Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  1989—Plane to Hawaii. Just noticed I’m reading a People with JFK, Jr., on the cover. That’s a bad omen.

  I returned to find that Lindsey had moved out. In an even stranger twist, she had moved in with my grandparents. They were away for five weeks doing one of those Europe-on-ten-dollars-a-day-style tours. She needed a place to stay, and in keeping with tradition, my family was nicer to someone outside the family than to their own blood. Adding insult to injury, I would drive by their house and see the motorcycle owned by her new boyfriend parked in the driveway.

  Not only was I out a girlfriend, I was now out a roommate. And I couldn’t swing the rent myself. I soon welcomed a succession of dudes renting the loft for $200 a month. As pathetic as I was, the parade of losers I shared my place with were worse. One guy moved in and all he had was a single cardboard box, the kind you use to carry your possessions after you clean out your desk when you’ve been fired from a job. It had no lid and contained a couple of T-shirts, a pair of folded jeans, and a can of Dinty Moore beef stew. Bob A. was one of these guys. He lived with me for a little over two months until his VW van was fixed and he could thus return north to his homeland of Canada. The night before he moved out, I promised to drive him to pick up the van the next morning and thought we’d have a little farewell party. We pooled our money. It was just enough for a $13 hibachi, some coals, and a chub-pack of chicken. As we sat in front of the hibachi I looked at Bob and thought, I just spent my last nineteen bucks on this cookout, rent’s due next week, and I don’t have a roommate to replace you. Bad times.

  I managed to convince Lindsey to give me another shot, and we made a fresh start in a new apartment in Santa Monica. It was a two-bedroom, one-bath in an eight-unit rent-controlled building on Fourteenth Street. It was nice to be out of the heat of the Valley.

  We quickly found there was a reason we broke up the first time around and I, for the second time in my life, lost Lindsey and was out a roommate.

  Looking for roommates when you’re entering your freshman year of college is one thing, but when you’re entering your late twenties it’s just sad. The key was to find someone who, like me, was able to thread the needle between being successful and a homeless junkie. After all, you have to not only live with this person but have heated, accusatory arguments over such hot-button issues as “Who’s been getting into my generic shredded wheat?” and “Why are we splitting the utility bill when you have a space heater?” A friend from Acme named Lisa ended up moving in and brought with her a very angry cat named Cicely. She would rub up against my leg, but when I would reach down to pet her she would swat at me. (The cat, not Lisa.)

  It was during this period that one night I was returning from the supermarket. As I walked up the stairs to the second floor heading toward my door, I heard a woman bellowing from the street. The apartment had a long, high hedgerow that blocked my view. So I ran down the stairs. I remember the flip-flops I was wearing at the time making their namesake sound as I descended. When I got to the street I saw a hot blonde in her mid-twenties pointing and shouting that someone had stolen her purse. I looked to my right and saw a black guy sprinting away, purse in hand. I took off running after him, knowing full well that even if I weren’t in sandals I wasn’t going to catch him. I wasn’t a fast runner when I played ball in high school, and it had been several years since. And let’s not forget that black people are naturally faster runners because of their anatomy. (I failed biology class but I did learn some science from Jimmy the Greek.)

  Now, you might be wondering why I bothered. It wasn’t just because the chick was hot; it was because I had no regard for my own life. For better or worse, whether we want to admit it or not, as a society we assign a value to life based on a combination of income, education, immediate family, looks, et cetera. At that point the Kelly Beige Book had me valued somewhere between a potted plant and an empty vending machine.

  The snatcher’s buddy was a little ahead of him driving an RX7 that kept swerving in with the door open so he could jump in and drive away. But I was too close in hot pursuit and the getaway driver decided to get away by himself and took off. The thief saw this, dropped the purse, and picked up some speed. I stopped running, figuring I had the purse and could return it to its attractive owner.

