by Adam Carolla
The apartment was a flophouse for assorted losers, addicts, and the unemployable. I used to meet people on the street and let them crash with us. I spent a lot of time in our garage, which opened to the alley behind the apartment building. I’d do quite a bit of wrenching down there; it was my own little Zen garden. I met a dude in the alley once who claimed to be a quick-draw six-shooter champion. Remember, this is pre-Google so I had to take him at his word. He was a complete alcoholic and one day showed up with both forearms in casts. He said he’d been kicked by a horse.
Another time The Weez came home to find a guy asleep on our couch. He was a fortysomething haggard alcoholic cement contractor who was missing his two front teeth. I had met him in the alley and he threw himself on the mercy of my court because his old lady had just kicked him out. His name was Mike. He was fully dressed and covered up to his thighs in dried concrete as if he’d waded through a cement river. I said to The Weez, “Look. He’s a cool guy, it’s okay.” At that very moment, in his sleep, Mike sat up and hocked a loogie into the air. He must have thought he was at his house or in the drunk tank, but he hacked up something onto our curtain without missing one Z.
There are a couple of other Mike stories that don’t necessarily involve the apartment, but since I’m on the topic, here we go. In ’85 when I was doing an addition on my grandmother’s house, he and his brother came over to help with the concrete. After putting in a full day’s work, my grandmother brought out dinner and we ate at the patio table. She even brought out a bottle of white wine. Mike shot down a large glass of wine like he was giving his liver a Gatorade dump and then held the empty glass up, grunted, and gestured at Grandma for a refill. Mike’s brother, a typewriter repairman (he’s probably living large right now), would argue with him in front of my grandparents, shouting profanities. After a couple glasses of wine, Mike’s brother had to relieve himself. So he politely asked to be excused, but instead of going into the house he walked twenty feet away and started taking a leak in the ivy. All of us could see him. Even Mike, the indoor loogie hocker, was outraged. “Hey douchebag. What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouted. “You’re pissing in front of Grandma!” Mike’s brother responded, “What? I turned my back!”
Another time after a day pouring a concrete slab, Mike and I pulled up to the Golden Chopstick for a little pork fried rice. Mike drove a Ranchero with caved-in driver’s-side door, which meant he had to climb through the window to get out. It was like a retarded version of the Dukes of Hazzard. Strike that, a more retarded version of the Dukes of Hazzard. Just as he crawled out of his piece of shit, Mike noticed a good-looking chick waiting outside, presumably for her boyfriend to arrive. Mike looked her up and down and said to me, “You wanna go get some?” I stared back at him with a look that said, “You drive a Ranchero with a concave door, you’re toothless and covered in concrete. Why would she go anywhere near us?” Mike reiterated, “C’mon, man, let’s go get some of that fine pussy.” Rather than say what I was thinking and insult the man, I simply said, “Let’s just eat.” Mike replied, “What, you don’t want to get laid? Don’t you like pussy?” He said this matter-of-factly, as if it had been offered up. He acted like she had come over and offered to service both of us in the bathroom of the restaurant and I had turned her down. I’m sure the only reason he didn’t call me a fag was because he was too much of a gentleman to use that term.
This was the type of guy I’d meet in the alley and allow into my abode. I attracted them for some reason. I was the porch light to their alcoholic moth.
When I’m in charge there won’t be any more alleys. They’re officially more harm than good. Have you ever talked to a couple who were deeply in love and said they met in an alley or heard of a guru who had his deep spiritual awakening in an alley? No, there’s nothing in an alley except syringes and hobo piss. Also, alleys do not seem to fall under any city jurisdiction. They’re littered with potholes and old sofas. No matter how bad they get, the city never repairs them. It’s a sort of asphalt DMZ. It’s as if the road crews in charge of the alleys are based in Mozambique.
