by Adam Carolla
LAZY FLIP-CAP GUY At some point a few years ago, somebody invented the ketchup bottle with the flip cap so you could avoid the ketchup going skunky when one of your coworkers was too lazy to twist the metal cap back on the Heinz. But the lazy flip-cap guy’s lethargy has overcome this new technology. Every job I’ve ever had with a communal kitchen has had a ketchup, and now a mayo squeeze bottle, where the cap was left open at a 90-degree angle. I find it satisfying to hear the snap of that plastic cap after I’ve doused my fries in ketchup. But this guy is so lazy or passive-aggressive that he refuses to complete the simplest task on the planet. What’s this asshole’s strategy? Obviously he’s using the ketchup—why does he want it to get all dry and crusty at the top? Is he high? Or is it a fuck-you to everyone he works with? Imagine how devastated the inventor of the flip cap would be if he could travel through America’s kitchens and see the millions of unsnapped caps. I’m sure when he invented this thing, he thought, “Eureka! That’s it, there’ll never be another open, crusty ketchup bottle. I’ve created a utopia for generations to come!” But there’s one thing he didn’t count on … just how lazy, self-absorbed, and narcissistic we actually are.
WE’VE BUILT A
MINIMUM-WAGE
GILDED CAGE
We made a mistake in this country that will rank right up there with slavery and Japanese internment camps. We deputized a bunch of minimum wagers and placed them in every guard shack, behind every counter, at every gate, and gave them carte blanche to fuck with us. We’re essentially prisoners in a penitentiary that we paid for.
Let me give you two quick stories that would have never happened in this country fifty years ago. Last year I went to the X Games to watch a friend race in the rally competition. The race was gonna begin momentarily, and I was running late. I was met in the parking lot by a guy who had my credentials, and we started jogging toward the entrance. When we got to the entrance, there was an eight-dollar-an-hour guy in a yellow windbreaker standing between a two-foot gap in the barriers. We showed him our credentials and he said, “You can’t get in this way.” At first we were confused. These were all-access laminates. He said we had the right laminates, but that we had to enter at the end of the barriers on the other side of the parking lot. I looked to the right and saw that if we did that, it would lead us right back to the same spot just on the other side of the two-foot barrier he was standing in front of. There were no metal detectors to pass through and no paperwork to sign. He simply wanted us to go a hundred yards to the right and then back to end up in the same exact place we were already. Keep in mind, all he needed to do was move a half step to the left and we could have passed straight into the venue. And there was no line, so we weren’t cutting in front of anyone. He just wanted to watch us dance. There’s no way our grandfathers would have put up with guys making ten cents an hour fucking with them. They would have pulled a derringer from their boot and shot them in the face. And there wouldn’t have been a court in the land that would have convicted them.
The second incident happened over the holidays at Disneyland’s California Adventure. (Quick note if anyone who’s in charge of the music selection is reading. The weird Muzak version of “California Girls” is fine, but perhaps you should think about pulling the Mamas and the Papas’ classic “California Dreaming” from the set. I was eating a frozen banana with my daughter on my lap thinking, I wonder if Papa John Phillips was fucking his daughter when he wrote this song?) Anyway, back to the minimum wager who’d waged war on our happiness. We had been waiting in line to ride some zip-line device with a tire on the end of it for about twenty minutes. My son had pussed out early on, and now it was just me and my daughter. When it was her turn, the diesel dyke in the khaki slacks and matching ranger hat said, “She has to be at least forty-two inches tall to go on the ride.”
Another quick sidebar: That fucking arm that measures kids’ heights should be at the back of the goddamn line so you don’t have to wait half an hour to find out you’re not Splash Mountain material. You probably know where this one is heading.
