President Me

by Adam Carolla

I’m a big proponent of organ donation. I think it’s important.

  In fact, I think it’s so important that in my administration if you have an organ-donation sticker on your license when you get pulled over, you only get a warning. It’ll be like the punch card at a Quiznos. The cop will notice you have that little organ-donor dot on your license, punch it out, and let you go. That’s your one freebie. I’m not saying you’re going free if you get hopped up on prescription meds and plow through a farmers’ market, but if you get tagged doing forty-four in a thirty-five, you’ll get a pass. In fact, I’ll even extend it to the DUI. If you blow a .09 we’ll knock it down to .05.

  Why is there not more discussion of the need for people to be organ donors? A ton of people get killed in accidents every year and their organs could be used for the kid with the rare cancer. Why not? Why are there more PSAs for proper mercury-thermometer disposal than this? What would save more lives?

  And why should you take useful body parts to the grave with you? Maybe it’s just because I’m an atheist and I think when you’re dead you’re dead, but I have no attachment to my internal organs. Go nuts. Harvest away. In fact I’d like to know that some of my body parts are living on. I want to think that my liver continues to get doused in alcohol even though I’m gone and if I can donate my dick that would be cool. It would be like cheating on my wife from the great beyond.

  I think that blood donation is important too. And like my organ-donation punch card idea, I have a plan. What blood donation needs is a little bit of my marketing magic. The Red Cross is missing an opportunity. Between the twenty-nine TV shows, three movies in theaters, and the other fourteen in development, nothing has ever been hotter in pop culture than sexy vampires. The removal of blood has never been sexier. We need to target blood donation to that youth demo. We could make a whole experience out of giving blood, like a cooler Medieval Times. The room could be all dark with red velvet curtains, the technicians can be wearing Dracula capes, the Band-Aids they put on after could be shaped like bloody lip marks, instead of lying on a table we put you in a coffin, etc. The Twilight tweens would be lining up around the block.

  Then there are the women who say they’re donating eggs. I have a problem with this. I’m fine with the gesture that has made it possible for an infertile couple to experience the miracle of childbirth. It’s the part where the “donation” nets her fifty grand that bothers me. She hasn’t donated her eggs, she’s sold her eggs. Imagine if I sold my Audi on eBay for $30,000, and then announced I “donated” my car. Dudes would never tolerate this. You don’t donate your sperm, you sell your sperm. This is like a hooker donating a blowjob for $150. Although, ladies, this is your chance to find out exactly what your genes are worth, like a Kelly Blue Book for your ovaries. Short, fat, and a GED will get you $185 and a bus ticket back to Fresno. Tall, blond, and a Ph.D. will get you $75,000 and a private jet back to Fresno (it’s just a weird coincidence that they’re both from Fresno).

  THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

  This next section may get a little controversial, but like I said, I’m President Truth Teller. I don’t think that half of the people that claim to be disabled actually are. I bet if you took the list of people currently getting disability payments from the government, sent them a letter saying they’ve been entered to win a million dollars in the Dr Pepper Cadillac Challenge at the Cotton Bowl, and all they had to do was throw a football through a hole in the P of a giant Dr Pepper can, 85 percent of them would be on a plane the next day. As president, I’m going to enact this sting operation and save us billions.

  What I’ve been noticing is that it seems like half the people currently in wheelchairs don’t need to be in them. When I was a kid and saw someone in a wheelchair, you could tell that was the only way they were getting around. They were missing a limb or two and had their pant legs pinned up. Now you see the obese, or even worse, just slightly overweight woman, get up out of her wheelchair and into the Lark scooter at the Costco and think, “That was a pretty smooth transition. Are you confined to the wheelchair or do you just prefer it?”

  All the time, especially here in L.A., I see the guy in the wheelchair pushing himself across the intersection backward with his feet. This makes me mad, sad, and confused. Clearly your legs work, unless you have some obscure disease that renders your knees unable to function in a forward-facing position. So they can push, but if they pull they combust? I don’t get it.

