you really going to want to go into the ocean and swim and this is what you're using to, you know, yeah, the legs are going to propel you along, but you really, these are what I call drowning arms. these do not look like Olympic gold medal swimming arms these look like instant

you're sinking to the bottom when you're a giant T-Rex Oh, but the majestic T-Rex could swim for miles and miles through the frothing waves to get to islands where it would hunt with its children

Yeah I don't know that first of all You're living on planet Earth, T-Rex. You've got no barriers, no obstructions to the whole planet. No mankind exists yet. So you've got no predators. You got no obstacles. Why do you got to go to the damn island?

Why do you got to swim to an island? What's that your idea of going to McDonald's? Come on, kids, we're going to the island tonight. It's a special treat. Daddy got a raise today. Let's swim to the island for the odds. you can eat buffet. No.

So anyways, so then they go on more and they elaborate, and they, you know, Richard Attenborough, whatever his name is, he's still going off his script, he's like, and the baby T-Rexes, it was very rare for more than three of the whole clutch to make it through their first year. Out of 12 T-Rex pups, only three would make it to maturity. And as they walked across the glacier, that's the other thing. This guy picks his word.

It's glacier, you melting British sponge cake. If I hear that guy say, the glacier one more time, or the sloth, the three-toed sloth, crawled across the glacier. No. Hey, hey, hey, hey, yeasty. It's the three-toed sloth crawled across the glacier. You British roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, sucking, gravy-licking, puffball.

So anyways, I'm sitting here thinking, here he is rifling off these statistics about the mortality rate. of young T-Rexes. And I'm like, pardon my French, how the fuck do you know? 400 million years ago and somehow you know the mortality rate of the T-Rex kids? And somehow you know a giant T-Rex was an excellent swimmer?

Hey, broccoli ass. We don't even know who shot JFK. We don't even know who really built the pyramids or how they were done. And that was like, what, two, three thousand years ago? And somehow you have the exact statistics on the survival rate of T-Rex babies from 400 million years ago? I mean, come on, man. Why not just make up some more shit? The T-Rex on Saturday afternoons like to lay on his back and suntan up on the top of volcanoes.

And then to cool his reptilian body, he would take his children only the ones that have survived and slide down the icy glacier and smash into the sloths waiting at the bottom, using them like hairy retarded bowling bins. Come on. I'm not having it, man. It's one thing if you want to do the animation and recreate, but don't start telling me what these animals did and what they looked like.

And even with the CGI, you may think you have the exterior. You may think you have what they looked like. maybe they were scaly, maybe they had bumpy skin, maybe they had feathers. You weren't there. For all we know, for all we know, dinosaurs could have had some type of exterior coat that was something we don't even know exists. They went extinct. We have no real flesh and blood record of these critters.

I mean, for all we know, their exos skin could have been glass or plexiglass or, or fiberglass, or it could have been made of wheat, or it could have been made of something we don't even know exists. It could have been running liquid wingle-wongel-bondongle. And we know that doesn't exist. So anyways, man, it's like I'm all for like kind of reenacting and pretending. that we can peek back in time and kind of imagine what everything looked like and how they move. But let's not start rifling off statistics and pseudo-scientific facts.

You don't know. It's just, it's a little bit annoying from that perspective. But it is fascinating and it is really cool. cool. And it's funny too because you look at a show about dinosaurs and they try to talk about all these things. But if you think about it with dinosaurs, all they can kind of fabricate and elaborate on is based on the fossil evidence that has been discovered that has been found. So let's say we took every fossilized dinosaur species that they have and put them on a list, I don't know, how long is that list?

Maybe 300 dinosaurs? I mean, how many can you think about off the top? You're at the Stegosaurus, the alyosaurus, the T-Rex, the Bronosaurus, the Paleos, you know, there's a list, but that's just from the bones. and remains we found from four, five, six hundred million years ago, right? So think about all the living organisms that exist in today's world, from ants to seashells to birds to insects to mammals to amphibians to reptiles. Like that we have millions of species.

And by the way, mankind's eradicated. thousands of them already. But so imagine way back then 400 million years ago when there was no interference by man, we have to assume there was probably millions of species back then. But then cut to the list of what we know, or what we think we know, maybe three, four, five hundred species of recovered dinosaur. And look how fantastical those are with the giant heads and the fangs and the clangs and the claws and they're higher than an apartment building and they're longer than a cruise ship.