But as I said, I was always in my garage off the alley wrenching on something. It was my sanctuary. One morning after a night of partying we were heading out to Good Neighbor, a great breakfast place, to tamp down our hangovers with some banana pancakes. When we got to the alley, everything had been tagged. I didn’t care about the alley itself, but they had tagged the garage door. My garage door. This was my personal Pearl Harbor. I had been attacked on my home turf. The tag simply said “Eggbert.” Snake, interestingly enough said, “I bet Toad knows who this is.” Toad was another guy we knew. Fortunately, that was as far into the nickname animal kingdom as we had to go. Toad was the guy who knew shit. So we piled into Snake’s car to find Toad. We hadn’t even traveled two blocks before a car passed us going in the opposite direction and somebody yelled, “That was Toad!” So we banged a U-turn and started following him and his buddies. He turned onto Ventura Boulevard and we pulled up alongside of him at the first red light and told them to pull over, we needed to talk. He said nothing and kept driving. So we followed. Unfortunately, there was an LAPD cruiser that was behind both of us for what seemed like a hundred miles. Eventually the cop turned off, Snake turned up the heat, and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride began. He and his crew started evading us, thinking we were chasing them. We eventually pulled up next to them and Snake, who’s a smart guy but a little bit nuts, rolled down the window and yelled, “You either pull over now or I will find you and do something horrible to you and you won’t know when.” They agreed, pulled over, and we explained that we weren’t after them but wanted the goods on Eggbert. We demanded he cough up the information. At first he was coy but eventually started singing like a canary. He dropped a dime on his buddy Eggbert. The guy’s name was Greg Bertrand, thus Eggbert. I knew his older brother and knew where he lived, so we went to his house. Some of my buddies wanted to just kick in the door and then kick in his face, but I convinced everyone to play it cool. I was the Jimmy Carter of the group. I knocked on the door and his parents answered. I said, “I need to talk to you about your son.” They asked what the problem was and we told them he had tagged our place. His mom was not surprised. She even mentioned that they were missing some spray-paint cans. Eggbert was just stepping out of the shower when his mom called for him. He entered the living room wearing only a towel. She pounced on him, “Were you out doing graffiti last night?” A shocked and dumbfounded Eggbert blurted out, “Yes.” This poor son of a bitch was out tagging all night without any witnesses and by ten the next morning an angry group of tag-ees was at his house. My favorite part was that his dad couldn’t get over the Eggbert handle. He asked, “Eggbert? What the hell kind of stupid nickname is that?” I explained to him and his parents that our drunken manager Al carried a sidearm and that Eggbert would be better off dealing with us than him. Greg ended up having to repaint the entire alley.
A little PSA on tagging. When you see graffiti, you assume it’s done by black or Mexican gangbangers from the inner city. Well, this kid was blond and from the suburbs. So next time you see the side of a building or a billboard tagged up, pause for a moment, and then still assume they’re black or Mexican. Who are we kidding?
In another of our long series of boneheaded financial decisions, The Weez and I decided to kick in $750 each, well over our rent at the time, to cobble together fifteen hundred to buy a limo he had found. It was a twenty-two-foot-long 1964 Cadillac Series 75, the kind you’d see Elvis or the Beatles in. We picked it up by the airport on a Sunday night, and shortly thereafter the road trips commenced. We’d pile into the limo and go visit our friends who had actually made it out of the Valley and gone to college.
1985—Across the street from the apartment. Note my truck in the foreground, plus the shirtless Weez and underpants-clad Ray.
One of our usual destinations was Palm Springs for spring break. We’d just hop from motel to motel getting drunk by the pools. There was a pl
ace called the Ocatillo Lodge—it’s still there, though it’s gone from looking like someplace Lucy and Ricky would visit to someplace Ricky and Ricky would visit. Palm Springs is now a gay mecca. Back then it was the kind of place where the following story could happen.
I was sitting in some random person’s room. I have no idea who, we used to just get shit-faced and bounce from room to room. The phone rang, so I picked it up. This was long before caller ID, so when a phone rang you’d just answer it. I don’t know why, it’s not like I’d pick it up and it would be my dad. I said, “Hello?” and there was a guy on the other end. He said, angrily, “Where’s Stacy?” I said, “I don’t know who Stacy is, I’m just sitting in this room.” The guy said bluntly, “Bullshit.” I reiterated that I had no idea who Stacy was. He replied, “You put her on the phone or I’m gonna come over there and kick your ass.” I said, “Come on down,” and hung up. I had no idea who this guy was or if he was built like Brock Lesnar. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door, and I opened it to reveal two dudes. They were just average white guys from the Valley and announced they were there to kick my ass. So we stepped out into the walkway in front of the room. The first guy threw a bad punch at me, missed, and I hit him in the face. He went down. The second guy then took a swing and I dodged and punched him in the face. He went down too. I casually said, “You should get some ice on that,” and they got up and walked away. I got in a fight with two dudes over a girl I never met.
