In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy (2 page)

I was interviewed on the radio a couple of times during the course of training Jimmy. I was extremely nervous. I remember the first joke I ever told on the radio. I was asked about Jimmy’s boxing nickname. I said, “Originally we were going to call him the Brooklyn Assassin because he was born in Brooklyn, then I thought the Sand Man would be good, but after seeing him box we just settled on Jim.”

Now the fight was over and so was my super-short radio career unless me and the Brooklyn Assassin could figure out a way to get me on the air. The fight was on a Friday and I was on the phone with Jimmy over that weekend and he said, “I want to get you on the air, but I don’t know what you do.” I said, “I’m an improvisational comedian, I’m best working off the cuff and shooting the shit with the guys.” Jimmy, who only pulls his punches in the ring, said, “You better come up with a character and call in Monday morning.” I knew two things: one, if I didn’t hit a home run Monday morning on the
Kevin and Bean
show, there’d be no second chances, and two, I was horrible at characters.

I fell back on my Groundlings and Acme Theatre training and thought about what kind of character would feel unique yet familiar, funny and not fucked-out. I remembered some advice I’d like to say my dad gave me but that I’d read off a T-shirt (it was the name of a Pat Travers album),
Go for What You Know
, and that was the day Mr. Birchum, the woodshop teacher, was born.

Mr. Birchum taught remedial wood at Louis Pasteur Middle School in Monrovia, California. He hated kids and loved tools and his dog Sawbuck. Mr. Birchum immediately turned into an overnight sensation. Within months I was signed by the William Morris Agency. A few months after that
Loveline
radio, and then the TV show, fell into my lap.

Then came
The Man Show
. Jimmy and I had been dying to work together outside of radio. The problem was, nobody else was dying for us to work together. You have to understand that nobody in this town has a sense of humor or any imagination, and we were just a couple of schlubs from local radio. One afternoon when Jimmy was driving home after yet another failed attempt to hook up with a blonde and do some sort of he-said-she-said
Good Morning Burbank
show, he called me and said, “They keep trying to pair me up with these crazy blondes and tell me women need to like me. My own wife doesn’t like me. I say we do our own show. Just me and you, our opinions, our voices. We hire our friends, one big frat house called
The Man Show.”
I said, “That’s an awesome idea. But first we should build a time machine so we can go back and kill Hitler’s mom.” (It sounded more feasible at the time.) Thank God I was wrong.

So there you have it. We’re ready to get this book on the road now that you’ve had a peek behind my curtain to see how this monster was created, the sausage was made, and the fudge was packed.

The plaque said “best all around offensive and defensive player.” It was all downhill after that.

KIDS
THESE
DAYS

I have two kids, twins, a boy and a girl. My girl I don’t worry about; I’m sure she’ll have six-pack abs, be well trained in mixed martial arts and will at least be bilingual, hopefully not bi-curious. My son I worry about. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be gay. At this point I’m just hoping he’s not a bottom. Sorry to sound closed-minded and uptight, but let’s face it, no dad wants his son to go gay. Not only do you get no grandkids, but I’m sure high school is no picnic for a fifteen-year-old gay boy. On the other hand, maybe I’m just viewing this through the bifocals of an old heterosexual dude. The way things are going, my son will probably get his ass kicked for
not
being gay. “Carolla thinks he’s too good to suck cock. Come on, boys, let’s get him.”

Never mind gay. At the rate we’re moving in a couple of years you won’t be able to tell the difference between chicks and dudes. Sound extreme? Think about this. In every movie where advanced time-traveling beings come to our planet there’s one constant: no junk. The crotch is always smooth—you can’t tell the dude aliens from the chick aliens. It’s not like in
Signs
Mel Gibson said, “Commander Zorback is cool, but his old lady is such a cunt.” You can’t tell them apart! We can all look forward to a future of superlong fingers and no cock. I can’t wait.

But that’s the future. Kids today are soft, fat, and self-entitled. People ask why. Is it junk food? No. Junk food has been around for fifty years. As a matter of fact, back then it was worse. There were no salads or green apple slices in a McDonald’s. If I went into a McDonald’s when I was nine and someone handed me an apple, I would have kicked him in the nuts. Is it video games? Nope. Video games have been around for thirty years. None of the kids playing them back in the day were morbidly obese. We’re all scratching our heads trying to figure out what we’ve introduced to society to ruin our kids. But it’s not anything we’ve
added
that’s ruined our kids, it’s stuff we’ve gotten rid of.

First thing was the gym rope. Remember that thing that stretched from the floor to the ceiling in your gym class that you could never climb? That constant reminder that you were inferior? It’s the only apparatus I’m aware of that makes it possible for you to be ridiculed while people stare at your nuts. Most of the kids couldn’t make it to the top. But that wasn’t the point; the point was you had to try while some middle-aged guy in a windbreaker who couldn’t make it up a flight of stairs yelled at you. At some point somebody decided the ropes needed to be removed. Sparing the kids the rod is a good thing, sparing them the rope is a horrible idea. We should have put Lardo on that rope, given him a three-Mississippi head start, and then sent a subway rat scurrying after him. But we didn’t want to shame the boy, so we took them all down, gave everyone a participation trophy and a pamphlet on secondhand smoke, and sent them to a cultural-diversity seminar. Taking down the rope would be a capital idea if there were no ropes in life. But they’re everywhere. You just can’t see them. They’re in the workplace, they’re in relationships, they’re in every goal unrealized and expectation not met. The point everyone missed about the rope is you weren’t supposed to make it to the top. It was there to create a fire that burned in the oversize belly of every kid who couldn’t shimmy up it. A fire that has now been forever extinguished with stuffed-crust pizza and Mountain Dew.

