The Harland Highway - The NEW Harland Highway podcast #12

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Harland gets on about credit cards, Smoking for the first time, magic mushrooms, and Jesus music! 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. Oh yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Here we go. Here we go, everybody. You know where you are. You're not in your kitchen. You're not out in your trailer. You're not in your boat house, sniffing cobwebs. You're not down in the root cellar eating gourds and pumpkin rinds.

You're here. You're on the highway that gets you there, the Harland Highway. We're going to get you there. Today's another beautiful journey where we're going to get off on all kinds of different exit ramps and see what's there. Explore, adventure, do what we need to do to make life fun. And before we go on that journey, I have to ask you very kindly if you're watching or if you have watched before, please subscribe. There's a little icon over in the corner, just a little, all you got to do is click it.

And please subscribe to the Harland Highway podcast. It means a hell of a lot to me. And, you know, the more we can build this thing, the more we can do. I mean, we could get to a point, really, if we get like 100,000 subscribers. which is where we want to get, we could get to a point where I personally bring jello pudding pops to each of your homes.

Like seriously, like not even joking. Like I would seriously, before every podcast, like go to each of your home, sort of like a chocolate jello pudding Santa Claus. And I would just like, ding, dong, here's your pudding, got to run, got to go do the pod. So subscribe to the show. and tell your friends about the show.

Why deprive them of the merriment and the mirth? What are you selfish? Are you greedy? You got to have all the laughs and all the giggles. Do you not? Ah, no way. We share here on the highway. Get driving and pick up your friends.

Carpool, this is what I'm trying to say. And if you don't like your friends, drive your car right into a pool and you know what to do. Put the auto lock on and as it sinks, you swim out and get some new friends. That's what carpool means. Duh. But let's kick it off.

So gay pride is a thing. Now, everywhere you turn gay pride. And I thought, how do I celebrate gay pride? How do I get in on pride? And I thought, well, okay, here's what I'll do for pride. I took my little nephew, eight years old, to the zoo, and we went up to the lion enclosure, which is open, but you look down at the lions, and I picked the kid up, eight years old, and threw him in to the pride.

And I yelled, happy pride day, Elwood, and he couldn't hear me. He was being eaten alive. He was being mauled. As I yelled it, I could hear his femur crunching. So I tried. I tried to pride, but, you know, you do what you do. You do what you do with these causes. There's so many causes. I mean, what can we do? There's so many causes. How do we keep track of all the causes?

How many children? How many friends? How many people can I throw to the Pride Alliance, for God's sake? I mean, it's ridiculous. But before we dig into the bulk of the show, I got a little beef. I got to get off my chesty poo. My skull covered chesty poo.

That's right. I got a skull on my chest today, player. Can we discuss the, where is it? Can we discuss these things, these things that sort of dominate our lives, the old credit cards? No, I'm not holding it still. No, I'm not, what am I an idiot?

I'm not holding, see how I'm flipping it around? I'm not holding it still so you can zoom in on your little computer, on your phone, and grab my number. Yeah, uh-huh. Nice try identity thieves. No, you're not. It doesn't stop moving. Good luck getting this credit card number, you, uh, Sesame Street count retreads.

I wonder if the count from Sesame Street has a credit card. There's so many numbers on these things. Can you imagine the count from Sesame Street? Excuse me, sir. Can we get your credit card number, please? Well, yes, of course. Three, seven, nine. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, four, two, six.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, six, six. Nine, never mind, sir. Ah, ah, ah, ah. Right, I mean, you'd just, you'd put a bullet through that freaky Velcro, blood-sucking, mince meat, gurgling, fat boy. I don't know why. How do you dare call a Muppet a fatty? I just called you the count from Sesame Street, a fat boy.

And I'm kind of glad I did. It feels good. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. But anyways, these damn things, if the number isn't enough, okay? And the way they make these, have you ever tried to, like, do something on the phone? Or you're ordering something online. And it's like, please enter your credit card number. And you're okay.

And you pick it up, and the way they've printed the numbers, like you have to have the exact perfect beam of light coming through the window or from your light source. It's like you got to, wait, wait, I can't see it. I'm trying to reflect the, is there a solar eclipse today? Can we get a solar eclipse so I can read my goddamn credit card? I mean, you can't. It's just, ugh.

Anyways, but that's not my real beef with these suckers. And again, I'm moving it around, identity thieves. I'm almost kind of cockteasing the identity thieves right now. You want this, do you? Oh, yeah, come and get it. Come and get it, baby. Yeah. Oh, you want my credit card info?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there it is. All you got to do. Yeah, a little cock teaser. Dirty little. credit card cop teaser oh yeah just flap it in my face baby yeah what was that a seven i just saw wait oh was that a two i don't know wasn't it a cock teaser um and for those of you listening to the

podcast right now i'm flapping my credit card all around it looks like a butterfly that's been sucking Australian beer behind an all-male steam bath. But here's where I'm going with these damn rectangular plastic life source things. Can I go to a Chipotle? Can I go to a department store? Can I go to a gas station? Can I go somewhere? Can I go to a drive-through window?