We’d also taken the limo to visit our friend who went to college in Santa Barbara. One time on the way home we had the limo full. There were twelve people packed in there, and Chris was driving. We were coming up to a red light, and Chris told everyone in the back of the limo, “No brakes!” Everyone started freaking out and screaming. We blew through the red light, fortunately didn’t get T-boned, and drove right onto a freeway entrance. The brakes were always an issue with the limo. It was roadworthy, we rebuilt the engine and suspension, but it was so heavy that we’d burn through the brakes pretty quickly.
There were many other road trips that you’ll soon read about, but they didn’t involve the limo. So let’s get back to the apartment.
One night Chris and The Weez came home, each with a bottle of tequila in his belly and a skank on his arm. Chris was particularly out of control. Since I didn’t have a room of my own to escape to, I took The Weez aside and tried to enlist him to control Chris. But he had other plans. The fact that he had used the tequila to wash down some mushrooms was preventing him from being able to “maintain.” Moreover, he was about to hook up with a fat chick. Now, I know the large ladies need loving too, I’ve got no beef with them, no pun intended. But I knew The Weez would regret it the next day. So I gave him one of my many “You’re high. Let me save you from yourself”–style lectures. It seemed to work, but then I turned for a moment and when I looked back I found him making out with his BBW. So I said fuck it and decided to bail out and head over to Ray’s for the night.
The next morning I returned and instituted a new apartment policy. After surveying the Sodom and Gomorrah–like landscape composed of piles of hungover people, broken beer bottles, and cigarette butts, I declared “Clean or Leave.” I couldn’t take the floozies and flunkies littering our place anymore. I’d have to work construction in the morning and the gang would be in the living room making a bunch of noise and I’d come out in my bathrobe and yell, “Hey! Keep it down. Some people have to work in the morning.” They’d yell, “Shut up, Walt!” and rip another bong load.
The Weez eventually moved out because it had gotten too crazy. And this was The Weez. That’s like John Belushi going, “I can’t handle this anymore.” Unlike the gentiles, who, when they leave home don’t return, The Weez was able to go back to his parents’ house. But he took his futon and the limo with him.
LIKE most people from depressed chaotic families, I tried to spend as much time away from my houses as possible. One of my homes away from home was the apartment of my buddy Ray Oldhafer. I met Ray at Colfax Elementary in the fifth grade. I didn’t play football with him, unlike my other friends growing up, because he was a huge German man-boy and was too big to play in the same league as me. He was ripped. Ray was a year older, four inches taller, and fifty pounds heavier than everyone else in our class. He was not husky; he was built like an action hero. It’s rare to see fourteen-year-olds with veins in their arms and calves like a Roman soldier. Ray was the bench-press champion at our junior high. One time I walked into the weight room to find a spindly geek on the ground with a barbell over his neck pinning him to the floor. I asked him what happened. He told me that Ray had commanded him to lie down so he could put the weights across his throat. That’s how scary Ray was. He didn’t even have to physically beat a nerd into submission, he could just ask and said nerd would humiliate himself.
Don’t get me wrong; Ray is one of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet. He just grew up in an equally, yet differently, fucked-up family as mine. He’s a sensitive guy despite his size and tendency to hurt and humiliate. He’s like a big St. Bernard that knocks over tables and toddlers. It means no harm; it just doesn’t know that it’s big and dumb. He would ask me when we were kids, “Why is your lawn so high?” or “Why is your room so small?” or “Why doesn’t your mom shave her armpits?” He wasn’t trying to be mean or bust my balls, he genuinely wanted to know what was wrong with my family.
Ray was and continues to be the least subtle person I know. When I was a kid I used to sneak into movie theaters, sometimes with Ray, sometimes without. If I wasn’t with Ray we’d go to the back, wait for someone to exit, and slither in through the open door. If we were with Ray, we had a different technique. Ray would walk up to the front door of the theater and bang on the glass until someone going to the bathroom noticed. Ray would wave them over and yell at them to open the door.
