by Adam Carolla
Either way, you watch an episode of Far Out Space Nuts and tell me if the label “legend” applies.
SITCOMS
Let it be noted that when the history books are written and future generations want to know why we’re still doing shitty live-audience four-camera sitcoms in 2011, they can blame Two and a Half Men. The genre was almost dead. I was like Jamie Lee Curtis in the first Halloween, catching my breath on the sofa and thinking, Thank Christ this horrifying ordeal is over. And then from behind the couch popped up Sheen, Cryer, and that kid with the thyroid condition and set the movement back ten years.
I did a sitcom pilot for CBS. It was run by five women who were sort of like friends of your mom when you were in high school. A little bit scary, not particularly funny, and you weren’t exactly sure what they did for a living. But you figured you ought to be nice or you would get in trouble. Indulge me on a quick sexist rant for one minute.
Most of the comedy executives that I’ve dealt with at the network level have been women. Close your eyes and tell me, how many really funny women have you come across in your life? Thank you. I fantasized I’d be talking comedy with a bunch of fat Jews named Murray who knew exactly what I was talking about. The reality is you get your choice between postmenopausal women, gays, and Harvard grads. The network landscape is littered with people who have never made another human being laugh, not counting the time they tried to throw a softball. But don’t worry, they’re experts. Like an expert on great white sharks who’s never left Wichita. I don’t know why it’s an accepted fact in this town that you can be an expert on funny without having a funny bone in your body—and I’m including their funny bones, which I’ll downgrade to mildly amusing bones—but somehow they all get away with it. And if you knew how much money these guys/gals/gays made, you’d never stop vomiting.
CAR COMMERCIALS
I love cars. I hate car commercials. So why would a guy who loves cars hate slow-motion beauty shots of cars cruising down winding roads? Because of the disclaimer: “Closed course, professional driver. Do not attempt.” Do the goddamn lawyers have to get involved with every fucking aspect of our society? They used to just be on the commercials where the guy pulled an e-brake and slid into a parking space in front of a busy café. Now the disclaimer is in every shot of any car driving. I’ve seen them on minivan commercials where the van was going fifty-five in a straight line on an empty highway to Vegas. Hey assholes, if I’m not allowed to attempt to drive the vehicle in a straight line on an empty highway, what the fuck am I buying it for? There was a Subaru commercial a few years ago that showed their competitors’ cars driving around on the front wheels with the rear ones six feet off the ground, illustrating they are front-wheel drive versus Subaru’s all-wheel drive. And then came the disclaimer: “Do not attempt.” How the fuck could you attempt to drive a car with the rear wheels eight feet off the ground? It’s sad that we’ve regressed as a society to the point where we have to put warning labels on shit that’s physically impossible.
HERPES MEDICATION
You always know it’s a herpes commercial when the chick is kickboxing, mountain biking, or riding a horse on a beach. I wish I could get genital herpes just so I can start living. Whenever I see a herpes commercial I always think, Poor actress. People in snuff films are making fun of you. But then I realize the worst gig in TV is not the chick playing the herpes queen, it’s the stooge boyfriend who has to stand next to her and look understanding while she’s talking about not letting breakouts control her life. If you do the math, it’s fairly clear she didn’t get the herpes from this guy—her last beau gave her the big H during one of their very frequent pound sessions. And after her first outbreak, he probably moved on to some European lingerie model who was clean as a whistle. Now this sap is left behind to pick up the pieces and use a condom for the rest of his natural life. I wonder how the audition process goes. Here, put on this flannel shirt and try not to look too judgmental. Just a thought: You know how Native Americans get pissy when Mexicans play Indians in movies? I wonder if people with herpes get angry when nonherpes actresses depict them. If I was in charge, I would only hire actresses with herpes. And the good news is there’s no shortage of them.
DUMB GUYS IN COMMERCIALS
Look, let’s face it, guys are smarter than women. Ladies, please de-bunch your panties and open your ears. Men build all the bridges, all the dams, go to the moon, et cetera. It’s a fact. I don’t want to argue about it. If you don’t believe me, go down to the patent office, where, by the way, Einstein and his penis used to work, and see all the great innovations women didn’t come up with. But commercials depict men as simpleminded buffoons. The wife’s out of town and Dad’s left alone to prepare breakfast for the twins. Smash cut to the guy dumping the waffle batter into the toaster. Or how about the famous Carl’s Jr. campaign about how guys would starve without them, featuring a dunce in his mid-thirties attempting to make guacamole by putting a whole avocado in a blender? (You ladies are lucky I’m too lazy to look up what percentage of Michelin-rated chefs are men.) Or the same guy wants to lounge on the sofa all day watching arena football, but his lady convinces him to go with her to Home Depot to remodel the basement. We would complain about this unfair depiction, but we are too busy running Home Depot and the plant that makes the television the guy on the couch in the commercial is watching. And building, designing, and operating the camera and satellites that make it possible for you to see the commercial that makes us look like retarded chimpanzees.
