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

by Adam Carolla

  I CANNOT BEGIN to express the envy that I feel when I see what the entertainment world has to offer my kids in contrast to what I had. Whether it’s television, movies, toys or even commercials, what my kids get to enjoy far exceeds the entertainment I got when I was a lad. It’s not that we didn’t have a television, it’s just that growing up my television was deeper than it was wide. It was a thirteen-inch black-and-white Zenith and got three channels. Let me be more specific. It got all three channels. That’s all we had.

  Now my kids have a 70-inch plasma television with so many channels they could watch one a day and not run out for three years. And that’s not to mention the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming possibilities.

  My kids watch a television that is bigger than they are. If you lay my kids diagonally across the screen, their toes and scalp wouldn’t make it to the corners. And if you took the television off the wall and set it on the floor it’s bigger than the service porch I called a room growing up.

  Yet this ginormous television goes, like all things in their life, wildly unappreciated. They, like all kids now, are completely obsessed with their mobile devices.

  I woke up one summer morning last year (I know it was summer because the kids were out of school) and walked by Natalia on the way to make some coffee. She was perched on the sectional sofa in front of Jerry Jones’s Jumbotron with whatever iCarly or Dog with a Blog bullshit Disney Channel was pushing out at the time. But as I passed, I had to do a double take and a double back, because I noticed that she wasn’t watching the gigantic show in front of her. She had her nose buried in her iPhone. There was a wall-sized show ten feet from her but she was watching the wallet-sized screen ten inches from her face.

  Somehow the kids of today got so spoiled on big that the pendulum swung in the opposite direction and now small is cool. (If only this were true for penises.) I had a tiny television when I was growing up because that was the technology at the time but believe me I would have gladly stepped up to the nineteen inches and basked in the glory of a Barney Miller episode. It would have blown my mind to see eight inches of Abe Vigoda.

  I think this change is a bad sign for the future. How’s it going to pan out? When Natalia’s thirteen will she be at an IMAX theater with one eye closed to look at the postage stamp–sized contact lens implant television called iLid?

  I’m not joking when I say that Natalia and Sonny are totally obsessed with their mobile devices. One afternoon, we were leaving for some event and I walked into Natalia’s room and saw her bedroom window was open. So I told her to shut her screen. She said, “I did.” I replied, “I’m looking right at it, and it’s wide open. I don’t want flies to get in.” She then held up her iPad and angrily said, “I did. Look, I shut the screen.”

  We almost had a very 2014 version of “Who’s on First?” going on. No wonder old people are confused by technology. We don’t give anything new names. Think about it: window, screen, tweet, bookmark, cookie and spam are all words that used to mean something else. Hell, tablet is simultaneously the oldest and newest means of communication on the planet. We have the same word for the thing Moses carved the Ten Commandments into and what my daughter is Instagramming and selfie-ing from.

  If it’s not on a tablet and in 3-D and costs at least three hundred fifty dollars, my kids don’t give a shit. As I write this, I’m looking out my window at an air hockey table that is being used as a regular table to set junk on because my kids used it once on December 26 and then never again because they’re so sucked into the virtual world. Think about the toys and games we old farts had and what our kids would think of them.

  Ant Farms: Do you remember ant farms? Ask your parents or grandparents if you don’t. (Actually, just Google it. Why have a conversation with those old fucks?) The ant farm was two pieces of plastic half an inch apart with a bunch of dirt in the middle and you’d just stare at it and watch ants dig tunnels. This was the height of entertainment for us. (My generation, not the actual Carollas. That was too costly an item for us. I had to go to my kitchen to look at ants.)

  First off, what did you expect the ants to do? They’re digging a tunnel. That’s what ants do. Big fucking deal. Whose idea was this? Finally, a reason to bring ants into the house. Don’t we spend most of our time trying to keep them out? If you want to see ants, just leave food out on the counter.

  But the point is this. If I gave Sonny an ant farm, he’d drug me, put me on my back, take a Lincoln Log, put it in my ass and use the ant farm to hammer it in like he was driving the golden spike.