Where maybe, just maybe, you technology credit card wizards from the evil mountain of Visa and American Express Mountain, do you think you can make one credit card reader that I know how to operate? Is it possible we can just get one uniform credit card reader where the stripe goes this way and the chip goes that way and you put it in this and you swipe it that way and you, Oh, wait, why don't you fold it into some origami and make it into a little swan and then put it in? Or what, the chip goes, how does it go? It goes up, oh, I got it in. Have you ever done that?

You just want like a burrito bowl from Chipotle. You're hungry. You've been at the gym. You just want to go home. Sit in front of your TV with your burrito ball and munch. And then they go, would you please insert your credit card, sir? almost evil like they know what's coming like they're like you know they've got this boring job where they sling rice and chopped chicken and shredded pigs all day and they need some entertainment value

they need something to amuse them as they as they become zomified just taking order after order and like sir will you insert your credit card please and in their head they're going watch this and it's like sure yeah can't oh sir could you uh sir could you uh take it out and try again? Yeah, do I sweat? Am I, do I put it in at an angle? Am I, oh, sir, if you, maybe try it the other way, sir. Okay, maybe can I, am I, I mean, you know what I'm talking about?

It's like you just came for a snack and suddenly you're trying to work out a Rubik's Cube. Every G.D. credit card reader has its own freaking way to do it. Upside down, sideways, the chip, the tap, the slide. Sounds like something you do in a motel six hotel room on a Thursday night in Fresno. The slide, the tap, the push, the insert, the, yeah, that sounds, that sounds actually dirty. Maybe that's what's happening at these places. Yeah, stick it in again, sir, and then slide it. stick it in and slide and then pull it out and tap and then insert it again and just give it a little push

and then slide it again sir i mean what what kind of purve activity is this so anyways can we do away with these at some point and then and then the magnetic strip thing it wears down i don't don't know how a magnetic strip wears down. It's just sitting in my wallet, but, you know, I have a credit card for four months. And then I, you know, I pull it out and I look and then it looks like my magnetic strip is married to a wife beater. My magnetic strip has dark blotches on it and bruises and there's places where it's peeled off like a scab. And I'm like, good God. Who beat you up with an axe handle their master card? So, yeah, I got to be a notch a little about it.

And hopefully one day these things are just a thing of the past. And then the other thing is, even when you do get it right, have you ever tried leaving an underground parking garage or at the drive-thru? And because of COVID, now they hand you the little card reader. and now you know you got to be but you got to become like mr exact right you got to find that you got find this little tiny slot that's as thick as the damn credit card and now you're like oh oh and if you got any kind of little tremble in your hand or the guy holding it's got parkinson's or something it's like ye ye ye ye you know it's like some kind of game you takes you an hour you

Ooh, you get it halfway in, and then, oh, it's a, and then nope, and then sometimes these things go in so deep. You got them in there, and then you're like, please remove your card. You're like, oh, I can't really, can I just get a little, ding, I just got a little hair of the tip. And good luck if you're a girl with the long nails. I mean, if you got the long grizzly bear nails, you know, and by the way, why do you have those? Shouldn't you just be up in Alaska swinging for salmon in a bubbling brook somewhere? Just these nails, man. Get up and start slashing, stand on a rock in the middle of the river and wait until they jump up and slap a salmon out of the air.

But good luck getting your credit card out of a credit card reader. when you got the girly nails, man. I mean, you might as well grow Freddie Krueger fingers and just slash that credit card machine up because that's the only way you're getting that little piece of French toast out. So there you go. I had to get that off my chest.

It's been pissing me off. And so there you go. But now I want to turn to something that involves our health. And, you know, life is so precarious. Life, life I say, is like a tightrope walk, you know. Any day it can take a turn for the better or the worse. Any day you can fall off the tight rope wire or any day you can just be wobbling, barely holding on to the tight rope. And it's such a balancing act. And I don't know why. At this late point in my life, Like about a week ago, I thought, you know what? I'm going to start smoking. Screw it. Screw it.

I know you're not supposed to. It'll kill you dead. It'll give you cancer. And I've made it this far in life. Why would I start smoking? It's like, you know what? I'm bored. I was laying in bed.

I said, I'm going to start smoking. So here I am the other night. I'm laying in bed. It's late. And I bought the pack of camels. I got the camels or marburles or whatever the hell they were. sitting on my nightstand and I don't know why I did that all sexy if that was even sexy. I just, for some reason, I just went nightstand.

But anyway, so I'm laying in bed. It's late. It's, you know, it's like one in the morning. And I'm having one of these nights where I can't get to sleep. But maybe that was it. You know, I live in this apartment. It's like 40 stories high. And I'm laying in bed and I thought, screw it.

