“Good comedy is alchemical. It takes the mundane, applies the philosopher’s stone of the comedian’s perspective, and takes what has previously been hollow and fills it with something of the maker’s soul. Comedy grabs hold of the world at its most basic levels, embraces its paucity, and builds upon it. This is no mere mortal frivolity but a divine act, that addends all that exists.”
~Something I deleted from this article, because let’s face it… that is pretty goddamn overwrought.
About a month ago, I was crawling around on my hands and knees installing a laminated cherry colored wood floor. My boss, the sixty-five year old homeowner, took advantage of my bent posture by dropping a few quarters down the top of my ass crack. They slid in with surprisingly little resistance, and lodged themselves about a quarter inch above my anus. The metal was unwelcomingly cold. When I jumped up, spluttered in shock, and asked him what the hell he was doing, my boss simply winked and said “just thought you might want some change in your coin slot.”
This being nothing particularly unusual, I took a deep breath, sighed, and muttered, “Why the hell can’t I work construction with Adam Carolla?” for about the ten thousandth time in my life. I have often felt, that were this the case, the jokes on site would tend to be a good deal more clever.
My love for Adam Carolla stretches back to the seventh grade when I first discovered him. My mother had gone out on a Friday night to hop from Karaoke bar to Karaoke bar. It was her acknowledged hope that somehow, in one of the most backwater towns in Washington, at the late age of thirty-eight, she would be discovered as a major talent in the music industry. This would have been fine had it not left me home alone with my newborn baby sister.
As my sister mewled, screamed, and spit up on me for what seemed like the tenth time, I turned on the television to distract myself from my mounting concern. My little sister had a fever, and having succumbed to youthful panic, I had halfway convinced myself she was going to die. I had called my grandmother a short while earlier for instructions on what to do. Although she had allayed my immediate fears, she had no real advice. So I had spent the intervening time pacing back and forth with her until my legs grew tired. She never stopped crying.
Not knowing what else to do, I flipped through the channels until I came to rest on a show with a tall furrow-browed man. His voice caught me. It was an adult voice, and at that young age, an adult voice was exactly what I needed.
He spoke with a nasally drone that held the contradicting qualities of being both off putting and fascinating. I wrapped my arm tightly around my little sister, as I watched, letting her dig her snotty nose into the space between my neck and collar bone. I was coated with hot mucus in no time, but I was too focused on the television to care.
The man with the nasally drone was frothing at the mouth, screaming at the top of his lungs, declaring that what the world needed was judgment. He also expressed great distress that despite this vital need the world was full of “blowhards” who did nothing but try persuade people to stop judging. The tirade hung in the air through which it had been transmitted, divorced from my ability to process it.
I looked at my newborn baby sister in my arms, screaming with a fever. I took note of the fact that I was only thirteen years old. The clock declared that it was one o’clock in the morning. Then I had a mental vision of my mother and her half-mad husband (who came from a Micronesian island where there is literally no word for love) drunkenly parading around a Karaoke bar, and sat down with the force of a revelation. On pure reflex, I pat my sister on the back and shushed her to a state of calm. My mind was whirling.
Before “Loveline” these ideas had been ambiguous concepts floating without connection to one another. While I knew my life was atypical, it had never occurred to me to judge it. After two minutes of Adam Carolla these thoughts cascaded against one another like a river of dominoes. “You know what?” I announced to no one in particular, “this is pretty fucked up.” My sister sobbed her agreement. I watched the show for several more minutes, enrapt. A teenage girl had a boyfriend with a penis shaped like the letter “J.” She wanted to know if there was anything wrong with this. When Carolla ignored any conventional response and inquired as to which end was curved, I became a fan for life.
Previously, several adults had attempted to talk to me about the problems with my home life. They had no real interest in my feelings, but worked very hard to conceal this fact. They felt that by speaking to me that they could check off some box on a moral check list, and hurry on to the next task without the effort of actual concern. Their voices, filled with false compassion and hollow empathy, were nothing short of condescending. Not to say that I needed someone to drop out of the sky and rescue me. I just needed someone who didn’t want to pretend to do so. What I needed most was an honest, straight from the hip shooter, who really didn’t care about how my problems made him “feel.” Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew, and “Loveline” provided me with just that.
Though the magic of modern media, a disinterested 30-something former construction worker with a love of moral judgment, making callers confess to being molested, and making light of people’s problems, was reminding me that outside my house there were rational people in the world. And even if it was distant, and I might not see it for years to come, the knowledge that there was normalcy was enough to give me hope. Even though I have never met, nor spoken to the man, I can’t help but feel I owe him one.
So, loyal readers, my birthday is coming up in a few days. I will be 23 years old. And while I’m at something of a crossroads, I don’t really need anything for myself. That being said, to those of you who have read my stories since I began writing them, I would like to ask you a favor.
Adam Carolla has a movie out called “The Hammer.” The movie was produced independently, and he has paid all the expenses for its release out of his own pocket. It’s received positive reviews from critics, and rave reviews from us regular folk. It’s in a limited release, and will only be expanded if people go out and see it. So, if you’ve enjoyed my stories, and trust that I know good comedy from bad, please go out and see it if you are able (sadly I am not).
I will do my damnedest to write something funny and have it up here by my birthday. Any requests? I have an idea for one about politics, movies, and a family story. I’ll write whatever you all want.
