Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  Saul started talking about the movie in excruciating detail. Unlike Fred Willard, Saul was a little windy. I don’t know if that’s a shocker, but the Jews can get a little verbose when given the floor. He’s a great guy, but you wouldn’t want him giving the best-man toast at your wedding. You’d be divorced and have three kids in college by the time he finished. He talked about the film stock they used and the score and the catering but all I could hear was his drone and the ticking of my watch. It was now 9:44. At a certain point he finished a lengthy anecdote about his agent, said, “And that’s when I knew I got the part,” and took a long pause. I jumped up. As I did that he took a deep breath and started into his next story. I stammered, “Sorry, I have to leave.” I then faced the Bataan Death March up the aisle. He said, “What is this? You’re interrupting my story?” He was busting my chops and being humorous, but it was still embarrassing. I said, “I have to go host a radio show.” Keep in mind this was almost ten on a Sunday night, so he and everyone else in the room must have thought I was just bullshitting. To make it worse, just before I got to the door Jeff Garlin got up and said, “I don’t have to host a show but I’m leaving too.”

  In 2011 I went back to Phil’s house to watch The Ten Commandments. I enjoyed myself and didn’t have to interrupt the post-movie speech by Charlton Heston’s son, Fraser, who played baby Moses floating in the basket. Though I did make an uncomfortable “from my cold dead hands” joke that is going to get me shot by Chuck in the afterlife.

  TOM CRUISE: I’ve saved the biggest celebrity for last. Or actually the shortest.

  I was over at Kimmel’s as usual for football Sunday. Also like usual, I was hitting the kegerator pretty hard.

  The kegerator is the greatest invention of all time. I didn’t think the keg could get any better, and then they added the -erator portion. You put -erator at the end of anything and it instantly becomes better. Doesn’t matter what it is. Apartheid-erator, cat shit–erator, AIDS-erator. But I don’t even need the -erator part. You can just stop at keg and I’m there. No one has ever said, “Come on over. We’ve got football on the big screen, buffalo wings, some ribs, a keg—”

  And I interrupt: “Aaaannd?”

  “-erator.”

  “I’m in.”

  Also, I don’t want to seem like one of the leeches who goes over to Jimmy’s to drain his microbrew, so I’m the asshole who shows up with a skunky sixer of Natural Light and then makes a big deal about it. “Hey, I brought beer. Where do you want me to put this?” Every party has this asshole. The cheap dick who has to do a parade lap drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that he brought a warm six-pack of Stroh’s before he drains the keg full of Sierra Nevada. “Where’s this go? Jimmy, where does this go?” I don’t know. The chandelier in the upstairs bedroom? Put it in the fridge, you asshole.

  So I was hitting the kegerator pretty hard, getting shit-faced and watching the game on Jimmy’s 117-inch plasma TV. Not a projection screen, a plasma. The thing doesn’t even use standard household electrical current, it uses 240. That’s the shit they run bilge pumps off of. Four Mexicans died mounting it. I say it’s a small price to pay.

  Jimmy took me aside and whispered, “Keep it down, but Tom Cruise is coming over to watch the games today.” Tom had been on Jimmy’s show recently and Jimmy invited him over. I thought, Holy shit, I am gonna talk to him about All the Right Moves for two hours. Now I was nervous, so I started hitting the kegerator even harder.

  The early games came and went with no sign of Tom. I was starting to lose hope. But with about two minutes left to go in the fourth quarter of the late game, and me completely blotto, there was a knock on the door.

  I jumped up to answer it. I flung open the door to find Tom Cruise. But he wasn’t alone. It was Tom and his mother. And his mom was holding a box of cupcakes. Tom said hi, handed me the cupcakes, and strolled into the living room.

  There are a lot of rumors swirling around Hollywood that Tom likes the fellas. I don’t know if they’re true. Now, I’m no publicist, but if you’re looking to squash that kind of gossip, next time you go to the home of the dude from The Man Show to watch football with the guys, perhaps you should leave your mom and the cupcakes at home.

  I offered Tom a beer, but he said no thanks and would prefer a bottled water. I lost a lot of respect for the man that day, because he had a town car driver waiting outside. If you have a driver, it’s your job to get shit-faced. I don’t care if you’re in a funeral procession or a presidential motorcade: If someone else is behind the wheel, you should be getting wasted.

  Tom did a lap around the party and mingled for a couple minutes as the game wound up. Shortly after that, one of the Man Show writers and a regular at Jimmy’s Sunday football parties, Tony Barbieri, said to me, “Do your touchdown dance for Tom.” Because I was drunk I said, “That’s a capital idea.” When you’re drunk, everything sounds like a great idea. Somewhere in America right now, two drunk guys are having this conversation: “Hey, let’s go fuck with that cop’s horse.” “That’s an awesome idea. Just let me strip down to my underpants.”

  Jimmy has a sunken living room. So Tom was three steps up on the landing in front of the door. I told Tom I was going to do my famous touchdown dance, handed him a ball, and told him to throw me a pass. Tom reluctantly accepted the ball, and I stood in front of the big-screen a couple feet away. I shouted, “Tom, I’m open!” and waved my arms. Tom threw me a wounded duck. I caught it and proceeded to do my touchdown dance, which you can learn to do yourself by following the simple illustrated steps on the opposite page.

