President Me

by Adam Carolla

  And the plane you’re about to get on is a flying sleep machine. There is nothing you can do in that confined space other than sleep. If you want to lean back with your eyes closed, that is the perfect venue. Collapsed like a rag doll in front of the bathroom so I have to step over you to take a piss is not a good plan.

  Plus the airport has a hundred bars in it. There’s no better place to kill time. There’s a TV showing the game, there’s beers on tap. Go in there, you idiots, and cut the shit.

  And finally, I have a new law for all airport decor. Do not freak me out or bum me out before I get on the plane. Just before you get to security at Burbank airport you are greeted by this:

  Do you know who that dude is? That’s right, Amelia Earhart. Famous lesbian/aviator. Best known for two things—eating pussy and CRASHING AIRPLANES. Nothing instills confidence in the flying public like a large bronze depiction of a woman who ditched her plane in the Pacific never to be seen again leaning against a part that broke off upon impact. Sure, let’s rub her for luck before getting on the twenty-seven-year-old Southwest regional jet. The only saving grace is that I don’t think the majority of people know who this is when they see the statue. I imagine a lot of people tell their friend, “Yeah, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Let’s meet next to that statue of the dude with the paddle.”

  A side note as I closely examine this picture. Let’s talk about the placement of the velvet rope. If you can stand outside of the velvet and lean against the object the velvet rope is protecting without touching said velvet rope, then the parties involved, you have done a piss-poor job of velvet rope placement. And how is this protecting anything? You have three tons of bronze lesbian. Do you think there are some mischievous teens who are going to pull Mom’s minivan up to the curb, try to run in and steal the statue, and go, “Damn, a velvet rope. Didn’t see that one coming. Let’s just go to the park and light a hobo on fire.”

  PLANES, PILOTS, AND PASSENGERS

  AND HOW THEY PISS ME OFF

  There are many changes my FAA will make to planes themselves, the pilots, and more importantly the passengers’ behavior in the cabin. This stuff has always driven me nuts as a passenger. Once I’m president, I’ll finally get the chance to fix them.

  First up, pilots. What’s up with that giant leather rolling briefcase, fellas? I have to gate-check my backpack but you can roll something the size and weight of a microwave on board with no problem? It’s like two leather cinder blocks stacked up with a handle. Those things don’t exist anywhere else. What do you guys keep inside of those anyway? It can’t be that important. And how much shit do you need?

  As the agency that oversees pilots from now on, my FAA mandates that they get all of their crap into a fanny pack. You’re just going to flip on the autopilot and start talking shit about the stewardesses anyway. Attorneys appearing before the Supreme Court don’t lug that much stuff.

  As far as the in-flight announcements, there will be no more of this “If you look out the left side of the plane you can see the Grand Canyon” bullshit. Besides the fact that only half the people are on the correct side, the wings block most of the view, and if you’re in the middle you have to push aside the guy who’s asleep in the window seat to see it. Only 15 percent of the passengers can take a gander at the landmark. And, oh boy, it’s the Grand Canyon! Never seen a picture of that before. The announcements are never like “If you look to the right you’ll see an oil rig on fire and, those of you in the aisle seats, Cheryl the stewardess is going to pull her top over her head.”

  I also don’t need to know how many knots the wind is coming out of the northeast at when I land in Burbank. There’s nothing I can do with that information. “Oh, the northeast? Damn. I lost a bet to the guy in 21C. I said northwest.” Pilots do this because they know that we don’t know what the fuck knots are. And guess what, pilots, we don’t care.

  Also cut it with all announcements coming from “the flight deck.” Not anymore. I decree that we now must return to calling it a cockpit. I know this is because the female pilots and stewardesses didn’t want to work in something called the cock-pit. I don’t get it. Anytime you want to give me a job in something called the “titty-room,” I’m there.

  Plus I really don’t need to know where the crew is based. No more, “On behalf of your Atlanta-based crew . . .” It’s not like the passengers are thinking, “Oh, Atlanta. Good people down there.” Again, this is not information I can use. Just wake me up when I get to my destination or when you start serving booze.

