by Adam Carolla
A short time later I had flown from New York back to L.A. to audition for Loveline the TV show. I was on the balcony of my apartment on the phone talking to Jimmy, who was still in New York with Kevin and Bean. It was midnight.
As we were talking, a Ford F-250 pickup, going fifty down a residential street, without touching the brakes slammed right into the back of my car. It was an explosion of metal and glass. My car went careening into the street and the truck jumped the curb and onto the lawn of my apartment building. The balcony I was standing on was on the first floor, so I was staring down at the whole thing eight feet away from me. My car looked like an accordion. It was totaled. The guy threw his crippled truck into reverse and tried to drag it off the lawn. He was going to get the fuck out of Dodge in his Ford.
The point is that instincts matter. Whether it’s on the job or in a relationship, you should trust your gut. Unless your gut is full of Mountain Dew and Slim Jims, in which case you’re a cretin and should do the exact opposite of whatever your cholesterol-clogged heart is saying.
MOTIVATION No one came from a lazier, more apathetic family than me. If there was a laziness competition, my folks would take the gold, but it would have to be mailed to them.
So given this upbringing, it’s no surprise that I had to break the cycle and teach myself how to make something of my life. I was like a bear that was raised in captivity and then was ill equipped to go out into the wild. So I started challenging myself. If you’re thinking about something, don’t procrastinate—do it, whatever it is. For me it was the coffee mug. I would be going off to my construction job in the morning and I’d have my coffee mug with me. After I finished it, I would toss it on the floor of the passenger side and it would roll around all day until I got home to my shitty rented apartment. I’d be getting out of the truck and the coffee mug would be out of arm’s reach and I’d stare at it for a second and think, I should bring that in and rinse it out. But then another voice would come into my head and say, “Fuck it, I’ll just get a new one tomorrow morning.” The argument in my head would go on. “But then you’ll have two mugs clinking around on the floor mat and one will get chipped.” “Eh, just put it on the seat and that way they won’t bump together.” It was like a retarded version of those cartoons where an angel and devil would appear on Daffy Duck’s shoulders and argue. After losing twenty minutes of my life wrestling with myself over whether to take the coffee mug in, I decided, “Do it this time. And from now on when you see that coffee mug, you pounce on it. Eventually it won’t even be a thought anymore.” Everything seems overwhelming when you stand back and look at the totality of it. I build a lot of stuff and it would all seem impossible if I didn’t break it down piece by piece, stage by stage.
The best gift you can give yourself is some drive—that thing inside of you that gets you out the door to the gym, job interviews, and dates. The believe-in-yourself adage is grossly overrated. I don’t trust people who believe in themselves. Your job in life is to fool other people into believing in you, not to fool yourself. If you take a look at my Social Security statement from 1980 to 1994, you’ll see that I had no reason to believe in myself.
The bad news is I no longer make what I made in ’03. The good news is if I did I never would have written this stupid book.
So focus more on motivating yourself and moving forward, and less on self-belief.
YOU CAN BE POOR BUT NOT STUPID Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. People are constantly wasting money and short-changing themselves on the good things in life because they don’t understand cost versus value. Like the dunces who drive eight miles out of the way to the gas station where unleaded is five cents cheaper. Dummy, the amount of gas it took you to drive your ’85 Aerostar van over there cost more than what you’re supposedly saving. And is your time not worth sixty cents? How low is your self-esteem?
People do this with food constantly. We’ve all heard the semi-annoying five-dollar-foot-long Subway ads. Sounds like a good deal, right? But look at what you’re getting: a pillowcase-full of shredded lettuce, a couple of presliced composite meat products, and some half slices of processed, prepackaged cheese. For a buck more you can go to Giamela’s (a fantastic sandwich place in Burbank, but you could replace it with any good local sub shop from any town in America). For under six bucks you get a six-pound masterpiece of meat, fresh onions, pickles, and tomatoes in good Italian bread. If you’re going with the meatball sandwich at Subway, you’ll get four of them that are the size of a golf ball in some watery Ragú. At a place like Giamela’s, the meatballs are the size of a softball and need to be cut in half to fit in the roll. Then they get covered with a rich, hearty sauce. What’s the better buy? The one from the chain sub shop that leaves you hungry an hour later, or the one that weighs as much as a Duraflame log that is so much you save half and eat it for dinner?