I'm going to smoke, but I don't want to do it in the apartment. I don't want that smoke reek coming around, you know. So what I do is I take the elevator all the way up and then I take the little stairway up to the roof. There's always that little extra stairway and then you open that lead fire door, like as if, you know, Hiroshima's going to happen again. They always put this giant lead fire door at the very top. And so I pushed that. thing open. You know, I kick it open with my, I'm wearing my Birkenstock sandals, the ones I bought

at Lilith Fair when I used to go on a yearly basis. And I go out there and I'm standing on the roof and, you know, the full moons out and you can see a few stars in the sky. It's the city so it's hard to read the stars because of the ambient light everywhere. You know, the traffic's humming down below and the lights are twinkling around the city, it's kind of peaceful, kind of nice, and it's a slight breeze blowing, and I pull out the cigarette, and I light the tip, and I take my first drag. I'm like, I can feel it going into the lungs like a ghost, an arsenic ghost full of poison, just trickling inside of my human form, ready to pollute and contaminate and disease. ease me. For $12.99 a pack, why not? I'm like, and just as I start exhaling and the cancer ghost is

whispering out of my lungs and into the night sky, I look over to the far side of the roof. And my God, I see a woman standing there, a woman standing right on the edge of the roof, right on the precipice, as they call it. And she's just wearing this kind of sheer, flowing night robe that's open and the wind's blowing it, just flapping in the breeze. All you can hear is, and I'm thinking it's not that windy out. And I look over to the other corner of the roof, and there's a homeless guy perched in

the corner, making me. wind noises no that's not true that is not true but you know you can just hear the and her robes flowing and the full moon she's she's naked underneath and the the moonlight illuminating her milky or big breasts are lit up by the moonlight glowing they almost look like giant giant i don't know koala eyes. If a koala had down syndrome, like down syndrome eyes, and just I could see what I didn't want to see. And then she had a caesarian scar across the width of her belly. It was so wide that if you dip this woman in orange dye, it would look like someone cut a jacko-lantern mouth onto her abdomen. And I looked at her. I stared at her. She was

almost like a ghost, and I'm like holding this cigarette, the end of it, the orange amber's burning into the night sky. And I thought, my God, she's at the end of her rope. She's here to end it. And I recognize the situation immediately, and I approached very delicately. I inched my way forward. And as I got closer, I could see this empty, desolate, far away look in her eyes, just these hollow, ghostly eyes staring out into eternity, seeing everything at once but seeing nothing at all, all at the same time. And I felt for her, I could feel it was palpable, the loneliness and the lostness of this poor soul standing at the edge of her mortality.

And I said to her, I said, ma'am, are you okay? Are you going to jump? And she just turned very slowly and looked at me and her eyes a million miles away. And she said, yeah, there's nothing left for me here anymore. And it just hit my heart. It was like, wow, wow, what do I do? And so I asked her, I said, isn't there anyone that you can reach out to?

Is there anyone that loves you that can come? And in her empty whisper of a voice, she said, yes. I called my daughter. She's the only thing on this whole earth that I love. I called my daughter to come, but I'm afraid it's too late. Hey, everybody. Who wants to have better sex? No?

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So be sure to use this code Harland so you get your discount and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. Again, my heart was just like, holy God. And I thought, what do I do?

I can't lunge and grab this woman. She'll jump. And I thought, I'm not trained to take. to handle this type of psychological moment. It's too big. It's life and death. And here I am somehow in the middle of it. And I look to the sky.

I was like, what do I do? And then almost as if by divine intervention, I don't know if you believe in God, the Holy Savior, Lamb, Holy Lord of the Ghost, Savior Jesus, Lamb, Burning Bush of the Lamb, Lord God, Savior Jesus, Christ Child, the Holy Lamb. But all of a sudden, a sign came, something appeared, something manifested out of nowhere that none of us saw coming. This little mouse, a little city mouse, a little gray mouse with little curious black beady eyes glistening in the moonlight.

He ran up on the ledge right by this lost soul's feet. And the woman noticed the movement and she looked down. and here was this little cute mouse just staring up at her with all the wonderment and innocent of the world in its eyes and I think she recognized that she recognized another life form that was unaffected from the waves of the world the evil and the weight and the pressure and the stress of the turning churning world

that we live in here was this little hairy soft mammal that knew nothing of the ways of man. And it just looked up at her with the most innocent of all looks like a newborn baby looking into its mother's eyes and almost instantaneously this woman who was already beyond living.

Her demeanor changed. She looked down and I saw a smile creep across her face. A smile. Suddenly this little innocent mouse, this harmless creature somehow injected into her a moment of life, maybe even a moment to live, and she reached down with her trembling hand,

and the mouse of all things jumped onto her hand and ran up her arm and onto her shoulder. And this woman started to giggle, I guess, maybe the feel of the mouse on her skin or through her robe. Or maybe she was just amused that this wild creature was somehow unafraid of her and not aware of her torment. And I sat there in wonderment going, oh, my God, this little creature is somehow without it,

knowing what is happening, has turned this woman. He's somehow miraculously brought this woman back from the edge of doom. And then the little critter ran up the back of her neck and perched on the top of her head. And this woman who had shown no emotion, who was blank as a zombie crying in the night. Suddenly her face filled up with emotion and life and she actually started to giggle out loud.

She was laughing. She was like, this little creature brought her joy and I could tell maybe this was the catalyst to bring her back, pull her back to the world of the living and give life another chance. And I reached out my hand. And I said, would you like to come back? And through her giggled, she said, yes, yes, I would.

