President Me

by Adam Carolla

  I’m just saying, stand up for yourself. Maybe you’ve just got a little too much Amsterdam in you and wanna lie back and be cool but the rest of the world is laughing at you. You’re quietly taking more shit than the Polacks.

  (ANGRY POLISH DELEGATION ATTEMPTS TO LEAVE ASSEMBLY HALL THROUGH CLOSET DOOR)

  Okay. On to my hemisphere. I’ll start in South America with Chile.

  All I know about you is food-based. Every piece of fruit in my house has stickers from your country and I love your sea bass. Keep up the good work. But I can’t commit to the Cheel-ay pronunciation. But Chili sounds like we’re at a cook-off. Like Pakistan and Pahk-ee-stahn. I guess how you pronounce it depends if you’re on Fox News or not.

  Brazil. You guys have a very confusing culture. You have a giant statue of Jesus that is towering over slums he’s doing nothing about, and constant parades with chicks shaking their asses and titties. Which is it? Are you superreligious or debaucherous?

  Carnival seems unnecessary. I’d understand if you were a really buttoned-up culture and needed to cut loose once a year, but you see ass cheeks all the time. Chicks wear thongs to a christening down there.

  And let me take this moment to compliment you on your ass color. There is no better color for a tush than that Brazilian caramel color. It’s just the perfect color for what it’s on, like Aston Martin racing green. If you took that Brazilian ass and gave it Tilda Swinton’s skin tone we’d all be vomiting. But with Shakira’s color—muy bueno.

  And your nation’s name is synonymous with pube maintenance. You take pride in how you look below the belt. Kudos.

  But back to the Jesus statue. Can you climb up into that thing? It feels sacrilegious to be a human finger in the Messiah’s prostate exam. It just seems weird. The Jews would never make a giant Moses. Palestinians would fire rockets at the crotch anyway and I think the Jews were probably done hauling stones after the pyramids. But as a gesture of goodwill between our nations, I commit now as a gift from America that we will help you complete that Jesus statue by building you the world’s largest El Camino dashboard.

  Now for Cuba. How is it that you’re still just sitting off the shore of Florida mocking us? Fair warning—plans have been drawn up for the invasion. They didn’t take long. One Zodiac boat filled with Cub Scouts is all it is gonna take. Then we’re going to use the country as a penal colony for all our worst sex offenders. It will get them off our shores and it’s where I’ll produce my new hit reality show—Pedoph-Isle.

  You always had Russia protecting you, like that skinny shit-talking kid at school who had the older brother on the football team. But he dropped out and now we’re going to kick your scrawny ass.

  Cuba is a great experiment in communism and how it doesn’t work. We take an island, put it in the middle of the ocean, and say, “Pick a form of government. Any one you like, just pick one and stick with it for at least fifty years.” The cars are all from the fifties, the place is falling apart, and every time the Cuban baseball team goes to play a tournament half the infield doesn’t come back. Isn’t this all we need to know about communism? Your island is like a petri dish. The lab results are in and they’re irrefutable. You people are climbing into coffee cans and trying to paddle to Florida. When Florida is a superior option you know you’re in rough shape. It’s crazy, strapping truck tires and milk jugs to pallets and throwing yourself into the Atlantic. It looks like a Red Bull event.

  I’ll wrap this up with this last directive. Africa. I’m sick of seeing your starving kids on our late-night commercials. It’s bumming the shit out of me. And I’m sick of us sending mosquito nets and sacks of grain so you can keep crapping out more kids you can’t feed. I have some words of advice that will solve this problem. Specifically four words: cum on the tits.

  Thank you.