  She arrived moments later, out of breath, and saw that the thief had dropped the bag, leaving its contents strewn about the sidewalk and street. With nary a thank-you she began looking around and gathering her belongings, but couldn’t find her wallet. She completely ignored my heroics and began complaining. “Oh, man. He got my wallet.” I said, “Maybe it’s here somewhere.” “No, he got it. I knew it. Goddammit. I just went to the ATM.” She was now yelling at me. A minute later she found her wallet in the gutter, just off the curb. She declared, “I found it! I found it!” and the whole event became her victory, as if she had actually done something. This is such a hot-chick move. A fatty would have been blowing me. But she mentioned she lived in the next building over, and I thought maybe this would pay off later. Quickly a crowd gathered around the hot chick and her recovered purse. When the cops arrived and asked what happened, Pat Tillman Jr. chimed in with “Somebody took her purse, so we all started chasing him and he dropped it.” I thought, “Who the fuck are we? I didn’t see your ass chasing anybody.” The cops got the story without ever taking a statement from me, the guy who actually did the chasing. Someone then offered the blonde a cup of herbal tea, she left, and I slinked away to pick up the groceries I’d left outside my place and beat off.

  I spent a good two weeks hoping for a note on my mailbox that started, “Dear handsome hero …” and ended with a phone number written in lipstick. No such luck. As I’ve said, there are horrible people in the world, but hot blonde chicks are the worst. There’s no way that she didn’t know the apartment complex from which I ran to her rescue. She lived in a neighboring building and was coming home from school when the incident happened. She was standing right there when I came down. Even accounting for the trauma of having your purse snatched, it should’ve only been a day or two before she shook it off and came calling. There were zero attempts to make contact. Not even a Post-it above the mailboxes of my building. I know I sound bitter, and I recognize that I’m not one of the guys heading up the stairs on 9/11, but I did run out onto a dark street to chase a guy who could’ve had a gun. I’d say that if not some nookie, that should at least merit a T.G.I. Friday’s gift card.

  This next story doesn’t involve me and didn’t take place in one of my various dwellings, but it did go down a couple blocks from my apartment and centers around one of my oldest and most colorful friends, Dave. After being discharged from the navy for beating a superior officer with a shoe, he settled in sleepy Santa Monica to begin his life as an electrician. Dave was a good soul who on occasion would drink too much and run afoul of the law, his neighbors, delivery guys, and anyone in his general vicinity. Don’t think “criminal,” think “pirate” as I describe Dave. He had multiple warrants for parking violations, a restraining order from a woman who lived in an adjacent building, and once had the cops called on him for playing his music too loud. The twist is that the punk rock was coming through his headphones while he was wearing them when he was passed out. Yet in 1988 he was named Citizen of the Year in the ultra-progressive/liberal hamlet of Santa Monica. It should also be noted that Dave was built like a jukebox dipped in creatine. So how did this not-so-lovable lug end up winning the hearts of the Santa Monica City Council members? One night after polishing off what Dave dubbed a Big Lush (a 7-Eleven Big Gulp topped off with a pint of dark Meyer’s rum), he decided a large pizza would be just what the drunkard ordered. But he had two problems: He was in no shape to drive, and his address had been blacklisted by the local Domino’s franchise. He had been placed on the “no pie list.” God knows what you have to do to make it onto that list; perhaps it involved his shoe. I never got a clear answer. But the only way Dave could get a Domino’s pizza was to give an address three bl
ocks away, wait for the unsuspecting driver to show up, and intercept him before he rang the doorbell. So Dave hung up the phone with Domino’s, staggered out of the back of his apartment building, and headed up the alley to the drop zone. It was dark, cold, and late, but Dave walked with purpose, making sure he got there before the pizza did. Then he saw something in the distance. It looked like somebody was being pulled into the bushes off the alley. Dave went to investigate. When he arrived, he was shocked to see a young woman being raped by an ex-convict who had just been paroled after serving a twenty-year term for, you guessed it … check fraud. He jumped on the guy, and with the strength of ten drunken bears held him in a headlock until the police arrived.

  Four months later, it was official. The man who used to run up huge pay-per-view porn tabs and steal all my Tylenol PM when he was working at my house was now Santa Monica Citizen of the Year. The cherry on top of the bizarre sundae was that at the ceremony, the medal was bestowed upon him by Kent McCord. Who’s Kent McCord? He played Officer Reed on the cop show Adam-12. Hey, baby, this is Hollywood.