  And please stop apologizing. “We know you have a lot of choices when it comes to air travel. Thank you for choosing Delta.” It’s like you’re admitting your airline sucks. I don’t do that at the end of my shows. “I know you have many choices in comedy. I want to thank you for coming here instead of seeing Dom Irrera at the Laugh-ateria.”

  And finally, enough with the first names on the pilot announcements. It’s part of the “everybody’s a winner, there’s no ranking” bullshit going on in our country. I want my pilots to be Captain Gilmour and First Officer Winters, not Captain Bill and First Officer Dan. These guys are in charge of my life, I don’t want the guy who I could smoke a joint with. Between the first names and the “we know you have a lot of choices” apology, I’m not feeling very confident when the plane gets up in the air. Maybe that’s the point. If we all fear that the flight crew has no idea what they’re doing, we’re more likely to double down on the in-flight booze.

  Now, on to the passengers. I understand, but don’t appreciate, that every flight has gone from business to casual. Remember when people would dress to travel? I’m not talking about a bow tie and a pocket square, but they didn’t fly like it was laundry day and they were heading down to the coin-op. I’ve flown Southwest and seen a guy wearing cutoff sweats and flip-flops. It’s not a Kenny Chesney concert in your backyard, you’re leaving the state. Why aren’t you at least wearing something with pockets? Don’t you feel weird getting on a plane in a hockey jersey and huaraches? Part of the problem is that flights now are so cheap. You can get to Vegas for forty bucks. The people that were formerly taking a Greyhound or riding in the back of a pickup truck are now sitting next to you on an airplane. But the bigger problem is people have no regard for their fellow passengers.

  And to that point, here are some new in-flight rules. Violating any of the following will now be grounds for opening the emergency door in midflight and tossing your ass out at thirty thousand feet, per my presidential decree.

  1. IF YOU’RE IN FIRST CLASS YOU MUST DRINK. More than once I’ve had the guy next to me on the plane who doesn’t drink. I hate this because it really shines a light on my alcoholism. I have to assume he’s an air marshal or a terrorist because it’s insane to turn away free booze. This, by the way, is why I’m going to name Alec Baldwin as my TSA director. I’ve never flown with the man but I’m pretty sure that he’d strictly enforce my mandatory getting-shitfaced-in-first-class policy.

  2. NO MORE USING THE BACK OF MY SEAT AS A HANDLE TO HOIST YOURSELF UP. I’m trying to take a nap and the jerk-off behind me is yanking my headrest backward to get out of his chair. That’s the small piece of real estate I’m renting to sleep upon, not the handle Grandma uses to get off the toilet. Here’s my solution: All planes will now have the dangling loop strap you used to see on subways for people to steady themselves. They’ll hang from the top of the cabin so you can lift yourself with that instead of my hair.

  3. ALL SEATS MUST RECLINE. The closest I’ve ever come to being raped is sitting in that nonreclining last-row seat on the Southwest flight and having the seat in front of me lean back into my knees. I don’t see why we can’t just move every seat up a sixteenth of an inch so the back row can recline. Well, that nonreclining back-row seat is now illegal in my America. The problem is that the airlines are losing money and want to cram as much humanity into their vessels as possible, just like the slave ships of old. But unlike those Nubian warriors, we’re getting fatter by th
e day. And ruder. This is a terrible combination, especially in a flying tin can.

  4. RESPECT THE AREA AROUND YOUR SEAT. Even when you’re not literally spilling over into my seat, everyone has become so narcissistic and horrible that they have no awareness of the limited space on the plane. I was flying back from Phoenix not too long ago and I was in that weird row near the exit door that only has two seats—an aisle seat and a middle seat with space on the left for the door. I sat in the aisle seat. The guy next to me was sitting with his legs spread out like they were the Hatfields and McCoys. It was like his balls hated each other. The space you have is clearly delineated by the split on the seats in front of you. This dick had his knee way past the Mason-Dixon line. I’m six two, so there’s not a lot of room to begin with and he had the whole open space to the left for his overage. It wasn’t like he was asleep or had his earbuds in either; he was wide-awake and taking up residence in my space and could hear me steaming. I decided, “Fuck it, I’ll open my legs too,” and pressed my knee against his as a signal. No response. I was thinking, “Are we seriously not going to have a conversation about this? Do you not feel the warm thing with a pulse mashed up against you?” I pressed more flesh with this guy than I did any of my high school girlfriends and he never budged. Remember when just clearing your throat was enough to shame someone? You have to hit people with an oar now. I feel like I’m in a staring contest with someone who has no eyelids.

