Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  It was a very short time after that when another major life change was about to come out of nowhere. There was a KROQ event at a sports bar, one of those shitty Monday Night Football “come and meet Jimmy the Sports guy” things Kimmel had to do because Kevin and Bean were too big-time. I decided to tag along. The place was dead. With the notable exception of two good-looking ladies. They approached us and introduced themselves. It was a woman named Suzanne and her friend Lynette.

  Lynette told me she worked for the company that did the pilot for Loveline, New World Entertainment. It was originally supposed to be syndicated, airing mostly on Fox affiliates. Lynette worked in their syndication department, had seen the pilot, and had fallen instantly in love (at least that’s what I tell myself). I don’t remember exactly what I said to her after she mentioned who she was and that she was a fan. Lynette swears my line was, “Are you a single gal?” She also recalls asking me if I was tired because I was more low-key than on the pilot. Apparently I said, “As a performer I’m a seven, but in real life I’m a four.” We exchanged numbers and made plans to meet up because I hadn’t seen the finished pilot and she said she could get me a copy.

  We began dating, and two months into the relationship she found out that the show didn’t get picked up by the Fox affiliates. She was coming to my apartment for a home-cooked meal. (Believe it or not, I used to regularly cook linguine for two early on in our dating.) Eventually the subject of the pilot came up, and Lynette had the very uncomfortable task of telling me it wasn’t picked up. I continued cooking and said, “Eh, something else will come along. Let’s eat.” Within the year I was right and it was on MTV.

  Loveline started on MTV November 11, 1996. My hatred of executives, publicists, and dickhead celebrities began shortly thereafter.

  One of the first things we had to do was record promos. Promos are one of those bullshit things that take up massive time and energy that celebrities never get credit for. In fact, they get points deducted for them. Every one of you has seen a terrible advertisement with a corny tag line for a show that is probably very good, but you wouldn’t know it from the crap churned out by the promo department. Please understand this. That shitty slogan on the bus bench was not produced by the creators, talent, or the writers of these shows. It was farted out by a hack who isn’t good enough to write on an actual show but found his way into the network’s promo department. The boneheaded nonsensical promo line that Dr. Drew and I were forced to record over and over again was “You need a brain vacation.” I still have no idea what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.

  If you think “You need a brain vacation” is bad, a year earlier when the show was supposed to be syndicated we visited our Chicago affiliate to glad-hand and record some local promos. When we went down to the affiliate station, they unveiled their new ad campaign. We were supposed to say, “I’m Adam Carolla. And I’m Doctor Drew. Watch us on Loveline every weeknight at eleven thirty on channel thirteen, the Dubba-Dubba-Dubba-Dubba-WB.” This is one of the many, many times over the course of my career that I’ve said, “This is not going to work.” Three days earlier, I’d been remodeling people’s kitchens for a living. These people had been working in television for years. Why is it that I was the only one who knew this was a horrible idea? It took the guy a half hour to teach it to us and I kept saying, “Do you really think this is ever going to catch on?” Drew reminded me recently that when I’d get into blowouts with executives and other idiots over their stupid ideas, I used to always shout at them, “History will not be kind to this decision,” followed with a super-insulting “Let me save you from your horrible idea.”

  I should make a living as a corporate “insultant.” Not a consultant. An insultant. I would travel from company to company and explain to them why their new product or ad campaign was retarded. I’d circle the boardroom desk with a baseball bat, ask whose idea it was, and take them out Al Capone style. That way we would have never found out What Brown Could Do for You, and we all could have avoided the Noid. Are you listening, Airbus?

  Another colossal waste of time/gigantic pain in the ass I had to deal with early on in Loveline’s run was “media training.” This is the kind of thing I’m sure they had Sarah Palin do before she hit the press circuit after getting the VP nod. You have to sit in front of a camera while fake interviewers throw out made-up questions so you can “refine your message.” They’ll ask something like, “And what do you say to teenagers about having sex?” And you’ll reply, “Well, young people …” and before you can finish your thought, they’ll stop you and say, “Don’t say ‘young people.’ Say ‘young adults.’ ” They have a bullshit list of buzzwords they want you to avoid.