  The only thing I’ve seen that is sadder and more confusing than this is when I was heading into the podcast one night and noticed a fat guy riding a bicycle built for two—alone.

  But back to wheelchairs. At the turn of the century, being in a wheelchair meant something. If you were unable to walk, that meant you couldn’t work at the factory or fit through most doorways. Nowadays the government has mandated I put a handicap ramp up to my bed in case a paraplegic wants to bang my wife. We make everything accessible, especially the workplace. Back in the day, not only would you not be able to work if you were in a wheelchair, but the children playing in the street mocked you by rolling a hoop down the road with a stick. Now you can go to work wherever you want if you are handicapped. Everything we do today is sitting down anyway. If your hands work you can operate a laptop in a cubicle, and even if you’re quadriplegic, everything can be voice-activated.

  I also feel like I’ve seen a million handicapped stalls but never seen a handicapped guy taking a shit. Not that I’m into that. I’m sure there are Germans reading this who are turned on by that thought. I always want to use that stall, but feel guilty about it. I know the second I sit down on that shitter Stephen Hawking is going to wheel himself in there to drop a deuce.

  Maybe it’s an image problem. It feels like I’m always hearing about people who achieved great things when they’ve lost limbs or one of their five senses. I’ve got both eyes and both arms and all I use them for is to masturbate. Every third week on 60 Minutes they profile someone that has overcome adversity. “He doesn’t have the use of any limbs but he pulled himself up Mount Washington with his teeth.” Fuck that guy. I’m perfectly able-bodied and it takes everything I’ve got to get my ass off the couch to grab some Bugles.

  The worst is the handicapped guy who’s still doing extreme sports. He’s got the knobby tires on his chair, which is covered in cool bumper stickers, he’s wearing pads and going down the vert ramp at the X Games (probably the same one he went down when he broke his spine in the first place). I guess what I’m saying is fuck resiliency.

  Before you think I’m too much of an asshole, I’m fine with people who have legitimate disabilities, and providing accommodations for them. I just think that the system is being abused. Our culture has become so narcissistic (and lazy) that half the people I see getting out of cars with handicapped placards are younger and fitter than me.

  That’s why in my administration I will have a team of guys in unmarked vans patrolling handicapped parking spots, and if they see you take one and you’re able-bodied, they will make you handicapped with a pool cue.

  Maybe there’s some confusion about what qualifies someone for handicapped parking. Well, let me make it clear. As far as the administration of Adam Carolla is concerned, here’s the simple definition of who gets handicapped parking:

  If your cock works, no special spot. That’s my Mason-Dick-son line. Conversely you can be doing one armed push-ups, but if your honker doesn’t work then you get to park right up front at the Home Depot.

  By the way, I always notice a ton of handicapped spots in front at the Home Depot. For some reason that store seems to have a higher percentage than Kmart or Costco. Why? Are there are ton of quadriplegics putting additions on their houses? Maybe that’s how they got handicapped in the first place, falling off a roof trying to install a skylight. I’m just saying we should save two of the eight spots up front for the guy dragging 580 pounds of anchor chain out to his pickup.

  One last thought related to disability. We’ve all seen the
blind guy with the long white cane. I understand the need to compact such a thing, but does it need to fold down so small it can fit up your ass? Fishing poles only break down into two pieces. Why does the blind-guy cane need to fold up into a thousand? Won’t that make it harder for him to feel around and find when he puts it down on the coffee table?

  In general, I miss the old canes. Canes used to be cool. They were made of driftwood and had metallic eagle heads on top or swords hidden in them. Now they’re all brushed aluminum and have four feet wrapped in tennis balls. (By the way, tennis balls really have range as far as the pace of the activities they’re used for. Nothing is faster and harder on your legs than the sport of tennis, but nothing is moving slower and made to protect your legs more than the tennis ball on the bottom of Grandma’s walker.)

