The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Harland Williams - HarlandDew

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

My HoneyDew this week is comedian, Harland Williams! (Harland Highway, Dumb and Dumber, Puppy Dog Pals) Harland Highlights the Lowlights of a failed relationship and a creepy conversation with a dead woman.  SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://youtube.com/@rsickler  SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew  What’s your story?? Submit at [e-mail]  SUBSCRIBE to The HoneyDew Clips Channel http://bit.ly/ryansicklerclips  SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRABFEAST PODCAST https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crabfeast-with-ryan-sickler-and-jay-larson/id1452403187 SPONSORS: Wildgrain -Get $30 off your first box PLUS free croissants at https://www.Wildgrain.com/HONEYDEW 

I want to make a very special announcement here. I'm excited to say that I have the Crab Feast podcast back under my control. Okay. So it's every artist's goal to get their property back to them. We got it. All right. So if you don't know about the Crab Feast, but a lot of you do, I want to say this. I'm on the road at meet and greets. People come up, been rocking with you since the feast, man, crab feast, but a lot of you do. I want to say this. I'm on the road,

meet and greets, people come up, been rocking with you since the feast, man, the feast, the feast. The crab feast is a podcast that I did with Jay Larson. It's a storytelling podcast, audio only. We did it for about seven and a half years. There's 350 some episodes. Hell, if you listen to two a week, it would take you three and a half years to get through it. But it's a phenomenal library that I'm very proud of. It's what preceded the honeydew for me. And it's got all the same favorite guests you love. Segura, Bert Kreischer, Bill Burr, Christina P., you name it. And they're all different stories too. So if you love the honeydew, you got to check out the crab feast. Subscribe to it today. It's still getting a ton of downloads already. There's an active community on Facebook that goes through every episode.

It's been almost gone for four years now. So feasters, let them know. Honeydew fans, if you are looking for, you're them know, uh, honeydew fans. If you are looking for, you're all caught up on a honeydew and you're like, what else can I listen to? I'm telling you, go listen to the crab feast. It is a fantastic, fun, uh, storytelling podcast. You know, there you'll get like, man, I got this weird ghost story and a near death and

a marriage story into this, where that's what, what, you know, the honeydew for me was the crafties needed to have a baby. And I just focus on highlighting the low lights here. So go check it out. It's available everywhere you get podcast. It's audio only. Like I said, subscribe, join the fan pages, have fun with it. I'm going to be promoting it every week here on the honeydew now that it's back in control here. So I'm very excited about that. Thank you, Feasters. Thank you, Honeydew fans.

Enjoy the feast. The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to the honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the Nightpan Studios. I am Ryan Sickler, ryansickler.com, Ryan Sickler on all your social media. If you are watching this show, first of all, thank you. Second of all, please hit that subscribe button. All right? I say it all the time.

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All right? And if you sign up for a year, you get a month free. And I'm highlighting the lowlights with you all. And I promise you, we're going to do another highlight episode just so you can get a sample of the kind of shit I see every fucking week from y'all. Phenomenal. If you or someone, you know, has a story that has to be heard, please submit it to honeydewpodcast at gmail.com. Hopefully we get to do an episode together. All right. And I want to just keep reminding y'all about the crab together. All right. And I want to just keep reminding you all about the crab feast. All right. It is back under our control. It is a audio only

podcast. And I promise you, if you're looking for a new podcast, go check out this old podcast. It's all the same people. You know, Harlan Williams was on there. Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, Bill Burr, Christina Pachitsky, all the people you know and love right there with different fucking stories. That's the truth. Go subscribe. It's available everywhere you get your podcast. And also, specifically LA, I want to say thank you all so much for coming out to the special.

We had a blast. I can't wait to show it all to you. Very excited about that. Now, that's the biz. Y'all know what we're doing over here highlighting those low lights these are the stories behind the storytellers and i'm very excited to have this gentleman back here on the honeydew ladies and gentlemen please welcome back harlan williams welcome back to the honeydew oh dude just like startled me there. Give me a little kick, a little jump.

Can we just tell everybody real quick, it's the holidays right now, and we were outside. Yeah. Kirsten and I are out there with the dog. We're smoking a joint, talking to you, and there's a Christmas tree right next to us. Yeah, all kinds of beautiful Christmas trees. Beautiful, yeah, beautiful. right next to us yeah all kinds of beautiful uh christmas beautiful yeah beautiful um nordmans and douglas firs and all these nobles that's what we got we got a noble balsam yeah so

uh this nice older lady says excuse me do you work here and harland fucking says no i got fired for molesting one of the trees and this woman took that shit right in stride she loved it she goes you licked it didn't you said i licked the hell out of that thing you can't sap that's sap can't not like it and then she comes back she's like they're getting a whole new load at noon she loved loved it. She loved it, dude. You're hilarious. You're good energy, Harlan Williams. Yeah, well, you know, if someone in the public wants to improv with me, I'll improv with them. All day, right? Why not?

All day. That's the best. And it's rare that people just will jump in and improv with you. I get the shit out of you, dude. It's fun. It is. Yeah. Well, before we get into your stories today please uh

plug everything you like well hey man i will uh just mention my podcast the harland highway on youtube and uh it's a show where we just talk about everything and anything we meander down the highway and we go off all the different exit ramps and just have fun and uh great guests like yourself and that was fun uh everyone's been on it and uh so check it out the harland highway podcast um also check out harland's last episode if you haven't seen harland's last episode on here it's unlike any episode we've had in the uh entire run of the honeydew oh really yeah no one's had a dog get abducted by an owl no one well murdered murdered it was an owl murder yeah no one's had that yeah that's a unique story too i gotta say you yeah i don't want anyone have you

ever met another person whose dog's been abducted, murdered, excuse me, by an owl? No, by an owl. No. And I hope I never do. I got one. Because of you, I have two umbrellas over my balcony. Because we have barn owls that live right over here in these trees. Oh, yeah.