The next thing we removed was peanuts. Now, I know a lot of you assholes have a friend who works with someone who once was date-raped by a guy whose stepson was in Cub Scouts with a kid whose half brother is allergic to peanuts. I feel sorry for that kid, but that doesn’t mean the other two thousand kids in his school should be denied the simple pleasure of the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Once again we have put the individual ahead of the group. How many of these kids truly have a nut allergy? I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a kid who would go into anaphylactic shock if he keistered a PayDay. I’m saying our paranoia has turned a rare occurrence into a full-blown epidemic.

My kid’s preschool adopted a no-nuts policy. I’m happy to report that last year when they asked me to emcee their charity bake sale, I explained to them that I also have a no-nuts policy. I don’t emcee bake sales for paranoid nut jobs.

How is it I managed to be warehoused at one of the largest junior highs in the country with nary a kid allergic to peanuts, and now every third kid on my block has to carry a fucking syringe full of epinephrine? Have we changed physiologically in that short a period of time? Or is it, as I suspect, an emotional change? Whenever Whitey runs out of problems, these things rear their ugly heads. Remember black mold a few years back? Same group.

I saw an episode of
60 Minutes
a couple years ago where a team of doctors came up with a paste to feed the malnourished children of … are you sitting down? … Africa. The paste consisted of powdered sugar, powdered milk, and peanut butter. It was called Plumpynut and was so effective that it brought entire villages from the brink of death up to the health standards of America—colonial America. During the interview when the doctor was boasting about this amazing achievement, Anderson Cooper asked, “But what about the peanut allergies?” The doctor explained it’s not a problem there. So why is it that kids who are severely malnourished and basically have the immune system of a rat at an AIDS hospice aren’t allergic to peanuts? I contend it’s because they have real problems. We’ve run out of real problems so now we manufacture invisible ones.

So what’s the big deal about getting rid of the peanut-butter sandwich? I’ll give you two reasons, one practical and one symbolic. First, practical. No sandwich travels better than peanut butter and jelly. The time between when it’s made at six forty-five in the morning to when the lunch bell rings are five of the toughest hours on a sandwich. Sliding around the floor of a school bus in a brown bag, sitting on a bench exposed to the elements, and being mashed into a dank locker will bring an egg salad or a bologna with mayo to its knees. But not the resilient PB&J. Peanut butter and jelly is the only sandwich that actually gets better with time. Like a fine cabernet that sticks to the roof of your mouth. How many other sandwiches can boast that sitting in the sun makes them taste better? Thus it’s the perfect sandwich for the sack lunch. Also, no sandwich goes better with milk. But this point will be moot in a few months when the school becomes a lactose-free zone.

Now for the symbolic. If there’s a kid in your class whose heart will explode if somebody whispers the name George Washington Carver, by all means ban peanut butter and jelly. My problem is that kid isn’t in my kid’s class. We now live in a society where everything’s an emergency and we won’t acknowledge a difference between the people who get hives from peanuts and the ones whose windpipes will swell shut. So who shall we blame? I blame us because we caved to the hypochondriac,
Redbook-
reading, Oprah-watching, crystal-rubbing, Whole Foods–shopping survivor-of-incest moms and their pussy-whipped attorney husbands.

I know these problems are all in our heads. And this next made-up problem is
on
my son’s head. When my son was five months old, my wife told me the pediatrician suggested he had some asymmetry in his skull and that he should see a specialist. Of course the problem wasn’t my son’s head, it was in my wife’s head, and it would eventually end up in my wallet. But we went to see the specialist anyway. I knew instinctually that since no one I ever knew growing up needed an orthopedic hockey helmet, the chances of my son actually needing one were slim. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t going to be sold one. Why? Because we’re paranoid and we can afford it. So off to the specialist we went. He was going to run a series of tests to decide whether Sonny needed him to mold a dollar eighty-nine’s worth of plastic into four thousand dollars’ worth of orthopedic helmet. I already knew the outcome before the results of the test. And it’s not because I know anything about medicine—keep in mind I failed biology, and driver’s ed, in the tenth grade. (By the way, Mr. Deliberte and Mr. Gregory—fuck you, look who’s writing a book.)

Now, I don’t know anything about human anatomy, but I know everything about human nature. No termite guy is going to come to your house for a free inspection and come up with nothing. That fleet of vans with the giant fiberglass termites on the roofs didn’t pay for themselves. And when’s the last time you took your car to the corner garage for the free brake inspection and the guy said, “They look brand-new. Come back after you circle the globe a few times”? If this guy doesn’t find anything wrong with my son’s head, he’s not going to be able to afford the new tits he promised his wife. Obviously he’s going to find something wrong. That fleet of vans with the giant fiberglass kids’ skulls on their tops didn’t pay for themselves.

