by Adam Carolla
POPULATION/BIRTH CONTROL
When is a politician on either side of the aisle going to have the balls to pipe up and say, “Poor people: Stop shitting out kids”? If we solve this problem, we solve all the other problems. Who is it that’s filling our prisons? Who is it that’s filling our soup kitchens? Who is it that is uneducated and on the dole? Who is it that is getting pregnant as teenagers? Who has no insurance and is getting strung out and filling up the emergency rooms? Unwanted kids. When parents start focusing on raising a family and having two kids instead of nine is when all of the world’s problems go away. That’s when the prison guards get to go home; you get to leave your front door unlocked at night and your laptop on the dash of your convertible.
Then these unwanted kids go on to have their own brood of unwanted kids, and so on and so on and so on. But it never gets addressed. Half the guys in the NFL talk about how they never knew their dad and that they were one of twelve kids. And we just applaud his mom instead of saying this is fucked-up and that having that many kids is its own form of child abuse. When the politicians hit the campaign trail, there’s a lot of talk about the hardworking families on Main Street and the single moms who have to hold down three jobs. Right. They have to hold down three jobs because they have thirteen kids. Thus they can’t pay their mortgage. Thus the whole economy goes down the shitter.
We refuse to address the root of the problem. Politicians are always yapping about creating new programs and increasing aid to struggling families. But they never, never talk about putting on a condom or using the morning-after pill. Ironically, the only group they ever told to put on a condom was the gays. It’s not just the Republican politicians from the Bible Belt who are scared of the religious ramifications; the Democrats won’t address it because of the racial and socioeconomic overtones. So we continue to increase our population and bust our budgets. This problem compounds itself with each new generation of unwanted kids. This nation is sinking fast. The S.S. Fallopian Tubing is taking on sperm faster than we can bail.
In a nutshell, the problem with politicians is simple. They were all former oilmen, lawyers, actors, or, worst of all, politicians. Where are the psychologists, where are the sociologists? I want someone who understands human nature. Not how to manipulate people into voting for them, but how to motivate people into staying in school, raising a family, and paying their taxes. If these hypocritical fucks would see a shrink on Saturday instead of going for the photo op on the church steps on Sunday, we’d all be in a much better position.
Thank you. I’m Adam Carolla, and I need your vote.
GOD, RELIGIOUS
TOLERANCE, AND
OTHER SHIT THAT
DOESN’T EXIST
I am an atheist. There are two types of atheists. There’s the Adam Carolla–type atheists, who are logical, reasonable people who don’t believe in anything unless there’s proof provided. Then there’s the my-dad-was-a-born-again-Christian-and-used-to-sodomize-me atheist, the one with the chip on his fucking shoulder. These are the ones that want “In God We Trust” taken off the dollar bill. And they want the cross that’s on the Los Angeles crest, because it was settled by missionaries, taken off the mayor’s coffee mug. They draw attention to themselves by being a pain in the ass. Ironically, these people have turned atheism into a religion. I’m an atheist because I believe God doesn’t exist, not because I have a score to settle with him.
I understand why we invented God and why we cling to him with both hands—because we’re the only species on the planet that’s aware it’s going to die. Pardon the pun, but I pray I’m right about this. Imagine how horrible it would be if cows and chickens knew where they were heading, not to mention bomb-sniffing dogs. “Let me get this straight. When you’re nine I’ll be sixty-three and when you’re twelve I’ll be dead? And you want me to go down to the airport to see if that duffle bag is filled with C4? Suck my balls. Never mind, I’ve got it.”
This is why we have religion. That’s the genesis of Genesis. We can’t face our own mortality, so we concoct stories about God’s plan and a place in the clouds where everything is perfect and you get reunited with your loved ones. What if the person doesn’t want to be reunited with you? Maybe your dead husband’s been banging Jayne Mansfield up in heaven and the last thing he wants is you showing up and ruining the party. The great cock block in the clouds. Or what if the deceased guy was married multiple times? When he gets up to heaven, which wife gets priority? When Larry King finally kicks the bucket, it’s going to be a Chinese fire drill. And if you lose a leg to a land mine in Darfur, is it waiting for you when you arrive? What if you got a breast reduction? Are the rest of your tits waiting for you?
