Текст книги "Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting"

Автор книги: Adam Carolla

Daddy, Stop Talking!
And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting
by
Adam Carolla

Dedication

 
For my children, Sonny and Natalia.
Thanks for giving me so much material to use in this book.
And to Lynette, for getting me into this mess in the first place.
Despite all my complaints, I love you very much.
 

Introduction: The Culture of Dad Shaming

I’LL GET RIGHT out of the gate with an apology/explanation. I know that, before I had kids, I made a lot of proclamations that I would never become one of those celebrity blowhards who has kids, and then can’t stop talking about them and goes and writes a children’s book (I’m looking at you Jamie Lee Curtis, Paul McCartney and Madonna) or even worse, a parenting book.

But, as you’ll soon read and understand, raising kids is basically a problem you throw money at. Well, I have twins, so I need twice as much money to throw at the problem. Thus, this book. Please don’t loan it to your friend. Make them buy their own. In fact if you could plan a Nazi-esque book burning when you’re done with this copy so that it can’t be passed around, I’d really appreciate it.

This book will be full of tales of the misery that is parenting as a modern male. The days of Father Knows Best are long gone. It’s no longer enough to be just the breadwinner and disciplinarian. Dads today are expected to be earners, handymen, and spider killers, like we always were – but now all the mommy bloggers have demanded that we’re also diaper changers, meal makers and field trip chaperones, too.

Unlike other celebrity parenting books, this one won’t be an excuse for me to use my kids to talk about how great a dad and human being I am, with false humility. I can’t stand that bullshit when famous folk use their kids as human shields to get windy about how grounded they are. That’s just a way of being a blowhard by saying that they’re not a blowhard. I can’t stand when actors sit down with Billy Bush and say, “When I come home after I leave the set, all I see is a five-year-old who wants to wrestle with Daddy. He doesn’t know I’m such a superstar that I’ve had people taking my picture all day.” They’re essentially saying, “He doesn’t know how great I am!”

I’m also not going to tell you how I learn from my kids. Fuck that. I’m the grown-up. They and, subsequently, you as you read this, are learning from me. I’ve got no beef with her as an actress, but when Amy Adams won her Golden Globe she did one of those actressy things that drive me insane. She thanked everybody: costars, agents, managers, and so on. Then at the end she thanked her obnoxiously named child, Aviana, a name that I’m pretty sure she took from the sparkling water she was drinking on set. This kid, by her own admission, was not old enough to understand what Mommy was saying. So why did she thank her? Because the little tyke had taught her how to “accept joy and let go of fear.” Her daughter was three. She probably only taught Amy how to have a Guatemalan chick take care of her while Mama was on set all day. My twins have taught me basically nothing except that kids are expensive and have no gratitude.

I hate the parent-shaming crap that is so pervasive today. It’s like the guy who announces his wife is his best friend. He doesn’t mean it; he just does it to make the rest of us look like assholes.

As I write this book, there is an Apple commercial showing how I can be closer with my kids through apps. It shows happy dads connecting with their progeny by using apps to map the stars, garden and take pictures of tidal pools. You know, shit that I never do with my kids because I’m too busy earning the money to buy them the iPhones they use to ignore me. Ads like this are just not realistic. The only thing I do with my phone is watch a little porn, then call my agent and yell at him to find me work so that my kids can enjoy all those app-tivities with the nanny. If this ad were at all realistic, if it looked in any way like my life, it would show the dad screaming at the mother to get the glass replaced on her broken iPhone and then he and the kids staring at their phones while ignoring each other.

I know I’ve already made the lady readers’ uteruses pucker with my insensitivity. Better get used to it. You’re only three pages in, there’s plenty more to come. Listen, I understand that I’m not the world’s greatest dad. You know how I know? Because I was driving behind him the other day. I found myself stuck in traffic recently and noticed an SUV with the “You’re Driving Behind the World’s Greatest Dad” license plate frame. I immediately got mad at this jerk. I know that he didn’t get it for himself. His kids went to the mall, saw that and bought it for him. My problem is that he actually put it on his car. If it were me, this thing wouldn’t even leave the garage. It’s like the dads wearing those Rainbow Loom bracelets their kids make. Sure, smile when they give it to you, but don’t show up for work wearing it the next day. If your daughter brought home an orange freeway cone full of semen, and asked you to wear it like a clown hat, would you? If my kids brought me that license plate frame I’d tell them I was going to keep it in the trunk so it could be closer to my heart. Where are this guy’s friends? Why isn’t anyone telling him he’s an asshole? I know part of my rage is envy. I am jealous that this guy doesn’t care what people think of him. But I hate him for shoving his “greatestness” in the face of all of the other dads out there.