  (SPARSE APPLAUSE FROM BRITISH, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN, AND SCANDANAVIAN DELEGATIONS AS ALL OTHER NATIONS HAVE LEFT HALL IN OUTRAGE)

  THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE

  ACT AND OTHER IMPORTANT

  NEW WEDDING LEGISLATION

  When DOMA was overturned in 2013, I was happy. My feeling has always been that gay marriage should be legalized. I was once asked in an interview the top five reasons gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry, and I said the number one reason was they’re American citizens who pay their taxes and have the same rights as anyone else. Reasons number two through five were, SO THEY’D SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT! It feels like we’ve been arguing about this forever. It’s not even about the volume of gay people in the population, but the volume at which they protest. They are that loud and that proud. Asians make up 5 percent of the population but feel like less than one percent. Blacks make up 13 percent but feel like 46 percent. Gays are supposedly 3.5 percent but feel like 96 percent. We get it. Yes, you’re here, you’re queer. We’re used to it. So please shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, I’m sure we’ll still be arguing about it years from now. The Supreme Court may have overturned Prop 8 but eventually some gay activist is going to sue because he’s not allowed to get married at the Crystal Cathedral. (For those who don’t know, the Crystal Cathedral is a gigantic glass church in Anaheim, not an adult performer. Which is a shame. Crystal Cathedral would make a great porn name.)

  Again, I have gay friends and I want them to be able to get married. I’m just sick of hearing about it. I think we should move on to many of the other topics facing our nation that are much more important than whether two guys get to settle down, grow old together, and raise adopted Chinese kids or lapdogs.

  Maybe I’m at my saturation point on this issue because I live in L.A. I really noticed this one day when my daughter floated the idea that I marry her idol, Katy Perry. I pictured the C-cup on Katy and thought, “This is the first time we’ve been on the same page, kid. You’re onto something.” But then I asked her, “What about Mommy?” Natalia replied that she could stick around, and Lynette and Katy Perry could be her mommies. I told her that wouldn’t work and that she couldn’t have two mommies. She instantly replied, “But Bradley has two mommies.” I realized that half the kids at her L.A. charter school had two daddies or two mommies.

  Before I move on from gay marriage, let me weigh in on gay slang. I know that we can no longer use the phrase “fag hag.” Which is disappointing to me. It was one of my favorites, right behind “sand nigger.” But I thought there was still a need for a word to describe the chick who only hangs around with gay guys. The Grace to their Wills, if you will. So I asked my listeners, and they came up with an excellent alternative—“fruit fly.” Pretty good, right? They just buzz around the fruit, not really harming anyone but usually annoying the shit out of you.

  And while I’m in an area that’s going to get GLAAD’s dolphin shorts in a bunch, let me also lay out my position on the code words for gay sex positions. I think “pitcher” and “catcher” are played out and “top” and “bottom” are boring. They’re not creative at all. During my administration, we will use only “tumbler” and “coaster.”

  All that said, I do want the government to get more involved in the marriage regulation department. Not so much regarding who can get married but how they can get married. Here are some of President Carolla’s new wedding laws:

  NO ELABORATE PROPOSALS: Some guys are fucking this up for the rest of us. No more skywriting proposals, no surprise question pops on the Today show. Just take ten minutes and do it right. Get down on one knee and string together a couple choice words that the wife can remember and tell her chick friends. Nothing too long. It should be able to fit on a license-plate frame. We need to get this sorted out for you and your buddies. If you screw it up it will haunt you forever and you will be an object of ridicule by your wife at all family gatherings for the rest of your days. But if you overdo it, then when your wife tells my wife, she gets pissed at me. When she’s hanging out with the one-uppers who talk about proposals on private islands, she’ll have to angrily say, “Adam threw a ring at me, said ‘there!,’ and started watching S
portsCenter.” And then I get the cold shoulder and blue balls for a week. Knock it off. One knee, ten words, move on.

  THE RING: De Beers has that stupid “two months’ salary for an engagement ring” rule. That’s fine, but I have some limits to add. If you’re a renter, I cap it at $900. If you’re living in an apartment, you have no business spending any more than a grand. As long as you have a cleaning deposit, $900 is the max ($1,500 if you’re in a condo). I think that’s fair. The price on the ring should have a ceiling if your actual ceiling is another guy’s floor.