At every funeral, the relatives of the deceased are told, “He’s in a better place.” Awesome. So the rest of us are stuck down here in Shitsville? And if he’s in a better place, why are you bawling your eyes out? Shouldn’t you be blowing a New Year’s Eve noisemaker and throwing confetti? You’re crying because you know you’ll never see that person again and that one day your number will be called, too.
How about when the seven-year-old rides his bike into the street and gets killed by a gardening truck? Rather than deal with the horrible truth that sometimes awful things just happen, the family will say, “God needed him up in heaven.” Why? What does God need with a seven-year-old? Is he manufacturing Nikes? Does he need a right fielder for heaven’s Little League team and saw that Billy had a cannon for a right arm? And even if he did “need” little Billy, couldn’t he have taken him quietly in his sleep? He had to get dragged under an ’81 Toyota pickup with a shark cage full of gardening equipment in the bed?
Another way we make ourselves feel better about people passing on is by saying, “He died doing what he loved.” I’m sure that’s a comfort to the guy who got hit by an eighteen-wheeler on his motorcycle: “He died riding his Harley, doing what he loved.” I’m pretty sure if he knew that he was going to ride his hog right off this mortal coil, he wouldn’t have loved it so much. And they’ll say it no matter what. Yeah, I’m sure the guy who had a heart attack in his cubicle loved crunching numbers for the plywood wholesaler. That was what he was born to do. The only time they don’t say it is when the guy actually did die doing what he loved, autoerotic asphyxiation. I sadly had to attend a funeral for a young man who died that way. I wouldn’t say it was uncomfortable, but I’d rather have watched my mom attempt to set the gang-bang record from a dentist’s chair.
My problem with 95 percent of religions is one they never speak of: They hate religions other than their own. They all claim to be innocent Steeler fans, but let’s face it, they hate the Patriots, and once in a while a couple of rogue superfans think it would be a good idea to try to take down the Patriots’ team plane. And the next thing you know, we’ve got a fight in the stands.
It’s all just made-up nonsense so we feel better. A lot of people like to attack Scientology and say that it’s not a “real” religion, that it’s a cult. To me, all religions are cults. And here’s my take on Scientology. Tom Cruise and John Travolta always look happy. If your religion gets you in a place where you can bang Katie Holmes or pilot a DC-10 to the America’s Cup, then sign me up. I don’t care if you believe in space aliens; my only interest is that someone doesn’t blow me up at a disco.
Most religions adopt this if-you’re-not-for-us-you’re-against-us mentality. How about the third option? How about the people who just don’t give a shit about your retarded fantasy? I don’t mind the imbeciles that buy into this nonsense, I mind that as a society we give them such a wide berth. Every once in a while you’ll come across a guy who is a Disney fanatic—the one who makes the weekly pilgrimage to the Magic Kingdom, has a denim jacket covered in Donald Duck pins, and says things like “I’ve ridden Pirates of the Caribbean over thirty thousand times.” You immediately realize the guy is a kook and start making fun of him. But you sure as fuck don’t respect him. What’s the difference between this nut bag and the guy
who dresses like an undertaker with a beard down to his waist and fucks his wife through a sheet? Or the guy who treats his flock of goats better than his flock of wives and can’t make it fifteen minutes without falling to his knees and praying? And by the way, if I ran Guantánamo Bay, not only would I double down on the waterboarding, I’d take that arrow they have out in the rec yard that points toward Mecca and spin it toward Vegas.