But what about all the millions of species over the decades and over the centuries that didn't leave any fossilized remains? Can you imagine the plethora of creatures that we can't even imagine because there's no way to even know what they were or know that they existed? Maybe there was a centipede that was a mile long. Maybe there was another dinosaur that was five times higher than a brontosaurus. Maybe there was a fish in the sea that was, you know, the length of a football field. Who knows? But that's what's fascinating about.

So I do appreciate them doing this kind of reenactment. But you got to wonder, too, with kids watching this stuff now that is so real. Like, you picture a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old kid watching this dinosaur thing with this immaculate CGI. And I could see the kid just turning to the parent and going, oh, where is that? Can we go there? I want to see those. And you're like, what are you talking about, Billy? I want to go there.

I want to go where the dilapidavid. Dons are running around and the triceratops. I want to go there. Oh, well, that's not real, Billy. What do you mean? It sure is real. I can see it. Well, Billy, that, no, it's not. It is so and I want to go or I'm going to eat the couch. So entering into this weird, weird world. But anyway, speaking of weird stuff, let's take a little break. And I want to show you this week's hand-drawn Harland Williams custom T-shirts. As you know, I draw my own T-shirts. And every week I like to show them to you just so you can see what I've been up to creatively. So let's throw to that.

And we'll be right back after we look at my T-shirts. Oh, yeah, here we go. Time for another hand-drawn shirt by yours truly. And if you don't know, I draw my own t-shirts. I take Sharpie markers and I draw directly on the t-shirt. And if this shirt's still available, you can own it at harbling.com. So let's go ahead and reveal this week's hand-drawn harlot t-shirt. All right, here's this week's hand-drawn t-shirts by yours truly.

and this first one is my depiction of Elon Musk ox. I don't know how many of you are familiar with a musk ox, but they're a large hairy, hoofed mammal that live out in the Arctic and the snow and the tundra, and they have a rack of horns or antlers on their head that looks like a kind of like a shell with points on the end. And so I decided to combine Elon Musk with a musk ox, and there's Elon Muskox. And then over here, I don't know who this guy is. But if you look at the smoke curling up from a cigarette, it spells the word loser.

And for some reason, I just hate this guy. Like I drew him and I thought he's like kind of the pretentious artsy-fartzy loser that I see sometimes. walking the street just kind of trendy and I don't know poor guy I just labeled them a loser so you got the loser and you got Elon Muskocks these are available at harbleng.com my t-shirt website I hand-draw these myself and if they're not available you can always buy a print at harbleng.com well we are back and I forgot to mention little co-co's here today, co-hosting, and he's got a very handsome hat on today. Very, very Frank Sinatra, little Coco, little Coco, a little Coco, a little Coco, a little

Coco talking to you. Okay, ass. I was just saying, I like your little hat. Nothing. Okay. Anyways, let's, speaking of quiet introvert, you know, I think we all experience moments of just being with ourselves and being quiet. And I think that happened a lot during COVID. I think, you know, we were all, all of us just kind of cooped up with ourselves, especially if you were single and you lived

alone you didn't have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a wife or family like for millions and millions of people myself included um we had to spend a lot of time just with ourselves um and when you're alone with yourself as a human being you get very uh introspective you get reflective you have a lot of time to examine yourself and think about yourself because you don't have a lot of external stimuli. You don't have other people to bounce off of. And sometimes when we are in a place where we're alone for too long, we start to really find out about ourselves. And sometimes we find out things about ourselves that maybe we didn't know or maybe even something we don't like. And I had an experience, I can't forget, I'll share it with you. There was kind of a

beat not too long ago where I was getting kind of cabin fever, you know, and everyone's still sort of socially distancing. So it's still a bit weird. And I was just kind of feeling a little bit like closed in. You know what I mean? And I thought to myself, man, I got to get out. I got to get out of the city. I just got to clear my head. I just, Daddy's got to fly, right? Daddy's got to move. So here's what I did And it was very interesting I discovered something about myself That I did not know

And I'll tell you what happened I was getting the cabin fever And I'm like I just got to get out and breathe right So I went down into the backyard And you know what I have in my backyard Let's not pretend you don't know what I have in my backyard You know what I got I got an old wooden tool shed like most of us do

An old wooden shack over in the corner of the yard, and I go back there and I have my Birkenstock sandals that I bought at Lilith Fair, and I boot the door in. I get the Lilith Fair's burkenstocks, and I just kick the door in, right? Boom. Doors fly open, and you can see the sunbeams coming through the cracks in the wood and little particles of dust floating around in the sunbeams. And then over the Over in the corner, over in the corner my old wooden shed under an old dusty tarpaulin. An old dusty tarpaulin, I go over and I grab the tarpola right. I grab the tarpaulin right by the edges and I just pull it.

