Daddy, Stop Talking!: And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting

by Adam Carolla

  After that first time, I thought, “I’m only good for one or two of these a month.” It was a process. Like crème brûlée, it was a once in a while treat. But very quickly, I figured out how to do this efficiently and, dare I say, artfully.

  But before I get into the rules of the sacred rite—I call them Spunk Shui—let me express my wild envy of how plentiful porn is today. When I was a teen, there was none. I used to just lay in a field and wait for a cloud to take the shape of a boob. Now there’s so much Internet porn guys are spending the majority of the day in their refractory period. The question isn’t “Did you beat off today?” it’s “How many times did you beat off today?” I think all the porn access nowadays is going to make you lose your hunger for the hunt. Your generation isn’t even going to bother to date because you can go beg the old lady for a hummer, or you could instead just look at thousands of videos of other chicks giving guys hummers. You’ll lose the eye of the tiger. This cannot be. Not for my son.

  I was sickened the other day when I was perusing some porn with some busty nineteen-year-old, not a blemish on her, doing unspeakable acts with two dudes (and in high def and free). I looked down at the bottom of said video and there were 623 likes and 128 dislikes. Dislikes? How can you dislike that? I want to find the guys who took the time and had the temerity to click “dislike” on the nineteen-year-old Swedish D cup being cornholed. Who are these animals that think, “I don’t know, I’m giving this a thumbs down.” What, there wasn’t enough semen? They didn’t get a bowling pin into the mix? When did this become not enough? I want to find these guys and just slap the crap out of them, film it and put it on the Internet and see how many likes it gets.

  By the way, in that same session an ad popped up that said, “Tired of masturbating?” I thought, “Nope. Try me again in about one-hundred-fifty years.” It was one of those “Hook up with sluts in your neighborhood” ads. I say hit me with that ad when I’m in my refractory period and responding to a bunch of work e-mails. That’s when you might get me to try to connect with horny singles in my area. But you caught me at the wrong time. I will have no interest in sex in 10, 9, 8, 7 . . . ahhh.

  You kids don’t know how easy you have it. Because there was no Internet in my day, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue used to be jackable.

  I know guys who used to beat off to the Adam and Eve or the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Not even porn, but a lingerie catalogue! My lowest point was when I went to a sporting-goods store and fell in love with the model on the raft box. This was a busty chick floating in a pool, holding a lemonade. To me, at age thirteen, not only was she hot, she was a celebrity. I assumed she must have lived in an inflatable mansion somewhere. It would actually make a great documentary to track that chick down. I could probably pull this off now. I have a successful career, she’s in her fifties, and it might be fun. But I digress. The point is there is no way the young ’uns of today are fantasizing about raft-box models.

  Here is my “I walked three miles in the snow” story to you, Sonny. I watched my first porn at age sixteen. Ray’s brother had an 8mm stag film. We had to set up a projector and a screen. If you wanted to beat off back then, your parents couldn’t just go out grocery shopping, they had to go to Whole Foods . . . in Spain. They had to go on a cruise for you to have enough time to rub one out.

  Ray brought the stag film, literally a black-and-white film, and a projector over to my grandparents’, who were in Europe, to set it up. They literally had to be on another continent for us to have enough time to arrange a porn-viewing session. But we couldn’t find a white wall to project it on. The best we could find was a white chest of drawers in my grandmother’s room, so we showed the movie on that. At one point, I pulled out the middle drawer and said, “Look, 3-D.” When the party wrapped up, the film got left behind in my possession, but not the projector. So the next day, I was literally holding the film up to the light and squinting. No jewelers’ loupe, just looking at eight millimeters of porn. That’s less than a third of an inch, approximately the width of a pencil. Sadly, John Holmes’s cock was still bigger than mine.

  Yes, watching porn used to be a communal experience. It was so rare that we used to get together, have a party and watch porn. If you had roommates and you were the only guy in the apartment with a DVD player, or, in my day, a VHS player, you had to make sure to hook it up in the living room. Otherwise, your room would become the designated jack zone. It was a philanthropic gesture that not only was good karma, it also kept your roommates’ chi off your comforter.