  Tom and his mom were mortified, grabbed their cupcakes, and bid a hasty retreat.

  I want to bookend this chapter with some thoughts about my house. It is a constant work in progress. A couple years ago, I added my super-garage. And during that process I had the ultimate fuckstick screw with me. In order to complete the garage, I needed a bunch of half-inch-thick sheets of tempered glass. Each sheet was eight foot by eight foot, and they needed to go up to the second floor. That meant each sheet, at about four hundred pounds, was going to require a couple of guys and a hand-cranked telescoping lift to get it up there intact. It was hairy. You’d have to crank it up to the second floor, and then the team of guys would get it with suction cups and gingerly put it into place. If one thing went wrong, someone could have easily died. I had a small army of guys waiting at my place and said I was going to jump into the Ford Explorer and go over to Acme rental in Van Nuys on Oxnard and Sepulveda and get the lift. I pulled up in the Explorer and saw three or four of them sitting in the yard, plus I had called ahead to make sure they had one. One of these lifts is about six feet high but collapsible. They’re made to fit into the back of a truck or van. I went into the front office and gave the guy a credit card and did all the rental paperwork and liability waiver. He then got on the blower and called Manny. I don’t know his actual name but it was a fifty-year-old Mexican guy who looked like he’d been working there for twenty years. I backed the truck up, eager to load the Genie lift and return to the team of guys on the clock waiting back at the house. Manny looked at the Explorer and said, “It won’t fit.”

  After being a carpenter for twenty years, I have tape measures for eyeballs. I can tell sizes and capacities instantly. It comes in handy on a construction site and also when checking out a chick’s rack. I can tell a cup size from twenty paces. Anyway, I knew this thing would fit. But Manny insisted it wouldn’t. We went back and forth on this for a couple of rounds, talked about folding in the legs, until finally I just said, “Let’s give it a shot, I’m here, I’m backed up to the bay, the hatch is open, let’s just try it.” He said, “It won’t work.” I was confused. He had gone from it not fitting to it not working. He said, “It’s no good. Even if it does fit, I can’t let you take it in that vehicle. You need a truck or a van.”

  Here’s where I wanted to go to the sledgehammer section, rent one, and take it to the back of the guy’s skull. There was no “
I’m sorry, sir,” and no explanation like, “We put one of these things in an SUV last year, the chick stopped short, it went through her windshield, and now we have a lawsuit on our hands. Sorry.” None. He just said I had to come back with a truck or a van. I told him I could easily put it in the back, close the hatch and drive away. No go. There’s a phrase for this on construction sites: “We’ve got a dime holding up a dollar.” Well, this peso with a fourth-grade education was holding up several hundred dollars. So I marched back into the office and said, “Listen, man, you’ve got a rogue employee out there. I’ve rented something from your establishment and he refuses to load it into my SUV. You need to go straighten him out.” I expected the manager to walk out and settle Manny’s hash. “You put it in the back of Mr. Carolla’s Explorer and stop arguing.” What I got was, “It’s his call.” They were semiapologetic about it, but apparently their company policy was that this guy was the yard foreman and if he said it was no-go, it was no-go. At that point I started begging. “I have a small army of guys on the clock three miles from here. I’ll stick to the surface streets. We’ve already done the paperwork. Can you please just tell him to look the other way while I load it up?” The guy just repeated, “No.”

  I then announced, “You’ve lost a customer for life. This dump will never see my shadow again, and I’m going to dedicate the first hour of my radio show tomorrow to what ass-wipes you guys are.” I stormed out and immediately got on the phone with United Rentals a short hop away in Burbank. Out of Genie lifts. “That’s all right. I’ll call Wannamaker Rents in Glendale. I’m sure they’ll have a baker’s dozen of those babies lying around.” Once again, all rented out. I don’t know what the fuck was going on at this point. This is a fairly pedestrian item that every rental yard has at least five of, and the only place in town that possesses one is the one I just got done telling to fuck off.

  So I called my buddy Ray and asked him to commandeer a van. He had a friend who owned a motorcycle shop and could borrow it. I told him to go to Acme, don’t mention I sent you, get the lift, and meet me at my house with it. A half hour later my phone rang. It was Ray calling from the rental yard. He had the van, Manny was going to allow him to leave with the lift, but Ray did not possess a credit card. Because why would a forty-six-year-old have a credit card? When I brought this point up, Ray countered with an even more pathetic response: “I had a credit card, but when my mom died it was canceled because it was in her name.” Touché.

  In an attempt to save time and face, I told Ray, “Don’t tell the guy my name and just ask him if I can give him the credit-card number over the phone.” He told Ray he needed to swipe the credit card.

  So I had to return to the place where just forty-five minutes earlier I was screaming “You’ll never see a nickel of my money again” with my credit card in hand and tail between my legs, meet Ray with the van, and get the lift. Remember, while all of this is happening the crew were back at the site picking their noses and consequently my pocket.