  It is nice when you can pit the fat guy against the rude guy. I was flying once with Dr. Drew and we hadn’t booked seats next to each other. So when we got on the plane I asked the guy who was preventing me from being able to do a Bloody Mary–fueled complaint fest in Drew’s ear the whole flight, “Excuse me, could you swap seats with me so that I could sit with my friend?” He just said, “No.” No explanation. Just a straight-up “no.” I then went to my seat one row back. As I buckled in I saw a fat guy come waddling down the aisle. And when I say fat I mean if John Goodman ate Adele fat. The plane was rocking back and forth with each step. As he walked toward the row containing the cock who wouldn’t switch seats with me I thought, “Please, dear God, let him sit next to that asshole. Please.” It may be the one prayer that God ever answered because the guy plopped his ample carriage down next to the dick who now was regretting not moving. I shouted up to him, “Good. Enjoy.” I’m not sure if the larger gentleman knew what I was talking about but the other guy got the message.

  5. IF YOU’RE IN COACH, STAY IN COACH. I know a lot of you are thinking, “Fuck you, Richie Rich.” The truth is the vast majority of time I fly Southwest or JetBlue (of course, all of this is going to change once I am president!), neither of which has first class. But when I’m flying with an airline that does, I want the benefits that come with the extra cash I coughed up for the ticket. Having a lower passenger-to-toilet ratio is one of those benefits. I can’t tell you how many flights I’ve been on where people from coach (or as us folks in the upper crust like to call it, steerage) push aside the mosquito net that passes for a curtain to come shit up the first-class head. I was on Virgin Atlantic recently and they had a magnet-tipped velvet rope separating the classes and someone came up, pulled the magnet from the wall, and waltzed right up to piss all over our seat. It’s sad that we’ll eventually get to the point where airlines have to hire a big black guy with a clipboard to work as a first-class bouncer.

  6. YOUR BAGS GO IN YOUR BIN, NOT MINE. There is complete and utter lawlessness when it comes to the overhead compartments. I’ve had to gate-check luggage because someone put their stuff in my bin. Shouldn’t this just be a given? The space above YOUR seat is YOUR space. The bin above MY seat is MY space. Why should I have to walk down fourteen aisles swimming against the current like a salmon, fighting with the drink cart to get my neck pillow? This is a tightly controlled environment, they tell you when you can sit, when you can stand, when you can piss, and when you can drink. Yet enforcing this rule seems to be a nonstarter. When you rent a car you rent the trunk as well, correct? What if you got the car at Hertz and it was just full of someone else’s shit? What if the dealer was just like “Yeah, I’m not sure whose hockey equipment that is. Sorry.”

  This is the micro version of the macro “narcissism is ruining us” argument I laid down at the beginning of this book. These are the same people who are asking the politicians what they are going to do for them personally, not the country at large. Nowhere is this scourge more evident in air travel than in the rise of dogs and bare feet on planes.

  7. KEEP YOUR FUCKING SHOES ON. I shouldn’t have to say this, but on my last three flights I’ve had bare feet come poking through between the seats. When did we get so simultaneously casual and disgusting? I blame this on the taking off of the shoes at airport security. We’re so used to being barefoot now on the airport floor we just keep the shoes off on the plane too. So after mashing your bare feet into the used gum, sweat, and dirt on the security-screening-area carpet (ironically the world’s most disgusting surface is the one we’re forced to tread on barefoot), you then wipe them all over the seat I’ll be occupying? No. And every now and again I’ll see some special aeronautical assholery where the guy has somehow pulled off a yoga move and gotten his bare feet on the wall or ceiling of the cabin. Since I’ve been complaining about this, people have been tweeting me pictures of these atrocities. One was a guy turning the overhead light switch on with his toe, which is worse plane behavior than anything the nineteen hijackers did on 9/11. That guy should be raped with a rolled-up SkyMall catalog. One of the best pictures a fan sent was the guy at a major airport—you could see the moving sidewalk in front of him and a 777 in the background—in the full downward-facing-dog yoga position, which in this case should have been called the Downward Facing Douche. His shoes were off and he was . . . ​wait for it . . . ​shirtless. He was in a major metropolitan airport, not the shitty detached garage he converted into a yoga “studio.” If you count socks and shoes, he was wearing less than a third of his clothes. Someone should have taken a running start from behind him and kicked him in the nuts like they were going for a fifty-five-yard field goal.