  You had to treat your porn like a commodity back in my day. It would get traded and passed around. You would show up at a buddy’s house with a shopping bag full of porn magazines and trade them like baseball cards. The aforementioned Dave of the Shave Dave party worked at a convenience store, so he would often pilfer porn (among other things). I’d go to his place and turn it into the floor of the New York Cock Exchange. There’d be heated negotiations. “One Gent for two Milkin’ and Poppin’s? Are you nuts?” At one point, it got so tense that Dave’s roommate, who worked the third shift, came out and shouted, “Can you keep it down!”

  And you’d have to hide your collection. It was a nice treat when you’d put it away for a while and forget about it, only to rediscover it a few months later. That’s a pleasure you’ll never know. One night, back when porno used to be on VHS tape, after a couple glasses of red wine, I stumbled across my stash and saw one that was named Head Cleaner. I got excited until I realized it was an actual head cleaner for a VCR. I still beat off.

  And you’ll never know the awkwardness of visiting the porn section of the ma-and-pa video store. Now everything streams wirelessly onto all of your devices simultaneously. When I was a teen, there were little local video stores that had the porn section shoehorned into the corner. The entire place was nine hundred square feet, so they took a four-by-four corner and hung Western doors, beads or a shower curtain in the opening. It was like the world’s worst—or best—voting booth. If there was anyone else in the store, you’d have to pretend to read the back of the box for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre while you waited for them to walk out with their rental before you ducked into the porn section.

  One time, I was in that section and an Asian guy came in. It was uncomfortable, because I didn’t want to offend him by looking at the Asian section. So I meandered over to the blacks and lesbians. Who knows, I could have been looking at his sister on the box of Charlie Chan in Her Can.

  And God forbid you had to call in advance to find out if they had the title you wanted. I interviewed the great Ron Jeremy on Loveline when he was promoting a movie called Spank Me, Fuck Me (featuring number-one Asian big-boob queen, Minka). Given that cast, I had to see it. So the following day I called my local video store. It’s the first and last time I ever did that. I used to just wander in and pretend that I’ve never even heard of porn. “Hmm, what’s in this section behind the beaded curtain? Pornography? Okay, I’ll try anything once.”

  So I called and uncomfortably asked for Spank Me, F’ Me. I didn’t even want to say the full fuck. The guy didn’t know what I was talking about. So I had to ask again, I got really formal. “Spank Me, F’ Me . . . It’s an adult feature.” As if that was going to make it better. The guy said “What?” again. After one more round of this I finally said, “Spank Me, Fuck Me,” and the guy hung up. He must have thought I was making a prank call. But I’d say this, Vivid, you lost yourself a sale with your stupid title.

  As weird as it is to think about, porn used to be a marker for where we were in our cultural evolution. Looking at porn titles now shows that we’ve lost all sense of nuance and subtlety in our society. I was skipping through Pay-per-View and looking at the porn titles recently, and it was all MILFs Who Crave Black Cranks and 18 Year Old Anal Loving Asians. Huh, wonder what those are about? I’m intrigued.

  What happened to porn titles where you used to have to use your imagination like Emmanuel or Behind the Green Door?
You knew it was porn, but you didn’t know what type. But you and your penis were going to find out.

  It’s not just porn titles. It’s everything. We used to have sandwiches called the Reuben and the Monte Cristo. They used to name sandwiches after celebrities. Now the burgers are “The Double Angus Mushroom Cheddar Bacon Bar-B-Q Thing Between Two Buns That You Put In Your Mouth Sandwich.” Everything has to be completely described and on the nose because everyone is a checked-out idiot.

  Eventually every porn title is gonna end with “. . . that you masturbate to.” In the future, we can look forward to seeing Barely Legal Lesbians Use a Double-Ended Dildo (and Then You Masturbate to It).