I do videos of them all the time. There are two or three of them circling. They're hunting. And this motherfucker. When I had my dog, she was three pounds of like a hawk. You gave me trauma. And then I even tried to get her one of those spiky vests yeah so the hawks don't grab manship but that was it looked she looked like a fucking armadillo it was excessive like a punk rock armadillo yeah owls and hawks they look they have this sight they have unique vision and when

they look down they move um they're silent when they fly they're silent And when they look down. And they move. They're silent when they fly. Yeah, they're silent. And when they look down and see a small dog, they just see like a lamb chop running. You know? Yeah. It's like a pork chop or a lamb chop. And it's like, they don't see dogs. Like Chili Willie used to see a lamb, chicken drumstick running.

Chili Willie. Remember Chili Willie? You're old enough to remember Chili Willie. Dude, who forgets the chillster yeah chili willie um well this time we're not going to be talking about animals um so you had a couple stories you wanted to share um and you know this is your episode harlem well i have an interesting story that happened to me that I thought you might find pretty weird and cool. It's kind of like a ghost story meets Highway to Heaven type of thing.

Okay. You know? Yeah. I'm also old enough to remember Highway to Heaven. By the way, I think Chili Willie did an episode of Highway to Heaven, too. The one where he was possessed. Chili Willie episode of Highway to Heaven. Michael Landon pouring holy water was possessed. Chili Willie episode of Highway. Michael Landon pouring holy water on a little

Chili Willie penguin. Yeah. This little stitched where's Waldo cap. By the way, am I the only guy that doesn't give a fuck where Waldo is? I don't give a fuck. Waldo can fuck

off. I hope Waldo's stuck in a bear trap in Montana, getting eaten by mountain lions, that fucking googly-eyed freak. He's giving everybody eye issues, squinting and looking for this motherfucker to fuck Waldo, man. It should be like, where's Pervo? He's always there kind of behind the Eiffel Tower or behind the bushes. It's like, dude, stay out of my yard. I feel like he's watching me undress at night.

Anyway, sorry. I digress. But this story stems from, do you remember sort of your first love that you're like in college? Did you have a girl that you were madly in love with and just drove you nuts? senior year high school oh and it ended obviously oh yeah yeah and was it brutal yeah it was pretty brutal yeah i mean i took it hard just hard and when you're young when you when you're in your like mid-20, you're still figuring out love and emotions.

And this stuff's really raw and ripe. I'm still trying to figure it out. We're always doing it. I'm sloppy and messy. Yeah. But when you're at that age, it's really nerve-ending. It's really fresh and new and comes down on you like an avalanche. So I had been with my college sweetheart for probably five years.

And this was just when I was starting to do comedy. Of all things, I ended up getting a job with the police. This was up in Toronto. So I got a job working for the police in the mailroom, of all things. So are you an actual officer? No, no, I'm not a cop. I'm just in the mailroom. And then twice a day, I have a special car, and I have to drive from where I work, where all the mail comes in, and go down to police headquarters. I have to circulate in the morgue, in the forensics lab.

Oh, you're walking around and delivering it. Everywhere. I have full access to the police force. And so this is at a point in my life where I was doing this as a day job, working as a male guy in the police station, the police force. And then at night I was starting to do my standup comedy. So I was just getting going. My life was starting to roll. And in all of this, I've got this kind of relationship that's falling apart with kind of the love of my life, my college sweetheart. And when I did my route, every day I had to like kind of twice a day, I had to go down by the shores of lake ontario go

to police headquarters then drive back uptown to where my office was and did this every day five days a week but i'm going through this thing like do i stay with this girl do i leave this girl we're in this why what was happening at that point where you're feeling that? There was a point where we were madly in love, but then she cheated on me, and I caught her. How did you catch her? Like in the act? No. It was very bizarre. We had moved in together, and sometimes your instincts just know that someone's cheated on you.

Your guts, bro. And it's so strong, and you feel horrible about it because you don't want to be that I don't trust you person, you know? But when something doesn't leave you, you go, why is this? And so we lived on the back end of a golf course up in Toronto, and it was a winter night. And we're living together. And I'm thinking, do we get married? Do we move forward? Do we go to the next level?

But I still had this nagging thing. And I'd asked her many times. I said, look, just tell me. Did you cheat on me? I can feel it. We can work it out maybe. I don't know. At least we can have a dialogue.

We can discuss it. And it just wasn't coming. She was telling me nothing happened. And so one night I went down into the golf course in the middle of the night, snowing. It's like this deep. It's Canada. You walked down? I walked down and I just looked to the sky. I go, God, please give me an answer. Did she cheat on me? Give me an answer, please. Like, I need to know.

Like, I had these big plans for my life. I knew I wanted to go to Hollywood. I knew I wanted to take a shot at doing something in the entertainment. Like, I had big plans. I knew I wasn't going to have a mediocre life. And I thought, if I'm going to bring this person with me, I want it to be the right person. And so I was like, please give me an answer. I remember getting on my knees and sticking my face in the snow, like just numbing my face.

Oh, see, I could never tell if you were being serious or not. This is for real. I'm telling you. I believe you. I just shoved my face, just frozen. Out of the house in the middle of the fucking night, trekked down to like an opening. Yeah, I'm in the golf course.

I'm on like, it's this huge, beautiful pine trees everywhere in the middle of Toronto. But now, you know, golf course is a giant park. So there was no one around, big, thick snowflakes. It's like a scene right out of It's a Wonderful Life. You know, please God, help me. You know, he's about to jump off the bridge, but I didn't have a bridge.

So I just stuck my face in the snow. And I went home and the next day I was looking around the house. I was cleaning or whatever. We had a little one bedroom apartment and I look in our closet and I see this bag, kind of a bag. And I remembered, oh, that's her bag. And I hadn't seen it there before. And I pulled it out and there was a notepad in it. And I opened the notepad, and in the notepad were two handwritten letters. One was to me saying all this stuff about, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the second one was to this guy.