I’m certainly not a student of religion, but I am a student of psychology, and there’s one thing I know: When you’re secure in your beliefs, you don’t need a bullhorn. Think of it as a game of twenty-one and you just got dealt blackjack. Why do you give a shit what the guys sitting on the stools to your left and right are doing with their cards? Just sit on your ace and king and wait for the payout. You show me a guy who never stops talking about what a badass he is, and I’ll show you a guy who doesn’t truly believe he’s a badass. Randy Couture doesn’t spend the better part of each day trying to convince his neighbors that he can kick their ass. I’ll take it a step further: I believe if I took most people who said they had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and knew there was a heaven and shot them up with Sodium Pentothal and a couple of roofies, I could get them to admit that there probably wasn’t a heaven and that their relationship with Jesus Christ was about as good as Angelina Jolie’s relationship with Jon Voight. And then I would have sex with them. Why waste the roofies?
None of these idiots really believe in God. Especially all the evangelicals and politicians who are banging male prostitutes or their nannies. They just want you to believe they believe so they can take your money, get reelected, or both. If Jesse Jackson really believed in the big man in the sky, would he have knocked up a woman on his Rainbow Coalition staff when he was married for thirty-five years? He says God speaks to him. I guess God never sent him the message about pulling out. And Jesse was the “spiritual counselor” to Bill Clinton after he got caught being blown by a chunky intern. Of course these self-righteous fucksticks don’t believe it. If they did, they wouldn’t engage in this behavior. Please permit me one last quick analogy. If you put me in a room, gave me a Playboy, pointed up at a camera mounted on the ceiling, and said there’s a guy who controls your destiny in the next room watching a monitor and I believed it, I wouldn’t beat off. But if I saw the camera was made of Styrofoam and there were no wires going to it, I’d have at myself. These guys know they have a fucking Styrofoam camera.
I hate that we have to pretend to respect all religions, especially the ones that are trying to blow up airplanes and pizza parlors or are actively involved with ethnic cleansing. Someone should just call them what they are, nut jobs. And don’t give me that shit where “It’s not all of them. It’s only a small percentage.” Sure, it’s a small percentage, but it’s enough to bring down the Twin Towers. I don’t blame them, they’re nuts. I blame us for not shouting, “You’re fucking nuts. I don’t respect your retarded beliefs. Now what are you going to do about it? Nothing, because your stupid religion has kept you in the Stone Age. What are you going to do, fly your fleet of Mach 3 jets over New York and bomb it? No. You’re so backward technologically that you have to use our planes to bomb us.” Here’s my question to all people and all religions. It’s the same thing I want to ask all the communists out there. How’s it going? How’s it working out for you? I watch the news and it doesn’t look like it’s going so well.
These people who tell you all religions should be respected are the same idiots with the COEXIST bumper sticker on their Prius. Who is this message for? You’re pulling into the Whole Foods in West Hollywood and parking with nine other Priuses sporting COEXIST bumper stickers. It’s preaching to the choir. Actually, the gay men’s chorus. The people who need to get the all-religions-are-beautiful-and-can-work-in-harmony message aren’t there. Do you think Ahmadinejad is pulling his armored SUV in behind you to pick up a nine-dollar organic avocado and a wheatgrass smoothie? This would be like going to a Beverly Hills private school to deliver an important message about staying out of gangs. Your stupid bumper sticker is falling on deaf eyes. The people who really should get the “coexist” message are literally on the other side of the world. The regions that need these stickers barely have cars to put them on. And again, they wouldn’t heed this coexist idea anyway. They’d stone you to death for having the audacity to be driving as a woman.
If this is on your car, please drive into oncoming traffic.
So no matter how crazy the religion is, we need to respect it? What about cults? Cults are religions, but instead of churches they have compounds, and instead of priests they have bearded weirdos with acoustic guitars. Every cult starts out as peace, love, and folk music, but eventually gives way to “bring me all the thirteen-year-old girls.” All cults are about fifty-year-old white guys nailing teenage runaways.
