Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  After the vomit story came up, Drew mentioned my fecal history and Fletcher took it as a challenge. This affront to his dignity stewed throughout the show, and after dropping numerous f-bombs and fellating the microphone, with about twenty minutes left in the show Fletcher stood up, barricaded the door, and threatened to shit in his hand and make me eat it. The Loveline studio was smaller than your average walk-in closet, there was only one way out, and the biggest, drunkest human being on the planet was blocking the door. (A surreal side note: When reviewing the tapes to refresh my memory on this story, I noticed that while Fletcher was threatening my and Dr. Drew’s lives and shouting, “We’re going to Poo-Poo City!” a long PSA on the dangers of airline turbulence was playing to the unsuspecting radio audience.) This went on long enough that six Culver City cops were dispatched and arrived on the scene. But neither Drew nor I wanted to press charges, so Fletcher was not taken away in extra-large handcuffs. This despite the fact that he dropped a couple of references to Ice T’s “Cop Killer” and claimed to be holding a live hand grenade.

  Perhaps my most infamous incident with a celebrity—or in this case, celebrities—was in February of 1999, a few months before the Pennywise incident. Jimmy and I shared an office at The Man Show and had desks that faced each other. Yeah, I know, that’s kinda gay. We were working there one day during the first season when, out of the blue, I got a call from our aforementioned horrible manager, who had received a strange offer. He’d gotten a call from Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, who wanted me to escort her to the Grammys. I was baffled. I wasn’t sure why I’d been chosen for this. I asked my manager, “Why me?” It turns out that Natalie was a big fan of Loveline on MTV. One night I was telling the following story. I was driving in my car with my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife and will probably be my ex-wife by the time she’s done reading this book. Hey, that’s the circle of life. Anyway, I was driving with Lynette. We had pretty much just started dating. As we were rolling down the road, I had to break wind. I farted, and without thinking about it, out of pure male instinct, cupped my hand and wafted the fart toward my nose. I can’t overstate how powerful this urge is in guys. This is something chicks will never understand. If I died and let out some gas a few days afterward, my cold dead hand would instinctively waft it up toward my face. After about three wafts, Lynette glared over at me with a look of disgust that I have come to know well in the ensuing years. She was horrified. It was the look of a woman who had just moved in with her fiancé, opened his desk drawer, and found a pile of pictures of kids with their eyes erased. An “Oh my God, what kind of monster am I with?” look. She said, “Do you have to do that?” Knowing that the best defense is a good offense, I got deadly serious with her and said, “Sweetie, I’m operating a motor vehicle. What would you like me to do, put my head between my legs? We’ll drive into an oak tree. Think about it.”

  Natalie heard me tell that fart tale on Loveline, thought it was hilarious, and decided I was the gentleman who needed to escort her to the Grammys. She hates George Bush and loves fart humor. I found out afterward that Natalie actually had to pitch me to the rest of the group before the date would be approved. Fortunately, the rest of the band liked me too, or at least didn’t give a shit.

  I accepted the invitation and decided to go to the Grammys, since it would probably be my only chance to ever do so. It’s not like I’ll ever have an R&B single heating up the charts. The problem was that I didn’t know how to break it to Lynette. I knew she wouldn’t be cool with it. I had even asked my manager (or his gay assistant Chip, I can’t remember) how it would work and he said it would be cool, that kind of thing happened all the time in show business. He said she’d understand.

  Well, she didn’t understand a fucking syllable. I responded with two points. First, I told her there were pros and cons to being with a guy in show business. The upside is you get to go to a lot of parties and there are gift baskets and things like that. This was one of the downsides. That didn’t get a great response. The second point was that I had to do Loveline right after the Grammys, so it wasn’t like I could do a couple eight balls and fuck her in the limo afterward. Maybe a quick handy in the bushes outside the auditorium, but that’s about it. I left out that last part about the handy, but still Lynette was not thrilled. I went anyway.