  Drew and I had been in show business for about ten minutes at this point and didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. So we went down, on a beautiful Saturday, to Bragman, Nyman and Cafarelli on Wilshire Blvd. BNC is the big public-relations company out here. We went upstairs to a conference room with a long table, and there were about twenty people sitting around it. They had hired a guy to come in and do fake interviews with us to hone our skills. Later Howard Bragman himself would sit down to play interviewer.

  First off, I don’t like killing a Saturday. The weekend is Miller time. Not Retarded Gay Jews Wasting Our Time time. At a certain point I just looked at everyone and said, “Come on. This is completely unnecessary. Let’s go and enjoy our weekend.” But they said no, we needed to do it again. By then we had already done four fake interviews. So I took a stand. I didn’t say a goddamn word. Not one fucking syllable. Drew, being the team player/pussy that he is, answered every question dutifully. He had the “Let’s just get this done and get out of here” attitude. But I had to make a point. For the entire interview, Drew answered every question and I was Marcel Marceau. And at the end, the seals at BNC slapped their flippers together and said, “All right. But if you could answer some of the questions …” Obviously I was being a dick and going on strike, but that didn’t seem to resonate with them. After not moving my mouth the entire interview I opened it to say, “Okay, now let’s get out of here.” Their response? “Let’s keep going.” The whole miserable affair was capped off when one of the fake interviewers asked my opinion on one of his many fake questions. I asked, “Do you want to know what I really think?” He said, “Yes, I would.” I broke character and shouted that my opinion was that this was all a fucking waste of time.

  Another exercise in futility, tedium, and frustration is the satellite tour. This is the mind-numbing experience of sitting in a studio and rolling through thirty-three back-to-back interviews with the interchangeable perky blonde chick and handsome-twenty-five-years-ago, thinks-he’s-funny-but-isn’t guy duos from Good Morning Tampa, Good Morning San Francisco, Good Morning Milwaukee, Good Morning Burbank, Good Morning Poughkeepsie, et cetera.

  Loveline was getting some national attention, and Drew and I were scheduled on one of these tours. Keep in mind that because we were on the West Coast and these tours started in the East, they began at five A.M. for us. The only thing that could make trying to be quick-witted, engaging, and funny at five A.M. worse is having a job that ended at midnight the night before. The studio where they did the satellite tours was in Culver City, literally across the street from the studio where I was five hours prior, but across town from where I lived.

  On this particular tour we were about twenty-seven back-to-back interviews into our scheduled thirty-two, I was exhausted, and the questions were wearing thin. We were talking to Good Morning Tucson, and before we went on the air the chick reminded us over and over that it was a “family show.” She was apparently nervous that we were the “wild sex-talk guys.” Partway through the interview, the male half of the morning-show combo asked us how Loveline worked. This was a question that had come up a thousand times in the press we were forced to do, so I had an analogy ready to go. I would always explain that on Loveline Dr. Drew was the pill that you had to give your dog and I was the Gainesburger it was wrapped in.<
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  So inevitably the question came up and Drew jumped on it. In true Drew fashion, he messed it up. He said, “We liken it to giving an animal a medication …” I jumped in. “Hold on, Drew. You’re screwing it up. It’s not an animal, you idiot.” Then I said to the team from Tucson, and this is verbatim, “You want your dog to take an antibiotic because it’s got the worms, right? Now what do you do? You give the dog the antibiotic, you put it in its mouth, then it spits it on the floor and doesn’t eat it. But you need it to take this medicine, so what do you do? You take the pill—” At this moment the cunty blonde with too much blush interrupted in the most sing-songy and fake-laughy tone she could muster, “We appreciate that Adam very much …”

  I don’t know if she thought I was going to go on some bestiality tangent in the middle of her “family show,” but I couldn’t finish my thought. Drew then stepped in to defend my point and finish the analogy. He said, “No, this is gonna be legitimate. You put it in some Gainesburger …” Drew turned to me, hoping I’d pick the analogy back up. I just leaned back and said, “No. Just go ahead with your interview. Let’s get this over with.” I went to bed at one thirty in the morning after Loveline the night before and got up at four A.M. to deal with a parade of teeth-whitened wannabe weathermen and overcaffeinated survivors of incest, and I couldn’t take any more.