And Ray had an ingenious technique for getting personal information out of people. He would look them straight in the eye and ask. Like the time he asked my mom if it was true that she met my stepdad at a primal-scream encounter group, which she had. Ray turned right around and informed me of this fact. Another time when we were teens I was telling Ray how cheap my dad was and Ray immediately told him. He didn’t think twice about it. It was a fact and therefore needed to be shared. God forbid you ever get a pimple or put on five pounds if you’re friends with Ray. You will be notified without delay or sensitivity. He wouldn’t say, “Are those new jeans? They look a little snug.” It would be “You’re getting fat,” followed by him grabbing your love handle and pinching it until it bruised. That’s Ray in a nutshell. He’s intensely conscious of his own feelings but is blissfully unaware of when he backs over other people’s.
That’s not to say that Ray didn’t sometimes intentionally create awkward situations for his own amusement. Ray’s mom had a friend named Kathy. She was a heavyset woman—about five four, 240. The first time I met her, she’d come into Ray’s mom’s apartment and started yelling at her son, who was visiting. I said to Ray, “Who was that woman? She could play guard for the Rams.” As soon as she walked back into the room, Ray said, “Kathy. This is my friend Adam. He says you could play guard for the Rams.” Ray is like the world’s worst parrot.
Another time Kathy made the grave error of sitting down in Ray’s mom’s apartment and trying to talk on the phone. Ray was about sixteen at the time. While one ear was occupied with the phone receiver, her other ear was wide open for attack. Ray came up behind her and put his dick in her ear. I wish I could tell you why, but there was no good reason.
Speaking of dicks, Ray once asked his mother who had a bigger dick: his dad or her new boyfriend, Jim. Her reply was very telling and shows where Ray got some of his gift for creating awkwardness. Without hesitation she replied, “Jim has more girth.”
I loved Ray’s mom, and one of my earlier Ray memories involved an awkward exchange with her. I used to stay over at Ray’s when I could because unlike my mom—who, if she did manage
to get some food in the fridge wouldn’t know what to do with it—Ray’s mom actually cooked what scraps found their way into the Oldhafer estate.
One night I was having a sleepover at Ray’s when he produced a magazine called Frisky. It was easily twenty years old when we were looking at it. It was a crazy 1950s nudie mag full of topless chicks in huge panties with huge beehive hairdos and huge cans with huge saucerlike nipples. We didn’t have any Internet back then, so it was any porn in a storm. Ray had to go upstairs and babysit the neighbor kids, so I told him I’d hang back with the Frisky. I was sleeping on the floor, of course. Ray’s mom came in and with her thick German accent said, “Get up, I’ll get you a mattress.” I had quickly slipped the Frisky under the blanket, so I said, “No, I’m okay. I’m comfortable, I don’t need a mattress.” She said, “Get up.” I repeated, “I like it on the floor, I’m used to it. I sleep in a closet at my house.” She wasn’t buying it and eventually started tugging at the blanket. I was holding the Frisky and the blanket at the same time while having this retarded tug of war. I bunched up the blanket and the Frisky and stood up. She said, “Give me the blanket.” I managed to keep the Frisky under wraps. I’m not sure how. That secret has been lost to history.
Later on, Ray came back from babysitting and I told him what had just gone down. “Whew. You would not believe what just happened. I really dodged a bullet. I was looking at the Frisky and she came in to make the bed and caught me. But she never saw it. I kept it out of sight.” The following morning, we were all eating breakfast and he said, “Hey, Mom, guess who had a Frisky magazine under the blanket last night?”
Ray was a troublemaker and I used to get into all kinds of shit with him. Another time I was staying over at his apartment and his mom walked out with two bags of garbage and told us to take them out. The dumpster in that apartment complex was located in a odd position. There was a long skinny driveway and then an immediate 90-degree turn. And there was no lighting. Ray walked out with his bag and I talked to his mom for a beat and walked out a minute later with the other one. Ray thought I was right behind him and didn’t realize I had hung back. As I was walking down the dark driveway, I heard the sound of garbage flying and a woman screaming, “OH SHIT! OH SHIT!” Ray thought it would be funny to hide behind the dumpster in the dark and then jump out to scare the crap out of me. My delay was longer than he thought and he ended up traumatizing some poor sweet little old lady named Debbie from the building. All 225 pounds of him. Ray doesn’t do anything half-assed, either—he goes all in. He didn’t just step out and say, “Boo.” He leapt out and screamed like a knife-wielding maniac.