Another thing that falls under this poor-versus-stupid category is the bed. Let me give you a little bed background from the Carollas. I didn’t know until I was into my mid-thirties that you could buy new furniture. I grew up in a house with four people sleeping on four separate beds and zero box springs. We were 0 for 4 in the box-spring department.
My mom had just a mattress on the floor. I always had only a very thin, cotlike mattress with no box spring. That in a room this big (see this page). My childhood room is literally a closet now.
Every bed in the Carolla home was a half step up from a prison bunk. My stepdad slept on one of those square late-sixties, early-seventies sofa things that they had in the Brady Bunch den. Essentially you would take this long triangular pillow, throw it onto the ground, and it became a bed. It had the bad, scratchy, burnt-orange seventies slipcover and it was on those gold rolling casters.
Eventually I started buying mattresses from the Salvation Army that had been reconditioned, which means some ex-con flipped it over, beat it with a broomstick out in the alley, sprayed it with Lysol, put it in a Hefty bag, and sold it to me.
So given the long, pathetic history of the Carollas and beds, I’m going to give you, the reader, the same advice I plan on giving my kids: Buy a good bed. It’s not like you’re gonna sleep every other week, or only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. You’re not gonna be on the road with your band half the year. I’ll be conservative and say 350 days a year you’re gonna spend seven to eight hours, eleven to fifteen if you’re a Carolla, in your bed. It’s the most important investment you’ll ever make. You always hear that thing where they say every cigarette takes a minute off your life. Every horrible night’s sleep probably takes four days off your life. You’re stressed out, your back hurts, you don’t feel right, and you’re not productive at work. Please buy a decent bed.
This is the room as it looks today. My bed was shoehorned into the corner, to the right of the door. The water heater and the electric meter were in the closet on the left.
And get yourself a nice bathrobe. Even if you’re not Bill Gates, a couple times a year you’ll go out and drop seventy-five dollars on a decent meal for an anniversary or birthday. Why not spend that same cash on something you’ll use every day? The pleasure of that filet mignon lasts about a half hour. A nice plush bathrobe will last you a couple of years and you’ll wear it morning and night and, if you’re like me, all weekend. Again, delayed gratification and value. I compare it to the baseball mitt. Instead of getting one made of vinyl that you have to replace, get a nice cowhide one for a little bit more and keep it your whole life. With the bathrobe, which makes more sense: spending ninety dollars every decade to have something that feels like you’re wrapped in a warm cloud, or thirty dollars every other year for one that’s shitty, itchy, and paper-thin?
Not to get too deep, but a lot of this is psychology. When you’re poor, you feel beat-down and shamed. You don’t feel like you deserve nice things. But saving a nickel by getting the generic pair of shoes at the grocery store isn’t going to turn you into Richard Branson. So treat yourself well, which will boost
your self-esteem and actually help get you into that next tax bracket.
DOES IT MAKE YOU MONEY OR MAKE YOU HAPPY? Ask yourself that quick, simple question before embarking on or sticking with anything, whether it be a job, a home-improvement project, or a relationship. If it doesn’t fulfill one of those two requirements, then move on and let it go. Now, I agree that money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness, but it sure as shit doesn’t hurt. If whatever you’re doing doesn’t make you happy or at least provide you the money to go to a therapist or a liquor store to take care of that unhappiness, then it’s time to blow that taco stand. Life is too short for anything else.
CHANGE On that note, I’ll leave you with this last tip, and cue the inspirational music while you’re reading it. This is roughly the speech I gave on my final morning radio show in 2009. Since then I’ve had two TV pilots, a successful podcast, several appearances on Leno, Dancing with the Stars, Howard Stern, et cetera, and sold out many live shows across the country. The end of that radio show wasn’t the end of the world. In fact, I would have never written this book if I were still doing my morning show.
