Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  In recent years the L.A. Marathon has gone in a straight line from Dodger Stadium to the Santa Monica pier, and hopefully off of it. This is disruptive to the flow of traffic, to say the least. But in ’99 it went in a giant circle around the city like a tremendous, sweaty Berlin Wall, shutting down the entire town from five in the morning to nine at night. L.A. already has a world-famous traffic problem, but the mayor and city council will not rest until it’s a full-blown pigfuck. I don’t know what percentage of Los Angelenos participate in the marathon, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say way less than 1 percent. This is yet another situation in which the majority has to pay the price because the minority wants to prove something to themselves. By the way, when I say “minority” I mean smaller group: There’s no brothers or Mexicans participating in the L.A. Marathon. Just so you don’t think I’m a total douchebag, I’m not saying we should cancel the marathon. I’m just saying we should modify it so the entire fucking city isn’t forced to participate. How about you head down to the Fontana Speedway? It’s got a lovely two-mile oval. First guy to make it around thirteen times wins. It would be the first time a Kenyan won anything on a NASCAR track.

  Also, let’s add a time limit to it. If you can’t complete a marathon in under six hours, you shouldn’t be running one. The entire town gets closed down for fourteen hours so some asshole can prove something to himself. But ultimately what did you prove? You’re a horrible marathon runner? And according to your “It’s not about the time, it’s about the distance covered” plan, then technically we’re all marathon winners. I ran a marathon between my den and my kitchen. It only took fourteen months to complete. Again, the point is that the marathon fucks up the lives of hundreds of thousands of Los Angelenos who don’t have anything to prove, but do have somewhere to be.

  Back to my trek to Dawson’s Creek. The entire city was gridlocked, and getting out of my part of Hollywood was impossible. It was as if the marathon planners had sat down with a map, put a pushpin into the spot where my house was, took out a Sharpie, drew a big circle around it, and said, “This is the marathon route.” At about twelve thirty the driver called and said he was running a little late because of the marathon traffic. That was the last time we’d speak. At one o’clock I decided to go out front with my week’s worth of luggage and wait for the town car. At one fifteen it became apparent that he wasn’t showing up. While delighted over the prospect of not having to tip the driver, I was horrified at the idea of having to charter my own flight to North Carolina. I’d be the first guest star in history to do a week on Dawson’s Creek and lose nine thousand dollars. I ran up the stairs and screamed at my wife, “We’re going to the airport right now. Let’s go.” We jumped on the 101 freeway and it was a parking lot, so we turned around and got on the 405. I drove like Vin Diesel on three Red Bulls toward LAX. As I approached the United terminal, I told my wife we were only going to be able to slow down to shoulder-roll speed, and that when I jumped she was going to have to take the wheel. Sweaty and out of breath, I hit the ticket counter at about 2:05. I knew there was almost no chance of making that last flight to North Carolina, but maybe it was delayed or they had to pull a drunken James Van Der Beek off the flight after he defecated on a drink cart. So I took a deep breath and asked the woman behind the counter if the flight had left. She said yes. My heart, nay, my wallet, sank. Why didn’t I take that eight A.M. flight? Why didn’t I listen to the producer? Then I realized I was doing something I promised I would never do—internalize. So I turned my ire toward my asshole driver and the motherfucking marathoners and the city officials that had put me up Dawson’s Creek without a paddle. Even though I knew what the answer would be, I decided to ask the woman behind the counter if there were any other flights going to North Carolina that day. To my surprise, she said, “Yes. The last one is at three thirty.” That’s the only time I’ve ever been happy a producer’s lied to me. I caught the flight, and my only recollection of Dawson’s Creek was a week’s worth of Loveline from one A.M. to three A.M. (with the time difference), followed by seven A.M. call times. The only saving grace was that Perfect Strangers was on at three thirty A.M. every night when I got back to my hotel.