So she was caught. She was busted. And so I ended it, but I still was so in love with her, and we tried to work through it and just couldn't get there, and I was struggling. I was like, how do I get it going with someone I don't trust, right? Right. And so cut to now I'm working for the police.

I'm doing my route, and I'm still struggling with this thing. And every day I went back to the same place from police headquarters back to the same place. And so this day I'm really like going nuts, like, God, I need an answer. So for the first time since I'd worked there, I drove past my building. I drove north. Where you live. Well, no, where I work. Where you work. So I drove past work, and I just kept going right up the road. And as I was driving, I did it again.

I went, God, please give me the answer. Like, what am I supposed to do with this girl? There's all this stuff. And so I'm driving along and I go about like two miles north of work, which I never do. And I see this burger joint called the fire pit. I pull in and it's this sign and it's like flames coming up and it's called the fire pit. And I'd been there before. It's like delicious burgers, right? And so I go into the place and it's one of those places where you stand at the counter, like McDonald's, you look up at the menu and then you

order what you want and then you sit down. So I go in, I look around, there's no one there. This is like four o'clock in the afternoon. I'm supposed to finish work at five, right? So I go, I'm just going to get a burger. I'm going to sit down. And I just said this crazy prayer, give me an answer. And I order my burger. I get it. I sit down in a little booth, little bench on each side. I got my burger. And as I'm looking down, I'm starting to open it. I got my burger. And as I'm looking down, I'm starting to open it. All of a sudden, I feel someone slide in right across from me.

And before I tell you any more, I'm a horror movie freak. Like, I love horror movies. Like, you know, Freddy the 13th. Freddy the 13th. You sound like a real fan. Jeepers Cre creepers. Freddy the 13th. I don't know all these idiots. They wear goalie masks.

Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th. Yeah, all those guys. Halloween. Halloween, yeah. Michael Myers, that first Halloween is a fantastic one. Yeah, it's great. And I love getting scared, and I love the thrill of it. So not much fazes me. So I'm sitting down at the fire pit. I'm just about to unwrap my burger and I feel someone slide in right across from me, but there'd been no one in this place. It's not a big place.

And sitting directly across from me is a woman, probably about 45 years old. And she's got long hair, gray hair. Like it almost looked like. Like a lady outside today. Yeah. Just like, but this really weird gray and it looked like. Scraggly. Dead hair. Okay.

And then I looked right in her eyes, and her eyes were gray. I've never seen someone with gray eyes, like a gray sky during a stormy day. They were foggy and misty. And I'm telling you, Ryan, I was just sitting there normal. And I don't know if you've ever been scared. I'm scared right now. My fear, I could feel it go up like a thermometer just went. And in my head, I went, oh my God, this person is dead.

You really thought that right away. That's the only thing that went into my head. I went, and I just felt like terror. Like I looked at her hair, her skin, her eyes. I'd never seen, and she's just staring right at me. I go, this person is dead. Like dead face, not a smile smile not any expression nothing no it just felt like it was a living dead person and i go this person is dead and she opens her mouth and i'm not making it she goes i died nine months ago

no harley get the fuck dude! Dude, I still get goosebumps. My fear. You're telling me you sat down, unwrap a burger, and this lady slides in out of nowhere and looks at you, and the first thing she says is, I died nine months ago. I died nine months ago. She looked. I thought she was dead the minute I looked at her, and my thing went like this, and I was so scared. I couldn't.

I froze. I wanted to scream. I couldn't. I froze. I wanted to scream. I've never wanted to scream. I literally wanted to go like just scream and I couldn't. I was literally like just like staring at her and I couldn't. I froze. I was terrified, dude. And she goes, I'm a diabetic.

This was after about 30, 45 seconds of silence. No, that's how it started. It was that long before she said anything? Yeah, she just sat there. And I'm just like whole, like I couldn't even talk. I've never been like that. She goes, I'm a diabetic. I had whatever happens when you go into diabetic shock.

So she said, I was dead for eight or nine minutes and they brought me back no this is a zombie this so i'm just freaking terrified and i didn't know what to do i couldn't move i was just somehow locked into this person it's like i'm just fucking with you got my burger you know it's like i'm like sitting there at the fire pit and it's like i wanted to have a cheeseburger there's a dead lady yeah i wasn't looking to have brunch with beelzebub you know what i mean i want i want onion rings not uh lunch with satan thank you very much this is wild it was insane i was terrified i like, give me some curly fries there, Lucifer. You know, I was just like.

So I'm sitting there completely terrified. And she starts talking about her experience when she was on the other side. She goes, they brought me back with, I don't know if they give them some kind of shot or something like that. And she starts talking about, she goes, I met God. I met this man with a long flowing white beard, a long flowing robe. And you're just sitting there. You haven't said a word yet. I can't move.

I've never been like this in my life. I haven't said a word. And she just starts talking. And so I'm like terrified. And then she starts talking about this was god and i touched his face and i was there with him and now i start sort of going from terrified that the red zone goes down and she starts talking about the afterlife and all this and that and now i'm sort of going the other way where I'm starting to get elated. I'm like, oh my God.

Maybe she's about to tell you the answer to the prayer you've been asked. Yeah. It's God's messenger. I don't know what she is. I'm thinking, is this an angel? And I go from being completely terrified to completely enchanted by this person. And then the last thing she's, not the last, the second last thing she says to me, she goes, God told me that where we are on earth, this is

hell. And that kind of freaked me out a bit. She goes, but there's a better place. And I was kind of like, I said, well, why is she telling me all this? This't my prayer and then we go from from that moment she finally stops and now i'm elated i don't want her to stop talking i went from complete terror to keep talking it was just like i was like there was some kind of like beam between us and then she just abruptly stopped she stood up stood at the edge of the booth and just looked at me and goes find the right girl no is that real dude that's a hundred percent real find the right girl and i'm just sitting there like this she just walks away goes out the side exit and i'm like this isn't real that's an angel that's i don't know what that is and so I sat there for about probably 45 seconds and I go, I've got to go see if that's a real thing.