  Cut to the night of the Grammys. I’m sitting at the Shrine Auditorium next to all the Dixie Chicks with their Dixie Husbands. It was time for their category, Best Country Album. They had been nominated for Wide Open Spaces. I knew if they won, the cameras would cut to us, there’d be hugging and kissing and excitement, and it would all be broadcast to Lynette, who was watching angrily at home. She’s full-blooded Italian. I pictured her spinning a whetstone wheel, sharpening a machete, and chugging red wine. I must have been the only person in the row rooting for Shania Twain. But alas, Martina McBride and the Backstreet Boys opened the envelope, called their name, and the Dixie Chicks won their first Grammy. I knew the cameras were on me so I stayed in my seat and awkwardly patted Natalie on the back, followed by an even more awkward “Hey, up top!” high-five moment. Ladies, you know that uncomfortable minimal contact you give the creepy guy at the office Christmas party? It was somewhere between that and a Howie Mandel fist bump.

  At the end of the night, I said good-bye and went to do Loveline. The next day I arrived at the Man Show office and I must admit I was preening. I was talking to production assistants I’d never spoken to before, dropping Natalie’s name into conversation. In my defense, I couldn’t really keep it a secret. When I arrived at the office that morning there was a huge bouquet of roses on my desk. They were from Natalie. The card said, THANKS FOR LAST NIGHT. YOU’RE SO SWEET. CALL ME. Jimmy thought it was weird that she sent me flowers and said I should call her and tell her I had a girlfriend. So I decided to give her a call that night on the way in to Loveline. It was about ten o’clock. Natalie picked up, and when I told her who it was, she said, “Oh, my God. I’m watching you on MTV right now.” So I was thinking, “Jeez, this chick has it bad for the Ace man. Can’t blame her, she’s only flesh and blood. Probably using that guitar pick in ways God never intended. Just strumming that bean.” I said, “Thanks for the flowers.” She said, “No problem.” I added, “You should know, I have a girlfriend. But next time you’re in town, come by and do the radio show.” She said okay and we hung up.

  Unfortunately, the next day a giant Mrs. Fields cookie arrived at the office with something like THANKS AGAIN. CALL ME. I MISS YOU written on it in frosting. Jimmy said, “You’ve got to call her and straighten this out. You’ve got a girlfriend.” On Jimmy’s insistence, I called her on my way to Loveline that night. I said, “Thanks for the cookie, too. It’s all very flattering, but I’ve got a girlfriend so—” This was followed by an awkward silence. I filled the gap by saying, “But seriously, next time you’re in town, come in and do the show.”

  By the way, you have to appreciate how difficult this was for me. Men aren’t wired to turn down eager, available pussy. Especially when it’s hot blonde millionaire Grammy-winning pussy. It’s not in our DNA to say, “Take your perky boobs and your nice ass, your Grammy and your Brinks truck full of cash, and hit the bricks. Shoo! Go on, git!”

  The next day I got to the office and Jimmy asked if I had called her. I told him I had and that it was all cool. But the day after that it was not so cool. I walked in and was greeted by a six-foot sub sent by Natalie. By the time I got there Jimmy had eaten two feet of it—I could tell by the chalk body outline of shaved lettuce on the wooden plank. On a large sign stuck into the sandwich was written in mustard, I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!—NATALIE. I decided to brush it off, thinking it was probably her just showing she had a sense of humor. She was embarrassed and was trying to make a joke. Jimmy was skeptical: He thought she was a home wrecker. But I blew it off and thankfully no presents were greeting me the next morning.