  Jimmy and I did a lot of traveling for The Man Show as well. We were invited to be the grand marshals of a Mardi Gras parade. This was a great compliment, and we were happy to accept. That was, until we realized why we had gotten the call. Originally the parade planners had locked down a much bigger celebrity than us, but he had to cancel and we were the backup. I’m sure the Mardi Gras revelers were quite disappointed and confused when they saw the guys from The Man Show tossing out beads and commemorative medallions featuring the likeness of the original grand marshal—Tommy Lasorda.

  Of course, we made a Man Show bit out of this and filmed our time in the Big Easy. One of my favorite moments wasn’t actually captured on film. We were doing one of those guided tours and we were in the van motoring along the highway, headed for our next stop. The speed limit was thirty-five and we were going forty-five. I know this because up ahead, going our direction in the next lane over, I saw a cop. I shouted at the driver, “Cop! Cop! Cop!” Because all they do is hand out chickenshit tickets, this is standard operating procedure when you’re driving in Los Angeles. One guy drives while the other works as a spotter. “Six o’clock—motorcycle cop!” So I started yelling at the driver, but he didn’t slow down. I said, “You’re gonna pass him!” In L.A. if a cop does twenty-eight on the freeway, no one will pass him. It’ll be a wall of drivers like he’s the pace car at the Indy 500 and is gonna pull in to pit row. I shouted, “Cop on the right!” but the driver just blew past him. I said, “I can’t believe you just drove past that cop.” He said, “They’ve got real crime to worry about.” And I thought, Wow, how liberating: You live in a place where the cops aren’t trying to rape you. As a native Los Angeleno, I can’t get my mind around this idea of cops stopping crime instead of fucking with motorists. Apparently that’s what goes on in these other cities.

  2001—New Orleans. Not the first time Jimmy and I have been together in pirate costumes. I’ve said too much …

  Jimmy and I traveled to Canada early in the run to try and pitch The Man Show for syndication there. This story doesn’t involve him as much, but it’s worth telling. Before we left, I got the speech from everyone that you should tell the people from customs that you are there for pleasure, not business. If you tell them business, you’re screwed. So I was going through and I told her “pleasure.” But they said, Okay, let’s look at your briefcase. Besides the Juggs magazine, they pulled out an itinerary. In addition to selling The Man Show, we were also doing Good Morning Montreal and all that stuff. My argument was that I wasn’t getting paid for it. It’s promotion, so it’s not business. I said to the customs agent, “When Michael J. Fox does The Tonight Show, he doesn’t get paid.” And the woman said, “Who’s Michael J. Fox?” And the entire tone changed from my business-versus-pleasure argument to How the fuck does a Canadian not know who Michael J. Fox is? And this was in 2000.

  What is the deal with customs agents? Who’s attracted to that job? I’ll tell you. Assholes who want power. They wear a shitty uniform and get paid a little less than a garbage man, but they get to fuck with innocent strangers on a daily basis. But ultimately they’re pussies who won’t confront anyone who poses an actual danger. They’re not going with the LAPD to gang-infested neighborhoods, they’re fucking around with Whitey. I told her I was not a criminal there to run drugs, I was just going to promote a show, drop a little money at a strip club, and be on my way. What I don’t understand is when everyone tells me to suck it up and take it up the ass from some jerk. These guys allegedly work for us. I didn’t barge into her house and demand she blow me. But I spoke up for myself. So they took me to a separate office and made me wait for an hour for someone to come out until I finally realized I was being punished.

  Another infamous Man Show road trip was one where we didn’t travel that far, just a
couple of miles to the City of Industry and the Spearmint Rhino strip club. One of the writers was getting hitched, and Jimmy threw him a bachelor party. Jimmy usually spearheads these events because of his own bachelor-party experience. Jimmy got married young and broke, and thus his bachelor party was pathetic—a couple of buddies from high school, a twelve-pack of warm Stroh’s, and they would have been lucky if they had the bra section of the Sears catalog for the “entertainment.” Plus Jimmy grew up in Vegas, so it wasn’t even like they could say, “Hey, we went to Vegas for the weekend.”