Because no one else seemed to notice. There was no one else in there. I ran to the side door. Never a physical touch or anything like that? Never touched. I ran. I looked out the side door and I did see her walking down the street. So I went, okay.

I almost thought I wouldn't, but that told me it was real. And that was it. That was it. It was, it was the strangest. That's scary. Scariest, weirdest experience. Yeah. And so there's so many things I want to ask you but this do you think like because she had been

dead for so long this is what her eyes look like now i couldn't understand it is that a lack of like i mean we are not doctors in any way here but is that a lack of oxygen like what the fuck i don't mind was she blind she wasn't blind i've never seen eyes that color in my life i've never seen them since i've never seen eyes that were so kind of dead when they when they stared but they were a smoky gray unlike i've ever seen ever and it just blew my mind when when i my first thought was this person is dead and then she goes i died nine months ago i just about you know dude how was the burger flame broiled let me tell you that much my man it was i don't even remember the goddamn burger when when i doing the when a demon sits

down or an angel she might have took it with her yeah i should have noticed the damn thing was gone the whole thing was a con job by satan to get my damn meat oh man you bury your face in snow in the middle of the night in a golf course and then you're driving and again and then you sit down and a fucking lady slides in the booth and has dead eyes and says i died nine months ago yeah they brought me back i met god i touched his beard and she gets up and says find the right girl that's the only thing she said and she just walked away. And I'm going, how? That is fucking insane. It's insane on two levels because people sometimes scoff at the power of prayer or they mock it or they don't believe it.

And you have every right to believe it or not believe it. That's fine. But I found it astounding that the night I asked for an answer to the cheating, The night I asked for an answer to the cheating, the next day, I found this notepad in a bag that had been sitting there for a whole year. I just happened to check it. And then months later, as I'm driving, I go to this location I never go to. Trying to figure out how am I going to make it work with this person? I know she cheated.

Can I do this? I'm conflicted, confused. I've got all these things going on inside me here. Give me a sign. And I asked. My prayer was, what do I do? What should I do? And then this person, this entity, and I've never experienced that. It just stands up.

And the only thing she says to me is, go find the right girl. Out of all the things she could have said. Yeah. So it was just wild. It was like a crazy, I went from completely horrified to completely enchanted to completely mystified. Okay, so now what happens? You go home and do you immediately split? And are you in better spirits about this breakup?

Like what happens? I'm both. And do you tell her? No, I never told her the story because it was – I don't think she would believe it. And I sort of just ended it after that because I was already conflicted because of the cheating. And then I thought like this was such a direct answer, and I just sort of severed the ties and we drifted apart. And then with a lot of relationships, time heals things. And to this day, we still talk.

We're still friends. But it never worked out that we became husband and wife or lifelong partners. But people go through rough stuff and breakups, but this was just a really weird way to get answers and insight. And I'm not pushing religion on anyone, but sometimes, you know, prayer is a very powerful force. It is. It also makes me wonder, and even if you don't believe in prayer, the power of thinking minus the religion or whatever behind it is still the same work you're doing, you know, still focusing on that thing and and envisioning it and um but also i wonder like if that lady doesn't slide in

that booth how much longer you do you stay with this woman or how much longer do you are you in turmoil about this you know and and also to a lot of our uh in our defense i think we do get signs that sometimes we don't see. Yeah. We miss whatever. And I wonder if you hadn't gotten any, and then they finally were like, just send that lady over there to fuck that. You know? Yeah.

If he don't get this. It was so extreme. Yeah. Send the fucking Medusa over there. So vlacky with Satan. I mean, it doesn't get any more direct, man. It's just like, you know, it's just brutal. That is wild.

And I don't really subscribe to the whole religious God prayer thing. I believe in a bigger entity, like a powerful force in the world that I conceive as God. And it's not that I disavow religion, but I don't follow it. I'm not immersed in organized religion, but I do believe in a higher God is what we all decide to perceive God as. And so it was really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had any other, I mean, that's extreme. Yeah. Have you ever had any other moments like that in your life where something's just sent your way?

Not to that – I mean, I don't know that anyone's going to have one like that. It was so specific. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing there, I feel like. Yeah, and to have one of them happen overnight and the other one happen within an hour, it was, yeah, I don't know that I've had any other experiences that were quite so abrupt and shocking and on the money, you know? Really crazy. on the money, you know, really crazy. If you've got family and friends coming for the holidays, then you're already anticipating that, oh my gosh, do I have enough food feeling?

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And sort of to segue on the back of that story, it's interesting because at that point in my life, I was breaking into comedy and the world was still sort of fresh and new to me. And the world's still sort of a rosy place when you're coming up in your mid-20s and you haven't had any real trauma in your life. I came up in a very normal, happy family. No divorce, no violence, no substance abuse. So life was pretty normal for a guy like me. And then here I am working for the police. And now I'm networking throughout all these departments of the police.

I'm networking throughout all these departments of the police, and here's Mr. Right Outta College, you know, Chuckles McGinty going into comedy. Yeah. And now I'm exposed to this stuff. Like, I have imagery in my head from working for the police where I realized quickly that, you know how there's this thing they call the dark web? Mm-hmm. How many people do you know thing they call the dark web? Mm-hmm.

How many people do you know have been on the dark web? I've never been on it. I have never been on it. Right? But you hear about it. I hear about it. And apparently you click and whatever, there's another internet where it's dark, where you can get drugs and sex and violence and who knows what's on there. You can get that on the regular internet.