So Rosie O’Donnell’s husky doppelgänger says, “Step under Jiminy Cricket’s arm.” I knew this was merely a formality, since we’d just got off another ride and Natalia made the forty-two inches with plenty to spare. This time, however, the minimum-wage maximum bitch said she wasn’t tall enough. I got down on one knee to get a better look, and I’m telling you a Pop-Tart dipped in Astroglide would not have made it between the top of my daughter’s head and the bottom of Jiminy’s arm. Her fucking hair was touching the arm. I said, “She’s tall enough.” The diesel dyke just said, “Next.” I said, “Wait a minute. We’ve been waiting all this time and you’re just gonna kick us out?” She said, “She doesn’t meet the height requirement.” I said, “By three thirty-seconds of an inch. And if she knew how to stand up straight, her scalp would be bleeding.” It was at this point that Ranger C-Word dug in. What the fuck has our society come to when people armed with only a windbreaker and a name tag can fuck so royally with the people who pay their salaries? And what is that instinct to dig in over nothing? She’s taking a moral stand against my daughter enjoying her afternoon?
Lawyers, unions, and wrongful-termination lawsuits have created our own little slice of Russia right here in the U.S.A. We’ve made it almost impossible to fire people and have thus enabled all the angry, frustrated douchebags whose names you never remember at the high school reunion to fuck with our pursuit of happiness.
When Jimmy was doing Win Ben Stein’s Money, I would go by the lot to visit him and it was always the same routine: He would leave my name at the guard shack at the entrance. The following is an exchange I’ve had 350 times with every guard on every lot in this town. “Hi, I’m here to see Jimmy Kimmel.” “Who’s he?” “He’s on Win Ben Stein’s Money.” “What’s your name?” “Adam Carolla.” “Let me check the list … you’re not on the list.” I don’t know what the fantasy is at this point—that I’ll just go up in a cloud of smoke, or that I’ll admit that this was all part of some horribly conceived ruse and apologize. Or shall I just throw the car in reverse and drive back up the hill to my home? But it seems to be the expectation. I tell him to check the list again. He then asks what my name is a second time. At a certain point when he realizes I’m not going anywhere, he asks one more time, “Who are you here to see?” and then picks up a phone and says, “Yeah, I have … [points index finger at me].” I shout my name for the third time. He repeats a facsimile of what I shouted at him into the phone, and then begrudgingly opens the gate with a look that says, “You may have won this round, Mr. Capolla, but don’t worry, Alan—I’ll be back.”
Here’s what I would like to scream at all the people who put themselves into the gatekeeper position. First, remove that plate of shit someone put under your nose and act like you fucking want to be there. Second, I’m not asking for entry into your fourteen-year-old’s vagina, I’m trying to drive onto a motherfucking lot. Third, it’s not your goddamn lot. Your job is not to stop all people from getting onto the lot, it’s to prevent certain people from getting onto the lot. Points four through twenty-seven: Drop your motherfucking attitude. Just because you control a white piece of one-by-six from a telephone booth with a wall-mount air conditioner doesn’t make you General fucking MacArthur.
This country is being overrun by these assholes, and no one wants to say anything because they’re getting minimum wage to park our BMWs. I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my embarrassed wife: When I dig into these ass-wipes with their GEDs dipped in attitude, I’m doing them a goddamn favor. Somebody needs to settle their shitty hash, because they’re not going anywhere with the attitude they currently possess. Obviously, it has not served them well. Here’s some advice for you people: Shake yourself like an Etch A Sketch and start over. You’ve already spent your thirties in a terrarium holding a clipboard with a pencil tied to it and sucking up carbon monoxide. Would you like to be buried in it?
Here’s another parking
-lot-related anecdote. The reason I’m telling this story is to hopefully inspire you and to kill pages. I was going to an event in Hollywood at the Palace Theater. As I was pulling into the lot adjacent to the theater, the guy with the flag yelled, “Twenty dollars.” Not “How are you? That will be twenty dollars.” Just “Twenty dollars.” I said, “I’m sitting on my wallet, let me park in the spot that’s ten feet ahead of me. I’ll get out of the car and give you the twenty dollars.” He said, “You give me the twenty dollars now.” Keep in mind, I was wearing a suit, sitting on the tail of the jacket, and at the time I was driving a 350Z, which means my ass was lower than my feet. I said to the guy one more time, “Just let me park the car and I’ll give you the twenty when I climb out.” What did he think my plan was? To jump out of the car, laugh like Ray Liotta, and yell, “Sucker! I’m running to Mexico. Good luck selling that thirty-five-thousand-dollar car.” He said, “No. I need the twenty now.” And I said, “Screw it, I’m going across the street.” I threw the car into reverse to pull out and park at the competitor’s lot, so he said, “Fine, park the car, then give me the twenty.” And then I did what I’m asking all of you to do and what makes me a hero. I said, “Fuck you,” and I pulled out and totaled a van filled with retarded kids. No, I just went across the street and parked. I never thought I’d be cast in the role of Asshole Robin Hood. I always assumed I’d be trying to stick it to the Man. But as it turns out, the problem is not so much with the Man but with the men he’s giving eight dollars an hour to.