  Just a quick riff on bachelor parties and what they’ve deteriorated into. The bachelor party used to be about getting drunk with your friends and lying down with one last chick before settling down with another. Over the years it’s turned into a fraternity hazing. Now the bachelor is the one having the least fun. He’s been duct-taped to a chair and is getting beer dumped on him while his friends beat him with flashlights. And a quick tangent within a tangent: The bachelor-party selection process is important. No inviting the brother of the wife-to-be, and no inviting the buddy of the buddy. That guy who no one at the party seems to know is always the one who gets too loaded and ends up doing some lines and then crossing some lines with the stripper. Bachelor-party crews should have a better vetting process than vice-presidential candidates. There should be full background checks on everyone in the party van.

  But back to the story. The bachelor party was the day of a Man Show taping, and we were going to hit the road in the party bus Jimmy had rented and stocked with booze right after the recording wrapped. As usual on taping days, we had a catered lunch—that day’s special was clam chowder. Everyone had a couple of bowls, Jimmy’s tally probably cracking double digits. What makes this notable is that about a spoon and a half into my first bowl I said, “This doesn’t taste right.” Jimmy insisted that the clams in the chowder were smoked and it was supposed to taste that way. He then slurped down another bowl. I ate a bit more, knowing something wasn’t right but that as usual I was. The clams weren’t smoked, they were spoiled. Unfortunately, my suspicions weren’t confirmed until we were at the strip club. There are a lot of terrible places to have diarrhea, but the champagne room of the Spearmint Rhino in the City of Industry is one of the worst. Throughout the night, in between lap dances, the guys were running into the bathroom and decimating the toilets with explosive ass mud. The night was a disaster only made worse by the fact that the bachelor refused the lap dance and Jimmy wasn’t having any of it. He had paid for the party, he felt a writer for the Man Show shouldn’t be refusing a lap dance, and let’s just say he had mixed emotions about the bride. It became an argument, then a scuffle, then a brawl. He was cursing and scratching and he was physically held down for the lap dance. Not surprisingly, he was not hired to come back for another season.

  That story reminds me of another travel tale, and you’ll soon understand the connection. So we’ll flash back slightly to 1997. Loveline was humming along, and I was asked to come out to Washington, D.C., for the HFStival, a big nineties alternative-music fest at RFK Stadium. WHFS was a Loveline affiliate and one of the first to put us on. They were huge fans because we were number one on their station, so I was flown out on a corporate jet with producer Ann and Tripp Reeb, the then–general manager of KROQ. Tripp was the guy who yelled at me for calling Mountain Dew “the nectar of the tards” on the show. When I informed him that Mountain Dew didn’t advertise on Loveline and that it shouldn’t be a problem, he told me that their parent company, Pepsi, was a sponsor, at which point I offered him a hearty “Yeah, but still.”

  When we landed in D.C. I went out with Tripp, producer Ann, and the GM of WHFS. I enjoyed some delicious Maryland soft-shell crabs for the first time ever and then hit the 9:30 Club, a famous D.C. rock venue, where I saw Ben Folds Five play and did a couple of shots with Andy Dick. It was a great night, after which I retired to my hotel room.

  The following day, I was slated to go to RFK and step in front of fifty-five thousand people to bring out one of the bands. It was a great lineup of nineties rock—Luscious Jackson, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Soul Coughing, the Verve Pipe, and Ben Folds Five among others. It was my job to introduce Beck.

  At six A.M. I awoke and instantly began violently throwing up. This happened every half hour thereafter in between curling in the fetal position on the bare hotel bathroom floor. When you’re so feverish that the cold tile of a bathroom floor is sweet relief, that’s a bad sign. I had gotten food poisoning from the crabs. It was miserable. I would have preferred to get crabs than what I got from those crabs.

  I doubled over in agony and thought there was no way I could get in front of a packed NFL stadium and shout out Beck’s name, even though Beck is one of the few musicians whose name you could actually say while vomiting. The only better vomiting band name is Blur.