And she started to reach for me. And as our hands almost touched from out of the darkness, swooping down from the shadows and the black veil of night, a large owl, a huge owl with its four-foot wingspan, and spotted the little mouse perched on this woman's head, and it came flying down, and boom, it. It grabbed the mouse, but in the process hit the woman's head and knocked her off balance. And she sadly spiraled over the side of the building and careened towards the ground.

All I could do was run to the ledge with my arms still out and watch her fall 40 floors. And down below, as she fell through the empty sky, A young girl stepped out of a taxi cab and ran towards the front of the apartment buildings, towards the entrance. And I saw her look up as she heard screaming from above. And as she looked up of a sense of recognition on her face, it was the desolate woman's daughter. And she tumbled through the air and landed right on her daughter,

killing her instantly and killing herself. And now here I stood, bathed in the glow of the moonlight. Nothing but a half-burned cigarette in my hand, the smoke twirling up into the stars like a million sparkling tear drops that watched the whole ordeal. As I saw the blood slowly start to seep out to the sidewalk, the tangled bodies of a deceased mother and daughter far below. I realized in that moment just how precious life was.

And I looked at my first cigarette, burned halfway through. And I thought to myself, life is too precious. I don't want to die. I don't want to cut my life short. So I took that burning cigarette And I put it out I twisted it out Right on that little mouse's face

Just to hear it shriek in the night To hear it shriek and scream As the burning ember sizzled into its face I'm kidding ladies and gentlemen A little can we have a little drama here for you That does my podcast always have to be be ha ha ha full of laughs i can't uh tell a little dramatic story for you i mean whoa players like lighten the f up okay get on your taco okay get on your life size taco and dial it down a bit

nacho okay because if you can't handle a little drama thrown in with the comedy then uh maybe you better get on your nachomobile, go to the Taco Bell drive-thru, order some hot sauce, squirt it in your eyes, go stand on the nearest train track, hope that the train's going to fuck off town, and you get hit and ride the front grill all the way through the mountains until it drops you off deep, deep, deep, right in the middle of fuck off town. Okay, look. I'm just messing with you. Holy God. Wow. You know what we'll do? Why don't we just, let's all take a deep breath. Maybe that drama was too much. I did not put a cigarette out in a mouse's face. You think I'd do that just after watching a mother murder her own daughter by jumping on her in the middle of the night? And I don't live in an apartment building. Okay, does that help?

Does that help make it all real for you? By the way, everybody, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. That's Better Help, Better Help. As you know, life is full of twists and turns, and it's important to show up for yourself through all of it. Better Help Online Therapy will assess your needs and can match you with your own licensed professional therapist in less than 48 hours. It's not a crisis line. It's not self-help. It's professional therapy done securely online and is available to people worldwide. You can log into your account

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So check it out. Better help. And they have a special office. offer for Harland Highway listeners. You get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com slash Harland. That's 10% off your first month of online therapy at BetterHelp, help.com slash Harland. Hey, get out there, make your life as good as it can be, and boom, better help. Can I get a little, yeah, thank you. Hello. I appreciate it. That story wasn't easy to tell the old, you know, first time smoking thing.

But since we're talking about first times, let me tell you a real story, okay? This is the first time I tried mushrooms finally. Seems like everybody's doing it. And I love how people are kind of pretending that it's like, like it's legit. And maybe it is. I don't know. I'm not a chemist. I'm not a mushroomist. I, but I, you know, I get the sense. There's this whole kind of vibe going around like all of a sudden mushrooms that have been illegal since the beginning of time and mushrooms that have properties that can alter your reality. People are sort of selling them off now like, oh yeah, mushrooms.

You know, I'm micro-douse. I do like, you know, a bunch of them. every day, or I take a little every day. And, oh, my God, it makes me so much more creative. I mean, I closed an oil deal in Saudi Arabia. I couldn't have done it unless I was on mushrooms watching an elephant chew through a log cabin. But there seems to be this kind of place now where they're being legitimized and they're being normalized and almost to the point where they're saying, hey, you know, they're almost treating it like a pharmaceutical where they're saying, you know, you might function a lot better if you were taking

politicilicides or whatever the, I don't know the technical term, philidicides or polyticides or polytacilocides or magic mushrooms. And they're kind of almost making it seem like it's normal to do it. And maybe you're not normal if you're not doing it and that microdosing and taking poison mushrooms, every day will increase your productivity and make you a much better well-adjusted functioning human being in everyday society? Hey, maybe. What do I know? I'm not God.

I'm not the Holy Lamb, the Holy Savior, whatever I told you earlier. Maybe they do for all I know, but I don't know. I always find it a bit suspicious when everyone starts to market drugs as being the way to go and then don't we like on the other end of that always hear the other story where it's always these these people that are like oh my god i was smoking pop for 20 years and i was doing mushrooms for 20 years and holy god you know i thought it was being creative i thought i was you know working at my best capacity and as soon as i got off them oh my god everything became so clear and now i'm doing my best work. I can't believe I wasted all those years, right? Don't you always hear these testimonials?

Where it's before they get on these drugs, it's like, oh my God, I just can't seem to get motivated. I've got writers block. I can't get creative. Wait, let me do drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs. And then, you know, 15, 20 years later, oh my God, I wish I'd gotten off these things sooner. You know, I don't know. Maybe for some people it works. Maybe for others it doesn't. Maybe there's a middle ground. Who am I to say?