  THE DRESS: We’ve got to put an end to the “$5,000 price tag for a dress you wear one time” bullshit, ladies. From now on the most a bride can spend on her dress is $1,000. For every hundred dollars spent over that grand, she must, by law, be able to fit into that dress for one year. Pretty simple math, right? You can go three grand on the dress, but for twenty years after, you have to fit into it. This would be the only time when a woman didn’t starve herself before the wedding. In fact, she’d be bulking up like De Niro before Raging Bull.

  THE OBJECTIONS: In every wedding ceremony there is the point where the priest asks, “If anyone can think of a reason why these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace.” At this point it’s too late. If I know my buddy is marrying Aileen Wuornos’s evil older sister, I’m probably going to sit on that info at the ceremony. I wouldn’t want to embarrass him in front of the whole family. So henceforward that question has to be asked at the bachelor party. I think after a few shots poured out of a stripper’s cleavage, you’re going to get the real answer on what your friends and family think of your bride-to-be. Though it will be awkward to have the priest there.

  NO DESTINATION OR THEME WEDDINGS: Not only are these exotic location weddings a pain in the ass for your friends and relatives to get to, but they’re usually a bad sign for the marriage. If you get married in a bikini, the average length of your marriage is about the same as the bride’s pubes. The marriage that lasts longest is the one in the nice suit, but not the tux, because the one in the suit is the second marriage. And none of that theme-wedding, “we both love roller coasters, so we’re getting married on the Comet at Six Flags” bullshit. I don’t care how much you both love SCUBA, in my America the underwater wedding is going to be torpedoed by the coast guard.

  Like the elaborate proposal, this also fucks up your nonmarried friends. When a guy takes the chick he’s been dating for four years to the destination wedding, there’s gonna be a long flight back from Maui. She’s pissed. Remember, she’s got all of her supercunty friends telling her, “If you were the one, Steve would have said something by now.” Chicks also have that marriage clock in their head. If you take a trip with a woman you’ve been dating for more than two and a half years, she’s going to spend the whole vacation anticipating a proposal every time you stop at the scenic overlook or checking her pomegranatini glass for a ring. And when it doesn’t come, she’ll spend the whole flight home with her arms folded, looking like she just smoked a bongload of cat shit. She’s disgusted with you and you’ll have no idea why. “We swam with dolphins, we saw sea turtles. What’s up?” (SILENCE.) So no destination weddings, or my government will not recognize your marriage. And for the aforementioned nonmarried-but-still-dating couple, if you’re past that thirty-month mark, there will be no vacations at all. Even if you win a trip on The Price Is Right, you have to sell that shit.

  THE WEDDING REGISTRY: Weddings cost too much. Back in the day it used to be that the father of the bride would pay for the wedding and you’d get a cow as a dowry and that’d be that. A simple transaction—I’ll give you a musket and three geese for your daughter. Now all you get is a bunch of debt and the stink eye from a guy whose precious little girl you’re stealing. Then people try to make up for the cost of the wedding with the registry, and ask for a bunch of shit from Williams-Sonoma that they’re never going to use. They have to try to earn back the cost of the reception one crystal goblet at a time. (Williams-Sonoma is crazy expensive. They have spices in that place I can’t afford, and $500 pressure cookers. Pressure cooker is at the top of the list of things that you only get as a wedding gift.)

  So from here on out, all wedding registries have a two-item maximum. First thing on that list—a basket. Everything else, cash. It shouldn’t be called a reception. It should be called a “pay off my credit card” party and every just comes with an envelope of cash like that scene in Goodfellas. And on that note . . .

  NO CASH BARS AT THE RECEPTION: If you can’t afford an open bar, you can’t afford to be married. It’s like my rule about powdered milk. If you can’t afford real milk, you shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.

