by Adam Carolla
When I was thirteen I was babysitting my neighbor and invited Ray over to hang out. Ray was the only guy I knew who ate more than me. We looted that pantry like a Best Buy during a race riot. Five minutes later, we were roasting marshmallows over the stove when mine caught fire. It was fully engulfed in flames and burning with napalm-esque ferocity. Realizing it could no longer be consumed, I didn’t want to miss an opportunity for a little horseplay. So I held the flaming marshmallow up by its skewer and announced I was “The Great Adam, world-renowned fire eater.” I then proceeded to arch back and open my mouth as wide as I could and mime swallowing the flame, being careful not to come too close to my delicate face. Just as I was pulling it away from my open mouth, Ray shoved my elbow and the flaming marshmallow became one with my cheek.
Ray really shined on Halloween. He once wore Jolson-esque shoe-polish blackface and an Afro wig for a costume in eighth grade. And speaking of Ray, Halloween, and blackface, one year I decided to dress up as Mr. T. I was over at Snake’s place getting my head shaved for Mr. T’s signature hairstyle. Snake had the clippers out for himself, too, because he was going as a Mohawk Indian. Ray walked in not knowing what was going on. He didn’t have a costume planned, but he saw the clippers and said, “Put me down for a Hare Krishna.”
He had long, straight hair at the time, too. In the end he looked so authentic that people at the Halloween party thought he actually had become a Hare Krishna. This was 1984, before Michael Jordan hit the scene and bald became cool. Bald was weird back then. When Ray came home, his mother broke down in tears. My haircut actually garnered a response from my normally indifferent dad, too. I came back with the Mr. T and he muttered, “Good luck getting a job now.”
1984—The apartment. Ray as the only Hare Krishna who would beat you with his tambourine.
1984—Me and my buzz cut at our friend Liz’s house.
I’d like to present you with some of Ray’s greatest hits, just to give you a better sense of who I was dealing with. Some are from our youth, others from when we were adults. The sad part is you won’t be able to tell which are which.
• Ray has broken two guys’ arms: Chris’s brother Ricky’s and Dr. Bruce’s (the guy who often filled in for Dr. Drew). Not intentionally—it was just roughhousing gone wrong. One of them was nine and the other was forty-seven.
• When Ray was later working on Kimmel’s show, Jimmy had a human-interest guest—Kyle Maynard, a quadruple amputee wrestler who was there to talk about overcoming adversity. He boasted that he had such extraordinary upper-body strength that no one could pull what was left of his arms apart once he locked them in place. Cut to Ray on top of a guy in a wheelchair trying to tear his arms apart.
• Also while working on Jimmy’s show, he was formally warned by ABC human resources that he could no longer play something called The Breathing Game. This consisted of Ray getting you in a bear hug/headlock and putting his giant hand over your mouth while pinching your nose closed. The “game” part was whether you could get out of his grip before you passed out.
• Ray was at a liquor store with Snake, Carl, and a couple of other guys trying to buy a bottle of whiskey. The squatty Armenian guy behind the register would not sell it to them. Snake threw down twenty-two bucks for the eighteen-dollar bottle and said, “That should cover it with tax.” The guy was pissed and about to get more pissed. Ray then said “Nice nail,” commenting on his long pinky nail. The clerk then took out his Day-Glo leather key chain and hit Snake with it. Snake retaliated by hitting the guy with an actual chain. The Armenian gentleman then reached behind the counter. Ray assumed he was going for a gun and started to leave. As he was walking out he felt the sting of an aluminum bat on his shoulder. Ray retaliated by punching out the window of the store. What makes this especially impressive/scary was that this was a floor-to-ceiling pane of three-eighth-inch-thick tempered glass. Ray ended up with a shard in his hand and had to remove it with channel locks.