I'm like, you know, just one of those swooping motions like like David Copperfield ripping off Donny Osmond's G string at an all night Kenny G. Raver. right and what's under my old dusty tarpaulin i think you know a 1962 midnight blue corvette stingray oh yeah oh yeah you drooling yet and daddy gets this thing out on the road i get it out i roll it out i start it up i get it out on the road and I just start to ride. I get out on the highway. I got this thing on the highway. I'm over here on the transgender highway.

And I'm just flying, right? I've got my pedal to the metal. I got my foot to the metal because daddy likes to ride hot. And I see the city and the rearview mirrors melting away behind me and I'm flying down the highway. in this 1973 sunflower yellow Dodge Charger. And before long, before you know it, I'm where I want to be.

And suddenly I'm out in the country, right? I'm out in the countryside. I'm rolling along. And now I've got rolling hills and green pastures. And it's beautiful, man. And what do I see? You know what I see out there in the country. We've all been to the country.

It wasn't long until, like, I saw it. There they were a field full of cows. A beautiful field full of cows. Those big docile creatures with the black and white spots. It was like 30, 40 beautiful cows. Even the little ones were there, the little cows, the veils. And I think some of them were branded. I think a few of them were bradded veils. And I was just like, wow, look at those docile, beautiful creatures. And I decided to pull my wheels over to the side, right? And I did one of these. I did like the truck driver, put my hand on the steering wheel. And I guided that 1984 Prius, gray Prius, to the side. Oh, and there they were the cows. And I stepped out of the Prius and the sun was shining down.

And I don't know why, but I just felt free. I felt while that ripped my shirt off. standing in the sun, shirtless, my six-pack, the sections of my six-pack, undulating, moving up and down like two monarch butterfly caterpillars climbing up the inner thigh of weird Al Yankovic's pasty white legs. And I turn and I see those cows and I walk over and I'm shirtless and I lean on the barbed wire, right? Just with my bare arm. you know, that's what Jesus would do. I just lean on the barbed wire,

and I'm looking at these cows. And I don't know what happened. This is what I'm talking about. Sometimes you discover things about yourself. You don't know, you don't like. And I don't know what happened. I'm watching these gentle, docile creatures out in the field, grazing, minding their business, just at peace and harmony with the world.

And I guess all the anxiety of being cooped up just came frothed out of me. And I feel horrible, but for some reason I started lighting the cows up. I started verbally abusing them. I started yelling at them. And to make it worse, I broke into an Irish accent. I was like, hey, there are you fat folks? Hey, you're fat folks, you block and white, speckled folks, yeah. Hey, just standing in the fucking field all day, eating the fucking grass,

shitting all over the place, squirting your milk everywhere. Ah, you fought fucks you. And in that moment, in that horrible, horrible moment, I realized right then and there, as I yelled at those poor innocent cows, I realized, my God, I'm. lactose intolerant I had no tolerance for those milk squirting slobs

and I didn't know I was lactose intolerant but now I do and like I said that can be the pain of getting in touch with yourself and getting to know yourself real well. So I've got some amending to do. I've got some making up to do. Maybe I'll sneak into a cowfield one of these nights and just pet the little milk squatters

and calm them and hold them, hug them and maybe spoon them through the night. Just lay them gently down on the grass and put my arms around them and spoon them naked. making little calf noise. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm trying to be tolerant.

Yeah. You know, this type of thing. I just, I'm a healer. I like to heal. All right. And if that wasn't mental enough, and by the way that really happened that's a real story

as if that wasn't mental enough I think we should end the show off with a even crazier story so let's do it let's throw to the Harland Highway crazy news story The Harland Highway

Crazy news story That's weird What strange stuff Okay Okay, okay, let's put them on. Let's put on the I Dream of Genie Peepers. I don't even know why I called them that, but I did. Dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, da. That's the theme for my I dream of genie. and this is the Harland Highway podcast. It's not your highway podcast.