  Now, let’s have a talk about the mess that comes with beating off. I was asked once during a live podcast if I could possibly complain about orgasms. And guess what? I can! If guys were like chicks and could have multiple mess-free orgasms the world would be our oyster. Imagine the VIP room at the strip club if nothing came out of your dick at the end of a spirited lap dance. Actually, we’d probably never leave those strip clubs and society would crash to a halt, but still. Women don’t realize how important orgasms are for us. They can’t appreciate it. For women, orgasms are like solar energy, they’re a renewable resource. For men, they’re fossil fuel—there’s only so much we can put out. Orgasms are awesome, but a moment later it’s like someone hocked a loogie on your belly. You can get hummus out of shag carpet faster than you can get jizz out of thigh hair.

  There’s no science to where the stuff ends up, either. Once in a blue moon, when you take a piss it goes forked and hits the seat, but it’s not like when you take a shit it circles around and hits you in the back of your head. Male ejaculate is just too unpredictable. And it makes double-teaming a chick with a buddy really dangerous. If you get your load on the other guy, your friendship ain’t coming back from that. In fact, it will probably lead to a Hatfield and McCoy–style generational dispute. You know what the Bible says: “An eye for an eye, a spooge for a spooge.”

  Before this gets any creepier than it already is, and before your mother rips her eyes out from the images I’m putting in her head, I’ll wrap up with, as promised, my sacred rules for the Art of Spunk Shui.

  One of my great accomplishments in life is having this defined by the Urban Dictionary:

  Spunk Shui: Coined by Adam Carolla: The philosophy of setting up a room or area of the house for masturbation with the intent of not getting inadvertently caught by friends or loved ones.

  I realized this spiritual calling one day when I was at Bill Simmons’s house and he was explaining how he was going to set up his guest house/office. He said, “Ace, I’m going to put a wall of TV monitors here and I’ll put my computer there.” Bill had ignored the first sacred rule of Spunk Shui: never turn your back to the door. I said, “Bill, you’re going to tell your wife you’ve got a column to put to bed but you’re really going to be burning the midnight Jergen’s because you came down with a bad case of writer’s cock. Then the wife will decide to show her support and bring you a cup of tea. The way you have this room currently configured she’s looking at your back and the monitors’ front, which has the back of some chick in her barely legal debut.”

  There is both an art and a science to not getting caught beating off. This has happened to me and I don’t want it to happen to you, my boy.

  When I was eighteen and living in my dad’s garage in North Hollywood, I was having a spirited session. Of course, I didn’t have any materials at the time. There was no VCR in that garage. There wasn’t even a wall. The wall was simply the closed garage door and a little Henry’s Roofing Sealer along the bottom. So, as Willy Wonka said, I was entering a world of pure imagination. I was Willy Wank-a. In a masterpiece of bad timing, my buddy John decided at that moment to pop in for a visit. And I mean literally pop in. He was an energetic guy and decided he was going to kick open the side door and do a John Belushi “Ha!” entrance. He didn’t know at the time what I was doing with my dong; he was just trying to startle me. Well, boy did I have a surprise for him. He, unintentionally, timed it perfectly. I was right at the moment of completion, past the point of no return. His “Ha!” went straight into “Ahhh!” I’m sure it haunts him to this very day. And it definitely traumatized me. I didn’t beat off again for a good four hours.

  Here are the remaining Seven Sacred Rules of Spunk Shui (as read by Morgan Freeman):

  Sacred Rule #2: Location, location, location. It’s always wise to place your spankatorium at the end of a long hallway, preferably with a raised foundation and wood flooring. Carpets on slabs can turn a three-hundred-pound mother-in-law in heels into a ninja.

