I briefly had an amateurish podcast a long time ago before they really took off. It was on a site called U-Stream or something and myself and my wonderful compadre Ol' Kurtis would phone up people that we knew. This is probably like 2008 or 2009 or something like that. It was fun. I liked it. Podcasts are pretty cool.
The genre has really gotten big. Some podcasts have almost like 10+ million listeners. I don't listen to the main big ones though. There's endless podcasts now and there's something for everyone out there and I've found my Somethings for Me out there in this vast wasteland we call the Internet.
Honestly, even though there's like 10 million podcasts going these days I only regularly listen to Three right now ... so it makes for a nice article template because I usually break loose into triple-truncated segmentation anyways in these essays.
So let me tell you the Three Podcasts that I listen to and then we will write about them... okay?
1. The Harland Highway with Harland Williams
2. Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast
3. The Purple Stuff Podcast
Those are the three I listen to. I like them. So let's write about them!
The Harland Highway
To listen: https://www.harlandwilliams.com/podcast
I've always been a big fan of Harland. As a Canadian we always kind of extra-dig our brethren/sistren because it makes us feel like we can make it too. I'd see like Harland or Norm MacDonald or the Kids in the Hall ... and as a teenager ... I'd always be like ... Wow, they're famous and they come from where I come from!I had a VHS tape of Harland Williams doing Stand Up and I used to try and emulate it. He would say whacky stuff like "Everybody sing to Billeeeeee!" and then do a bunch of crazy things on stage. He gets all weird and dark too. I'd go to high school the next day and act like him.
His podcast is a One-Man show, basically. It's him interviewing a cast of whacky characters, all of which are portrayed by him. Yes, he talks to himself.
There's a social taboo about talking to yourself, I've noticed, but I don't think it's all that important or needs to be heeded. All creative and imaginative people do that. They do. Do they, really? Yes, they really do talk to themselves. I do it in this blog pretty much all the time. Half of the content on this blog is just some bum talking to himself if you haven't noticed.
I threw out the taboo of talking to oneself early on in life, I didn't feel any need to heed that social construct. I first realized creative people do it with Beavis and Butthead. I remember as a kid when I first learned that both characters are voiced by the same person (Mike Judge) .. I recall thinking something along the lines of "Wow, when you look behind the curtain... Beavis and Butthead are just like this guy talking to himself in some booth!"
I talk to myself in this blog almost all the time. I'll ask a question out loud to lead off a paragraph and then think about it out loud (in writing) ... and then finally answer my own question. Another Talking-To-Yourself thing that I think influenced it too was Final Fantasy VII, in which the lead character will talk to himself in a bizarre way. Although the Japanese writers probably thought those scenes were highly intellectual stuff ... I saw those as more humorous than anything.
Hey, sometimes you just can't Stop Talkin' ... you know?
So, if talking to yourself is weird ... it surely 'aint gonna be me to cast the first stone on somebody because I talk to myself like a wild bat.
With Harland's cast of characters he invents to converse with when mixed with his comedic prowess ... there's some interesting exchanges that happen along the Highway. He has his foul mouthed Aunt Ruthy from Up State New York who calls in to tell her nephew what filthy situation his uncle has gotten himself into of late. He has hyper active youthful characters like Cinnamon Boy (a kid who really likes cinnamon), heavily drunken British pop stars, the over-zealous corporal major Tom Dowdy, the intellectually-refined yet morbid Dr. Ascot, his antagonizing boss who is convinced without a shadow-of-doubt that Harland frequents gay bars, all the way down to a poor soul just lookin' for a good ol' barbaque who calls strangers on the phone to ask if he can swing-on by to slap some ribs around.
I think these characters are highly entertaining and fun. There's a lot more too... that's just like half of them. There's almost One Thousand episodes of the Highway so there's been a lot of insane callers his producer Roger has let on the air waves over the years.
He says when he hits the good round number of 1,000 the show will end. I think it was an under-rated podcast. I mean compared to the millions of others ones out there, which let's call them what they are, they are cookie-cutter garble... I think this one really stood out. I think the format was interesting.
I can see that it's not for everyone this podcast... especially in a podcast world where the common-most gimmicks are Vocal Fry, Young People Talking about Young People Stuff, and Pseudo-Intellectual Clap-Trap ... I can understand that this podcast didn't soar to millions of listeners.
The Highway is right up my alley though. I can listen to a guy like Harland interview himself as a crazy person, get annoyed with said crazy person after they fly off the handle and say absurd filthy things, and then kick them out of the studio. It's something I can listen to multiple episodes in a row, even.
The vocal-fry, young people, pseudo-intellectual clap trap ones, on the other hand, I can't handle those. I've wrote before that I'm not on the Ira Glass bandwagon and never have been. Those "This American Lifes" and the thousands of podcast wannabe versions of it are difficult to sit through. I mean those clap-trap spewing vocal fryers don't even talk half the time ... they just breathe into the microphone like sweaty weirdoes.