But I am going to touch on the topic. I am going to press the buttons. I am going to make you think. I am going to make you look in the mirror and go, holy shit, I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford. But after all that, after admonishing you about drugs and lecturing you and preaching to you and getting up on my soap. box and just like cramming my opinions down your fat, greasy pie hole. After all that, yours truly tried mushrooms for the first time. And it's not hard.

That's the thing, you know, they're all packaged up. They come in a nice little, they've got them all packaged for you. And so I get these things last weekend and I'm by myself. I want to try them by myself. I've never had mushrooms, so I open the packaging and, you know, I bite in. I'm like, I'm eating the mushrooms. And they say it's like an hour. It's about an hour before they start to kick in and you start to feel whatever you're supposed to feel.

So I'm like, okay, I time it out accordingly. I started at like, you know, 7 o'clock at night so that I'd have time for whatever was going to happen was going to happen. and an hour ticks by and I'm sitting here and I'm going, you know, not really anything. Not feeling a thing from these mushrooms. So I'd take another big mouthful. I'm like, oh, no, no. And some of you are experienced mushroom eaters are probably going, oh, my God, you don't do that. You don't take you.

Sometimes it takes a little longer, but I was a bit impatient. So I took another mouthful. Two hours go by. Okay? Nothing. Nata. So now I'm like, I take like a bunch more, stuff my face with these mushrooms, five hours go by.

Okay, now it's like one in the morning, nothing. So I'm like, screw it. I call my buddy. I have a buddy who's, let's just say, he's a druggie guy. He's been doing the drugs a long time. He's schooled in the world of drugs. So I call up my buddy, Dan, and I go, Dan, what the hell is going on, man? I know you've taken mushrooms.

I've been eating them all night. I have it. I don't feel a thing, man. And so Dan right away, you know, he puts the question hat on. He goes, well, first of all, where did you get them? And I go, okay, Whole Foods. And he goes, what? I said, I got the mushrooms at Whole Foods, Portobello mushrooms.

And he goes, Portobello, what are you? I said, yeah, they're really big and they're tasty. You know, I kind of liked it. When I went to Whole Foods, I asked the, the guy there about mushrooms, and he said they were the best. And he goes, dude, no, no, no. What you want is the poison mushrooms, bro. It's the poison.

It's the poison in mushrooms that get you high. It's the poison that creates the high. When the poison gets in your blood, it creates the illusions and the stimuli. He says, you've got to get wild mushrooms, dude. Not store-bought. And I'm like, oh, great. So now it's two in the morning. I'm down by some polluted river here in Los Angeles.

It's not even a real river. It's like a concrete causeway with mold and seaweed. And I've got like a little miners hat on with a flashlight. And I'm crawling around on all fours looking for wild mushrooms on the banks of this river where corpses roll by, little white boys and Armenian kids and Latina. children and Asian people, all kind of just bodies of all races, nationalities, and religions. There's a body rolled by with a yarmulka on. It's L.A. There's bodies everywhere. You don't go fishing in the water in L.A. You go searching for loved ones, missing loved ones.

And so now I'm rummaging around on the moldy shores of Death River. and, you know, I got my hands and I'm feeling around for mushrooms and there's like raccoons beside me and porcupines and possums and, you know, now I'm like a hunter-gatherer I'm scavenging for food on the shore banks with these nocturnal animals.

You know, they're looking for salami and bratwurst and crayfish and, you know, loafs of bread and chili dogs. I don't know what these wild animals Eat what raccoons eat? What does a porcupine eat? I mean, it's got the name pork.

What are they out there looking around for pork chops and curly fries? I mean, possums look like they probably eat curly fries. Have you seen them? They're all greasy and creepy. They look like if a rat got raped by Dracula, that would be the kid, a possum. A curly fry-eaten rat vampire freak. Uh, so now I'm reaching, and sure enough, I find some little wild mushrooms rolling around in the, in the, in the swamp, in the muck, in the, in the mildew, had to, I think I rolled a corpse over of a little Swedish child. And there was some wild mushrooms growing underneath. So now I'm picking these and I'm popping them, because now I'm, I'm like, let's get going with this. And I think I did feel the poison because suddenly my body's just short, circuiting, and I'm kind of walking out of this river, death river, like a zombie. I'm like,

I'm drooling. There's froth coming out of my mouth. I look like Kujo just dug up a date at the pet cemetery. My fingers are curled up like an old lady that just won the world record for knitting a sweater or something. I'm just like, like Velociraptor claws over here, right? And I'm like, and then I collapse on the street. Next thing I know, I wake up. seven days later out of a coma, I almost died, and I phoned Dan, and I go, Danny, what the hell, man? You said, get the wild mushrooms.

The poison will do the trick. He goes, no, man, you need magic mushrooms, you idiot. He called me an idiot. Can you believe that? A buddy, a friend calling me an idiot. Like, I'm an idiot. I mean, you've been listening to the whole show. Do I seem like an idiot to you?