Not that I would want to be Father of the Year. Have you ever noticed how when you’re named Of the Year for anything it generally comes back to bite you in the ass? The Employee of the Year is always the one who gets caught embezzling and the Teacher of the Year always ends up on the news as a pedophile, so I choose to embrace my mediocrity.

One piece of dad shaming is close to home; in fact it’s on my coffee table right now. Underneath my wife’s Self magazine, which I argue in the narcissistic disaster we call America is a totally unnecessary publication, was a copy of Parents. I think we need magazines about how to focus on other people instead of ourselves. I don’t know why this was in my house. This is just a device to scare my wife and other rich white folk into not vaccinating their kids and feeling inadequate because they purchased their Christmas ornaments instead of making them by hand. Just like the activities in the Apple ad, no one does the shit this magazine is suggesting. I’m guessing the true purpose of this magazine is just to leave it around so when company comes over they think you’re a good parent. How about a magazine called Earner with me on the cover?

And I really resent it when people use their kids to try to make me feel guilty. I never use my kids in that “I have to spend time with my family so I can’t finish that project” kind of way. I also can’t stand people who act like they’re the only ones who have kids. You couldn’t show up for the job because you had to spend time with your kids? Well, what about me? I have two of them and I’m here waiting on your ass to arrive. I’m not saying that if you have a kid who is gravely ill you should leave him at the hospital to die so that you can help me. But I resent the kid excuse because it makes me feel like I’m the bad dad for compartmentalizing my family life and work life. Would I prefer to be at Disneyland with my kids? Sure, but I have to be on stage earning the bread. By the way, that’s a true story. I once returned from a live gig in Detroit to find that the whole family had gone to the Happiest Place on Earth while I was in the Crappiest Place on Earth.

When I was a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live, before I had kids, if there was a weekend shoot planned, the word would get around: “Someone has to go with Uncle Frank to the meatball festival in Conejo.” All the writers would say, “Ah, fuck, I don’t want to go.” Let’s be honest, no one wanted to go. But if you had kids you had an automatic out, you were off that list. It would be like, “Hey, man, I have a daughter. I haven’t seen her in a week. She has a soccer thing.” So the message to all the single dudes? Get in the bus with Uncle Frank. I was actually routinely punished at work for not having kids. And now that I actually have kids, I still don’t cash in and use them as an excuse.

By the way, I’ve been using the word “kid” a lot. This is on purpose, because I find that all these “I’m a better parent than you” assholes tend to use the word “child” instead of “kid.” They also like using “home” instead of “house.” When parents, especially mothers, get defensive and vocal they tend to say, “When you come into my home and use that tone in front of my child…”

Anyway, before we move on, let me tell you a little bit about my children… I mean kids.

My twins were born on June 7, 2006. They were supposed to be pulled from Mama Carolla on June 6, 2006, but even though I’m not superstitious or religious (as if there’s a difference) I thought it just seemed weird to have my kids on 666. So we pushed it by a day. I mean, if you had two flight choices, September 11 or September 12, any level-headed person after 2001 would fly on September 12. Lynette was having a scheduled C-section, so we had the option of delaying it by a day. Actually, on June 5th, Lynette started having contractions and I thought we were going early. I remember that we were watching The Apprentice and, like any good husband, I used the TiVo pause button to time the contractions.

The contractions were just those fake Braxton-Hicks things (up until then I thought Braxton-Hicks were the guys who sang “Smoke from a Distant Fire”), and two days later we were in the hospital extracting the kids. At this time, I was doing my morning radio show. Obviously, I couldn’t be there, but the show must go on, so Kimmel filled in. I remember sitting in the room listening to my sports guy Dave Dameshek doing his weekly “Jerk Report,” instead of listening to the nurses ordering me around and asking to see my wristband every time I came in and out.

Anyway, they were born and were completely healthy. Sonny was six pounds four ounces, Natalia was five pounds twelve ounces. I’m not going to pretend I know which one came out first. That pisses Lynette off. I got the quiz not too long ago. “Which one was born first?” “Um… Natalia.” “No” “Uh… the other one?” “Yes.” “And how far apart were they?” “I dunno. Two or three feet?”

