by Adam Carolla
Here’s how this all connects to my trip with Sonny. Like many of my weekends when I go out to race, I try to piggyback a live gig in the area onto the trip to help defray the costs. This time around, I’d landed a private corporate gig. So I was up late the night before the race. After that Thursday night speech to a room full of suits who’d had too much to drink, I woke up the next morning and Sonny was just sitting on the edge of the bed with earbuds in, playing with his iPad. He wouldn’t dream of waking me up. And his Breathe Right strip was sitting on the edge of the nightstand. I asked him why it was there. He said, “It’s not sticky anymore, but I wasn’t sure if we could use it again.” I was filled with pride at his efficiency and cost consciousness.
It was a tight schedule. The day before we had been given a VIP tour of the Jonas Salk institute, then it was on to the corporate gig (I brought Sonny along—I wanted him to see Daddy work). Then on Friday there was a practice race and a qualifying race. I always skip the practice race, but I have to do the qualifying because it determines my starting place for the actual race. But I had gotten a call Tuesday night that week from my agent, James “Babydoll” Dixon. He said he had a gig for me. It was, in agent parlance, “light lifting, and a nice bag,” meaning easy money. But it was in Los Angeles, which would mean I’d need to bring Sonny back home before the actual race. I didn’t want to ruin our great father-son race weekend, but at the time (and probably even now as you read this book) I owed money to lawyers, plural. I had not one, but two bullshit lawsuits going on at this time. I rationalized the whole thing, thinking that Sonny could come out Thursday, have breakfast Friday morning, do the practice and qualifying race as part of my pit crew, then zoom back to Los Angeles. Sonny wouldn’t know the difference between the real and practice race, anyway. But just in case, I asked Babydoll if he could move the gig so I could keep my weekend with the boy intact. Well, he called back two hours later to inform me that whoever had sought me out couldn’t move the gig, and when I didn’t answer right away, they had gone to someone else. Here’s the thing: I needed the money, but needed the experience with my son more. This was God, the Great Magnet, whatever you want to call it, making a point. I needed to have my quality bonding time with Sonny. I was relieved, to be honest.
Then Dixon called back an hour later saying the other guy had dropped out. So I said count me in. But for those few fleeting moments, I was Father of the Year.
CHAPTER 6
To Sonny and Natalia, on Buying Your First Car
THIS IS A little note to my offspring, meant to impart some hard-won wisdom on making that most monumental of purchases . . . your first set of wheels. While cars may not be as important to you as they are to me (though they should be), the lessons I include can be applied to any major purchase our kids will have to make one day. Just swap the car for whatever you value—boat, helicopter, NFL franchise. Hopefully they will have the bread to make the purchase without asking us for help, right?
Dear Sonny and Natalia,
Cars were obviously important to your dear old dad and I want them to be important to you. As you know, I had the wrencher gene as a kid, but it was never nurtured. Your grandfather was useless when it came to cars and your grandmother drove a VW Squareback with the engine in the rear under a piece of plywood. Cars were not nearly as important to them as ignoring each other.
Yes, I grew up without something I clearly loved, cars, and have admittedly overcompensated. When it comes to cars, I am like the guy who never gets laid in high school and then when he loses the zits and the Peter Brady voice crack he bangs everything with a pulse. When you’re deprived of a passion, you get a hankering for it and, if you can, you’ll overcompensate like someone who just got out of prison and walked right into the buffet at the Bellagio.
So I have filled a warehouse with rare and vintage cars, and guess what, you’re not getting any of them! I want you to have that hunger, too. I want you to want cars. More important, I don’t want you to think that you can get something for nothing. I took you guys to a warehouse full of cars once, and I did not like what I saw, not one bit.