  But about a week after the sub arrived, I walked in to find a bo
x on my desk. A little gift box. I opened it up and inside was a pair of panties. And they were not new. They were what I would call spent. I could tell by the smell. Panties are one of the few things that smell better as they age. You can’t say that about Indian food or car interiors. Anyway, the spent panties were accompanied by a note. It read, I NEED TO FUCK YOU TONIGHT. NATALIE. At first I paraded around the office, showing off the underwear. I was in love with the idea of a celebrity being in love with me. But when I was done Jimmy pulled me into our office. He was outraged. He said, “You have a girlfriend. This bitch is nuts. You’ve got to put a stop to this. You man up and call her.” I said I’d call her on my way in to Loveline, but he said, “No, you call her right now. You’ve been too nice. She’s not getting the message. This is a crazy person. You need to call her and lay into her.” I asked, “Now?” Jimmy said, “Right now!” I thought, Jimmy’s right. Enough was enough. I was fired up. I grabbed the phone, dialed with purpose, called up Natalie, and had the following conversation. “Hey, Natalie, it’s Adam.” “Hey, Adam, I’m in Nashville at a Pottery Barn with my mom.” I interrupted, “Listen, I’m flattered, I know you’re into me and you want to get it on, but I’ve got a girlfriend. I don’t know how many times I need to say it. This has gone on long enough. I don’t care how badly you want to fuck, you can’t be sending me panties.” Natalie cut me off. “What are you talking about?”

  I said, “Don’t play dumb.” She shot back, “I didn’t send you any panties.” I asked, “Well, what about the six-foot sub?” She replied, “No.” “What about the cookie and the flowers? I thanked you for the flowers, and you said, ‘No problem.’ ” She said, “I just figured my agent sent them, what was I gonna say?” (She’s right, by the way. If I got a call at four A.M. and a big black guy was on the line and said, “Hey man, thanks for the flowers,” I’d say, “No problemo.”) At this point my head was swimming. I was sweaty, confused, and embarrassed. And then I looked up.

  Jimmy was standing on his desk. And he was holding a video camera.

  As it sunk in that I had been the victim of Jimmy’s all time greatest prank, I started to hang up. My recollection is that I just said “Sorry” multiple times before I slammed the phone down, and even then apologized to the hung-up phone. Jimmy says that I asked Natalie, “So how’s the album going?” The adrenaline rendered the memory a little fuzzy, and unfortunately Jimmy’s videotape of the moment has been lost somewhere along the way. Perhaps you could ask the writing staff of The Man Show what happened, because Jimmy invited them all into the office to witness my humiliation.

  It had been Jimmy the whole time. As soon as he found out I was going to the Grammys with Natalie, his diabolical wheels started turning. The next day after the awards he had called Teleflora and had the flowers delivered. He had sent the Mrs. Fields cookie. He had the six-foot sub delivered. I should have been suspicious at that point, because the sub came from my favorite place, Giamela’s. I remember thinking, How could Natalie have known that? I also should have thought, How could she have warned the writers to not bother ordering lunch that day?

  There was a detail I never knew about this prank until it was revealed last year when I was in front of eighteen hundred people at a sold-out Wiltern Theater in L.A. and invited Jimmy to come on stage and retell the story. When we got to the part about the box containing the panties he asked, “Do you know where we got them?” I said no. He replied, “Do you remember our receptionist, Angela?” I said I did. Her name was Angela Box—that was her actual last name, and she was really hot. He said, “Those were her panties.” Jimmy had commandeered an actual pair of panties from our receptionist. He then reminded me that after I had gotten the panties from “Natalie,” I was strutting around with them, wearing them on my head and talking through the leg hole, sniffing them like a wine cork, hoisting them like the Stanley Cup, while poor Angela was standing there watching me the whole time, attempting not to throw up in her mouth.

  The Dixie Chicks came on Loveline a couple of months later. I recapped the whole story for them, and we all had a nice laugh about it. And the next time they came on Natalie arrived bearing a six-foot sub.

  THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

  I’d like to close out this chapter with one last wonderful memory of my Beachwood Canyon house. I was thirty-three years old, October 17, 1997: the greatest day of my life. I had a poker night with the fellas: Kevin (but no Bean), Kimmel, his brother Jon, and some other buddies were there. The night had two highlights. The first was when Jimmy stood up and very casually walked away, like he was going to the kitchen for some more Doritos. Moments after leaving the table, he jumped through the open window into the room completely naked. To add to the weirdness, he ran through the room saying, “Look out!” as if he was being chased.