Yeah. So imagine what the dark web's like right it that's the underbelly that's kind of where probably you know the demons live that's where this lady went back to the one that's well that's the thing i can't decide if she was a demon or an angel yeah you know because i don't get to decide what they look like it's all about their energy it was about the energy got to say that's an angel then. Yeah, the fact that it was so scary at first, but by the end, I didn't want her to leave. But also, if you really are alive and you were dead, you don't look that bad.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You look pretty good for coming back. And give me my goddamn burger back. Yeah. You don't need to eat. You're dead. Asshole.

Asshole angel. How's that need to eat. You're dead. Asshole. Asshole angel. How the hell would I die about that? God. By the way, do you still have diabetes? Yeah. Did that die with your whole body? I really want to know, actually. Do they have the needles up in heaven?

Yeah. But if you had diabetes and you died and you came back as diabetes gone, did you beat diabetes? I think you probably do. Like if you die, you kind of get cured. You should be able to come back and reset everything brand new. You're good. Go get a burger. Go tear that burger up.

Go have a cheeseburger. You're cleansed. Colon cancer? Nah. Go get a double cheeseburger. You've earned it, dead eyes. Go have a smoke, dead eyes.

Hold Greystoke. Oh, lordy. Oh, man. So, yeah, so here I am rolling around, working for the police going in there like just starting into the comedy world life's you know life's my oyster and now i'm like walking into the forensic lab you know the guys, the forensic guys are showing me, you know,

they're holding up skulls with circles in them. And I'm like, what, why is there a circle that big in that skull? And they go, this is where someone put a hammer through someone's head. I'm like, okay,

thanks for showing me that. This is just their day to day shit. This is stuff in their office. You're just bringing mail by. I'm just dropping by. And suddenly I get fucking Dr. Holyhead. Thanks a lot. Here's your envelope. Thanks for the midnight horror story.

And then I walk in there another day, and I walk in, and I go right into the lab where they do all the forensics, right? I'm in the morgue and on the floor, clothes, a shirt, socks, underpants, jeans, blood splattered on a bunch of the clothing. And on the table, on the autopsy table, a white sheet, and out from under the sheet, a rope with a split in it and blood on the rope. And I can see the shape of the body underneath. And I said to the forensic doctor, I said, what happened here? What happened here?

And he goes, this is a woman who was suicidal, jumped off a 35-story balcony at her apartment, tied the rope around her neck. When the rope went taut, it snapped, and she fell all the way down. No. And I'm just sitting here going, this is the human life here, and I'm looking at these clothes. It sounds stupid, but they're jeans just like I would wear. Yeah.

Or just a shirt you'd see on your sister. And just a little bit ago, that was a person. Yeah. And now they're a mound under a sheet. And then just this rope coming out from under the sheet and twirling on the floor. And I felt like I was in a stephen king novel you know you still like horror movies after all this shit i do but it it it it put a whole new spin on it you know because when you see this real stuff and then i remember going one day down to police

headquarters and toronto canada was kind of more of a happy, nonviolent type of place. We don't have guns. I mean, there's bad things that happen here and there and murders. But up until this point, we'd never really had like a child abduction murder kind of rape thing. I hate to even say those terms together. But during my time at the cops, this little girl was abducted from like a soccer tournament at a local arena. And she was abducted, raped, murdered. And here I am again, driving in down to police headquarters to drop off the mail. And this thing's been in the newspapers front page. It was kind of when Toronto in my mind and Canada kind of took that turn where

we're kind of this happy great place and then all of a sudden that horrible thing happened and nothing was ever going to be the same but here i'm driving and pulling up and there they are pulling the girl's body out of the back of the ambulance again with a tarp over it and i'm watching this little girl go by after reading about it all this time and then you know i'd get mail that would come through in the mail room and i would see stuff you know i'd have to open the mail and then distribute it and every now and then I'd get graphic police photographs from crime scenes. Oh my God, you're seeing this shit? I see this stuff. And I'm still young and impressionable. And there's a few images

that I'll never forget. There was an image of probably about a 10-year-old girl, a beautiful lake with a sandy beach, almost a sunset, and laying in the water in about probably, I don't know, a foot and a half of water rate where the water's coming up on the beach, a little girl, like doggy style, like laying down face forward or butt sticking in the air, her arms bound and a cinder block on her head. No. Yeah. Like just crazy shit.

And then I'll tell you one more example, but the reason I'm saying all this. And you see that mental image in your head? Well, let me put it this way. I've been all over the world. I've been to art galleries where I've seen the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Starry Night. And those I sort of remember, these images are crystal clear. These are crystal clear images. And it's stuff you don't get rid of. And the last image I'll never forget is it was a, you know, I'm opening the mail. I pull out photographs and it's a guy.

By the way, they should absolutely on the fucking interview give you a heads up. There might be some shit that you don't going to the morgue and seeing dead bodies or skulls with hammer holes in them and these graphic images or anything like that? Or is this a surprise to you? I sort of got the job on a fluke. I was hired to come in for a month to clean up in the warehouse. The government has so many documents. so they had a warehouse basement room, like documents to the roof of government form for this form for that form for this. And basically they needed someone to clean it up because it was a nightmare. So I went in for a, took me a month to stack and organize and throw all like it was, it was endless. And I did it. And in the time that I was doing it,

the guy who worked in the mail room had a heart attack and the guys were so no wonder right no wonder they said a heart attack but i think you got a hammer to the head yeah yeah there it is right there about to have one right here listen to this shit yeah damn And so they were so impressed with how I organized this chaotic mess. They couldn't believe I did it so well. They offered me the job in the mailroom and to be the driver to deliver the mail all around. So I had no real idea of what I was getting into. I said, yeah, it was great because I was doing comedy at night.