You guys ever read that article in the Post that said Ira Glass lives in a bug-infested cesspool? I believe it. I really do. I can picture that guy doing his podcasts in a rat-ridden sheisshole. I can see it. I can picture it. Him breathing into the microphone, with his sweaty lips like one millimeter away from it, with no spit-guard, rats chewing on his wires, and bugs crawling all over him.
I'm just joking. I don't really think Ira does his podcast whilst covered in rats and bugs. I'm just joking. He's a good guy. I always just found that Post article to be funny. He seems like a nice guy who doesn't live in a rat-infested apartment. It's a good show.
There's hundreds of these now. Hundreds of the fry/young/pseudo-intelectual-clap-trap ones. They really think this is groundbreaking fresh stuff and that they are re-inventing the wheel with these. They say it all the time that they are re-inventing radio. How is breathing weird and saying "um" all the time re-inventing anything?
Do they think they are legendary broadcasters or something? Sorry Fryers but there's no Howard Sterns in your bunch ... there's no Jean Shepherds in your pool ... maybe there's a coupla Cousin Brucies and maybe a Barry Farber or two at best.
Some of the big mainstream podcasts have a couple million listeners and think they are the biggest thing in radio history. Howard Stern hit 20 million at his peak! Twenty million! Yeah he was on legitimate radio, not in the podcast category I guess ... but even in podcasts (i.e. loose-knit amateur broadcasting) ... a few million isn't even that many listeners.
You know who was the biggest podcaster of all time? The biggest amateur broadcaster? You'll never guess. You'll never guess who had the most listeners for an amateur radio broadcast. It was way back in the 1930s. Yes, it was. Back in the 1930s, (this is a wildy off topic story comin up here...), in some small town in the deep US south, the town opened a big shopping-mall or grocery chain, and this one guy in that town was so mad about this grocery chain opening down there .... that he pooled up all his money and bought radio equipment to broadcast to the town to let 'em all know that he HATED this grocery store chain and didn't want them in the town! He didn't know anything about radio and rented a little shack, and bought all the equipment some guy at a radio store told him he needed .... and he bought things that he really didn't need ... really didn't need, this guy ... this guy had a signal so large it not only covered that little town he wanted to broadcast to but the entire continental United States of America received it loud and clear! Now, wait, that's not why he was the most listened to amateur of all time ... the reason was moreso that his way of expressing his hatred for this grocery store chain involved endless obscenities! ENDLESS OBSCENITIES! He didn't know you couldn't do that, he didn't even know anyone outside the small town could even hear the broadcast. Every radio in the United States when this guy would come on would tune in to listen to him endlessly swear in a southern accent about some dopey grocery store...
...and that my friends is STILL the most listened to podcast of all time.
Wow, we're getting way off track here in this section..... am I ramblin'? Sorry. This wasn't supposed to be about the mainstream podcasts of the age.
Anyways though, man, I'll take a funny dude talking to himself any day of the week over the mainstream podcasts is what I'm trying to say. If given the choice between the cookie-cutter mainstream ones or to take a ride with Big-H down the Harland Highway ... I'll always go with the Highway....
Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast
To Listen: https://www.gilbertpodcast.com/
This is the greatest podcast, it is very funny and it is educational. The famous types who have been on this podcast are numerous and Colossally Amazing. I find it to be a wealth of information about the past in regards to the entertainment world. I've probably heard 95% of the interviews over the last few years and they just passed 250 episodes so that's quite a lot of history there. This show is Talmudic is what it is. It's a Talmud of datum in regards to entertainment history.I love this show, it's the best. I actually think I learn stuff when I listen to this show. It's got it all! I laugh, I cry, I learn, it's a buffet of all kinds of things is what it is! I feel like I am at a buffet when I listen to this show! With the laughing! Oh and the crying! Oh and with the learning! It has everything you want in a show! What even else can you ask for!? You can't ask for anything else ... what more could you want? It has it all! What with the history? What with the laughing? What with the crying? It's all there. It's all there. You want impressions? You want dueling impressions? You want singing? Oh with the singing! All the time singing! Singing! Singing! Singing! Always with the singing! You want the singing!? You want all the singing!? Well, you got it! YOU GOT IT!!!! It's great. It really is.
I was saying above in the previous section that young people really think they invented everything and they are groundbreaking this and groundbreaking that. I don't know though, the old generation had a lot of talented people and just because this current generation doesn't know they exist doesn't mean they can pretend that they didn't. This show has people who were famous in the 40's on it, even. They had Orson Bean on this show! What more could you ask for? You can't ask for anything more, you really can't. You can't. I think young people should listen to this show ... I think it is good to remember old entertainers and their contributions.
This show has had every actor almost from the 1968 Batman on it ... and Gilbert told all of them his beautiful and touching Cesar Romero anecdote. The story is so sweet and wonderful ... hearing the Batman cast individually fondly remember their sweet friend, Latin Lover Cesar Romero, is deeply moving. I was moved each time.
Another fun reoccurring anecdote is the Joe E. Ross anecdote which is always a guest pleaser. It is another deeply, powerfully, moving, and sentimental anecdote.