• Every year the big event at North Hollywood High was an unsanctioned broomball game between two girls’ groups from our school—the Puffs and the Shana Clares. Broomball is hockey, but instead of pucks and sticks you use a volleyball and taped-up brooms. They’d rent out the local ice-skating rink after closing on a Saturday and the whole school would show up, most of them drinking B they’d BYO’d. Ray and Chris decided this would be the perfect place and time to do some stupid shit. I was always game to go along with their ideas, but when they told me the plan, I decided this was one mission I would not choose to accept. But I was there to witness it. The game was in full swing and the chicks were going at it hard on the ice. I heard brakes locking and tires screeching behind the rink. The two rear fire doors burst open. Ray and Chris, wearing nothing but tennis shoes and paper grocery bags on their heads and junk, hopped the wall and began to run across the ice. Sticking to his plan, Ray went all the way to the far goal and back, running the gauntlet of girls who were armored with pads and armed with broomsticks. These chicks were already whipped up from the game and went after him. He gave a forearm shiver to the titties of each and every girl who blocked his way and attempted to grab the paper bag covering his ball bag. That’s how nuts Ray is—one slip and he would have been completely nude sliding across the ice in front of the entire school.
It was at parties where Ray was really in full effect. If there was a cake, his fist was going into it; if there was a shampoo bottle, his dick was going into it; and if there was a pool, you were going into it. Eventually people started throwing themselves into the pool on their own volition. That way they could at least take out their wallet first and not have their shirt ripped. One of our friends, Jack Donitz, saw Ray enter a party and decided to cut to the chase. He slipped off his loafers, took out his wallet, and tossed himself, fully dressed, into the pool. When he resurfaced he found his shoe floating next to his head with his wallet sitting inside. Before he could grab it and return it safely to the edge of the pool Ray did a cannonball on it. You can’t say he wasn’t creative. He also once shot Jack’s spear gun through his hamper and into his wall. Eventually we knew that if Ray was around, it meant trouble, and we developed a code. We used to have what we called DTR parties. DTR stood for “Don’t tell Ray.” The only time I’d ever see Ray upset is when he’d ask what we were doing that weekend and we’d tell him we were going to a party, he’d say, “Pick me up at nine,” and we’d have to explain it was a DTR party. So in our world you could RSVP and BYOB for a DTRP.
For reasons that Freud would have a field day with that but remain unclear to me, Ray and a lot of the other guys I grew up with really enjoyed poop and pee. There are dogs who have urinated on less upholstery and apes who have flung less shit than Ray.
Our high school was built in the thirties and the locker room had separate lockers in the rear known as “the cage.” It was made of old prison-type grate and went floor to ceiling, twenty-five feet high. It had a door but it was broken, and the only way to get out once you were in was for someone on the outside to go get a pair of needle-nose pliers. This was bad news if you were the poor schmuck Ray and Chris trapped in there. The locker rows were double-sided and about seven feet tall. There was only about five feet of space in between each row, so once Ray and Chris got their victim trapped in the cage, Chris would get atop the lockers and rain golden terror from above. The victim had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. You couldn’t even climb the cage because the holes in the grate were too small to accommodate fingers. That’s not to say this treatment was only reserved for strangers and nerds: I suffered my time in the cage, too. And this behavior wasn’t limited to just the locker room.
When we were in high school we had a friend named Alex. Why he hung out with us, I have no idea. Alex was a normal Jewish kid from what we called Hebrew Heights who later went to Berkeley and has since gone on to become a lawyer. But somehow back then he hooked up with two lowland gorillas from the Valley in the form of me and Ray. We used to mooch off him because unlike us he ha
d a normal, intact family system who had two nickels to rub together. We used to convince him to spend some of those nickels on us. One of Ray’s finer moments was when Alex took us out to Fatburger and treated him to a double King with cheese, large fries, and a shake. Ray repaid him in gold. While Alex was driving, Ray took out his dick and started pissing on him. This was unprompted by an argument, alcohol, drugs, or even a dare. And it wasn’t a crazy weekend road trip either. This was your average Tuesday after school. That’s what Alex got for spending his money on food for Ray. And talk about dangerous. We weren’t in the parking lot. He was driving. You can’t text while driving because it’s too distracting. Imagine a large German guy pissing on you while you’re behind the wheel. The best part was that Ray got indignant and refused to leave when Alex pulled over and told him to get out. He flat-out refused, shouting “What for?” I was in the backseat the whole time laughing like a maniac. And the angrier Alex got, the harder I laughed.
Ray also took a leak on Snake’s leg. This time we weren’t in a car; he did it under the table while we were eating at a breakfast place called Du-par’s. Urine by its very nature is the same temperature as your body. So when a guy opens up on you under a table, you don’t feel it until he’s done. So after Ray had emptied his bladder onto Snake’s Levi’s, he got pissed and threw a glass of water at Ray. Ray retaliated by throwing an ashtray at Snake’s head. This erupted into a full-fledged fight, and needless to say we received a lifetime ban from the Studio City Du-par’s.