  That’s not to say I didn’t have problems during the actual tapings with the in-studio guests. Loveline TV was the beginning of my love-hate relationship with celebrities. I’ve run into some hilarious, great guys who always bring it—like David Alan Grier. I’ve also run into some incredible assholes. Everyone loves Rodney Dangerfield, but I know him as a douchebag. I wasn’t a stand-up, so I didn’t have the reverence for him that other people do. But I went into his dressing room to just say hi and thanks for coming on before the show. I’d give every guest the same speech: “Just go out there and have fun, say whatever you want, and if the show sucks, it’s my fault.” But when I got to his dressing room he was wearing a bathrobe and smoking a joint. I addressed him as Mr. Dangerfield and came in politely but he rudely shot back, “Who are you?” I introduced myself as the host of the show. He said, “So. What are you doing in here?” I said I just wanted to introduce myself and say thanks for coming on. He very dismissively replied, “All right.” The show went okay, Rodney didn’t have much to add. Then after the show we had to shoot promos. This is when the guest looks at the camera and says, “Hey, I’m Lou Bega. Watch me on Loveline, coming up next.” Then a version where they say “… tonight” and “… this week.” So the stage manager asked him to do the lines and he said, “No. I have to get a haircut.” So we asked him again. “No.” The camera was set up, the audience was in place, and the cue-card guy had the lines ready to go. The promos would have taken less time than it took him to tell us he had an appointment for a haircut. We’d just done an hour plugging his piece-of-shit movie Meet Wally Sparks, yet he couldn’t find thirty-five seconds to record a promo for his episode. Total dick.

  Drew got into it with the guests as well. I only mention it because it spilled over and affected me. We were doing four one-hour shows a day for $800 a show because MTV is supercheap and we didn’t know any better. It was grueling. That particular day, Jon Favreau was sitting in and a very chemically imbalanced caller was on the line. Jon was telling him, “Don’t let anyone tell you you need to take medication.” Drew started to freak out a little bit because he really thought this was a dangerous situation and that the guy did need to be medicated. Celebrities are such blowhards and are so used to getting their asses kissed they eventually decide their opinions are as valuable as those of people with actual expertise. Drew started mixing it up with Favreau, and the intensity got to him. Mercifully the show ended. But halfway into the next episode Drew was sweating and couldn’t breathe. He stopped the taping and went back to his dressing room. He was having a full-blown panic attack. Yes, even the great Dr. Drew has a chink in his shiny armor, ladies. That and the botched circumcision. We had the audience sitting there and were only two shows into our four tapings. So I entered his dressing room, took a deep breath, and said in my most caring and delicate tone, “Get your shit together, asshole. I’m not staying here for one goddamn minute longer than I need to. I don’t care what kind of attack you’re claiming to have. You and your flop sweat need to get back out on that set. I will drive this ship. I will handle the calls. You sit there doing nothing, like you always do.” Coach Carolla had come through. Drew sprang up, returned to the set, and we proceeded to make another $800 apiece.

  THE WORST FORTY-EIGHT HOURS OF MY LIFE

  The worst weekend of my life involved, not surprisingly, Jimmy Kimmel’s ass. It was April of 1996. We were going to Vegas for the twenty-first birthday of a guy named Big Tad Newcomb. He was an intern/punching bag on the Kevin and Bean show. Tad later found his way to being a production assistant on The Man Show and in 2006, when I started my morning show, against my better judgment we took him on as our “chunky flunky.” By that point the humor of a dim, overweight, goateed eighteen-year-old who lived with his mom in Fullerton had given way to the pity of a dim, overweight, goateed thirty-one-year-old who lived with his mom in Fullerton. Big Tad had become Big Sad. When you watch NASCAR, see Mountain Dew commercials, or hear Korn songs and wonder, “Who is this shit for?” the answer is “Big Tad.”