Anyway, I’m sure you know how this story ends. The tests suggested that if we didn’t buy the four-thousand-dollar PVC yarmulke, my son was going to look like Rocky from
Mask
. So after a plaster mold was made of his head, which was about as easy as stuffing a raccoon into a garbage disposal, four to six weeks later we received the final product. The instructions were to wear the helmet twenty-three hours out of the day, every day, for three months. He lasted less than forty-five seconds. He pitched such a fit and was so miserable that we had to pry the helmet off almost immediately. Then my wife and I did that thing all parents do at some point or another. We gave each other the knowing “fuck it” nod. For those single folks reading the book, it’s approximately the same look a cop gives when he’s accepting a bribe. And today my son is four with a head prettier than Yul Brynner’s.

Please indulge me for a moment on the off chance that the “expert” who prescribed the helmet is reading this.

Dear Fuckwad:

Obviously you don’t know shit about your field. You said if my son didn’t wear the helmet that his sunglasses wouldn’t sit right on his head. Well, your four-thousand-dollar helmet became a four-thousand-dollar doorstop, and three years later my son’s head is perfect. Which means you’re either A) horrible at what you do or B) a liar preying on the guilt of moms who drive expensive SUVs. Perhaps it’s a combination of incompetence and greed. Either way, you should focus full-time on your true calling—gay porn.

Thank you.

We’ve built our entire society around children. Even Vegas. I guess we should have seen it coming when they started putting up bouncy castles instead of real fake castles, the tasteful stucco ones where a man could get a shrimp cocktail and a whore. Can you imagine that stuff flying in the sixties with the Rat Pack there? “Hey, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, we want to make this town kid-friendly.” “Are you fucking high? How am I gonna nail cocktail waitresses with my wife and kid out here? I’m gonna clock you in the head with this bottle of Cutty Sark and bury your ass out in the desert if you don’t shut up. Now Dean, help me think of another racially insensitive joke I can use onstage when Sammy comes out.”

Shortly after my twins arrived home from the hospital, I had to pay a guy a thousand bucks to go through my house and make sure I couldn’t open any of my drawers or use any of my outlets. It’s insane. Three years in and I still attempt to fling open my bathroom drawer only to have it get grabbed by a nylon hook. I essentially gave somebody a thousand dollars to fuck with me. It’d be like if you paid a guy to fart in your car every morning before you went to work. Think about every bottle of aspirin you’ve ever tried to open when you were hung-over or any disposable lighter, the kind that take three hands and a bench vise to get a spark out of, or how many times you’ve been woken up from a nap by the backup beeper on a garbage truck—all in the name of child safety. I can’t take my kid for a drive to the mailbox in a car that has eleven airbags and five crumple zones without the little shit being belted in like Buzz Aldrin. Yet can you think of the one vehicle built after 1959 that doesn’t have seat belts? Cement mixer? Beer truck? A backhoe? No. They’re all required to have seat belts. It’s the school bus. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s put our kids in an unwieldy metal cigar tube piloted by a sixty-three-year-old with cataracts who has recently managed to string together nine months of sobriety.” If I drove my kid to school and the kid wasn’t wearing a Nomex fire suit and a six-way harness, I’d be arrested. Does anyone else see the insanity in this? I bet even prison buses have seat belts.

The other great irony in child safety is choking. Kids will put anything in their mouths, and any new parent will tell you it’s a constant struggle between “eat that celery stick” and “get that pencil out of your mouth.” That’s why I was shocked to see that the toy set my sister bought my kids for their second birthday was plastic food. Hot dogs, carrots, strawberries, broccoli, et cetera. If you go to any preschool around the country, you’ll find a bucket of fake plastic food. All made in China and all dipped in melamine before being loaded onto a filthy container ship. Of course the first thing my kids did was put the toxic plastic food in their mouths. Then I had to yell, “Get that out of your mouth, that’s not for eating.” And my son gave me a look that said, “What the fuck, old man? Ten minutes ago when we were sitting at the table, you were begging me to eat this carrot. Now you’re slapping it out of my hand?” Who was the maniac who decided the plastic shit they could choke on should be the same shape and color as the real shit they need to put in their mouths and chew, and why is this monster still alive?

*   *   *

Here’s a story that’s a little off topic but it sort of involves my kids, so this seems like as good a chapter as any to shoehorn it in. I had walked over to Jimmy Kimmel’s a couple of football seasons ago on a Sunday to watch the games. Somewhere around the second quarter of the late game somebody killed my seven-beer buzz by telling me Molly was missing. Molly’s my blond Lab. She got out of Jimmy’s yard, which is great for her and better for Kimmel since he’s allergic to her, but horrible for me. I don’t say my wife likes the dog better than me—it’s probably a tie. If Molly paid the lease on her Jag, though, the pendulum would definitely swing in her direction. Either way, I had two choices—come home with Molly or don’t come home at all. So I immediately took off on foot yelling Molly’s name and running through the neighborhood.