Hello? I said, do I seem stupid to you? What? I hope you're not thinking what. So anyways, I get out of the coma and I'm determined to do this. So now Danny says, dude, you got to get magic mushrooms. That's what I'm talking about. The magic mushrooms.

And I'm like, okay, you couldn't have said that at the beginning before I went to Whole Foods. Before I went down to the river and ravaged around for wild mushrooms with these roast beef eating night critters. So I'm like, got it. Magic mushrooms. Anything else? He goes, no, magic mushrooms, bra. And I go, great. I'm in the entertainment industry.

Okay? I have a few connections to high-level celebs here and there. I know people. and so through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of that guy's friend I was able to track down David Copperfield's address in Las Vegas you know David Copperfield that there's no one more magic than David Copperfield right so I'm like great let's get to Copperfield's pad and get some of these magic mushrooms because he's the magic man right So I take the first flight out of Burbank Airport. I fly first class on Southwest Airlines all the way to Vegas. It's only about a half hour flight. And I'm sitting up there in first class on Southwest,

and the first class section of Southwest. And we land, and I get to Copperfield's Place, and I'm not having it. Like this guy's giving me some magic. So I go to his house, I ding the doorbell, and the door opens, and there he is. David Copperfield with his 1970s hair. It looks like he's the lead singer for Air Supply or Ario Speedwagon. Or maybe the two of those lead singers got together, had love in one of the showrooms at IKEA on,

one of those dirty, Swedish wooden beds. And even though men can't have babies, these two freaks did. and David Copperfield is their bastard IKEA Ario Speedwagon Air Supply, Bastard Child. And again, this story is real, not like the smoking one. So I'm standing there and Copperfield's looking at me bewildered. He's like, who the hell are you? What do you want? And I go, David Copperfield, right?

And he's standing there in his white bathrobe with a big gold sea on it. And I go, okay, see, you got, you look like a cunt. And when I say cunt, I'm saying it in the British sense, where if you go to the UK or Britain, cunt is like the same way we use the word asshole. We'll go, oh, that guy's an asshole over there. It's a fucking cunt, knee. Look at that fucking cunt over there.

So don't get all like vagina warped out of shape on me. Because I'm not using it in the vagina sense. I'm using it in the British, fucking cunt sense. All right. So I hope you can differentiate a big pink, healthy vagina with the use of the word cunt as an everyday kind of slang or swear word used in everyday vernacular or vocabulary over in the United Kingdom. But over the United Kingdom. So I'm like, hey, David, yeah, cunt. And he goes, what the hell are you doing here?

Who are you? I said, I'm here for the magic, bro. Give me some magic mushrooms. I'm not leaving until I get the magic. And poof, like I was at one of his Las Vegas showrooms, poof, suddenly there's a burst of white smoke. And I'm like, ooh, ah. And like I was at a magic show suddenly.

Like Copperfield knew his role in this, and he went right in. He was supposed to get me magic mushrooms, but it's like he went, it's like he's wired. When he hears the word magic, it's just an involuntary combustible reaction, just poof. And now there's white smoke, and I'm standing there, ooh, and then the smoke clears. And sitting there, Copperfield's gone. I don't know where he is. I don't know if he went to Magic Land. I don't know if he's at the lead singer of Hart's house, like doing it,

Doggy style with the lead singer of heart. But sitting there as the smoke dissipates is a full-grown white Siberian tiger. Just what you want to see when you're in Vegas and just what you'd expect a magician like air supply hair, copperfield to have, right? And so here I am, face-to-face with this thing. It's staring at me with these big, beautiful blue eyes

and I can hear it's tummy rumbling and faster than a raccoon pulling a Swanson's you know meatloaf microwave dinner out of the LA Corpse River this thing's on me fangs in my nap crunch everything goes to black

so now I wake up in the hospital again out of a coma like I think this one was a five-monther and again, like near-death experience. So I'm just going to say, and, you know, at the beginning of this segment, I talked about how people are justifying the use of drugs recreationally and almost now as a form of functionality. But I'm here to say as a survivor of two comas induced by these so-called magic mushrooms,

One from the Poison Death River experience, and one from one of the world's largest carnivore predators, Apex predators, almost severing my spine with its vice-like jaws and seven-inch canine fangs. Drugs will get you killed. Okay? Drugs are dangerous. And I'm going to say it, because I literally. through it twice drugs will get you killed

so you do what you want to do players you know you rock and roll you keep rocking and rolling right down uh right down mushroom boulevard or molly uh molly avenue or uh lSD uh crescent uh you want to be up there on uh marijuana cul-de-sac Tooting your Lily Tomlin tonsillitis titmouse tinkerbell twizzlers have at it. I'm done. How many times do I need to go into a coma to know that drugs ain't the way to go?

So if you can learn something from what I did, then learn it. learn it and burn it and sunny and share it. And I don't even know what that meant, but pray to the Lord, thank the Lord that I made it through. And again, a real story. The smoking one, yes, I embellished it. I made it up. That was kind of for your entertainment value.