I was thinking about the Manson family. I’m not proud of it, but whenever they show that archival footage from 1971 I think, Hmm, not bad. Those chicks were nineteen and hot. Charlie essentially had a harem. Let me tell you something about these chicks: If Charlie could hand them a steak knife, tell them to go up the hill, break into a stranger’s house, and brutally stab anyone who’s inside of it and they say, “Fine,” believe me, there’s nothing they wouldn’t do in the bedroom. Orgies and back-door lovin’ are light lifting compared to breaking in through the back door of the LaBianca residence. Charlie was the messiah to them: There’s nothing they wouldn’t do with him, to him, or to each other while he watched. He had a good thing going. I’m betting at some point when Manson declared, “Okay, we’re gonna take the harem of hot nineteen-year-olds, put them in the van, and tell them to stab random Los Angelenos,” Tex Watson said, “You know what? Maybe just one more daylong orgy. Let’s get the race riots started next weekend. I’ll get some Boone’s Farm, you get some weed, and let’s just daisy-chain it. Just one more time before we send them off to prison for the rest of their lives.” What was Manson thinking? You have some land, there’s no such thing as AIDS, you have a bunch of hot nineteen-year-old runaways, and you’re gonna get them all thrown in the joint? Believe me, I would still be on that dirt patch in Chatsworth having sex if I were Charlie. That’s how you know he was nuts—not the stabbing, but that he gave up the nineteen-year-old punanny. Makes me sick.
Every time you argue with a religious person, they pose this question: “If you were walking down a dark alley, would you rather encounter a group of Christians or a group of atheists?” Before I answer that, let me ask you a question, my religious-zealot friend. What percentage of inmates on death row are atheist or agnostic? Of course I’d rather deal with people who had their own internal moral compass rather than a group that could stab me and be absolved of their sins. And where is this alley, and what year is it? Not if the alley is in Jerusalem during the Crusades.
I wish we could adopt the same policy with religion that the army adopted some years ago in regards to chugging cock. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” I won’t ask you who you’re currently praying to, you shut the fuck up about your Santa in the sky, and, speaking of the army, if you get out of line, we send over the Predator drones. Thank you, and I’ll see you in hell.
FOODS I HAVE
A BEEF WITH
I have a strange history with food. I’m part owner of an Italian restaurant, and the food at Kimmel’s football Sunday is sometimes the highlight of my week. But growing up, I was a crazed raccoon and the world was my Dumpster. My parents didn’t cook. If they did prepare anything, it was shitty seventies health food like that natural peanut butter that doesn’t spread and just rolls on top of the bread picking up pieces of sprouted wheat. My mom was Chef Boyar-don’t. This is the woman who once gave out walnuts for Halloween. And my dad cooked about as well as he snowboarded.
When I was a kid, I’d stare at the snack drawer at my friend’s house the way Travolta stared at whatever was in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. It would glow and I’d hear an angelic hum. My mom would never let food like
that in my house. Everything was macrobiotic and tasted like gerbil pellets. In the seventies we were constantly bombarded with messages about how everything was bad for us. Don’t sit too close to the TV, microwave ovens will give you a brain tumor, white flour is the white devil. Yet not one word about the sun and skin cancer. We were constantly riding our bikes shirtless in the San Fernando Valley in the middle of summer. We would go to the beach armed only with a towel. Not one ounce of sunblock. My mom was part of the whole Age of Aquarius thing, and she took the “Let the Sun Shine” message literally. How could the sun be bad? The Incas worshipped it and, more important, there wasn’t a white male behind it. It wasn’t built by a defense contractor. That was the problem. Hot dogs and saltines were all the work of the Man, and anything an old white male produced was bad for you. White bread was the ace of spades in my mom’s deck of terrorist cards. Why was that the one that had the target on its back? Because it started with the word white and was associated with this country. But she never had a beef with pumpernickel. As if there’s any nutritional difference between pumpernickel and white. The difference was one piece looked like a slave owner and the other looked like LeVar Burton. I blame it on Richard Nixon. No one in my mom’s generation trusted the Man after him. Thanks, Dick. You ruined my childhood.
L.A. RESTAURANTS
Since this is the food chapter, I’ll start with something near and dear to my heart and my home: L.A. food, and how they’ve fucked it up.