  It was the winter of 1991 and my friend Paul’s wife (Paul being the Acme buddy I’d auditioned for Party Pals with) worked for the Catholic Big Brothers. She arranged for our group to do an improv show at their church around Christmas. I’m an atheist, but I’m not an asshole. I have no beef with entertaining some poor Catholic kids around Christmastime.

  She later roped me into doing some personal Catholic Big Brothering. It was an odd fit. I wasn’t Catholic, I had no real big-brother qualities, and there was no pay. As a matter of fact, it cost money, since you’d be the one footing the bill for the fast food and the Apple Dumpling Gang VHS rental. Despite this, I went in for an interview.

  It was their job to suss out the creeps, so one of the first questions was, “How many times a day do you think about sex?” I don’t think they were actually interested in the number, it was more of a test to see if you’d start sweating profusely and dive through the plate-glass window of the building. I paused for a second and said “three.” I figured if I said zero they’d know I was lying. If I told the truth—3,600—they’d call Chris Hansen. Three seemed reasonable, as it was the number of times I’d beaten off that day.

  Then they asked, “How often do you do drugs?” I said, “I don’t deal them, but if I’m at a party and there’s a doobie going around, count me in.” Not only would it seem disingenuous to say “Straight as an arrow,” but I was in the middle of an interview for a job with no benefits and no paycheck that I didn’t really want in the first place, so I figured, Why lie?

  The bad part of being a Catholic Big Brother is that it’s a huge time suck. The upside is that if you’re a single guy it’s better than a puppy when playing the “Aww, that’s so sweet” card. Thus I was hoping for a black kid who couldn’t get around without his polio crutches. Instead I got paired up with Nate, the kid you saw in the picture at the top of this chapter, a spindly strawberry blond who, worst of all, was from Beverly Hills. Granted, he was poor as hell and lived with his single mom and three brothers and sisters in the cheapest apartment in Beverly Hills. Why Beverly Hills, you ask? Mama wanted to make sure her kids could get the same top-notch education Ian Ziering received.

  Since I was also poor as hell and living in an apartment, I’d take him to Taco Bell. That would be our nice meal out. We’d jump into my Isuzu Trooper and head out for some Bell Beefers with him and a friend.

  Nate hung around with a chunky Russian kid who would often tag along on our excursions. I have a couple of specific memories of him. First was his thick Russian accent. This is going to be a little hard to translate to the written word, so please forgive the phonetics. When he first introduced himself, he said, “Hello, my name is Teem.” I said, “Team? Like in ‘basketball team’?” He said, “No. Not Teem … Teem!” Eventually Nate stepped in and clarified that his friend’s name was Tim, short for Timothy. The other interesting thing about Teem was that he learned all his English from gangsta rap of the nineties. For our trips he would hand me a mix cassette of Dr. Dre, Easy E, Ice-T, and so on. Then he would sit in the back of the Trooper holding a bucket of Mountain Dew he poured himself at the 7-Eleven rapping along to the mix. Imagine a Russian version of the fat kid from Modern Family with Yakov Smirnoff’s voice rapping “Beeches ain’t sheet but ho’s and treeks/Leek on these balls and suck on thees deek.”

  Once I took the two of them to Magic Mountain. As the Trooper with the four-banger was struggling to make it up the pass with the added cargo of Teem and his salad bowl of Mountain Dew they were both lamenting their lot in life. They were in their first year of high school, which is miserable no matter who you are. But they went to Beverly Hills High, which made it worse. Both their parents had no money, so they had to go to class every day feeling like poor outcasts among the rich kids who resided in 90210 proper. Nate said, “We don’t get any girls,” and Teem added, “Yes, those beeches will not talk to us, what is up?” It felt like time for a big-brother pep talk. I turned around and said, “It’s all gonna change next year. You’ll be sophomores, and you’ll have a whole new crop of freshmen coming in, so you’ll be big men on campus. You’ll be rock stars.” Teem interrupted me and said, “Who are you keeding? Nate is too skeeny, and I am too fat.”

  In 1993 when the Internet was still a new fad, Nate fell in love with some chick he met in an America Online chat room. She was from Kentucky. Nate would call her long distance on his home phone.

  People under twenty who are reading this must be thinking two things. What the fuck is an America Online chat room, and what is calling “long distance”? Oh, you kids. Back when I was broke, you used to get charged extra to make a call outside of your area code. Now it’s all cell phones, Skype, and texts. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there has never been a better time to be poor.