  When it was time to return it two days later I told one of my guys, Gary, to fold the thing up and see if it would fit into the Explorer. He folded it up, slid it in, and the tailgate was completely shut, no tie-downs or bungee cords needed. I was furious. I told him to bring it back and tell Manny to fuck himself with any number of the tools that they rent. He ruined my entire day and cost me hundreds of dollars. Everyone argues with me on this point: “Oh, leave him alone. He’s miserable, he probably only makes nine dollars an hour.” Fuck him and fuck you for saying I shouldn’t tell him to fuck himself.

  This year I passed the store on my way to the party-supply place for my kids’ birthday. I was delighted to see that it was out of business.

  Every day I repair or replace something in this house. Because I take so much pride in it. Of all the homes I’ve had, this is really my home. It’s a metaphor for who I am. I built and installed every cabinet in the kitchen, built and installed every custom closet unit, set every piece of tile, hung every fixture, and picked out every antique knob. This isn’t me bragging about my aesthetic sense or expertise. It’s not about the skill set, it’s about the mind-set. That useless second front door on the first house you read about didn’t stay there for years because no one had the skill to remove it; it was because no one had the will to remove it. I came from the least effective group of people to grace this planet, yet I’m a doer. I’m a closer. I get shit done. And that’s not something you can buy, or that someone can give you. It’s something you have to build into yourself and your life. The ability to take care of business, to focus, to lock it off and knock it off. As opposed to every dump I grew up in, my current house stands as a testimony to that mind-set.

  CONCLUSION

  Thank you for joining me on this walk down memory lame. In dredging this stuff up, I’ve surprised myself at just how pathetic it all really was.

  But I hope you’ve gotten something out of it. I wanted this to be more than just a bunch of stories strung together so that you could laugh at my misery. I wanted it to be inspirational. So in that vein, I’ll tell one last story followed by one last, and most important, message.

  1970—Grandma’s patio with Laci. Note my parents in the background. Hey you kids, get a room!

  I’ve talked a little about my grandfather, technically step-grandfather, over the course of this book, but I’ve never really delved into him. His name was Laszlo Gorog. But we all called him Laci (pronounced Lotzi). He was an old-world Hungarian Jew who escaped the Nazis while many people in his family didn’t share the same fate. He was a creative guy, a playwright, who came to the U.S. and eventually found himself in the film business. He was nominated for the Best Original Story Academy Award for The Affairs of Susan in 1946. He also wrote The Mole People and Earth vs. the Spider. Not high art, but hey, the man had to put goulash on the table.

  And he did. That was one of the things that endeared him to me so much. He was the only member of the clan who knew how to, or gave a shit enough to, rattle some pots and pans. He used to make fantastic traditional Hungarian food, a food I still love to this day. He even made weird shit like beef tongue, and I remember he used to lament that he couldn’t get goose liver out here. He didn’t care that they stuffed the goose until its liver nearly exploded, he just wanted something to spread on a Ritz. He would even occasionally travel to Hungary and come back with paprika, because he couldn’t get the good stuff here. While everyone else would be muling in cocaine, he was the only guy going through customs at LAX with a pillowcase full of paprika. He liked it authentic. One day he saw a sign pop up for a Der Wienerschnitzel right near his place in North Hollywood and thought, “Finally! A place where I can get some schnitzel in this godforsaken town.” He was devastated when he found out it was corn dogs and 7-Up.

  He was a loving, caring man and an oasis in the emotional Sahara that was the Carolla family. Some of you may know that I was a bed wetter until age nine. While the rest of the family was tuning out or analyzing whether I had latent anger issues (by the way, my anger has historically been anything but latent), Grandpa took the novel approach of actually doing something. He would wake me up in the middle of the night and make me take a leak into a bucket next to the sofa I was sleeping on so I wouldn’t piss myself at two A.M. It was a simple, practical solution, and it worked. But more important, it demonstrated more warmth and attention than I had come to expect from the rest of my family.

  So, now that I’ve set Grandpa up a little bit, here’s the story. My whole life, my family had known me as a loser. To them, I was the guy from the first thirteen chapters of this book—stringing together construction gigs to pay for beer and rent with a bunch of nut-job roommates. But even when I finally started making some dough in showbiz, it didn’t make a difference. Because they were who they were, none of them had cable or really acknowledged the two shows I had on TV. And Loveline on the radio was way past their bedtimes. (In fact, one time my dad wanted to come on to plug one of his psychology lectures and I
said sure. He replied with, “How about seven on Friday?” The man had no idea Loveline aired Sunday through Thursday at ten.)

  But I didn’t give a shit that they didn’t give a shit. Except for Laci. He was nearing the end of his life when I became successful, and I wanted him to know it and to be proud. One day I got that Social Security statement the government mails you, letting you know how much you made that year and how much of it they extracted. I had made $543,453. So I went to Grandpa to brag a little. I said, “Hey, Grandpa. You know, I’m not a loser anymore. I’m making a good living in show business. I’m doing really well. I made a ton of money this year.” He looked at me and asked, “Did you make a million dollars?”