Speaking of inaccurate depictions, I’ve seen seventy-five ADT home-security commercials and I’ve never seen a face darker than Conan O’Brien’s involved in the home-invasion scenarios. Imagine if an alien came down to the U.S. and just watched TV for a year and then took a tour of our prison system. He would be like, “These white criminals are the shrewdest of them all. They commit one hundred percent of the crime and almost never get caught.”
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS
We’ve all seen PSAs. When I was a kid it was Smokey the Bear talking about campfires and Woodsy Owl telling us not to litter. My kids can look forward to Fergie warning us about online predators and Zac Efron explaining the dangers of huffing copier toner. Radio and TV stations don’t run these PSAs out of the goodness of their own hearts or because they’re civic minded. The FCC mandates that they run a certain number of them a year or they’ll pull their license. We all make fun of the Reefer Madness–type PSAs of yore, but how kind do you think history will be to ones of today like David Schwimmer telling you to talk to your kids? (Little-known piece of TV trivia: Schwimmer’s character was the only one of the Friends who actually had a kid—you just wouldn’t know it because he never spoke to him.) Dick Van Patten wasn’t available? Or even the guy who played Joey? You had to get the one Friend who was a deadbeat dad? He spent more time with the monkey. And by the way … talk to your kids? This is all you could come up with? How fucking lazy can you be? “I used to just grunt at my kids and use semaphore, but ever since the guy who ignores his kid on TV and has no kids in real life told me to talk to mine, Harvard, here we come!”
The most popular PSA on television these days is the “Over the Limit, Under Arrest” one for drunk driving. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can this asshole have a beef with a drunk-driving PSA? Well, this is why I’m the writer and you’re the readee. Simple: gender bias. This commercial shows cops pulling over six or seven drivers. All males. Women don’t get DUIs? I’m sure the makers of these PSAs would argue that more males get DUIs than females. Fine, but from here on out, every AIDS PSA has to start with “Attention fags.”
PSAs aren’t limited to your TV set. Hopefully your town has not degenerated to this point, but half the municipal vehicles, garbage trucks, cop cars, and so on in Los Angeles have a bumper sticker that reads STOP SENIOR ABUSE. (Between these bumper stickers and the barbed wire around the freeway signs, L.A. has to win the award for the most depressing city to drive in. A stroll through the Hol
ocaust Museum would be more uplifting.) Does this bumper sticker actually stop anyone from abusing a senior? “I was on the way to Shady Acres to beat the shit out of Nana, got caught behind a street sweeper, and really did some soul-searching. Took a long look in the rearview mirror and didn’t like what I saw staring back at me.” Obviously this bumper sticker doesn’t prevent senior abuse. I bet if anything, it reminds people to abuse seniors. “Jesus, that’s right, it’s been almost a month since Grandpa’s felt the cold sting of his own slipper across his weathered face.”
But it gets worse. Next to that bumper sticker on the same street sweeper is one that reads DON’T ABANDON YOUR BABY. Is this what it’s come to? I don’t know why this is written in English. (I know that sounds like I’m a racist, but who’s the one assuming I meant it should be written in Spanish?) This is not asking you to raise your baby, it’s basically saying drop it off at the firehouse instead of the Dumpster. In the final tally, I’m sure these bumper stickers do way more harm to the collective psyche of the community than they do good.
Thousands of hours and millions of dollars are squandered each year on ineffective, no-shit-Sherlock PSAs. Meanwhile, barrels and barrels of oil are wasted and most of those rollover deaths in a Ford Explorer a few years back could have been prevented if the tires had been properly inflated. But nary a word about that. Maybe they’ll get to it when they’re done with secondhand smoke and self-esteem. Obviously our government, the FCC, and the Ad Council (the anemic, semiretarded, hypocritical, money-wasting morons who come up with the PSAs) have little to no interest in having a positive impact on society. I gotta go. I gotta get Schwimmer’s agent on the line. I want to see if he’s available to cut a PSA on wasting our most precious resource—my fucking time.
MOVIES
I love movies. I love good movies, I love bad movies. I just don’t like mediocre movies that are supposed to be great. Let me give you a couple of titles of movies that were mediocre but were huge successes.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE Nominated for best picture, best original screenplay, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress. It won for best original screenplay, and Alan Arkin won for best supporting actor. As far as best original screenplay, this is like giving song of the year to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” And Alan Arkin was in the first half of the movie; his corpse was in the last forty-five minutes. He played a junkie, sexually addicted grandpa who taught his fat granddaughter to dance like a whore. He didn’t have a lot to do in the movie, and it’s a role that your grandfather could have pulled off. (My grandfather has been dead for ten years, so he’d require a little more time in makeup.) Alan Arkin was fine, but giving him the Oscar for this role was like awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a guy who broke up a bum fight with a garden hose.
LOST IN TRANSLATION Another film that qualifies for the Emperor’s New Gay Clothes Award. A boring, look-how-cool-I-am movie made tolerable by Scarlett Johansson in her underpants that won for best original screenplay. I’ll bet when Alan Arkin and Sofia Coppola see each other at Oscar parties they exchange those knowing glances that couples who are fucking around on their spouses with each other do. “Can you believe what we got away with?”