Why “Sonny” and “Natalia” you might ask? I’m half Italian and my wife is full-blooded Italian so we wanted Italian-sounding names. Sonny is short for Santino, taken from The Godfather. Natalia gets her name from an actress I beat off to… I mean interviewed on Loveline, Natalia Cigliuti. Ironically, she’s from Uruguay and isn’t Italian at all but it sounded good, like it was from the old country. When I called Jimmy to reveal the names on the radio show he commented that Sonny and Natalia sounded like an old couple from Brooklyn. “Sonny and Natalia are coming over and they’re bringing manicotti.” He also pointed out that Sonny’s middle name was Richard (Lynette’s father’s name), which shortens to Dick. So not only did he have a pornish name, “Sonny Dick,” but also sounded like my most hated beverage, Sunny D. Then, just for a little extra salt in the wound, Jimmy noted that my kids were born on Prince’s birthday. (Though Prince would probably argue he wasn’t even born, but created from a purple energy cloud farted by a unicorn.)

I also wanted them to have solid, classic names. Not made up bullshit names we have nowadays. I don’t know what’s up with all the… den names? Aiden, Jayden and Cayden. That’s a soap opera name, not a real name. There’s no Aiden, Jayden or Cayden who’s going to dive on a grenade in Afghanistan to save his platoon. We’re all obsessed with giving our kids unique names to make them feel special. A list came out in 2013 and some of the most popular names were Django, Katniss, Atticus, Asher and Serafina. Listen, you’re not going to get into Harvard because you have a unique name that a hundred other white parents in your town also thought was unique. Just fucking name your kid Dave and let him go out and carve a life for himself.

A lot of people do the thing when they have twins where they give them both names that begin with the same letter. I was against that from the start. My best buddy growing up, Ray, has three brothers Rob, Ronnie and Rich. I used to always give him and his mom shit for this. I mean, how lazy can you be? This came back to bite me in the ass, though. I was once complaining to Jimmy about something stupid Ray had done and the long history of idiotic decisions that family had made. I went on to say that it really said something about how lazy and retarded that whole family was that all the names began with the same letter and that it was probably so that they’d have fewer letters to remember with their already feeble minds. Jimmy then reminded me about his brother Jon, his sister Jill, his mother Joan and his father James. I’ll have to remember not to bring that up again in front of his new daughter, Jane.

Speaking of Jimmy, him being my bestie, he was the first to come see the kids when they got home from the hospital. It was kind of awkward, though. He showed up with Sara Silverman, his girlfriend at the time. Lynette was hormonal and feeling overwhelmed with how disorganized things were at home – diaper pail in the wrong place, spider in the bassinet (both true stories, btw), shit like that. So she was crying. I didn’t even know they had come in. When they went into the room they just saw Lynette in a heap of tears and me standing there like a stooge. I remember the look from Sara like, “What did you do, you monster?!” This has happened to me more than once. A few years later, Lynette was out of town and I was alone with the kids. Despite being fine most of the night, the minute their nanny walked in, they started crying. She looked at me like I’d been using them as tennis racquets. Another time, Lynette had gone to see the Killers play over at Kimmel’s outdoor stage and came home to the kids crying. She sprinted in yelling, “What’s going on, what are you doing?” I said, “I was trying to dry her hair in the microwave, what do you think? They’re babies, they’re crying. But please, feel free to make it my fault.”

See, I even get the dad shaming in my home about my children.

This is a book for you parenting realists out there. Dads who want to crack a beer and go to the garage instead of to Gymboree class, and moms who can’t wait to go back to work after maternity leave. This is for anyone who has ever rolled over in bed after a long day of “Mommy Mommy Mommy Daddy Daddy Daddy” and said to your partner, “What the fuck were we thinking?” Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. I just hate what our society has turned parenting into. It used to be enough to feed, shelter and clothe your kid. Now I talk to the dads at the two o’clock Saturday basketball game who just got back from the soccer tournament in San Juan Capistrano that their kid was playing in that same morning. If he skips that hundred-mile round trip, if he blows that off and only goes to the basketball game, he’s a pariah. If my dad had put down his cigar and gotten off the sofa, he would have been a saint. So this is a book for all the other dads out there like me, who yearn for the days of a lower bar. You’re welcome.

CHAPTER 1
Daddy, Stop Talking!