  Big Tad had a big brother named Tim who would be joining us for the Vegas trip. But he was a male stripper, so he called himself “T. Chance Thrasher.” He also had a son named Blade. I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in. This is who I’d be partying with.

  Jimmy, being Jimmy, decided he was going to make our trip miserable the best way he knew how—gas. As soon as we got in the van Jimmy declared that he had loaded up on canned clams and cauliflower, which he had through extensive research in his secret underground fart laboratory deep within Cheyenne Mountain, determined to be the key to his weapon of ass destruction. Apparently the two cans of clams are for the smell and the cauliflower is the propellant. I think his goal was to make us have to get out and hitchhike before we got to the Bun Boy and the world’s largest thermometer in Baker.

  We were just barely merging onto the freeway when Jimmy let his first salvo go and said, “Boys, it’s gonna be a long trip.” It was not the worst Jimmy gas attack I’ve experienced, but a good, solid 6.5. On the homeland security fart chart it would be orange. But then T. Chance pulled the move that Indiana Jones does in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the guy comes out spinning the sword and Indy just half-heartedly shoots him. He casually said, “Oh, it’s on?” He didn’t know us and he probably would have held his gas, but Jimmy drew first blood. Just like the sheriff in the original Rambo movie.

  In that movie when they say, “We’ve got to clean you up for the judge,” do they really have to chain him to a wall and hit him with a fire hose? I’ve been arrested before and no one put me up against a wall and reenacted a civil rights demonstration in 1963 Selma, Alabama. How about I just put on a fresh T-shirt for the judge? Is there something in the lost and found I could slip into?

  Anyway, Jimmy drew first mud, so T. Chance responded with an appalling fart. It was horrifying and majestic at the same time—like a great white shark. We were all simultaneously disgusted and impressed. And not only did T. Chance have quality, he had quantity. He was breaking wind nonstop for the entire trip. He was a farting machine with an unlimited fuel supply. He was like the sun. I kept turning to Tad and asking when he’d run out, and Tad said it would be generations from now.

  In between lighting matches I kept asking Big Tad, “Is this an everyday occurrence?” He said it was. In fact he said this was better than usual. It was a light flow day. If this had been a period, T. Chance would be merely spotting. If only someone had rammed a tampon up his ass. It was unrelenting. Even Jimmy, the reigning champion, couldn’t keep up and had to beg for mercy. He put up a good fight, he has the ass of the tiger, but the clams weren’t kicking in. I
n fact, they gave him a terrible stomachache and he ended up nearly shitting himself and had to destroy the bathroom at a McDonald’s in Barstow.

  It didn’t stop once we got to Vegas, either. We all shared one room at the Continental Hotel, which was a dump. It was probably a story and a half tall. The in-house entertainment was Cook E. Jarr and the Crumbs. He had hair like Cher from the seventies, and you couldn’t tell if he was a light-skinned black guy or a dark-skinned douchebag. This was also the hotel where Jimmy lost his virginity. And by “hotel where Jimmy lost his virginity” I mean the hotel parking lot where Jimmy lost his virginity. Our room was small and had two beds, Jimmy and me in one and the brothers Newcomb in the other. The gas-passing didn’t stop, even when T. Chance passed out and the sound of Tad’s snoring added rhythm to his brother’s symphony of stink. Jimmy managed to fall asleep only because he’s a narcoleptic. He could nod off on a donkey in a hailstorm. Meanwhile I was staring at the ceiling all night praying for a good old-fashioned Vegas hotel fire.

  The olfactory assault continued for the whole ride home. And then just for good measure, as we dropped T. Chance off, he farted into the open door of the van before waving good-bye.

  Let me end with one extra detail that makes it just a little more hilarious/pathetic. For the entire time that the Fullerton Fart Machine was blowing wind in the back of the van, he was reading one of those How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur books from the fifties. I’m sure he’s parlayed his God-given ass-ets into a multinational corporation by now.

  Every so often I turn to Jimmy and remind him about that trip to Vegas and ask, “How much to do it again? Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Would that be enough?” I’ve yet to offer him enough money.