  The second highlight was not just of the night but of my life. The game wrapped up and at one A.M., like an old gay couple, Jimmy and I found ourselves alone cleaning up. Jimmy was at the sink doing dishes when I felt a big fart coming on. Jimmy adores fart jokes. So I grabbed one of those cylinder-style Trader Joe’s whole-bean coffee cans. It had about four beans rattling around in the bottom of it. I popped off the plastic lid and put it up to my ass. I even twisted it a little bit to create an airlock. I then released a long, warm, silent fart into the can and quickly sealed it back up. Then I said to Jimmy, “You want to smell some fresh-roasted Sumatran beans?”

  Now, you have to remember that when you ask people to smell things, they’re usually tentative. If you say, “Hey, smell this milk,” they’re not going to go all in. They’re going to think it’s spoiled or something. But not with coffee. People bury their face in that. You see those commercials where people open a can, push their nose into the opening, and the smell wakes them up. People suck that in like it’s their last breath. So I handed Jimmy the can with a picture of a rain forest on it. He popped the lid and put his whole face in it. He took a deep inhale of pure, uncut, end-of-a-long-poker-night Carolla ass. Guys talk about unforgettable moments like winning the Super Bowl or scaling Mount Everest. All of those would pale in comparison to that moment: the part where Jimmy’s brain had to catch up to what had just happened. At first his look was puzzled, but that was quickly replaced by horror.

  And here’s the best part. On top of the brilliance of that moment I was stoned, so it made it all that much more amazing. I’ve never laughed so hard in my goddamned life. It was far and away the greatest moment of my existence. (Sorry, Lynette, Sonny, and Natalia.)

  NOW that you’ve gotten to know me, let’s flash back to where all the trouble began. This is the home of my grandmother Helen, my mom’s mom. I never formally lived here, but I had so many memorable moments throughout my life in this house I thought it warranted its own chapter. You might remember my dad’s medallion from the picture in the opening chapter. Well, big amber beads and whatever the fuck Helen is wearing were as egregious a fashion choice. I also enjoy the picture on the previous page because Grandma, in her quest to look like an extra from the first twenty minutes of Coming to America, managed to combine both tacky leopard print and flower print. It also should be noted that my dad is wearing clear, nonprescription glasses.

  Among the many atrocious features of this house were the cheap wooden knockoff Greek columns. As if you’d be driving by and think, Classy—it’s a little slice of the Acropolis right here in the San Fernando Valley.

  What you can see in the previous picture is the kitchen I added on to my grandmother’s house. My table saw is in the foreground. That kitchen was a piece of shit. I put it on in 1985 for ten bucks an hour under the table when I had only been in construction for ten minutes. With Grandma helping, or at least looking over my shoulder critiquing every step of the way, it took me a year to finish. She was a tough, brassy old broad who didn’t take no for an answer. One day in July, toward the end of the job, I was in the kitchen rolling on primer when she walked in and offered to help paint. She was wearing a blouse, underwear, and nothing else. I as
ked her why she wasn’t wearing any pants and she said she was a grandmother and didn’t have any painter’s pants, she just had weird long grandma skirts with sunflowers on them that she didn’t want to mess up with paint. I said, “Okay, but for God’s sake, stay off the ladder.”

  In order to connect the new plumbing to the sewer line, it had to be found and unearthed. Turns out the old clay pipe was six feet under the lawn, so I dug a ditch just wide enough for the plumber, Bob, to crawl down, cut a section out of the crumbling old pipe, and splice in a Y for the new waste pipe to connect to. Bob was at the bottom of the hole carefully trying to cut the pipe, but it was so old that it was disintegrating as he was sawing into it. He managed to remove the top section, creating a trough filled with chunks of seventy-year-old red clay. Meanwhile I’d forgotten Bob was down there, and as the old saying goes, Out of sight, out of behind. I went to use the bathroom and moments later heard screaming coming from the hole in Grandma’s lawn. I had floated a log down the rustic clay flume that settled on the debris right where Bob was working. He made me get in the hole and manually move it along. Later my grandmother fell in that hole after we’d covered it with a tarp like a Burmese tiger trap.