  As always, I, President Carolla, have a great two-birds-one-stone solution to all of this. All blind-guy canes will now be equipped with metal detectors so they can find some doubloons as their owners walk in the park. And for the regular cane, we will simply attach a nail at the end so Granny can pick up some litter while she walks in the park.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT FAT

  Nowadays everyone is paranoid about gluten and trans fats. The only time you should be worried about trans fats is if it’s your first day doing porn and they say the person you’ll be performing the scene with is named Trans Fats.

  I had a run-in with one of these assholes when I was doing an interview trying to plug a gig in Denver. From the get-go, I could tell the guy had an agenda because he kept talking about my “right wing” views. Then he hit me about my “controversial” opinion on shaming fat people (more on that in a minute).

  He was trying to blame obesity on our “fast-food culture” instead of the fat people themselves. I made the cogent point that I worked at McDonald’s and that there was a McDonald’s on every corner when he and I were both kids. So why is there a difference now? He said, “Well, the menu was a lot different back then.” Yes, it’s gotten healthier, dickweed. They didn’t have salad, bottled water, and apple slices on the menu when I was a young politician in the making. If I went into McDonald’s when I was eleven and my mom tried to make me order apples, I would’ve fed them into her asshole like it was a nickel slot machine.

  When I argue with people I just hand them a shovel and watch them dig their own grave. So I asked him, “Seems to me like the menu has more healthy options. So what’s different today?” He claimed that the food is a lot higher in calories now. I told him that couldn’t possibly be true. But like all dumb people going down the bad-argument road, he didn’t do a three-point turn, he hit the accelerator.

  I told him I’d hang on while he looked up the calorie count for a Big Mac in 1978 vs. today. He said he’d do it after the interview. I said, “No, do it now so I can laugh at you.” He fired back, “I’ll do it when we’re done.” I countered, “No. If you do it after I hang up, I won’t be able to mock you and your retarded argument falling apart.” The guy then said he didn’t have a computer. How fucking convenient. Of course, when I had one of my lackeys look it up later that day, I was vindicated.

  This guy wanted to blame our obesity epidemic on the food itself. He’s only partially right. Our food today does suck, but it’s our will that is really the problem. Big Macs haven’t gotten any less healthy for us. It’s that we’re morally weak, there’s a fast-food joint on every corner and they’re open 24/7. These places used to close and you’d only go there once in a while. Not too long ago, Taco Bell introduced the “FourthMeal.” I thought brunch was the fourth meal, but apparently the fourth meal happens between midnight and two A.M., when you’re shit-faced.

  And of course the sizes are absolutely insane. Every commercial you see now for food is about cheapness and portion size. The voice-over says, “Come down to Hometown Buffet” and they show a guy with a Fred Flintstone–sized rack of ribs and a waiter using a pallet jack to bring the food to the table.

  Buffets are now illegal for anyone over two hundred pounds that makes less than $35,000 a year. Because when you’re poor and somebody says “$7.99 all you can eat” your mission statement is “They’re going lose money on this fat hombre.” I know, because when I was poor I used to apply basically the same principle to renting porn.

  Nothing is about health or quality, it’s all about price and quantity. Today you’ve got 7-Eleven drinks the size of an aquarium. They might as well make one called the Dunk Tank. You just crawl in and use the straw to breathe. I’m not trying to go all Mayor Bloomberg on you, because I’m not big on the government getting involved in this area. But the more fat people there are, the more fat acceptance there is. This is a strain on our health care system, not to mention our bridges. Hell, if you factor in the effect of weight on gas mileage, this is having a major impact on global warming. Seriously. The bottom line is, fat ain’t free. That’s why I’m fully behind so-called fat shaming.

  This is a term that gets me in trouble, especially with chicks. But I’m not saying we should put fat kids’ pictures in the paper or stand them in the town square and take turns pelting them with rocks. I just mean we shouldn’t accept obesity as okay. People need to feel the sting of some stares as they waddle down the street. If you visited a person’s house and saw them slap their nine-year-old, you’d call Child Protective Services, but if that same nine-year-old were 210 pounds, you’d quietly judge the parents but allow them to feed their kid a breakfast of Slim Jims and Mr. Pibb.