And I know it was, that one was hard one. That one was dramatic. That one was, had you on the edge of your seats. And you felt for this poor woman who fell and landed on her daughter. And I put a cigarette out on a little mouse's face. But it was all made up. Whereas this magic mushroom story, totally real. And if you want to contact the hospital and get my medical records to verify,

please be my guest, nosy. Yeah, just go online, look up Our Lady of Bullshit Memorial Hospital. That was for the first coma. And then the second hospital was, Dear Mother of Mary, I'm fucking you over with the biggest load of bullshit you've ever seen on the back of a John Deere tractor, our Holy Saint Hospital of the Tender Lords in Man. Manhattan, in the Bronx, in Yonkers.

On Staten Island is where I meant to say. Rhode Island, Ithaca. It's up in Ithaca by the Finger Lakes. You'll find it. But I've been talking, I just realized I've been throwing the word Lord around a lot. You know, like you say, praise the Lord that I wasn't hurt. and I think maybe we should end on something that's a little holy maybe.

And this is something that's been occurring lately. You know, nowadays with the advent of Spotify and our playlists in our devices, how often do you really listen to active terrestrial radio anymore? Do you listen to it at all? Do you listen to an AM or FM state? and groove along. Well, I'll tell you, the only time I do it now is when I'm driving.

And I drive a lot. You know, I'm an active guy. I'm a cosmopolitan guy. I'm on the go. Daddy's on the move. Daddy's got to pop the popcorn. Daddy's got to sizzle the Bratworth sausage. Daddy's got to flip the flapjack.

You know how I roll. And here I am rolling around town, cruising, really, around town. Hustling. Hustling around town is what I do. And I got the tunes. I got the tunes on the car radio, but here's the dilemma. I am a channel surfer. I just, I'm not married to any particular station.

I don't have the time in my day to wait around for you to play a song that pleases my audio-sensory apparatus. I am not going to kneel down and be your servant. I am not a slave to your playlist, okay, you greasy chestnut cracking, fucking dragon slaying, snot-rack-licking radio stations. I want to hear what I want to hear when I want to hear it, and so I surf as I'm driving. And when you do that, ultimately, you get all flavors of. the music buffet. You get heavy metal, you get rock and roll, you get pop, you get country, you get Latino, you get news, you get all these different styles of music. And it's kind of fun because it's really the only chance I get to discover new music and new hit songs and stuff.

I didn't know who Dolipa was. And then I started hearing her songs over and over on the radio when I'm cruising around town. And suddenly now I'm aware a Doolipa. Whatever, I don't know if, is that one of the Winnie the Pooh characters? We got Owl, we got Eeyore, we got Kengit and Roo, we got Winnie and Doolipa, and Eeyore too. Thanks for noticing me. I'm E.R.

And this is Doolipa. Oh, stuff and fluff. Excuse me, Doolippa. But would you happen to have any extra honey, Doolippa? Okay, why we just went there, I don't know. And again, I'm going to turn to the Lord and say, what is happening to me?

Dear Heavenly Lamb, Lord of the hosts, why was I born this way? Why am I off? Why am I not like the others? Dear Savior, Lord of the roast beef, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Dance, Heavenly Hash Ice Cream. So anyways, when I'm cruising along, there's one genre of music that is a little odd to me. And here's what happens. I'll be cruising through.

I'll hear the doo lip-all, hear sting from the police, I'll hear deaf leopard, I'll hear. And then all of a sudden I cruise onto a song, and it's kind of like, okay, you know, it's kind of catchy and poppy. And I'm like, oh, maybe this is a new one. I don't know who this is. I'm not sure who this artist, but yeah, it's kind of got a cool little bead, and it's kind of catchy. And then you're kind of going along.

And like, it's sort of there, but there's something a little off. Something in my warning system in the back of my brain is going, hmm, why isn't it? It's sort of going up the hill, but it's just not getting over the hump. And it's like, you know, it's a nice song. It's like, I am loving all the life, and I am living with my lover. And I'm like, okay, it's sort of rock and roll. It's sort of a little bit country.

But what is it? Something just a little off musically and lyrically. And what is, and then all of a sudden you hear it. You're tapping your feet and you're kind of getting drawn in. And then all of a sudden you hear, and just like the Lord on the crucifix. I was standing there frozen in the night. Oh, the Lord on the crucifix, Holy Lord Savior, won't you take my hand, pull your hand off the cross,

pull the nail from your hand, and help me through the night. And I'm like, wait a minute, I just realized, and I got nothing against you if you like the Christian music or the Holy Roller music or whatever you want to call it. God rock or whatever it is, I got nothing against you. God bless you. I believe in God. I got nothing bad to say about you for that. But there's something about that music. It just, it's suddenly, it's sort of, and now you can kind of, you get the Christian rock radar on and you're like, wait a minute, it sort of pulls you in. And then all of a sudden, and as I stared out all in the lake,

I decided to grab Jesus in my mind and run across the water. Oh, the Lord had me run across the water. And me and my girlfriend had some kids. You know, there's always like some. Suddenly you're doing something with Jesus. You're snowboarding or you're on a toboggan. Or you're watching the baby Lord Jesus in a cradle playing with a yo-yo or there's God has come down and put a miracle on your dinner number four at the Chinese restaurant.