I was just getting into it. And here I had this secure government job with dental and medical, and I almost didn't leave it. They make it so cushy. And you're also not stuck in an office all day. You're out driving around the city. You have a route, things like that. It's half and half. Half the day's in the office doing the mail then the other half's driving around and delivering so one of the other images that i pulled out i'm sorry if this is too graphic this is what the show is man you have to live with it yeah it blows me away that i hear you starry night is like i remember that but this shit i remember vividly oh yeah i mean mona lisa and a kid with a brick on her head i mean mean, fuck that person. The police told me the father put it on her head.

What? The dad? Yeah, the dad. And you're just like, so now I'm exposed to all this stuff. And one of the last images I'll mention, it's pretty graphic, but it leads into a bigger kind of mentality that I have towards police, which I think a lot of people need to hear and don't hear about. But the last picture was of a guy, a white guy, just sitting in a chair on his couch, arms on the

chair, one of them on his lap, and jeans, shirt, head, face, mustache, and then mustache perfect, Head, face, mustache, and then mustache perfect, as perfect as mine and yours. And from the top of the mustache, gone. Gone. Just a clean, almost like a saw took it off. But the mustache, everything perfect. And on the wall behind, and between his legs, a shotgun. And I'm just like, holy – like the casualness of it.

The fact that it just looked like a guy sitting there, but then you realize from here up is just cleanly gone. Tomahawk, God. And I went, holy shit. I go, I'm a kid, and look at this stuff, and then I've carried it with me my whole life. And then I look at today and I'm not saying there aren't bad cops out there. I'm not, there's always great cops.

There's always cops that- There's good and bad everything. Right. But what people don't know is the cops live and function in that dark web that none of us, most of us have never seen. We watch TV shows. Oh, look at CSI, the murder. Dateline. It's all phony.

It's all entertainment, believe it or not. Can you believe that the majority of the top shows that we watch are about other human beings being murdered? What's that say about us? about other human beings being murdered. What's that say about us? But these police, when you get pulled over for a ticket, when you get stopped in the street, most of these cops are just trying to do their job. And what people don't realize is that police yesterday,

that policeman or policeman was scrubbing that head off that wall. Or dealing with a 10-year-old little girl with a cinder block on her head like yeah or picking up so many parents yeah you know and so it really gave me such an insight to what the police psychologically have to go for people in law enforcement they live and breathe in that dark world and for myself when i saw this stuff i had an epiphany where i went i didn't think human beings could do this stuff to each other i knew people thought and i knew that people you know disagree and there's murders and there but but when you see it raw and and you you see it in real life it's so powerful and it's so dark and it was one of the other driving forces for my comedy because i went you know it was interesting that it happened at that time when i was starting

because i went this is such a dark force this is such a dark force. This is such a dark, horrible area. And I'm pursuing a life where maybe I can put joy and light on top of it. And to me, I realized, wow, there's a balance here. But I don't know if I was meant to see that stuff to sort of help me or, but it, it really is powerful. How often do those images rotate through your head? It's not like I'm traumatized by them and I, I lay awake at night and think about, but they're always there. Like I'll never forget them. You can access them whenever you want.

Yeah. And, and they'll pop up. I mean, they can, as, as horrible as it sounds, sometimes if I see a picturesque lake or an ocean set with a beach, sometimes that'll pop into my head. And it doesn't, I've never let that darkness slow me down. If anything, I've used it as fuel to go, what can we do to creep light into the world? How do we break open the darkness and let light in and hopefully through comedy and laughter? And I always say laughter is joy. And so, but people, next time they're pulled over by the cops and they decide, hey, fuck you, pig, Next time they're pulled over by the cops and they decide, hey, fuck you, pig, and defund the police. People don't really know what these guys see every day and what they have to do and the guts they have to clean up and the babies they have to carry down the stairs that have been murdered.

And so it's pretty intense. Do you have any family in law enforcement? Well, believe it or not, my dad was a politician. So he was actually, just as fate would have it, I worked in the Solicitor General building in Toronto. And prior to that, my dad was the Solicitor General. What is a Solicitor General? That's the equivalent of the Attorney General in the States. So my dad was a pretty- Of Toronto? Yeah, he was of Ontario, of the province. So he was a minister, which is a pretty powerful spot. And of course, they didn't know

that about me when I went in there, the kid in the basement. So all these people are working for the ministry of the solicitor general, and they't know that currently in office while you're doing that no he had he was the he was uh probably there a year before me oh wow so fresh out right yeah so nobody knew that i was the you know i was the former um minister's kid because and i wasn't going to advertise and then one day my boss like calls me and he goes, was your father our former solicitor general? And I go, yeah. And he was just like, it was just, it's so weird. Yeah. It was so weird. Like they could, cause I had long hair down to here, you know, I was just supposed to work down in the warehouse, you know? So I was just kind of a,

I had long hair and I was like a young guy just out of college so it was pretty pretty weird the way that all came together man i am talking about that that gunshot i had a friend of mine when i first lived here this is in the 90s he uh his name is dave knight there's a great dude took me in when i first moved here laid on his couch for a while, but he was gun crazy. He had a couple of nine millimeters or whatever, but he was also the super of the building. And, you know, we had a gangbanger upstairs and he was from New York and he wasn't fucking around. And like he would come out in the middle of the night and he'd throw a fucking gun at me like, come on. I'm like, come on, shit. I'm sitting there.

I'm watching Saturday Night Live, dude. Yeah. I'll never forget. it was one night we heard this pop and it sounded like a gunshot out there and he came running out through a fucking nine i was like i'm watching saturday night live i remember the saturday night live it was it was martin lawrence the one where on the east coast he said some offensive shit about washing your ass and using a stick up or something and then they delayed it and after that it was always a tape delay on that for for a while it was yeah but um he would play russian roulette too he had a revolver and he would fucking put a put one in the chamber he'd spin and he'd look he'd clearly

look and then i i was like dude and it would freak me the fuck out. He would play Russian roulette in front of you? Yeah, he would just put it in, but he would spin it and clearly look and then click, and I'd be like, no, dude, no. Yeah. So I had gone home for the summer. I come back. This is 94. I'm going to college at Cal State Northridge, and I'm supposed to meet him for lunch. And he goes, hey, can we do it a little later?