At a certain point Ray graduated from number one to number two. I think I know where it all began. One day when we were sixteen, Ray, Chris, and I cut fourth period. Ray needed to take a shit, so he headed into the bathroom and invited us. I knew that no good could come from me going in there, so I stayed behind. Chris did too. Momentarily. Once Ray was safely on the shitter, Chris went in. Out in the hallway I heard Chris kick open the stall door and yell, “Freeze, baby!” which was the catch phrase he’d shout before the piss hit the fan. I then heard Ray yell “No!” shortly followed by “My eye!” Chris was pissing all over poor Ray, who had his shorts around his ankles. This left Ray with no recourse but to reach down between his legs into the toilet, grab his breakfast from earlier that day, and whip it at Chris. Then I heard what sounded like a body hitting the floor, which was Chris trying to get out of the bathroom and slipping on the piss-covered tile. Fortunately, I never entered the fray. But that was the day the Geneva Convention was broken. It was the shit heard round the world.
Yet like America before Pearl Harbor, I could stay isolated for only so long before the carnage found its way to my shores. I remember vividly when I was pulled into World War Deuce. It was about eleven in the morning, third period. We had a hundred-year-old codger named Mr. Spathe for English. He was on the verge of death and didn’t give a shit—unlike my other teachers, who were middle-aged and didn’t give a shit. So halfway through class Ray just announced, “We’re going to the bathroom.” Spathe barely looked up. Me, Ray, and Chris left class. They headed to the bathroom and I was standing alone in the hallway. I wasn’t about to follow them in. There had been far too many poop and pee skirmishes in that bathroom for me to put myself in harm’s way. A few minutes later, they came out with devilish grins and Ray was holding something behind his back the way you would when you’re going to surprise a coworker with a cupcake on their birthday. Ray walked out into the hallway and said, “Ace, come here. I want to show you something.” I was nervous because Ray was acting nice so I held my ground. But before I knew it Ray made his move. I had a split second when I saw something was about to happen and tried to duck and slip past him, but it was too little, too late. I felt something go “WHAP” right in my ear.
The story gets a little fuzzy here, but I’m sure you’ve figured out the bottom line—one of them shit into a paper towel. To this day neither Chris nor Ray will take credit for the stool. Remember, this was before DNA testing; nowadays we could get to the heart of this mystery like CSI—Crap Scene Investigation. Either way, someone’s number two was put in a paper towel and then in Ray’s hand and then my ear.
My first impulse was to kill Ray. Unfortunately, we had exactly the same foot speed, he had a five-step head start, and I was at an emotional and a drag-coefficient disadvantage. We had a retarded Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote chase scene through the halls and out into the quad with Ray chanting, “Shithead! Shithead! Shithead!” the whole time. People were now looking out their classroom windows, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to catch him so I cut bait and decided to run to my locker and then dash home. I threw on my maroon jacket, pulled it up over my head, and snapped it closed like Kenny from South Park. Only my eyes were showing as I ran toward home in shame. But I had one last barrier, the security guard. He was a big brother with a Jheri curl. But I shoulder faked left and pumped right, jumped over the fence, sprinted home, and took a shower that was slightly longer than Karen Silkwood’s would have been if she had been raped on the way home from the plant.
In retrospect, I probably should have seen it coming. When we were in seventh grade, Ray borrowed my L.A. Rams beanie. He had it for a few weeks, and when I asked for it back, he handed it to me like a lunch bag. When I opened it, I saw that he had crapped in it. And it wasn’t like this was some weird phase he went through when we were kids. After high school when I was living in my dad’s garage, Ray deposited a large dook inside the entrance to my room. Unfortunately, my father discovered it before I did. Ten years later at our high school reunion, we were side by side at the urinals. Ray turned 90 degrees and started peeing on me. We were wearing suits and this wasn’t the end of the night; I still had to go out and see people I hadn’t seen in years who already thought I was a loser before I smelled like a hobo who pissed himself on a bus bench. I asked, “What the fuck?” Ray simply said, “Old times.” I had to give it to him. It was a nice wiz down memory lane.