  Venus Fly Trap: We never had one of these at our house, but there was one at the counter of the gardening store up the street. We’d go there just to put our finger in it and watch it slowly close. Could you imagine a kid nowadays being entertained, nay, amazed by this like I was as a youth? No fucking chance.

  Shadow Puppets: Yes, back in the day we used to think shadow puppets were entertaining. Someone would hang a sheet, take the shade off the lamp and make something that looked approximately like an ostrich head. That’s what we had to fill our sad days. If I attempted to entertain my kids by folding my hands to make a shadow puppet of a bird, they’d flip me the bird.

  Fake Rocket or Horse in Front of the Supermarket: When I was a kid, this is what made the trip to the grocery store worthwhile. Not that there were a lot of Carolla family trips to the supermarket. My mom would hit the Full o’ Life health food store for some sprouted wheat bread and jicama, while the rest of you readers over thirty-five were riding the fake horsie in front of the Ralph’s or Stop & Shop. That thing cost a quarter, and would sort-of vibrate or slowly rock for a minute, yet it was the height of entertainment. If it was the rocket version you held on to a metal disk of a steering wheel that either didn’t turn at all or spun in perpetuity.

  Every now and again you see these around, but you never see kids on them. They’re like the appendix. They used to serve a purpose, but now they’re just taking up space. Kids today wouldn’t put up with that shit. And more importantly, they’d have no idea how to operate them. I don’t think my son or daughter have any idea what a quarter looks like. They’d be trying to swipe Mommy’s debit card in the horse’s ass.

  Vibrating Electric Football Game: This is yet another game I wanted, but never had. This one broke two cardinal rules of the Carolla household—it plugged in and it brought joy. Anything that used electricity, either in the form of household current or batteries, was a no go. More importantly, this went on a tabletop. Anything that required space could never enter our abode. There was no place in my house to set up a game. My room was literally a converted service porch with a water meter still in it, so it wasn’t like I could even have friends over and set up a game of Clue on the floor.

  This game was basically a vibrator that got flattened. You’d put little plastic football players on and they’d spin in a circle. But it was the opposite of football. Random vibrations would make the guys go in various directions bumping into each other. There was no strategy. If they were playing electric football, Kate Upton would win three out of five against Bill Belichick. The little foam football would invariably get lost and one guy would always fall over and just spin in a circle on the ground like Curly from The Three Stooges. Sonny would never have any interest in playing electric football, or as I now call it, Madden 1973.

  Rock Tumblers: I also wanted a rock tumbler when I was a kid, but we couldn’t afford it. So I was told, and this is completely true, to put rocks in a jar, add some water and shake it incessantly. For days, I just held a Mason jar full of rocks and shook it. At some point, the bottom of the glass jar broke free and fell out in a perfect circle without shattering. The rocks still looked exactly the same, but I was able to remove the bottom of that jar like the world’s worst jewel thief. That was the end of my rock-tumbling days. Except later, when I used Rock Tumbler as my gay porn name. That’s how pathetic I was and how spoiled my kids are. I had to make a DIY version of something they would never take out of the box.


  The Viewmaster: Another pathetic toy memory from my childhood. This was the world’s worst pair of binoculars. You’d hold them up to your eyes and look at shit you didn’t care about. “Here’s what the Grand Canyon looks like from the south side.” Amazing. If they had photos of Lynda Carter with her top off I’d have been all eyes, but instead you got to see the construction of EPCOT Center. It was a portable version of school slide projector. And as entertaining.

  Slinky: This toy is like an accordion that doesn’t produce sound and is made of scrap metal. Literally. It’s a by-product. It was originally a spring made by a naval engineer to stabilize equipment on ships, but somewhere along the way a genius marketing guy decided it would make for a fun, cheap toy. This is one we could actually afford in my family. And it didn’t require batteries or parental involvement. Yet it was still a rip-off. The commercials show it going down stairs, right? Never in the now-seventy-year history of this lame toy has this happened. Definitely not when a young Adam Carolla tried it. Like all things in my home, including my parents, it just sat there.

  I think the thing only got popular because of their jingle, though it certainly wouldn’t fly today. There’d be a lawsuit by GLAAD. “It’s good for a girl or a boy” would become “It is fun for a girl or a boy, or a transgender, or a pansexual or an asexual, gender-neutral human.”