  We feel bad shaming the kid but the real shame is going to come in a few years when he can’t get a prom date or play sports. So he’ll be depressed, won’t find a good job, or fit in one airplane seat. Then he’ll really feel shame. If you had to make the choice for your kid to be obese or a smoker, you’d want them to be a smoker. Being fat will kill them sooner and will certainly cause more discrimination in their shortened life. They’ll lose more jobs and potential relationships from being fat. Especially as a woman. A chunky chick will always lose more opportunities than one who smokes. It’s a sad but true fact. This is the ultimate discrimination. I’d argue that every man alive would take a seven or above from any nationality over a fat chick with blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t think it’s any different when you’re a business and you’re hiring a receptionist. You want to put your best face forward when a customer comes in the door, and if that face has an extra couple of chins it’s not a good thing. Race takes a backseat to fat in the discrimination department. This is the ultimate thing not to be.

  Unless you work at the Magic Kingdom. When I took the kids to Disneyland a year ago I could not believe how fat the female employees were. I’m not talking about 15 pounds of “she’s got a little extra ass on her, what a pity” fat. I’m talking 120 pounds overweight. The chick running the Jungle Cruise was bigger than the fiberglass hippo she was pointing at.

  And they usually came in pairs. It was like a live Tweedledee and Tweedledum, except they were nineteen-year-old Mexican chicks. This is not a good plan. I think we need to team up the skinny ones with the fat ones. Mobile shaming. You don’t want to have the two fat chicks deciding on what they’re going to get for lunch. You need a skinny one in there to toss around the idea of getting a tossed salad.

  I was in a hotel in Boston last year before a gig, bouncing through the channels when I came across some Three Stooges. And because I was in a hotel room I beat off to it. Rules are rules.

  Anyway, when I was in my refractory period it occurred to me that Curly is not fat by today’s standards. I hadn’t seen the Three Stooges since I was twelve and I remembered Curly being “the fat one.” But if you put him up against the average female employee at Disneyland, he’s a middleweight. I’m not saying he was skinny. He was no Kate Moss, but he may have been a Kate Upton.

  The point is I could go to any mall in America and find ten tweens who are fatter than Curly. He was five seven and 192 pounds, with a little bit of a gut on him, but he would not be fat in today’s society. Perhaps if
he ate some more of those pies instead of getting hit in the face with them, he could get as husky as the teen behind the counter at Hot Topic.

  The worst part is that we can easily rectify this with a little discipline. We don’t need any new drugs or fad diets. There are three hundred thousand diet books currently in print and ten new ones coming out every day. How much fresh information could you possibly glean? Eat less, move more. That’s it. There’s no need for a diet book. Everything you need to know about losing weight could be printed on the back of your driver’s license or a business card.

  Dig this analogy/advice. Your body basically works like a hot-air balloon. It’s all about maintaining a consistent altitude through the ratio of weight to fire. If you want to put a bunch of heavy stuff into the gondola (like mashed potatoes and chicken pot pie), you’re going to need to stoke the flames extra hard (i.e., exercise). Michael Phelps can eat whatever the fuck he wants because he spends nine hours a day in a swimming pool. His fire burns so hot and so often that he could butt-chug a garbage barge of tapioca pudding every night before he went to bed and still never gain an ounce. You and I are only willing to commit twenty to thirty minutes a day on the stationary bike, thus we’ve got to keep track of what’s going in the wicker basket. Man, I’m getting heavy here—pardon the pun. You can also choose not to exercise at all but that means a lot of celery and jicama in the basket.

  That’s why as much as I want shaming to get people to go to the gym, I don’t want any shaming when they’re there. If they’ve hauled their fat ass up onto the treadmill, I don’t want the skinny bitch training for the marathon next to them making them feel bad that they’re slowly walking on a zero incline. This even goes for healthy people, like me. I’ve been at the gym in the hotel and do my twenty on the treadmill and the chick who is on the one next to me is still chugging away even though she was already sweaty and miserable when I got there. Cut it out, lady. Everything in moderation, okay?