I don't know. There's always some weird, suddenly God and the Lord appears in these songs. And I realize, God, this is what takes me out of them. And it's not because I'm anti-religion or I have anything bad to say. It's just there's something about them. They're just a little bit cheesy and they're corny. And back in the day, these songs, you knew when you were getting like religious music because it sounded like a choir and it was like, oh Lord Jesus, take us to, you know,

it sounded like church folk singing. But now they've kind of packaged the holy music to sound like a good old fashion rock and roll song or a pop tune. Some of them even have a little bit of rap in them. And I've even heard ones that were sort of. heavy metal it was sort of like it freaked me out it's like oh yeah it's saturday night it's saturday night everyone's out drinking yeah but jesus got me by the waist and he's taking me down to the dairy queen so i don't have to have alcohol yeah you know god i just swallowed

some air particles that were laced with uh chloroform uh extortion philatio filaments. And I think that might have been God punishing me for daring to do, to sort of do a piss take on the religious music. But please, please know, Lord, and please know my viewers. I do not begrudge you or say anything defamatory if you're religious. I got no business doing that. We're all entitled to believe in whatever we want now.

Put your hand up to the podcast. Put your hand on the podcast and believe now that from this pulpit where I sit, we are all entitled to anything we want to believe, anything we want to be spiritual about. Put your hand on the podcast and say it with me now. We are free to do what we want. And I think by now most of you have bailed out.

I'm sensing that most of you probably have bailed out, shut this thing right off, probably not even hearing what I'm saying right now. And I don't blame you. Right at the end there, just pretending I'm on a podge evangelist or something. New word, by the way, pot evangelist. But I think we've got to end it there. I think we got to end it there. and I think most of you are probably on mushrooms by now anyhow.

But before we go, don't forget if for some reason you can't watch this podcast on your YouTube or on your phone, excuse me, you can listen to it on audio. We have relaunched the Harland Highway podcast in an audio format, and you can listen to it on any podcast platform. It's called the New Harland Highway, because I don't know if you know it or not, but back in the day for the last 11 years with a three, four year break in between,

I did over a thousand episodes of the Harland Highway audio only. So this whole visual format is all new, but if you want to hear these and you don't have time to sit at your desk or look into your phone and you just want to hear the fantastic content that I'm delivering. Yeah, I don't think you're going to go to any other podcast

and get a smoking story and throwing your nephew to the pride of lion's story or a magic mushroom story or a credit card story. Are you going to really get that anywhere else? I don't think so. I don't think so. In fact, I know so.

Put your hand on the podcast in the name of the sweet holy lamb of podcast. So anyways, please tell your friends about the Harlan Highway. I said it early. I want to get up to 100,000 subscribers. I want to get beyond that. So please do your part. Just subscribe. If it hurts your finger to press that button,

so be it. Have a crippled finger for a few days. But come on, help a player out. I need to get my mushrooms and I can't do it unless I get a hundred thousand to scab and now. So please subscribe. Please inform your friends of the Harland Highway podcast. Imagine how happy your friends are going to be when you guys can have a conversation over lunch and go, oh my God, Sarah. If you hadn't told me about the podcast, I never would have heard the smoking story. I never would have heard the magic mushroom story. I never would have heard the credit card thing or the Pride Alliance.

Thank you so much. Thank you for being a friend. But seriously, no, please subscribe, tell your friends, get the word out. Just share the link. And also, when you watch the podcast, don't be afraid. Leave a comment down below. I love to hear what you think. Love to know if there's anything you'd like to see

or a topic you might want to hear me ramble on about if you can dare because you know it ain't going to come out normal now. But I'm up for the challenge. If you have a goofy topic or a serious topic, you want me to comment. I'm not saying I will, but I'll take it into consideration now. I'll bring it in and suckle it on my womb. And what else? Bonus material, if you're enjoying this.

I also do some carryover stuff. My old podcast, I used to do a lot of theater of the mind characters at a whole library of characters that I did voices for, probably 10 or 15 different characters. And now you can hear those exclusively on my Patreon account. Patreon is a digital platform where you can pay a monthly fee, a small monthly fee and get all kinds of bonus material videos. And by the way, if you're on Patreon, guess what?

We just started this. You get these podcasts like between four to five days earlier than everyone else. So if you're just one of those people that's Jonzen to get more of me and get me ahead of everyone else, if you join Patreon, you get the visual video version of the Harland Highway days before everyone. else. So it's $5 a month, or if you're feeling generous, you can do 10 or 25, whatever you want. Go to Patreon, just go on to Google, type in Harland Williams' Patreon page, and it'll take you there and just try it. If you don't like it, get off. If you like it, stay on. Everything helps, and we appreciate it. Also, if you enjoyed the T-shirts and you want to pick one up,

an original or a print, just go to harbling.com, and you can pick up your stuff there. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have you here. It really does make me appreciative. We live in a new digital age, and I've sort of decided to take a turn with my career and kind of go after this kind of digital era that we're in, and it's really enjoyable, and it's fun, and I really couldn't do it unless you guys were the other half of the equation. So a heartfelt thank you. Hope you can share with your friends, and until next time, everybody, stay off the drugs,

stay off the edge of the building, stay out of the creek, stay out of the zoo in the lion's den, and stay.