  The Guinness Book of World Records: I loved this book when I was a kid. I could have never imagined ending up included in the book as the record holder for Most Downloaded Podcast. Portable music players didn’t exist until I was a teen and even then a Walkman was way outside of the Carolla budget. We were so pathetic and our self-esteem was so bad my parents had the little known 7-Track player. But anyway, looking back I can’t believe that this book was actually entertainment to me and my generation. You’d just stare at a picture the size of a postage stamp and think, “Wow, that crab has really long legs.” There weren’t even that many pictures. But we all remember the classic ones: the lady with long nails from India, the world’s tallest man, the world’s longest neck, and the greatest of all being the world’s fattest twins on the trail bikes. Sadly, my kids will never know the pleasure of gawking at the world’s fattest twins in the Guinness Book, for two reasons: They don’t read books that aren’t in tablet form, and those fat twins are now your average Wal-Mart shoppers.

  Boo-ray for Hollywood

  My kids, and all modern kids, are spoiled when it comes to the movies. They will never know the pathetic majesty that was the drive-in. These went the way of the dodo when I was in my twenties. The harbinger of doom for these American institutions was when they started having swap meets on the grounds during the daylight hours. Frankly, I’m surprised they hung on as long as they did. It’s a crazy business model. You need acres and acres of real estate, tons of concrete, lots of equipment—all for a business that can only operate after sundown. But there was something beautiful about a night at the drive-in. It was always a thrill going from the car to the snack shack, weaving through the cars in the dark, waving at friends. When you’re in a movie theater now, going from your seat to the snack bar is a pain in the ass, stepping into someone’s spilled soda and pretty much giving the person in the seat next to you a lap dance as you attempt to exit the row. You get in that argument with your wife, “Come on. You go get the Goobers, I got them last time.” “Why do I have to do everything?” Yet the drive-in snack shack was about four miles away, but you had no complaints at all about making that trip. Maybe because there was stuff to see, especially people making out in the back of cars.

  I think if we’re realistic, we can just admit the whole business model was based on backseat boning. Did people not have places to have sex in the ’60s and ’70s? I guess kids still had the decorum to lie to their parents back then and pretend they weren’t having sex. Teenagers had to steal away to the drive-in to finger-blast their best gal while Rebel Without a Cause played a hundred yards away, especially if they didn’t have a basement. I’m sure when Sonny is sixteen he’s just gonna be like, “Hey, Dad, could you clear out? Here’s a five. Go down to the liquor store, get yourself a six-pack of Mickey’s and drink it in the parking lot. I’ll be nailing my girlfriend on your bed.”

  When I was growing up, our family went to the drive-in once or twice but it was typically a disaster. We were always caught off guard, “Who’s got a blanket? The car’s parked sideways, Dad. We can’t see.” But I distinctly remember seeing the cagey veterans of the drive-in, the folks super-committed to this family night out. They had folding chairs, hammocks, quilts and their own popcorn machine. It was like the parking lot at a Jimmy Buffett concert.

  Nowadays, taking the kids to a film is a festival of annoyance. I’ll start with the aforementioned snack bar.

  I’m not one of those guys who complain about the price of movies. Having made two of them, I know how much effort they are to produce and I think the idea of sinking thirteen bucks into something an army of people put a hundred million into isn’t that tall an order. But the price of the snacks is a different story. That I can complain about. I’d be fine with the inflated cost of theater popcorn if it were satisfying. But I resent paying thirteen-fifty for a small popcorn. That dollar to calorie ratio is horrible. Weight wise, it’s more expensive than cocaine.

  More importantly, you never know what you’re going to get. Movie popcorn has too much range. It goes from so super salty I can’t eat it, to so right that I can’t stop myself, to so dry that I’m going to bring it home and use it as blown insulation.

  Plus, I don’t like when you pay as much for the popcorn as the movie ticket and the girl at the snack counter already has it set aside. I want a fresh scoop of popcorn from the bottom where it’s still warm, salty and soaking in coagulated butter. I want to see you digging for gold, baby.