I go, yeah, no problem. He's like, like one or two. I go, yeah. Please tell me you went to the fire pit. So I go to the fire pit for a charbroil burger. And this dead lady. So I wish it was as good as the ending of your story. So that day, you know, look, when weird shit happens, schedules, like you said, they get thrown off.

You drove north that time or whatever. It was something always different about the pattern breaks. I get there early. I knew we weren't having lunch anyway, but I get there early anyway, and I call anyway. Why? I knew we weren't having lunch anyway, but I get there early anyway, and I call. Anyway. Why? I knew he wasn't going to be ready.

And this voice answers, and I say, hey, is Dave there? He's like, no, he's not. Can I take a message? And I said, yeah, this is Ryan. I'm supposed to meet him for lunch. And he's like, well, I have to tell you that I'm the homicide detective and your friend is he's passed away. And I was like, and I knew I knew it was a gun right away. I knew something with the gun right away.

Whoa. So then it doesn't hit me like I'm like, what? And I go over anyway. And the gangbanger that we talked to all the time was up on his balcony. And again, I know he's not there. Yeah. And I said, hey, is Dave here? And he goes, no. And I could tell he's gone.

And when he said he's gone, I was like, this shit's real. So I go up. They won't let me in the apartment. And our friend tells me that he had two friends visiting from New York. So imagine having two people come to your home. They're hanging out. We're all buddies. We've known each other for years.

And he does the stupid Russian roulette thing. And he spins it and he looks and he misses it. And boom, he accidentally blows his brains out in front of his friends who are immediately traumatized. Oh, yeah. Another friend of his who I had talked to for a little while comes. And the other sad thing was Dave's mom and brother lived in the building. So now they're trying to keep them away from his place. And his friend Matt went in.

And I never thought about it. But like you said, like it was he told me teeth, hair, bones, flesh, like, oh, and he's scrubbing it off this wall that someone else is going to move into probably in a month and yeah that always fuck with me thinking about just that fucking he was just he was just fucking around what a dumb way to fuck around yeah like you know if you're fucking around and you know you're never gonna shoot yourself then what's the point of fucking around right and you know one day you're gonna get it wrong because that's the way odds work if you throw 10 pennies in the air it's rare you're gonna get 10 heads or 10 tails but every now and then if you do it enough you're gonna get all 10 yeah what a oh yeah that's brutal wow and then i think about that too i think about those yeah and i think about those cops too

like you say who are that was their afternoon is going and and at what point do you get so numb where you're like now we're just another guy shot himself another fucking dad murdered his kid another like yeah you're right about that. I think you get numb and a darkness creeps into you, and you sort of have to let it live there. But that's what I'm saying. When you encounter police and they don't want to give you a speeding ticket, but that's part of their job, or they don't necessarily want to hassle you or ask

you what you're doing there, but that's the job they've been assigned. And when you see people being belligerent and angry and rude and pushing back, again, if it's a bad cop, okay, but it seems more and more these days, people are just pushing back for the thrill of it to see if they can annoy the cop everyone's holding up their cell phones like it's captain america's shield hey what are you gonna you know what i mean like people walk up to a fucking grizzly bear in the woods hey good bear good bear like they actually say good bear stay there bear like they're calling it bear like it knows what it is and they think their fucking phone's gonna protect them and it's like man they don't know

right these like it also like it speaks english yeah there's bear in all kinds of languages every language has the word bear how do you know he doesn't speak german yeah and the bear you think the bear is going oh is that an iphone is that the new 14 oh my okay i'm not gonna maul you today but if you had an android i would have eaten you for lunch man that is so true but yeah so it's just it's like think about the journey of of the next law enforcement person you encounter. Think about where they were hours ago or yesterday or even a year ago. Or the call before this one. Right. And they're carrying the burden of the dark underbelly

of society for us. They have to deal with it. And even they go, you asked me if I was prepared, if they had set me up to know about any of this. The cops are. They are told what they're going to run into. And it's got to be traumatizing and horrible. and remember the journey of the law enforcement person that's, you know, would more than likely take a bullet for you if there was a shootout, you know?

Let's go back to your dad for a second here. That's a powerful position. What's it like growing up as a kid with your dad? What is it called again? The what general? Well, he was the solicitor general. He started off as a local politician, like an alderman, and then became an MPP, a member of provincial parliament, and then ended up in the top position of the attorney general.

For how long? Or the solicitor general, which is basically he oversees all of law enforcement for the province. So when you asked if my dad was in law enforcement, in essence he was the top dog for the time he was the minister. You ever talk to him about the craziest shit he's seen or dealt with? I never have, no. Because he's probably, I mean, think of the little microscope you got and what he's dealing with, with all of law enforcement. Yeah. It's interesting you asked me that question because I never even considered it till now. That's weird because I guess I don't really have that kind of open dialogue with my

dad like that, but- You never told him what you saw? No. None of this? No, no, no. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn't occur to me that, you know, my dad's probably seen way more than me. Fuck yeah. It's funny you just said that right now because it didn't really enter my mind. But it's probably because it's like, oh, it's your father. Your father, you know, they're grownups.

They're, you know. They're fine. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, think about that. Like, if you're talking about all cops live in that dark underbelly yeah think of what your dad lives yeah your dad lived in all of like just take swat alone that yeah fucking beat cops that the fucking murders the this the the missing kids the all that he's overseeing all of that well i don't know how immersed he got in daily, day-to-day crime cases.