Change feels bad at the beginning. “I just got dumped by my girlfriend. This is horrible.” “I’m moving. This is horrible.” “I’m going to a new school. This is horrible.” “I’m starting a new job. This is horrible.” Change always feels scary. Why? Because it’s unknown. And we’re scared of the unknown. That’s what freaks us out. We build our world around the known—this is my wife, these are my kids, this is my house, this is my car, this is my office. When that gets interrupted, it scares the shit out of us. But it’s usually for the best. When you think about the lives where there is no change, they are the most unlived. Like the guy who’s been a postal carrier for sixty-one years and lives in the house he grew up in. That’s the opposite of change. Lots of change makes for a very rich, vivid, and colorful life.
Here’s the problem. A lot of times you don’t get to be the captain of your own change ship—other people make those decisions. When you make the call, it usually feels good. “I want to break up with that guy”; “I have a higher-paying job I’d like to move on to”; “The Bay Area is a much nicer place to live and I’m moving there.” But when someone else decides, then your ass is freaked the fuck out and you don’t know what to do.
But think about all the change that’s happened in your life. Is it ever bad? Change is growth. That’s how you measure growth. It’s the rings in your tree. Sure, it can be bad temporarily: You’re out of a job, you’re out of your apartment, you’re out of your relationship. But six months or a year down the road, you don’t think, “I wish I still had that job,” or “I wish I still lived there,” or “I wish I was still with her.” Anyone who’s past the age of twenty-five has had several significant changes happen in their lives. They’re always met with resistance. But if you have a rearview mirror, you’ll look back and realize you are happier and better for that experience.
My Pop Warner team decided to wait until the championship game to make the CHANGE from undefeated. Now that’s the look of growth.
TIME TO
CALL IT
A LIFE
I’ve always said, “Life is just the time between crapping yourself.” (I’m planning on trademarking that phrase and putting it on a series of inspirational posters.) I have a lot of thoughts about the beginning and the end of our time on this mortal coil.
I recently did a live show and invited my old partner Dr. Drew and my old roommate, Ralph Garman, now star of the Kevin and Bean morning show, to join us onstage. Ralph’s wife was pregnant at the time, Drew’s triplets were all grown up, and my twins were three and a half. But the one thing we all had in common was infertility. For some reason the gainfully employed non–drug abusers who look at marriage as a lifetime commitment, or at least until the youngest hits junior college, couldn’t figure out a way to shit out a kid without twenty trips to the fertility specialist. But if two dimwits hump in the back of a van in a Walmart parking lot, they can easily add a tenth to their brood of future addicts and welfare recipients. It seems that the higher the education level and tax bracket, the lower the sperm count. Whether you’re a fan of God or Darwin, what the fuck is the plan?
The couple that has to make sure their mullets don’t get tangled while they’re literally knocking boots can have a kid for the cost of a six-pack of Stroh’s. My kids cost me fifty grand. There were pills and injections for my wife, and I had to beat off into containers at facilities. Talk about killing something I love—it took all the majesty and romance out of having at myself while my wife was asleep in the next room.
You don’t realize that your balls have their own schedule until a doctor is telling you when to have sex and where to jack off. I would ask my wife, “Can’t I just beat off into Tupperware in the comfort of my own bathroom and then rush it to the place?” But the clinic was twenty-five minutes away and I guess the sperm is only good for twenty. (There are tube socks in my hamper that would beg to differ.) So I had to go to the clinic where they put you in that room with the hollow-core door that’s been undercut because they used to have shag carpet. You can hear the nurses clomping around outside and clucking like chickens. A tile floor, a hollow-core door, and an inch and a quarter of daylight underneath it actually act as an amplifier. It’s a good thing I had a lot of roommates and learned how to rub one out while they were twelve feet away fucking around making noise. They could be in the next room stabbing each other with fireplace pokers and I could still finish off. I’m a ninja when it comes to masturbating. I’m like a safecracker. I work quickly and I work alone.