The minimum wagers who were put on this planet to ruin your short stay on the same planet come in many different shapes and sizes. Usually they have penises, and huge guts that hang over the top of their penises to protect them from the rain. But once in a rare while they come in the form of a young petite female, and this next story is just such a case.
I had a hankering for Middle Eastern food, so I headed for the city of Van Nuys to a restaurant I frequent called Zankou Chicken. Middle Eastern food sounds horrible on paper and looks horrible on a paper plate but tastes delicious. And once you’ve decided you’re in the mood for it, Italian, Chinese, or burgers just won’t do. So I sped toward Van Nuys with visions of shawarma dancing in my head, jumped out of my car, ran into Zankou, and proceeded to order what I always get, the fifty-fifty shawarma plate—half chicken, half beef. For those of you who’ve never heard of shawarma, let me A) explain to you what it is and B) thank you for being heroes in the fight against terrorism. Shawarma is slices of beef or chicken piled high on a vertical spit that rotates in front of a red-hot three-sided space heater. An electric knife is used to carve off morsels that usually end up in the provided pita and eventually in your belly. In the case of Zankou, their shawarma station had the two spits side-by-side just inches apart. It’s important to note that the price for the shawarma plate, be it chicken or beef, was the same—$7.99. And with that in mind I happily ordered my fifty-fifty shawarma plate.
The seventeen-year-old Armenian she-dwarf who weighed all of ninety-eight pounds, and if you subtracted the eyeliner would have been well into the low seventies, said, “We don’t do half and half, it’s either all chicken or all beef.” I said, “I know for a fact you do the fifty-fifty shawarma plate, because that’s what I order every time I come here and I’ve been here at least ten times.” The curt cunt just repeated what she said the first time. I said, “I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m asking for. Not more meat, just the same amount but with chicken and beef. If they’re both the same price, instead of two swipes with the electric knife on either the beef or the chicken, just give one on the beef and one on the chicken.” She then uttered the phrase that’s the battle call of all shitty businesses: “Everyone asks for that.” God fucking forbid you give the public what they want. As a matter of fact, we could avoid this whole mess if you just boarded up the doors and got on the roof with a hunting rifle like a Korean liquor-store owner during a black riot. Or you could just give everyone what they’re asking for since it doesn’t cost you an extra goddamn penny.
She explained that she could get into trouble. I said, “Go get your manager, we need to talk about shawarma and your attitude.” She said, “He’s not here.” I asked, “Then how is he gonna know you gave me the fifty-fifty shawarma plate?” But Tammy-Faye Baklava wouldn’t budge. At this point a lesser man would have ordered the falafel plate, but this American said “Let’s roll” to the Zankou in East Hollywood. She just grunted and gave me the see-you-in-hell look. I left with the satisfaction of knowing that in a few short years her Armenian husband would be beating the holy shit out of her. And that’s not a slight against Armenian men; if she married Carl Sagan he’d be beating the fuck out of this bitch on a nightly basis.
I hopped into my Honda and set sail for the Zankou Chicken on Hollywood and Normandy, which is nowhere near the Zankou on Sepulveda and Burbank in Van Nuys, where I was. A scant fifty minutes later, and now starving, I walked into the Hollywood Zankou Chicken, said to a guy who looked like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “Give me a fifty-fifty shawarma plate,” and without any hesitation he said, “Would you like a drink with that?” My first impulse was to drive back to Van Nuys to settle that bitch’s hummus. But by that time my blood sugar and resolve were both dropping quickly. So I settled in for one of the most, and simultaneously least, satisfying lunches of my life.