So if I want to do the theme from I Dream of Jeannie, let's see you stop me. Let's see you stop me, you mushroom soup slurping, crouton dipping, French fry, curly fry, crinkle cut fry sucking freaks. Did I have I lost you? Come back. Come back. We're going to do the crazy. I apologize. I apologize. Let's do the crazy news story. Here's the headline. What is wrong with people? Here's the headline for today's crazy news story. Man in wig throws cake.

at the Mona Lisa. You know the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting of the Mona Lisa or the Mona Lisa? Depends how you want to say it. Mana, Mona, tomato, potato, potato. Richard Gere, Richard Greer, Maryland, Maryland, whatever. So this happened in Paris where the Mona Lisa resides. And here we go. A man seemingly disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair

threw a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris and shouted at people to think of planet Earth. The Paris prosecutor's office said Monday that the 36-year-old man was detained following Sunday's incident and sent to a police. psychiatric unit.

An investigation has been opened into the damage of cultural artifacts. Videos posted on social media showed a young man in a wig and lipstick who had arrived in a wheelchair. The man whose identity was unknown was also seen throwing roses in the museum in front of slack-jawed guests. The cake attack, and how often do you hear that now? days. You know, we get Al-Qaeda, we get ISIS, we get school shootings, we get bombings, we get a cake attack. It sounds like someone getting in a fight at a Jenny Craig or something

like that. So this guy attacked the Mona Lisa and left a conspicuous white creamy smear on the glass that protects the Leonardo da Vinci painting. Security guards were filmed escorting the wig-wearing man as he called out to the surprised visitors in the gallery. Think of earth. There are people who are destroying the earth. Think about it. Artist tells you, think of the earth. That's why I did this. Okay, wig, wheelchair, lipstick guy, lady. The guards were then filmed cleaning the cake from the glass. A Lourdes statement confirmed the attack on the artwork involving a pastry.

So it was a pastry attack. And this painting, in case you didn't know, was over 500 years old. And it's been attacked before. It was damaged during an acid attack in the 1950s. Uh, there was a woman, a Russian woman who was angry at, uh, France for not giving her French citizenship. So she threw a ceramic teacup at the painting. I think it was shot at at one point in time. So, uh, good Lord. The idea that this guy like put on a costume and got a wheelchair and put on a wig and lipstick. It was almost like Norman Bates mother.

rolling into the Leuillev and attacking something with a piece of cake. Norman, I don't like that painting, Norman. I'm going to smear a hostess ho-ho all over that painting, Norman. Come here, Norman. Mother wants you to rub a Swiss roll on the Mona Lisa, Norman. I mean, this is just ridiculous. and I don't know if any of you have seen the Mona Lisa. I've seen it.

I've been to, I saw it actually. I think it was in London, England. It was on loan to the British Art Gallery there, right in London. And I had the opportunity to see this miraculous painting in real life. Although I don't even know why I'm calling it miraculous. I'm a little kind of befuddled by the Mona Lisa. I recognize that it's a portrait of a simple-looking woman with kind of a plain half-smile.

But I'm not entirely sure why this particular painting has enchanted the world since it was kind of created. Over 500 years, it's considered an art classic. And it's funny because this is the contention I have with the art world is I feel like from a very early age, we are kind of told what great art is. If you go into any major art gallery in any major city, it's the Van Goghs, it's the Da Vinci's, it's the Goyas, it's the Dalis, it's the Rembrandt, it's the Renoise, it's all the, you know, all the masters, right?

And so our generation and the next generation and the next generation, they're all going to be fed that these are the master artworks. And I think the real place in the art world is the art form that they inspired or created, like cubism or realism or, you know, Dutch dingle-dongle or whatever, all the different art movements that transpired. I think, you know, all these classics help show the steps that art has taken through the centuries. But I do find it interesting that every generation of humans that comes along is kind of spoon-fed that this is art.

this is this is this is what art looks like these are the great paintings and it's strange because when you think of the millions and millions of paintings that have been done by very talented artistic people

over the history of civilized man I always found it very kind of absurd that there's just this small collection of art that we just keep regurgitating to new generations of humans and saying, this is art. This is what we hang in the galleries.

And so like a lot of things in our system, like our educational system and the institution of marriage and many other things, I think a lot of things could be updated and modernized and changed. But some of these things, we just seem stuck in it. So anyways, I remember I went to see the Mona Lisa

and I was with my buddy, my buddy Bob, and, you know, these art galleries are very prim and proper, and there's security guards everywhere, and there's a real stuffiness, and almost a little bit of pretentiousness to a lot of these big art galleries. And it's like, oh, you are, you weren't in the presence of art. Please behave accordingly.

Please absorb it and analyze it and interpret the art. And so I decided, you know, I was over in London and I said to my buddy Bob, I said, you know, I'm going to act like the American tourist that people hate. You know, like sometimes Americans get that kind of stereotypical, the big kind of dumbass American tourist. And it's not true. That type of tourist exists in any culture. But for some reason, the American got stigmatized. with the whole, I'm just dumb old American tourist, which isn't fair at all, but nonetheless.