  ANNULMENTS FOR ALL: A lot of states have laws putting limitations on annulments if you’ve been married for more than a certain amount of time. I’m lifting all of those laws, especially for anyone who gets married young. If you can’t go down to the store and buy a six-pack, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been married, you should be able to get an annulment. If you’ve gotten married at nineteen and a half, you shouldn’t have to go through a divorce. In fact we’ll fast-track ending your shitty relationship before you crap out a kid for us taxpayers to take care of. I don’t want you to produce offspring before you realize that the guy who loaded you up with Natural Light and humped you in his Honda behind the high school football stadium is not your soul mate.

  7

  THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

  AND HUMAN SERVICES

  As president, I’m going to get the government out of health care. I know this is going to piss off the Michael Stipes and Michael Moores of the world, but I just don’t think having health care is a right. Health care is a commodity like anything else. I don’t look at it any different than housing; you’ve got to earn it. Somehow we decided health care is something you get cradle to the grave no matter how much, or how little, you’ve contributed to the system. I know that some people on the bottom need our help, but once people figure out that it’s free down there, the bottom all of a sudden starts getting bigger.

  I don’t know why I seem to be the only one who understands that when the government provides something for free—whether it’s food, housing, or health care—there is a human cost. The government may be handing you a free block of cheese but they are taking away your motivation to get a job and buy your own fucking cheese. And what more powerful motivator is there to get up, get work, and get insurance than the fact that not having it could literally kill you?

  This is the inherent flaw in government-mandated health care. It’s dependent on young people purchasing insurance they’re probably not going to need, in order to fill the coffers for the older people who do. But when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together and if I did I certainly wasn’t spending them on health insurance. That was beer money. Why do we expect better from the current generation of twentysomethings? Have they demonstrated an abundance of long-term thinking and self-sacrifice? Fuck no. Unless that health insurance comes with a free copy of Grand Theft Auto 5, they’re not interested.

  And why do we think for a second that having the government involved will make things better when it comes to health care? Now, I’m not entertaining the paranoid “death panel” ideas that ignite some of those on the far end of the right wing. I think the government is incompetent, not evil.

  I’d actually be okay with death panels if I thought the government wouldn’t fuck them up. The reason we’re in such a shitty position when it comes to health care costs is because people are living way too long. I think we have an absurd perspective on death and dying. We want to prolong life forever but never think about the costs. We just hand over our insurance card and think, “Put it on my tab.” We don’t realize what that’s costing the entire system.

  Which is why as president, I will be calling for two initiatives:

  First, I demand an end to all the antismoking propaganda. I recognize that smoking is bad f
or you. But as far as overall cost impact on the system, the last fifteen years a person in their eighties or nineties lives cost far more than the six months of chemo a person has before finally dying of lung cancer at fifty-six.

  And who at this point doesn’t know that smoking is bad? It’s been the broken record playing for the last thirty years. And it’s only getting louder, more in-your-face, and more disgusting. I’ll be attempting to eat dinner, look up at the TV, and see an antismoking PSA with the chick smoking through the trach hole in her neck. Yuck.

  We’ve even gone past the repeated refrains about secondhand smoke to thirdhand smoke. Now, it is as if I could walk through a cloud of smoke, it will get stuck on my coat, and then when I hang it up at home, the smoke particles are going to jump off in the middle of the night, go upstairs, and rape my kid’s lungs.

  Being a smoker is worse in this society than being a deadbeat dad. If you ditch your family and take off to Florida, you’ll be judged, but not nearly as harshly as you would if you attempted to light up a butt in a Starbucks. The antismoking agenda has gotten to the point of absurdity. I feel like if you had a convict lined up to be executed by firing squad in today’s society, they’d be fine with the part where we put him in a blindfold and line him up against a wall, but we wouldn’t allow him to have that final cigarette. We’d have to stick a Nicorette patch on him with a bull’s-eye on it.