  Eventually his mom got wise and cut him off. He was in love with his Kentucky Woman but was heartbroken by their Communication Breakdown: She was the Wind Beneath His Wings. (Sorry, let me turn off my iPod.) He wanted me to drive him to see her. I didn’t even know where Kentucky was, never mind have a car that could get us there. He pleaded about how much he missed her and wanted to talk to her. Taking pity, I gave him my calling card and told him I’d separate the Kentucky calls out of the bills and he’d have to pay me back. I told him to use it but not abuse it. Three weeks later, I got my phone shut off. I didn’t receive a cancellation letter or anything. One day my phone just stopped working. I went down in person to the phone company, and they said I owed them $375. Nate rang up a nearly $400 bill ringing up a chick neither he nor his penis would ever meet in person.

  Occasionally people come up to me at my live stand-up shows around the country or call into the podcast wondering what happened to Nate. I’ve completely lost touch with him. He came around once to see a taping of The Man Show, but that was the last time I heard from him. It’s weird. Contrary to what you think would happen, he sort of cut me off after I got famous. I’m not a huge believer in karma, but it does strike me that things started working out in my life after I mentored him for a year or two. Nate, if you’re reading this, two things: First, you still owe me for that phone bill. Second, say hi to Teem for me the next time you visit him in prison.

  LA CRESCENTA was a weird, sleepy little community on the outskirts of Pasadena (technically the foothills of Glendale). It felt rural, like a Mayberry-esque town. There was a little market and a place to get shoes repaired. I literally got my shoes repaired. Who does that anymore?

  There’s a guy by the name of Ralph Garman that you SoCal natives may know from the Kevin and Bean morning show, and others of you may know from doing some voices on Family Guy. I know him as one of my roommates from La Crescenta. Ralph and I met through the Acme Theatre in 1991. We did sketch and improv and even played on the theater’s softball team together. We immediately hit it off and later decided to shack up together. We had another roommate named Courtland Cox, who’s gone on
to produce all of those VH-1 “whores-in-a-house” shows. Unlike me, with no middle name, Courtland ended up with a worse scenario. His middle name is Downs. Cox is a tough last name, but putting “Downs” in front of it makes your name an activity: Courtland Downs Cox.

  Like all of my preceding abodes, this house had no central heat or air-conditioning. Seeing your breath in your own room is pathetic. In the winter I used to go to bed in a thick wool sweater and ski cap. For the hot summer nights, I resorted to a tried-and-true technique from the time in my dad’s garage: I’d run out, jump into the pool, then run back in without drying off and hop into bed. This killed two birds with one stone because it also accomplished my biweekly bathing.

  Having a pool was great, except for that first day of summer. Confused? Why wouldn’t the first day of summer be the best day to own a pool? Let me explain. The first day of summer meant it had been exactly eight months since Ralph skimmed it, ran the pool motor, or put in a drop of chlorine. A little lesson on Human Nature 101. Ralph slept in the master bedroom, yet the rent was divided equally three ways. So in order to justify having the master suite, Ralph was in charge of the pool and the lawn. This worked out all right during the summer when he wanted to be outside, but when it was a little bit colder, he didn’t perform his due diligence. One year I had to take it upon myself to drain the pool and clean it. And as I recount this story, keep in mind that this was a large pool. Not quite Olympic size, but as big as you’ll see in a residential application. That particular year, Ralph was so derelict in his duty that the pool had turned into the Black Lagoon. I rented a bilge pump and drained off the first several thousand gallons of swamp water. But the last three feet that had congregated in the deep end was a sludge so thick and viscous it wouldn’t go through the pump. It was the consistency of crude oil and comprised of decomposing leaves and possibly a decomposing hooker Ralph couldn’t be bothered to dump at the park. I, wearing supermarket slip-on shoes and cutoffs, proceeded to remove it with a flathead shovel, one scoop at a time. I was using an over-the-shoulder chuck technique, so half of the putrid swill made it out of the pool and the other half rained back down on me. It was a terrible day made worse by the fact that Ralph was sitting in plain view watching TV the whole time.