My dad, at that level, oversees legislation and is working on actually passing and creating laws. So it's probably more at a legislative level that my dad functioned at that capacity. But he's coming up through the ranks all the way to that level though, right? Yeah. Well, in that situation, he was a member of parliament and was assigned this. So it's not, my dad did not rise up through law enforcement. But that being said, he had to have been privy and probably seen a lot of things that,

interestingly enough, I've never asked him about. I'm sure if I saw what I saw in a year, I mean, I saw a lot. Yeah, dude, and that's all in one year. Yeah. He probably saw a lot too. So, yeah, interesting. Maybe I'll ask him one day. Yeah, see what he says.

Do you ever miss, do you ever think if you didn't do comedy, do you think you'd still be doing that job or working somewhere in that field? You said you like they made it so cush for you, it was hard to leave, right? It was scary. There were moments where I was up on the 12th floor and I was still trying to figure out this girlfriend. And here I was just starting comedy, the most unpredictable career path you could ever imagine. And when I started comedy in the early 80s, it wasn't – comedy wasn't like – nowadays, every third person you meet is doing stand-up and there's 7 000 clubs across north america when i started there was one club in the whole country one comedy club and 12 headliners where this was in toronto what club it was called yuck yucks okay yeah yeah and i thought man if i could break into that if i could break into that and all of canada that was it really dude it was empty and

then i didn't even know about what was going on in the States because when you're up there back then, it was too hard to. So basically, I gave myself five years. I said, I'll try for five years. And if I don't get paid in five years, I'll get out. So here I am stepping into the most unpredictable, I'll get out. So here I am stepping into the most unpredictable,

unsecure career path you could ever want to take. The window was this big to get through. It's like a sperm, that one sperm getting to the egg. And so there were literally days where I'm standing on the 12th floor looking out the window down on the city and just going, I got health insurance. I got dental. I get a three weeks paid vacation. I make pretty good money for a guy working in a mail room. I don't have to think too much. I just deliver mail. I drive around. I get an automatic raise every year. I get a bump because that's the government way.

It's almost impossible to get fired. And I'm like, why don't I just marry this girl and just have this life? They make it so easy. And that's when my brain went, no, this is a trap. Like, of course they make it so easy. So easy to do what? Nothing? To deliver mail?

To drive back and forth every day and see the underbelly of the world? And in that moment, it wasn't even an epiphany. It was just like, no. It was just like, I went, should I? No, just immediately. And I said, I'll take the hard road. I'll take the risk. I don't know what's coming.

I might be homeless. I remember I used to, some days I would go downtown and sit with the homeless for half a day. Did you really? Yeah, I'd go, I'd find a homeless guy, I'd follow him into McDonald's, and I'd sit at the seat right beside him. Just, I wanted to, it sounds horrible, I wanted to smell it, I wanted to hear it, I wanted to see it because I thought. I'm laughing because I wonder if they go back to their circle telling them about the time the fucking blue-eyed guy

showed up and fucking sat next to him at the McDonald's. Yeah. It was weird. Get that job. Yeah, yeah. I explored it, man. But I was like, you know what? And you just would study?

Or would you offer money, talk to them? I would just sit with them. No, I would be in their presence to see what it felt like. I wanted to absorb the experience of being homeless, even though I wasn't. I thought, what's it like? What's it like to have no responsibility? What's it like to have no commitment to anybody or anything? I thought, is this the ultimate freedom in this world we live in with cities and towns and people? And I sort of already knew it

wasn't, but I wanted to see. And then when I got this job, I thought this is an easy road they've put in front of me, and I don't know what it was. It's probably the same thing that's in you. It's a bit of a warrior mentality. It's like I want to go to battle. For sure. I want to punch my way through the ranks. I want to, not in an egotistical way,

but I want to show my mettle. I want to show that I can climb this comedy mountain or go through it or go through let me over it i'll go through it yeah like i i want i want this battle i want to be slashing through the jungle all the way to the top of the mountain you know and and it was scary it was petrified i had security i could have had the girl of my dreams. And I just went, no, I got to take this challenge and go for it. Bro, you made the right call, Rocket Man. You made the right motherfucking call, Rocket Man. You know, there's days when you look back on your life and you go,

would life have been different if I just kind of settled in and had the wife and the kids and kind of did the regular thing? Or was this the right thing? I will never know the answer to that, but all I know is I wake up invigorated every day. And in closing, I'll say, I feel like I'll say I feel like I'm able to put light over the darkness that exists in the world by taking the path that I did and bring laughter and joy and put a crack in that darkness. Dude, you do. And you're great at it, brother. Thank you. You're great at it. Thank you.

Thank you. This has been an awesome fucking episode. I got chills. I got fucking worked up over here. I got emotional. it um thank you this has been an awesome fucking episode i got chills i got i know it still gives me emotional um will you please plug uh whatever you'd like again yeah so um check out my podcast it's not this deep and dark but that's why i like coming here because we get into some lasagna layers bro i like that we jump right in the fire pit here we work that priest grease yeah priest grease all over the place but my podcast is a lot sort of lighter and funnier and silly that that that light i was

telling you about and so check that out the harland highway it's on youtube it's uh launches every tuesday morning and then i also draw my own t-shirts. Yeah. And if you want a hand-drawn t-shirt of mine, go to harbling.com. Scapula guy is still there. Scapula guy and I think I'm coming up on 200 different designs. Damn, are you really? Yeah, I hand-draw them right on the shirt and then when the original sells,

we make prints and they're all available at harbling.com. Oh, so someone does get the original original out there? Someone gets the original. Those are expensive. They're like $200 because they're original pieces of art. But then from that, we sell the prints for like $18, $19, $25 or something. Great. Yeah, so Christmas is coming up.

Make great gifts. And, buddy, thanks for having me here. You got it, brother. Thank you for coming. As always, RyanSickler.com. Ryan Sickler on all your social media. Talk to you all next week. Thank you.