The day after Thanksgiving 2014, I brought you to the garage of my old friend Jay Leno. Do you remember walking around his hangar full of more than one hundred and thirty cars? We had to take a golf cart to get around that place it was so big. When we got there, Jay was out in one of his steam-powered cars. He was doing exactly what you’d expect him to be doing, wearing all denim, tooling around in a car from over a century ago that only a millionaire with no kids can afford or have the time to enjoy. He was living up to every stereotypical image you’ve ever seen of him in tabloids. It was like going to a fat guy’s house and finding him on the toilet eating a giant turkey leg. I recall that you kids were pretty bored at first but, eventually, you, Natalia, looked at a car and said, “That’s my car, that’s what I want to drive to school.” It was a Dodge Viper. Among all of Jay’s cars this was your first pick. This is a pretty garish and nutty car and at the time it came out, it had the biggest engine you could get in a sports car. The only reason someone would buy this car is to do donuts on their ex’s lawn while high on prescription pills. It’s all engine and clutch and no backseat. But you had made your taste known.
That’s not the part that concerned me; it was what happened next. As we started walking back to the front passing forty acres of cars, you stopped and decided you wanted a different car. You changed your mind. It was like when someone is at the diner, orders the club sandwich but then looks at the table next to them and sees a Reuben, and calls the waitress back to change their order, annoying both the waitress and your dining companion. Your pick this time? A Ford GT.
This will run you about 300K. But then, another 180 yards down, you changed your mind again. You sent the Reuben back and ordered the surf and turf. You pointed at a McLaren P1.
This is a one-and-a-half-million-dollar car. It’s not the most valuable car in Jay’s collection, some of the older ones are worth far more, but that was the one that had the highest original sticker price. By the time you’re in high school and thinking about cars and reading this, that McLaren will be a cool six mil. That’s my concern. You have expensive taste. And seeing Daddy’s collection, you might have the impression that it’s normal to have a couple of Lambos lying around. It’s not. Just like all other things in your life that you might desire, I want you to earn it. You, too, Sonny. After Natalia pointed to that McLaren, you jumped in and said, “I’ll take one too,” like you were ordering a side of hash browns.
So, now that we’re a little more realistic about cost, let’s think about the future. When you are ready to lay out the cash for your first ride, take a moment to reflect before you sign on the dotted line. Don’t get anything too small or too big. I know you, Natalia, you’ll want the zippy little car. You have that daredevil gene. You’re going to want something cute, fast and sexy, but you’re not going to know how to drive it. I knew a girl in high school who had a Triumph Spitfire, a tiny little convertible. I’m a big guy, and the one time I sat in this car, I realized that I could hang my hand out and touch the ground. It has no airbags, crumple zones or anything to offer as far as safety. It’s a cute car that a cute sixteen-year-old would surely die in if a big guy with a big Ford F-250 with the lift kit stopped short. Not so cute. You’re a rich white girl from the hills, so, statistically, this is how you’re going to die, anyway. You’re not going to get killed in a drive-by, you’re going to be killed in a drive-over, when that Ford F-250 smashes you as you’re texting behind the wheel. Let’s not do anything to stack the deck, shall we? To make sure that you abide by my wishes and stay safe, I have mandated in my will that when I die from exhaustion due to my work schedule your mother implement my safety plan for your first car: a line of tires strung around it like on a tugboat. This is fully legal, and only costs about ten bucks a used tire. Then every six months you go without an accident, we’ll take one off.
Now, you might flip the script. You might wan
t to go with something big. You could be that little chick who wants the giant Suburban as a way of overcompensating. We always talk about guys driving big trucks as a way of making up for a small penis. If that’s true, why is it that I always see little chicks climbing into giant SUVs? I think it’s a power thing. It’s the only time when you are in motion with your head more than five feet from the ground. I also think women like bigger cars so they can carry around all their extra shit.
So, Natalia, you’re either going to have a small car that is too fast for you or a big car that you can’t handle. No matter what happens, I’m sure as you spin your wheels I’ll be spinning in my grave.