SOMETIME SHORTLY AFTER the twins started talking, they decided I should shut up. It quickly became the family joke to teach them to tell Daddy to zip it. I remember one night we were sitting around watching television as a family and I was pausing the TiVo and yapping, as I’m prone to do. Natalia, whom I’m sure had been coached by Lynette, chimed in with “Quiet time, Daddy.” This delighted Lynette and also the nanny, Olga, who was sitting with us. Before Natalia could even talk she’d been trained by Lynette to flap her hand open and closed like a duck bill and say “Pa-peep, Pa-peep, Pa-peep,” the Italian variation on “You’re talking too much.” Once it got a laugh, she kept going with it. Eventually the phrase became “Daddy, stop talking.” I was on stage doing a charity auction once at the Feast of San Gennaro and the kids were on stage with me. Natalia grabbed the mic and started saying, “Daddy, stop talking.” I shot back, “If Daddy stops talking, you don’t get a pony.”

That’s what this book is about. This isn’t just a book, it’s an act of defiance. Everyone in my life is trying to shut me up. But when I shut up, so does my wallet. This is how Daddy pays for all the events you drag him to that annoy him, that house full of your crap and all the concerts, restaurants and camps you go to while Daddy is out hustling.

It isn’t just Natalia. One weekend in 2012, Lynette was out of town (again. See a pattern here?) and I was taking care of the kids. But we called her to check in and say good night. She asked Sonny how things were going with Daddy and he told her, “He’s wasting my time.” Apparently, Sonny had very important Play-Doh to get to or something because he felt I was talking a little too much. I brought him onto the podcast a day or two later to break it down. He said, “You were talking to me until dinner time,” and, infamously, “It’s just a waste of my time.” This sound clip, a “drop” as we call them in the radio game, became so popular that we turned it into a ringtone and sold about eight thousand dollars’ worth of them. Since then, Sonny has been pestering me for his cut. Literally. Like everyone else in my life, the kids want all of my money. Recently, I had Sonny on stage with me for a corporate event and he started hitting me up for his end of the ringtone money again. I said, “You’re living in it, you little shit.”

Another time, I was sitting down for dinner with the kids in a diner. Natalia had a grilled cheese and Sonny got a ham sandwich and French fries. At a certain point, I reached over and took a bite of Sonny’s sandwich. (Carbs don’t count if they’re on someone else’s plate.) I knew he wasn’t going to finish it, and I’m not into wasting food, especially food I pay for. He looked up at me and said, “You have a huge mouth in two ways. You take huge bites of stuff and you never stop talking.”

My initials are ALC (Adam Lakers Carolla) but they might as well be ATM. My kids experience, but don’t appreciate, the nonstop stream of money and stuff in their lives. There is zero connection for them between what Daddy does and the things they enjoy.

One night, I was going between jobs. I had done The Soup that night, and had to go straight to the studio to record the podcast. This was around eight, so I called the kids while I was driving to touch base and tell them I loved them. I told Lynette to put Natalia on. She said, “Hi, Daddy,” and, before I could start to do the good night, I love you speech she started putting in a gift order. She wanted a Rapunzel doll. I told her I was just calling to say good night. She followed up, “But you’re working, right?” She was so used to me calling her from the road, which meant I would be bringing back some crap from the airport gift shop. I explained I was still in town, and I had just had a busy day and didn’t have a chance to come home. She kept going. I had to stop her, “You’re not getting anything, I’m here.” When the phone got handed to her it was like she pulled up to the speaker at the Jack In The Box drive-through. She just started firing her order at me.

I think everything I’m talking about here – the zero appreciation from our kids – can be summed up in the story of a New Year’s Eve gig in Reno. The New Year’s Eve of 2011 going into 2012, I had a stand-up show in Nevada two nights in a row.

Since I was going to be working over New Year’s I decided to make it a family trip. Instead of staying at the Nugget, where I was playing, we’d get a suite in an upscale hotel in Tahoe and have a little family time during the day. I used the American Express Platinum Card, so we got stepped up to an even bigger room, one hundred dollars in WAM (that’s Walking Around Money) and we had comps to the buffet. And because it was New Year’s Eve they were pouring glasses of Champagne at the counter. After we checked in and got to the room Lynette said, “You know, I’d like some of that Champagne.” I asked, “Why didn’t you get some?” She brushed it off. Then, a moment later, she said she wanted to go to the store and grab some crackers and junk for the kids, and some Champagne. I told her to grab me some, too. I settled in to watch a little SportsCenter before it was time for me to head out to Sparks to do my show while she hit the store. A little while later, she came back with the kids and the cookies and a mini-bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

I asked her, “Where’d you get that?” She said, “I got it at the store.” I shot back, “You didn’t want to go to the counter and get the freebies?” She replied, “I was at the store.” Against my better instincts, I followed up, “But you paid for it with the hundred-dollar credit from the hotel, right?” Of course, her answer was no. Then, to make matters worse, I asked, “Where was the store?” She said, “Right next to the front desk.” So she got a thirty-three-dollar minibottle of champagne containing three glasses’ worth when she could have gotten two for free, mere feet from where she spent my money instead of the WAM from the hotel.