So I decided to mess with the security guard at the art gallery of London there. And I was standing there and my buddy Bob was with me and believe it or not, there were hardly any people around us. And I said to the guy, I said, oh, I did kind of a southern accent just to add to it. I said, hey, is that? What's that paint in there? And I don't know word for word what the guy said, but immediately you could see the hairs go up on the security guy.

He was like an older British guy, had the uniform on, almost looked like a cop. It's like, well, that is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. And I said, oh, okay, cool. Well, how much is it? And he's like, I beg your pardons, huh? I said, how much is it? I kind of like it.

He said, I'm sorry. It's not for sale. I said, well, I'd like to buy it. I mean, what, I mean, what? I got two, three thousand dollars. Would that get me that thing? He's like, I'm afraid it's not for a set. He was just like incensed.

And me and my buddy Bob were trying to hold in our laughter. And I just kept, well, I'd like to, you know, Can we take it down? I'd like to look at it up close and just can I touch it and just kind of see if I really want it? See if it's worth the $2,000? And he was just like, I'm afraid you should go somewhere else to buy your art

or something like that. He was just totally incensed. So we had a good laugh. And then we dropped kick the Mona Lisa, shot it through yogurt all over it, took a flame thrower to it, a box cutted it right across the face. and soaked it in pomegranate juice.

No, we didn't. We didn't. But we wanted to because that's that smug Mona Lisa face where she's just like, it's almost like she's taunting you, right? It's almost like she's inviting you to assault her. She's got that real kind of like, like she just won a big argument.

Like you were a married couple and she won a big argument and now she's just gloating. She's just there with that half smile and those half-drooped eyes. She's like, mm-hmm. Yeah, looks like I won again, loser.

Mm-hmm. And you wonder why people want to put their fists through her or the shooter or burn her or rubbed cake on her or it's just like cocky. She's a cocky and she's got it coming. Someone's going to get you, Mona Lisa. Your days are numbered, you smug, cocky, half man, half woman, whatever you are. And I'm just getting angry.

Just getting angry. And that's not what we want to do here at the Harland Highway. I already am lactose intolerant. I don't want to be Mona Lisa intolerant. So let's wrap. it up. Let's close the door. And before we go, can I please remind you and ask you humbly to subscribe to the Harland Highway podcast? There's a little button over here on the left. You can see it right in the corner right over there, a little subscribe button. If you hit that, it gets bigger

and you hit subscribe, or there might be one down below on your YouTube page. And it would be so helpful if you guys could subscribe and recommend the podcast to your friends. Because the more we can build this up, the more I can do it, and the more guests I can get, and the more fun we can have, and the more we can kick the Mona Lisa right in the face. And also don't forget if you want some bonus material, join my Patreon page.

Ooh, I just did a little seven-up burpee. Excuse me. please join my Patreon page. And when I can, when I get things edited in time, what I did for the first time is I pre-posted the Harland Highway podcast for my Patreon members. So in other words, they saw the next podcast about four or five days before you did. And don't get pissed off of me,

but that's just one of the perks you get when you join my Patreon page. $5 a month, and you get bonus material, get some of the audio skits that I used to do on the old podcast with some of my characters, Aunt Ruthie and George Michael and all kinds of fun characters. You get to see a sneak preview of my artwork and my t-shirts before everyone else does. You get goofy video skits, all kinds of stuff. So if you want to jump on the Patreon and get all that bonus stuff. Just go to Google and type in Harland Williams Patreon. And you can enjoy that. And then as I told you last podcast, I'm doing this thing called Camio where you can order up your very own custom video from yours truly. And I can do a video for you

for your birthday or for Father's Day or Mother's Day or Valentine's Day or any type of event or moment in your life where you might want me to do a personal, funny, silly video for you. So just go to a cameo, cameo.com, and type in my name and just send it off and we'll get it to you. In some cases, for a little extra money, you can get 24-hour service where I can get the video shot off to you within 24 hours if you really, really need it for a specific time frame. So check that out. And again, please tell your friends to get on the Harland Highway and subscribe.

And we'll just keep bringing this fun stuff to you. We'll try and keep it even more real than CGI. Yeah. More real than CGI. Hello, Brontosaurus breasts. So that's it for today. Hope you had a groovy, groovilicious time. There's that word again.

We brought it all the way back around. And we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for being here. And until next time, everybody, chicken chamein, baby.