Either way, you’ll need insurance. Though when I see insurance company ads, I’m not sure that insurance is even necessary. I mean, according to these ads, the only time you can get into an accident is if you’re having a good time. Crashes only happen if you are having fun with friends, particularly friends of a different race, who are sitting in the backseat. I don’t mean driving drunk kind of fun, just jovial, laughing with your ethnically diverse friends kind of fun. And then, bam. Next thing you know, you get T-boned by an Escalade. I’ve never seen a commercial where someone totals their car if they’re just going eyes forward, hands on the wheel, with a stern look on their face. When I drive I look miserable and I’ve never gotten in an accident. Kids, that’s my tip. Skip the insurance and drive angry. Hands on the wheel at ten and two, and wear a look like Bill Belichick at a press conference, and you’ll never get into a wreck.
Unfortunately, by this time I’m sure there will be a nationwide government mandate on carrying car insurance, so just pick one and get on with your lives. The amount of car insurance commercials currently on television is astounding. I hope it won’t get worse once I’ve departed. You’d think that there was a huge difference between auto insurance companies by how fiercely they compete. But, honestly, they’re all pretty much the same. And yet, they keep coming. More and more commercials for more and more companies, all offering basically the same coverage. It’s like when they say you spend a third of your life sleeping. This is true. What they don’t say is that you’ll spend more than half of your waking hours viewing car insurance commercials.
To the insurance company CEOs reading this here’s my offer: I’ll switch my insurance to the one with the lizard and Lynette’s to the one with Flo, if you’ll agree to never show those ads again. Deal? Hopefully by the time you kids are reading this, we will have invented a chip you can put into the television that knows you already have insurance, and blocks those ads so you can get on with the business of working to pay for it.
While I’m on automotive innovations, let’s talk about car-door openings. Hopefully by the time you’re buying your first car, the auto industry will have figured this out. Why is it that when car doors open they only have two settings? It doesn’t just flap open like the door on your house, it opens to one place and stops, and then it hops to the next place and stops. The first one is just enough to get a little air in and let a little fart out. It’s a crevice just wide enough that maybe DJ Qualls could crawl out of his Denali. The next place car doors stop is where it slams into the door of the Camry next to you in the Best Buy parking lot. That opening is wide enough for the guy from The Blind Side to step out of comfortably holding two bags of groceries. It’s either too open, or not open enough.
Hey, car manufacturers, how about a nice middle ground? A Goldilocks zone, where I can get out comfortably without denting the car next to me? What’s that first opening for? “Hey, I need to let my ferret out to pee?” Not only that, but all the parking spots are getting smaller and all the cars are getting bigger. Plus, our fat asses are getting bigger, too. This is a disaster. Statistics I just made up show that this opening issue is the reason for the 92 percent increase in car-door dings. All I’m saying is let’s treat car doors like a vagina, we don’t want it so tight we can’t slide in, but also not so wide you feel like a tube sock alone in a dryer.
Anyway, on to you, Sonny, and your first wheels. Don’t get anything too cool. A lot of cops are car guys. They were dudes who loved cars and took the cop gig so that they could do burn-outs, and maybe get into a high-speed chase. So, as car guys, cops will be quick to pull over a Lamborghini, just to check it out. You want something nondescript that blends in to get around this. One of my good friends intentionally drives a Volvo station wagon so that he won’t get pulled over. That guy has pretty much circumnavigated the globe while tipsy, and has never once been pulled over because he drives the official vehicle of upper-middle-class soccer moms. So, Sonny boy, take a booze-soaked page from his playbook. (I don’t want to get him in trouble by naming him, so I will keep this alcoholic anonymous.)
Speaking of getting pulled over. Let Pops give you both a couple of tips on getting out of a ticket. Natalia, you’re going to be a good-looking young woman, so you should be fine flirting your way out of a ticket. Sonny, you’ll be in tougher shape. You’ll be a handsome young man, too, but the number of gay male cops who will let you off when you flash your pearly whites is going to be pretty tiny, and any female cops who pull you over will probably be more interested in Natalia, if you know what I mean.