I’ll leave you with another tale of a minimum wager attempting to ruin my life, but this one has a storybook ending. I was at a billiards hall drinking beer and shooting pool on a Friday night after a Man Show taping. It was a Man Show tradition. After every tape night we would go to a big pool hall and drink pitchers of beer until the PAs got drunk enough to tell you what they really thought of you. I was in the middle of a conversation with a PA about how Jimmy was the funny one when somebody ran up the stairs and yelled, “They’re towing your car.”
I, along with a couple of people, ran down the stairs and across the street to find my car hooked up to a tow truck that was ready to drive away. I’ll bore you with a few quick details because they’re important to the telling of the story. One, the car was a brand-new silver BMW M3, and two, the tow truck was one of those modern-style ones that had the two prongs that slid under your back tires and lifted the rear end of the car off the ground.
I ran up to the gentleman and said, “This is my car, how can we take care of this?” And he said, “You can follow me to the impound lot.” I said, “How about we just take care of this right now? I’ll pay you and we can both go our separate ways.” He said, “That’s not going to work,” and began to drive away. I jumped into my car and mashed my foot on the brake pedal as hard as I could. He dragged me for a couple of feet, then jumped out of the tow truck and yelled, “What are you doing?” I said, “You’re not towing the car. Let’s just take care of this now.” He said, “I have to tow the car. If I don’t come back to the impound lot with a car, my boss will ask questions.” I said, “Do you ever go out on a call and by the time you show up, the car is gone?” He said it happens all the time. I said, “Let’s just make this one of those times.” He said no and headed for the cab of his truck. I then headed for the driver’s seat of my car and we began round two of Dancing with the Tards.
We both jumped out of our vehicles, got into it again, and at a certain point I said, “Why are you being such an asshole?” This could have been settled easily and nobly the way our forefathers would have done it—with a trip to the ATM. But no, this dick was going to make me follow him to downtown L.A. at one A.M. and fill out a bunch of paperwork.
All of a sudden I heard a voice yell, “Pull your tie-down off.” It was the voice of one of our directors, Tom. (Tom wasn’t exactly what you would call straitlaced. He once, in the middle of the AIDS hysteria of the late eighties, dressed as a junkie hobo and went into a crowded New York subway car and shot fake blood from a prosthetic penis at a horrified crowd of commuters.) I looked over and saw that Tom had taken the nylon lashings off the passenger-side rear
wheel. I, without hesitation, pulled the lashings off the driver’s side, and then Tom screamed, “Go!” Keep in mind the rear wheels of the car were at the height of a kitchen countertop. Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was fear of being squirted by a fake penis, but I jumped into the car again.
The car didn’t budge. The problem was it’s rear-wheel drive, and the tires were on a rack that prevented them from rolling forward. Tom was now slapping the hood yelling, “Go!” This time I threw some revs on the engine and dropped the clutch. The car lurched forward and landed on the ground with a thud, hitting something on the way down. I didn’t have time to get out and assess the damage, I just hauled ass into the night, and so did Tom. I went home, poured myself a glass of wine, and did what I always do, waited for federal marshals to show up at the house.
The following morning I went down to the garage fearing the worst, and to my shock and delight the only thing wrong with the M3 was the spare-tire well in the trunk got converted from an innie to an outie. I pulled out the spare tire, climbed into the trunk, and jumped up and down on the sheet metal until it went back to its original form.
There are probably more than one of you at this point who feel sorry for the tow-truck driver. To you I say Suck it; this dick brought it on himself. This would have never happened in the past or today in New Jersey. We could have settled this with a couple of twenties and a handshake. But in the immortal words of John Rambo, “They drew first blood, not me.” Tow-truck drivers are the worst people on the planet, second only to meter maids. The lion’s share of the work these guys do consists of going on moneymaking sweeps with local cops and hanging out in flooded intersections to charge people fifty bucks to tow their stalled Hondas out of the drink. And the impound yards they work for are a bunch of extortionists. I got a motorcycle towed at eleven thirty on a Thursday night and went to pick it up at seven Friday morning and they charged me for two days’ storage. Feeling sorry for these assholes is like feeling sorry for Uday and Qusay Hussein. Fuck those guys. And besides, isn’t it nice to hear a story where the rich white guy wins for a change?