  By the way, do yourself a favor and skip the fake butter. Here’s how you know the shit is cancerous and horrible for you—it’s self-serve. You can top yourself off. If it was real, actual food it would be expensive and they’d dispense it themselves. Plus, anything self-serve is a very ugly American thing. Imagine telling someone in the Third World that all of us have access to unlimited fake butter, as much as we can consume. We could sit under that tap and just squirt it forever like a golden butter bukakke and no one could stop us.

  And that fake greasy butter really ruins the movie experience if you’re seeing something in 3-D. Every other movie that comes out now is in 3-D, so those silly goggles are ubiquitous. When the kids put them on they smear them with greasy popcorn fingers, so what they’re seeing looks like the White Diamonds commercial circa 1987. Everything is in soft focus, like a Barbara Walters interview.

  Here’s my solution to this smudgy 3-D glasses problem, and it actually involves a solution. Since that artificial butter is completely chemical anyway, why not throw a little glass cleaner in there? That way while your kids are smearing their fingers on the glasses they’re actually cleaning them. We’ll call it “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Windex.”

  And my kids have no idea what a feast the movies are for them. When Lynette takes the kids to the movies they hit the snack counter and walk into the theater with a popcorn, a kosher hot dog, a twenty-ounce soda and an order of curly fries—each. They eat a meal, not a snack. The idea of going to the movies when I was a kid and even slowing down at the snack counter was unimaginable. The Carolla plan was to stop at the liquor store, grab a Three Musketeers and keister it. You had to sneak the snacks.

  And with kids and the cost of movies it’s not just the tickets and snacks, it’s the merchandise. If I go to see a movie with Lynette it costs me fifty dollars by the time we’re done with parking, popcorn and drinks. When I take the kids to the movies, not only does it break into triple digits for that night out, the spending doesn’t stop even after the credits have. When Frozen came out, my bank account got frostbite. I had to buy the soundtrack, ten different Barbie versions of Elsa, a Lego version and thirteen princess ou
tfits for Natalia to dress up in. There was this one-upmanship happening with her friends. Natalia only had the doll and the outfit with the crown, meanwhile her friend Cami had the scale replica of the village and the kid-sized sleigh. So I was considered a worse father than Papa John Phillips because my credit card, and thus Natalia, couldn’t keep up. Disney does to my wallet what the Indians do to the buffalo. No part gets wasted. When they’re done, there’s nothing left.

  All I’m saying is this. You parents reading this know raising kids in today’s society is hard enough as is without Hollywood and Silicon Valley making it worse. So please, take a stand with me and limit your kids downloading and streaming to my podcasts and independent films only. Thank you.

  CHAPTER 11

  I’m Not Down with OPP (Over-Praise for Participation)

  I’VE LONG SAID that kids today are lazy, fat, self-entitled pussies. And you know what? It is our fault. This chapter is a much-needed smack in the face to all of us, my fellow parents. By softening them up as much as we have, we’re setting our kids and our culture up for failure. If we were Japanese, they’d all kill themselves and if we were in a war, we’d all be dead.

  Here’s how off the rails we’ve gone in rearing our kids. I noticed one day Sonny was playing with a toy bubble gun. It was like a squirt gun that you load up with the soapy solution and when you pull the trigger, it blows bubbles. Is this how lazy we’ve gotten? What happened to those little plastic sticks with the hole that you would blow into to make bubbles? Are our kids so pampered that asking them to exhale into a miniature hoop is too tall an order?

  Our whole culture is catered to kids and their happiness now. I really noticed this recently when I saw the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. We have a whole awards show dedicated to what kids care about? You know what adults shouldn’t care about? What kids care about. I saw a parade of A-list celebrities at this show getting green slime dumped on them and thought, “What have we become?” Seriously, this show gets big stars. Mark Wahlberg, Sandra Bullock, Will Smith and Harrison Ford have all been covered in green slime. Can you imagine Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart doing this? Fuck, no. They’d be on stage in front of an audience full of kids smoking, swirling some Cutty Sark in a rocks glass and telling an unapologetically racist joke about Rhianna.