  Sacred Rule #3: Lose the lube. This stuff seems like a great idea when you’re living at home and your stepmom has a tub of it the size of a ketchup dispenser at Fenway. But wait until you’re out on your own and your roommate has cleaned out the last drop of Udder Balm. Any man who experienced the heart and cock-ache of the any-port-in-a-storm, “Fuck it, I’ll use Prell” jack knows all too well the slippery slope that is the slippery cock. It’s like the alcoholic who can’t afford booze and is drinking Sterno. Sonny, I don’t want you to “chase the lube dragon.” Once you get on that you’ll have to go to a rehab or prison to get off of it. It will be calling you like heroin calls a junkie. If I’m already too late, quit now! Just white knuckle it. Pun intended.

  Sacred Rule #4: Don’t get married to the sound. Either you will have the volume up so loud you won’t hear the front door opening or worse, when the old lady’s asleep you’ll resort to plugging headphones into your computer and you’ll end up like Sara Connor’s roommate from the first Terminator. Whether it’s the Blu-ray edition of Taboo II or staring at some high-def vids on a 24-inch Mac monitor, if you can’t jack in silence it’s time to turn in your gui.

  Sacred Rule #5: Don’t get married to the position. You never know when, or where, your next spank-ortunity will be. Even if you’ve followed all the other rules of Spunk Shui there are going to be times when you’re traveling. It’s like teams that play well in domes but suck in cold weather stadiums. You need to be flexible. Literally. And God forbid you have a near death experience. You need to be able to snap one off at thirty-thousand feet in a plane doing a nose-dive or while being chased by a Kodiak bear. You don’t want the last thought on your deathbed to be “I wish I had jerked off more.” That’s bad karma.

  Sacred Rule #6: Be into what your wife or girlfriend looks like. This one is more for when you do get caught if you don’t adhere to the principles above. Assuming you will eventually get caught, it’s best to be watching a chick who looks enough like your wife or girlfriend that she won’t be completely offended, but enough like someone new that you can still get wood. I have a friend who’s into the MILF thing so it’s cool with his forty-year-old wife that he’s looking at forty-five-year-old women. But she wouldn’t be as cool if he were into busty Latinas in their twenties. So find a site with the same types as your lady, or as I call them, fuck-similes.

  Sacred Rule #7: Settle. One way to get caught is to spend too long looking for the perfect thing. You can waste hours upon hours looking at Internet porn. It’s like walking down an endless aisle in a virtual porn store the size of Antarctica. But the truth is, you can find something to facilitate the sacred act in a few minutes if you keep your mind as open as your pants.

  I have two inventions to nip this in the bud. The first is an app to connect your laptop, that is, your mobile porn device, to a treadmill or elliptical machine. You’ll have to run for the amount of time you want to watch porn. Not while you’re actually watching porn. That could lead to a lot of slip-and-fall lawsuits. I mean you have to earn that beat-off time with some exercise. Imagine how fit we’d all be. Well, all men. Though if you’re anything like me this would just mean a trip to the Home Depot parking lot to hire some day laborers to hit the treadmill and raise the total time.

  My other idea is a little more practical. It’s simply a softwa
re fix. Single guys should have a lock-out timer for the porn-jack session. You set the time you think you need to complete the task. It then locks you out for four times that period if you go past your limit. If you give yourself thirty minutes and go thirty-one minutes you’ll be locked out for two hours. Imagine how productive our society would be with this app. We’d be off foreign oil, there’d be no cancer and we’d all probably be living on Mars. I’ve even got a tag line for the ads, “Your cock is on the clock.”

  I hope that answers all your questions about puberty, Sonny. With the wuss that your grandfather was it’s important to me that I teach you about all aspects of becoming a man. It’s a confusing and scary process that you’re not entirely in control of. Just do your best, and know that you’ll be laughing at yourself and how awkward it was for you later in life.

  And sorry if it was a little too focused on masturbating, but it’s clearly a topic I’m passionate about and upon which I have a lot of wisdom to impart. You’re my boy, my heir, and you have some big shoes to fill. I don’t want to say I’ve taken masturbating to the next level but before I started doing it they called it amateur-bating.

  CHAPTER 10

  iPads and iPods Are Fucking Up How iParent