I don’t know if you guys recall, but back in 2014 I actually got pulled over with both of you in the backseat. I had not been pulled over in seven years, thanks to my radar detector keeping me aware of all the spots where the cops hang out at the bottom of hills, waiting to pounce. Plus, I always drove with one eye in the rear-view mirror. Not the safest move, but in Los Angeles you have to drive scared.
On this particular day, we were driving to the ocean. In an attempt to avoid a traffic snarl, I made a last-second decision to hop off one freeway and onto another. I sped up to hit the off ramp and instantly saw a California Highway Patrol cruiser in my rear view. He didn’t have his radar going, so my detector hadn’t gone off. I was just a target of opportunity. My usual cop Spidey-sense let me down. He hit the rollers and pulled me over. I was doing eighty.
By the way, the top speed on the car we were driving was 177 miles per hour. I hadn’t done anything unsafe. The most dangerous thing about the whole scenario was him pulling me over and getting out of his car to walk to my driver’s side window. He was much more likely to get clipped after he got out of his cruiser than any potential accident I could have caused. But anyway. . . .
I knew you were both in the backseat and it was a teachable moment. I had my license and registration ready to go before he even got to my window. And I didn’t fight with him. When he said, “I pulled you over because you were going eighty,” I didn’t shoot back, “Come on, it couldn’t have been more than seventy-three.” I just said, “I understand.” When he asked for a reason, I told him the truth, “I was going on one ramp and changed my mind at the last second and just kind of blanked.”
The first thing I knew was that this cop hadn’t been lying in wait with a radar gun. Those guys are ticket-writing machines. They exist to write tickets; that’s their mandate. So if you get hit with one of those quota-meeting assholes, you’re getting a ticket, no matter how you react. I knew I was just low-hanging fruit for this guy, and thus had a chance to sweet talk my way out of it. That’s the lesson, if you start arguing or give a bunch of excuses, cops are going to give you the ticket just to prove the point. If you push back, they’ll make sure you know who’s in charge. Make them not want to give you a ticket. Make them feel bad for doing their job.
It worked. He let me off with a warning, and we then sped well over the limit all the way to the beach. It wasn’t because I was a celebrity; the guy didn’t recognize me. It was because I was a cop-killer with kindness. I hope you will always remember this little nugget of wisdom.
But just in case you have too many brushes with the po-po, here’s another tip. I once got pulled over on Van Nuys Boulevard doing seventy-five in a thirty-five miles per hour zone. Obviously, I knew I was way over the limit, and that there was no wiggle room. I fully expe
cted a ticket. When the cop started asking me all the usual questions, he threw in an extra one I wasn’t expecting: “Where’d you get that hat?” I forgot that I was wearing an LAPD hat that someone had given me. It was just a coincidence. But being quick on my feet, I told him, in my best humble-brag tone, “I do a little charity work for the boys in blue.” I’d probably done one celebrity golf tournament, and was shitfaced the whole time, but I didn’t go into details. He walked to his motorcycle for a minute, then came back and let me off with a warning.
So here’s the tip, a tip of the cap so to speak. Travel with baseball caps for the police department of every municipality in your area. Do what you have to do to get your hands on them. Go to the local precinct, and say you have a sick kid who loves the cops or something, and then put them in a box in your backseat and swap them as you cross county lines.
While we’re on caps, here’s a great idea that I never got around to manufacturing. Take this and run with it, kids. This simple device will help you and all drivers avoid tickets while using the HOV lane.
To be honest, I fly solo in the HOV all the time. You have to in Los Angeles, if you want to get anywhere. What I do is lean the passenger seat back, and pull the shade down on the passenger’s side, like the sun is bothering Granny’s cataracts. I’ll even pretend to be talking to that person: “Grandma, all the kind words you had about my car headliner have been nullified by your hurtful comment about my double chin.”