At the clinic they offer you porn, and at first you have to pretend to be confused. “Hmm, pornography, you say. Don’t believe I know that word. It’s pictures of nude people? I was unaware of this innovation. Well, if you say so. I’ll try anything once. You’re the expert.” And it’s always the poorest selection. That basket of porn is like the kids’ plastic pumpkin a week after Halloween. The Reese’s, Snickers, and Almond Joy have been pilfered, and all that’s left are a few scattered Necco Wafers and a dog-eared Hustler with Seka on the cover. You end up beating off to chicks from the eighties with Nagel paintings behind them who died of a drug overdose ten years ago. My cock was insulted. The pocket in the seat in front of you on the Southwest flight has more jackable material in it than the porn basket at the fertility clinic.
We did a Man Show bit once where Jimmy and I went to one of these clinics. We were going to compare our sperm to see whose count was higher, but we also decided to race and see who could produce it the fastest. So we stood in the hallway, one of the producers, Beth Einhorn, hit a stopwatch, and we sprinted into our rooms. By the way, this was Beth’s first day, so it must have been bizarre to explain to her loved ones when they asked, “How was your first day on the new job?” “Oh, I timed two guys while they spunked into cups.” So it was essentially the cock against the clock. I came bursting out of the room three seconds before Jimmy, but that was only because he had the dignity to pull his pants up before exiting. We accounted for that and realized we were on exactly the same jizz clock. It’s like when women work together for long enough and their cycles sync up.
So years later, when my wife and I were trying to get pregnant, I’m at this fertility clinic and I know I can wrap this up pretty quickly. But I don’t want the nurse to watch me walk into the room, tie her shoe, and then see me walking out with a bucket of jizz. So I did that casual jack move, the one you see the guys from the gangbang porn doing. It’s the masturbation equivalent of the runner at the stoplight jogging in place to keep the heart rate up, or a Golden Gloves boxer whose fight isn’t for another hour shadowboxing. Cutting to the chase, my sperm were fine, my wife’s eggs were fine, and there was no reason we couldn’t get pregnant. A couple of months and some in vitro fertilization later, Lynette did eventually get pregnant with my twins, the boy and what’s-her-name.
This seems like the best place to recall a horrible y
et hilarious moment in my life. It was my first night on Dancing with the Stars, and everyone was a bundle of nerves. Marissa Jaret Winokur, the chubby chick from Hairspray on Broadway, was one of the contestants, and she was especially anxious. She was taking the competition very seriously and she was due to dance last. The only thing more nerve-racking than dancing in front of twenty million people is pacing around for an hour and forty-five minutes waiting to do it. People were giving her stupid advice like “Have fun out there” and other shit that isn’t constructive: A) That’s not advice, and B) nobody has ever had fun because somebody yelled at them to have fun. After my dance, I left the stage and ran into a pacing, on-the-verge-of-throwing-up Marissa.
I could tell she was all up in her head, so I pulled her aside and thought I would offer some sage advice that would calm her nerves. I said, “You’re not going to have fun out there. You’re going to have an experience out there. Don’t run from it, or try to mask it with a shot of Patrón, embrace it. It’s a crazy rush.” Then I continued, “It’s like giving birth. It’s painful, it’s scary, but it’s life affirming. You don’t want to be passed-out and not experience the miracle of childbirth.” Then, like a moment out of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, she immediately replied, “I had cervical cancer and both my ovaries removed. We have a surrogate that’s pregnant right now.” Another contestant, Penn Jillette, started laughing maniacally at what had just gone down. Visually it was surreal because she’s five foot one in heels and Penn Jillette with his dance shoes on is knocking on the door of seven feet. Plus he’s a comedian and a magician, so I thought they were screwing with me. I persisted, “No, seriously, are you sterile? Did you have your parts removed? No fallopian tubing at all?” She said yes, she was barren, it was like an ashtray down there. I had put my Capezio right in my mouth. I thought the whole childbirth thing was a great analogy, but I sent Marissa out to her first dance thinking about her long-lost ovaries instead of her paso doble.