You have to remember, we didn’t have cable or the Internet back in the day. We had to make our own entertainment. When we were seventeen, Ray and I noticed a billboard above a store called Aahs!! on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. It looked like a freeway sign and read:
For family fun go to:
1. Knott’s Berry Farm
2. Disneyland
3. The beach
We knew this was something we had to fuck with. And in an uncharacteristic burst of ambition, we decided that simply getting a can of spray paint just wouldn’t do. There are three important things to understand about this particular stunt.
First, our usual nonsense was free. This one cost us money. We bought some white vinyl and cut out letters in a matching font to apply to the sign. We borrowed the money from our Hebrew Heights friends and roped them into coming with us. It was me, Ray, Rudy, Jack (his shoes were still wet), a kid named Robbie, another named Steve, and the aforementioned Alex. Boy, did we ruin that kid. That was his real bar mitzvah. That day he became a man by committing petty crime with a bunch of assholes from the Valley.
Second, this was dangerous on a couple of levels. It was three A.M. when we climbed on top of a dumpster to reach a ladder that would get us onto the roof of Aahs!!. We were then able to climb another ladder up to the billboard. But the real danger was that Ventura is the busiest street in the San Fernando Valley. It’s crawling with cops. You couldn’t stand on Ventura for two minutes without a cruiser going by. Yet there we were, shouting at each other about hanging the letters straight, the whole time being illuminated by the light on the billboard. If the Man had pulled up we would have had two options—be cuffed and put into a squad car, or do the honorable thing and dive to our deaths.
The last thing to keep in mind is that there was no YouTube back then. We weren’t filming this in the hopes of becoming viral video stars. But thank God one of us had the foresight to come back the next day and take a picture. We just wanted it for ourselves. It’s not like I ever thought I’d become famous and be able to put it in a book. But here it is …
for family fun.
One hot summer night I let Ray put me in a dryer at a coin-op laundry. They lock from the outside, so you can’t get out once you’re in. Especially if Ray is the gatekeeper. So I just tumbled dry with hot air blowing up my ass. I was three seconds into it when I thought to myself, God, does this suck. I don’t know what the hell I was expecting, as if it supposed to be Space Mountain or something. I was in North Hollywood inside a metal cylinder with three-inch-high fins every foot, rolling me around like an old tube sock.
At a certain point I gave Ray the “I’m serious” call. “I’m serious” is the safe word of buddies fucking with each other. Ray eventually let me out. It wasn’t like we were eleven or even sixteen: This was when we were in our early twenties. This is what happens when you don’t go to college. We couldn’t afford vacations, but stuffing your buddy in a dryer only costs a quarter.
Ray and I also took a road trip to Vegas with Chris. While I’m sure there were as many drunken shenanigans as our broke asses could afford, this story isn’t about what happened when we got to Vegas, it’s about the journey to and from. Chris and I hopped into his ’84 Nissan mini-pickup and went to grab Ray. He came out of his apartment, saw me in the front seat, and said, “Get in the bed.” There wasn’t enough room on the vinyl front bench seat for all three dudes, so one of us needed to get in the back of the pickup. For clarity, this was a bare metal pickup truck bed. No bed liner, no camper shell. I told Ray that I wasn’t going to get in the back. We argued for a little bit and I finally said, “Look, I’m a fair-minded guy. One of us will sit in the truck bed on the way there and the other will on the way back.” I knew there was no way that one of us was going to get stuck in the bed for both the outbound and return trip. Ray replied, “Get in the back.” This worked out well for me. It was the middle of August but it was also eight P.M. when we left. So while the ride to Vegas for me would be warm, the ride home on Sunday at high noon would be horrible for Ray. By my calculations, he’d die somewhere between Death Valley and Baker, California. So I jumped into the back and we left. For the four-hour trek I bounced around the bed, alone with my thoughts—remember I had no cell phone, no iPod, not even a sliding window so I could talk to the guys in the truck. Just me sitting on the driveshaft of a dangerous vehicle in the dark of the desert night being driven by a lunatic in the form of Chris. It never dipped below 85 degrees. Again, my only comfort was knowing that my 85 degrees would be relative luxury compared to the triple digits and blazing sun Ray would be dealing with. He’d be long dead by the time we got to the world’s largest thermometer.