This is a podcast's podcast. It truly is.
The Purple Stuff Podcast
To Listen: https://purplestuff.podbean.com/
This show is for a niche market, but, I'm really in that niche. If you were born between the following years: (1978 to 1988) then this show is for you. It is a Secret Clubhouse for eighties kids. It's these two guys from New Jersey who talk about stuff eighties kids used to faint over. It's nostalgia city! I used to not really get nostalgia so much until I saw how powerful nostalgia aimed at my specific demographic hit me. It hit me hard!
I used to watch those shows, nostalgia shows, like Antiques Roadshow or Canadian Antiques Roadshow and not get it because those objects were not nostolgic to me. Like, some guy would bring in some rock from the War From 1812 or some fork from the Civil War Armory Barracks ... and I wouldn't get it because I don't have any mental connections to gimmicks, chachkies, or macguffins from the 1800s.
They have shows like American Pickers or Canadian Garbage Hunters on TV too, where these hobos or what-have-you will search for "antiques" from like the 60s ... and that's when I realized ... as the chachkies started to hit closer to home ... closer to my wheel house ... that nostalgia can hit home big time. I just need a Antiques Road Show or a Canadian Garbage Chasers show that is aimed at chachkies and culture from the 80s! AND PURPLE STUFF IS THAT SHOW!
Everything they talk about on this show brings back a FLOOD of brain voodoo in my brain. Like, they could be talking about some commercial that aired back in 1992 and I will remember what I was eating, what my mom was wearing, and what we were doing at school the next day just from THINKING about this silly commercial or whatever it is. That's nostalgia, dude. It's a gateway into the past for your brain. It is great.
The reason I know about this podcast which is more obscure than the Gilbert and Harland ones above, is that I used to read one of these guys websites back in the Olden Days Internet. In the old internet times, many many years ago, back when the internet was a really goofy place, way before anyone did their taxes on the internet, there was a site called X Entertainment and it was great. Back before Youtube existed (where you can see anything from any time) ... this was the only place you could read articles about the 1989 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then look at really choppy VHS-transferred clips of the cool parts. This site was really good. Not just the grainy clips but the writing was good.
There was an article on that site about how he wanted to find Hi-C Ecto Cooler that had been out of circulation for many years... and it was such a great article. If you can take a topic like Hi-C Ecto Cooler and turn it into a edge-of-your-seat thrill ride ... you know you're a good writer.
I remember when they made the Ghostbuster Reboot in 2016 that on Twitter "Hi-C Ecto Cooler" was trending for a few days ... and I remember the first thing that came to my head was ... "Finally, that guy from X Entertainment is gonna find his Ecto Cooler ... Thank Goodness!" ... and I googled to see if that site still existed and found that it was now called Dinosaur Dracula and that he had a podcast.
I hear Hollywood is making another Ghostbusters Reboot (again) ... they are trying to re-find that 80s magic again. Ghostbusters is Ghostbusters ... okay? It exists and always will (as will Ghostbusters II) ... but you can't re-create 80s magic. Believe me, I'm a eighties kid, and I am telling you the Magic is in a Magical place that you can no longer re-create. The 1980s was a differenter and more magicaler time that will always be with us but can never truly be 100% re-enacted. That, in essence, is the magic of 80s Magic!
If I was the studios, what I would do, instead of trying to recreate the unrecreatable magic of Ghostbusters ... is to make a movie about how the Search for 80s Nostalgia is a wonderful and bittersweet journey in its own right. Instead of making a New Ghostbusters II ... I'd make a movie called "Searching for Ecto Cooler."
It would be a film based off of Dinosaur Dracula's honorable life-long search for Ecto Cooler ... and it would not be played goofy ... it would be done 100% seriously with someone like Sean Penn playing the role of the Man in Search of Ecto Cooler. A very Human Comedy about the bittersweet emotions related to nostalgia. THAT'S how you re-capture 80s Magic ... you make a movie about trying to re-capture 80s Magic ... not by rebooting classics and hoping they come out 1/3 as good as the original.
If done correctly I think Searching For Ecto Cooler could win an Oscar. I do.
Conclusion
Let's give out an Award now. Just for fun. What's a good broadcast-related award? An effigagy? An effigy? A F-Emmy? No.
I know, let's give a Brass Figlagee (with bronze oak-leaf cluster (or palm)) to one of these three worthy broadcasts.
All three are deserving of the Figlageeeeee, geeeee whiz n' willackers, this is a hard one.
Let's give it to Harland Williams ... 1,000 shows is a lot of shows ... and if 1,000 is going to be his final show ... after 10 years of taking us down the Harland Highway ... then he deserves it.
So congratulations to Harland Williams on 10+ years of broadcasting podcasts and let us adorn him with this figurative Brass Figlagee!
If you listen to any of these shows from reading this, you can support them all in some manner, they all have premium content versions of the show. I think they are all great shows and you should listen to them!
(Edit: I don't think "Vocal Fry" is the right term I was going for. I think the broader term of "NPR Voice" is more applicable to what I was refering to. )