  I spent the next four hours violently removing any liquid or solid that had passed my lips in the past seventy-two hours. I felt horrible that the station had gone through considerable expense to fly me across the country and for the fans who made Loveline number one in D.C. And who was going to break it to Beck? So I made a promise that if I could string together sixty minutes without vomiting, I would get on the subway and head to the venue. I managed to stop vomiting and decided to go to RFK even though my head hurt worse than JFK’s.

  When I arrived, I could barely stand. Thankfully, in the bowels of the stadium they had a makeshift tent city for each band—think of the Red Cross setup in a high school gym after a tornado. The first set of cots I passed belonged to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I was greeted by Dicky Barrett, who took pity on me. He opened his beach-towel door and invited me in for some Gatorade and a nap. Later we would become great friends, but at the time I barely knew him. That just goes to show what a great guy he is.

  An hour later I was out onstage introducing Beck, and six hours after that me and the rest of the Bosstones were in the gay section of town enjoying one of the best steaks I’d ever eaten.

  One last travel story again related to Jimmy—this time going to Vegas. In 2000 Jimmy’s grandfather passed away, and the memorial was in Las Vegas (that being where the Kimmel family resided at the time). As Jimmy’s best bud I was invited, as was our producing partner Daniel Kellison. Like always, I tried to get to the airport as close to my flight as possible and not waste my life (and remember, this was pre-9/11, so you could cut it a lot closer). But on this sunny Saturday, for no particular reason, LAX was crowded. I pulled into the parking structure and drove around for more than forty-five minutes looking for a spot to no avail. I was already cutting it close, but the added time searching for a nonexistent spot meant I was very likely going to miss my flight. I gave up hope and decided to leave the structure and go to one of those Park ’N Fly lots and take the shuttle. As I pulled out of the structure, the bitch in the booth (by the way, Bitch in the Booth is my favorite Dr. Seuss book) took my ticket and asked for eight dollars. I protested that I couldn’t find a spot and shouldn’t have to pay. The argument continued and I decided that my time was worth more than that, threw eight bucks at the chick, and sped off to the satellite lot.

  1997—Washington, D.C. On stage at the HFStival. And they said Squirrel Nut Zippers wouldn’t stand the test of time …

  1997—Washington, D.C. On stage at the HFStival. And they said Squirrel Nut Zippers wouldn’t stand the test of time …

  I got to the check-in counter and had missed my flight. I booked myself on the next plane into Vegas. I landed and was already pretty beat, but Daniel wanted to hit the strip club. I told him no, I was tired and starting to feel a cold coming on, so it was one more hand of blackjack and then off to bed.

  Cut to me at Paradise at one A.M. doing that drunk-guy unrealistic math. “Just one more shot of Jaeger, I’ll be out of here by one fifteen, hit the hay, and still feel okay in the morning.” It was seven A.M. and fully daylight when we left the club. I stepped out into a bright, hot Vegas morning and got myself back to the
hotel. The funeral was in less than three hours.

  I lay down knowing I couldn’t get any real sleep but hoping for something a little longer than a nap. As soon as my head hit the pillow, the hotel phone rang. It was a couple of jag-offs I had met on the flight who I made the mistake of telling I was staying at the Hard Rock and who wanted to invite me out for some more partying. I ended up getting twenty-five minutes of sleep, and when I woke up I wanted to puke.

  My head still spinning a little and definitely feeling nauseous, I slid myself into a suit and slid out of the hotel. I was greeted by a cloudless, 115-degree Vegas Sunday. I rode waves of nausea through the funeral, and when it was over we all filed out. As we left the grounds of the funeral, despite the fact that it hadn’t rained, there was a rainbow. Jimmy’s family stared at it, feeling moved. There was a real moment and lots of comforting notions about how it meant something, a message from Grandpa. I spoke up and said, “I know you’re all taking this as a divine moment, but they’re filming a Skittles commercial down the street.” There was a short, tense beat, but then everyone busted up laughing. Jimmy’s mom, to this day, thinks this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life.