TYLER PERRY MOVIES I don’t blame Tyler Perry—it’s not his fault he’s a horrible writer. It’s not that hard to write horribly. It’s Oprah’s fault for making a star out of a guy who’s built an empire around a gun-toting, 250-pound grandmother whose conflict-resolution strategy involves threatening to put her foot up your ass.
Dear black community: You don’t have to support this guy’s subpar products just because he’s the same color as you. It’s not like I sit around and say to my white friends, “Rob Schneider’s got a new piece of shit coming out this weekend—let’s head to the multiplex. By golly, he’s white and we need to support our own.” (If you think I’m being too hard on Tyler Perry or Rob Schneider, I challenge you to watch Diary of a Mad Black Woman or Deuce Bigalow 2.)
Here’s a handful of my favorite movies. I left out the Gone with the Winds and the Godfathers because I figured you’ve seen those.
PAPILLON Steve McQueen at his best. And if Arkin had an ounce of dignity he’d drop off his ill-gotten Oscar to the guy who is missing one, Dustin Hoffman, for his work in this movie.
LOVE AND DEATH Woody Allen’s funniest joke-for-joke movie.
BREAKING AWAY Funny, understated, and a great performance from Paul Dooley.
DEFENDING YOUR LIFE Funny, poignant, smart, inspirational. Sad that most of you have seen Happy Gilmore and Tommy Boy 250 times but have never seen this one. Best comedy of the last twenty-five years. Lost in America is another Albert Brooks masterpiece that never gets shown on TV. Why Billy Madison has to play on a fucking loop and Lost in America pops up once an Olympic season is not only confusing but cosmically wrong.
FARGO No better Coen brothers movie. William H. Macy was excellent. Arkin, after you’ve dropped off the Oscar at Hoffman’s place, grab one of the loose Oscars he’s using to hold down the tarp on his barbecue and bring it by Macy’s place for his role in Fargo.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN Best opening twenty minutes of any movie in the last thirty years. Important, moving, almost made us forget we hate Vin Diesel.
ELECTION Quirky, funny, dark. All the things Little Miss Sunshine was trying to be.
CARS (AND ALL THE PIXAR STUFF) Entertainment for people four to ninety-three. I know you thought I was gonna say ninety-four, but the cutoff is not a day over ninety-three. Sorry, rules are rules.
OVERNIGHT This is a great documentary. But I could have picked twenty others. The point is, you’re almost never gonna go wrong with a documentary. P.S. Don’t call it a “doc.” Now that Papillon’s made it off of Devil’s Island, there’s a vacancy for all you people who say “doc” and “Curb.”
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN No better Coen brothers movie.
MUSIC
I love music. I don’t know anyone who says they don’t. The problem for me is I love good music, but based on what’s playing on the radio, the music everyone else likes sucks. So I’m forced to listen to that shitty music on the radio. Music is one of those topics that’s very personal and that people claim is subjective. But if you like “I Need to Know” by Marc Anthony or you don’t feel like you’ve heard the Oak Ridge Boys’ “Elvira” enough this week, you’re a brainless fuck who doesn’t know shit about music. The problem with those people is they’re dumb, and dumb people respond to repetition. Thus, they end up thinking songs that blow ass are good because they were beaten into their heads by corrupt program directors.
Here’s how stupid people are. “Having My Baby” by Paul Anka was number one in 1974. In ’06, CNN announced it was the worst song of all time. One of the best songs of all time, “Rosalita” by Bruce Springsteen, came out a year before but did not chart. On a positive note, it’s comforting to know that people had no taste and were nimrods almost forty years ago. Everyone always talks about today’s youth, how ill-informed they are and how bad the music of today has gotten. At least our parents were fucking idiots too.
How did we get into this mess? Rod Stewart comes up with an abortion of a song like “Passion” or “Hot Legs.” The label he’s on drops off a sack of cocaine and some money to a DJ and/or program director. They agree to play “Passion” three times an hour, you assholes hear it on the way to work two thousand times, and the next thing you know, you’re hooked on a subpar, piece-of-shit song. There’s no way, based on its own merits, that “Shout” by Tears for Fears would be a number-one song. Somebody had to get paid off.
You measure a good song the same way you measure architecture, fashion, or any other artistic endeavor. Time. You know when you see a picture of yourself from the eighties with a horrible hairdo and some stone-washed jeans and you think, “How embarrassing—what the fuck was I thinking? Why didn’t somebody stop me?” It’s the same thing Mick Jagger and David Bowie should be thinking every time they hear their cover of “Dancing in the Streets.” The point
is, at the time it seemed like a good idea, just like kitchens with burnt-orange Formica and avocado appliances, den walls covered with fake brick paneling, and segregation—all horrible decisions that we now universally recognize as wrong. But somehow when it comes to music, we can’t just admit we made a mistake with “Emotional Rescue.” There’s always some dick who defends the past. “Hey, man, I lost my virginity to ‘Careless Whisper.’ ” I’m sure there was somebody who got laid for the first time on 9/11 but they don’t get a boner when they see the footage of the planes going into the tower.