  This is not just an annoyance. This is a safety risk. The point of the “laptop case must be safely stowed safely” bullshit is because that case can get in the way if there’s an emergency. What about the bitch in 28F who’s taken off her UGGs and placed them in the aisle and has her bare feet on my seat. Is this not an impediment to me getting to the emergency exit? And is there a worse plan for you than to be barefoot when the plane catches fire or if we need to make an emergency landing in the winter? You’ll be standing on the frozen tarmac of O’Hare in your bare feet. You’ll be shoeless like John McClane in Die Hard 1 but in the setting of Die Hard 2.

  If you tried to go barefoot on a ride at Disneyland, they wouldn’t let you. Why on a plane post-9/11? There are no laws on this because we could have never imagined this world. If you went back a century and tried to convince lawmakers at the time that this is something their successors would have to consider, they would throw down their top hats, shout “Poppycock!,” and swing their pocket watch at your head.

  Do you remember back when bare feet were disgusting? Back when we had something called a civilization? This barefootedness has crept up on us. We didn’t make Dr. Scholl the surgeon general. This is just us becoming more narcissistic. Every time you go to the Starbucks or the smoothie place, you’ll see the ass clown with his bare feet on the table. I’m putting my bagel there in twenty minutes, man. What’s your plan? You gonna put your tootsies up on the table, lean back, and grab a little shut-eye? The world is not your living room. I’d like to pick my nose wherever I want and on a hot day I’d like to just be in my Jockeys, but we have a society. So slide your feet back into your Crocs and stow them safely under the seat in front of you or I’m going to stow a size-twelve steel-toed work boot up your ass.

  There are only two bright spots to all of this. First, if you’re one of the many millions of males out there with
a foot fetish, it’s game on. This is the Golden Age. You must be walking around with a constant erection. Every flight and every Starbucks has turned into your Playboy Mansion. Second, this gives me an excuse to include my Crocs joke. Wearing Crocs is like getting blown by a guy. It feels great until you look down and realize that you’re gay.

  It occurs to me to that this non-shoe-wearing is the domain of rich white people. Blue-collar people don’t do this. They might end up on a flight wearing a mustard-stained wife-beater, but they still have the dignity to keep their shoes on. This is the hipster dude working on the MacBook Pro while sipping a double-skim, light-foam, extra-hot soy latte or his performance-artist wife who boards the plane with her “service” dog because she has irritable bowel syndrome.

  8. JUST LEAVE YOUR PETS AT HOME. That’s my biggest plane pet peeve, and it’s a literally a pet peeve. I was on a flight from Dallas to Tucson in first class and the woman next to me had a little mutt with her. If there’s anything that says “first class,” it’s inhaling dander and dog farts for six hours. I put on an Academy Award–worthy performance, asking this woman about her dog, saying that I was interested because my wife and I were thinking about getting another dog, but really I just wanted to make fun of her onstage that night in Tucson. I asked her what her “service dog” was for, and she said anxiety. Bitch, that’s what the airport Chili’s is for. Have a couple of “service beers” before the flight like me and other normal people. We all have a little anxiety before getting on a plane. I paid a bunch of extra money and I can’t even get a Bloody Mary before the flight takes off, but this cunt can bring Benji on with her because she has a note from her doctor stating that she’s a fucking nut job? It’s a great society we’ve crafted. We’ve decided to bend over backward for these bat-shit bitches. That’s what this is, a personality disorder. We should create a separate airline for these people—Narcissistic Personality Disorder Airlines. “NPD Air. Come fly the crazy skies.” And how about that note from the doctor? Here’s my rule—you should have to get a note from my doctor to bring your damn dog on board.