Whatever. I tried to move on as she poured each of us a glass. Then she sat in a chair to leaf through a magazine and put the glass on the floor. I suggested that probably was not a great plan with two kids walking around. As predicted, three sips in, the glass was knocked over by Sonny. As I watched eleven dollars soaking into the padding of the carpet, I downed my glass, then said I was going to take a nap.

I woke up about half an hour later and said, “Let’s go out to dinner before I have to head to Reno.” We wrangled the kids and, as we were walking out, I saw a full glass sitting on the table. Again, the mini-bottle could only contain three glasses. One was in my belly, one was in the carpet, so this was a third one poured by Lynette for herself. I asked, “What’s up? Are you gonna drink that?” She said yeah and began walking toward the door. I stopped her. “No, drink it now,” I said. Confused, she asked, “What?” I said, “Drink it.” So she took a sip. Not good enough. I said, “No, finish it. We’re not wasting that.” I made her drink the whole goddamn thing.

Cut to the following morning and time for breakfast. They all want room service. This is a nice hotel with a very nice buffet upstairs that, again, is free. So I say no, we have a free buffet, let’s go check it out. I win that battle and we head upstairs to the buffet, which is a horn of plenty: five different kinds of sticky buns, omelet bar, fresh fruit and so on. Of course, in the face of all this food, there is only one move for Natalia. She scans the entire buffet like the Terminator analyzing the room looking for his target. She’s trying to find the one item they don’t have. She does so, and announces that she wants chocolate-chip pancakes. I told her, “You can have eggs any way you want, waffles, sweet rolls…” No dice. She wanted chocolate-chip pancakes and that was that. And Lynette backed her play. She found a way to make me pay.

It’s not the money. That was eight bucks or something. It’s the principle. We have this whole spread in front of us that, again, is free and they still want more. There was a Mexican guy in a hat who would make you any kind of omelet you want. Nope. She needed the one thing they didn’t have. There were Belgian waffles, toast, sticky buns, biscuits – every combination of flour, eggs, sugar and butter imaginable, except pancakes. Come to think of it, there might have been pancakes but no chocolate chips. Thus, she needed the chocolate-chip pancakes.

The next day, Natalia wanted chocolate-chip pancakes again. I put my foot down. I wanted to send a message. The terrorists hate us because of what was in that buffet. There were two hundred and thirty-three food options. I wasn’t going to let something that would have been the greatest day of my childhood be so wildly unappreciated. I told her to go find something and eat. She walked in, grabbed a sticky bun and a little melon and was fine. But I got a heaping helping of the stink eye from Lynette.

The whole trip, and my whole point, really came into focus when we were going home. After leaving Tahoe and heading towards the airport in Reno to fly back, we passed a big billboard with my picture advertising the shows. I said “Hey, kids, look. See your old man up there?” They were completely unfazed. It might as well have been a billboard for a local RV dealership. I banged a U-turn and went back for a second lap to see if I could muster a modicum of enthusiasm from the kids. But like so many who have gone to Reno before, I came up snake eyes.

That story might make you think I’m a horrible dad and a greedy asshole ogre. But by the end of this book I also hope to lay out a strong defense for why being a dad in today’s society will drive me insane and possibly to an early grave.

I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray. Mark is a great guy and genuinely funny. One Sunday afternoon we were sitting around at Kimmel’s watching football and shooting the shit. In that conversation I asked him where Sugar Ray was playing and he joked about their fall from stardom and that they were now playing “anywhere you can smell funnel cake.” Nothing beats a nice and humble guy. But the thing he said that sums up perfectly how I feel about my current lot in life as a father and husband is this. Mark is also a father of twins and stated perfectly the thing that is constantly on my mind: “Since when did making all the money count for nothing?”

He’s right. Keeping the lights on, paying the mortgage, feeding the kids, going out and earning all day at whatever profession you have is now a zero. That gets you back to even. This is not an indictment of our families; it’s just how our culture has gone. It’s like smoking pot. Back in the 1950s it was considered an activity second only to bestiality in how deplorable it was. Now everyone is firing up everywhere, no problem. You can’t go to the Mac store without getting a contact high. What would have been unimaginable and shameful back in the day is common and accepted.

Divorce lawyers, start your engines. If any part of this book is going to lead to the end of my marriage, it’s what I’m going to say next. But it has to be said: women are no longer holding up their part of the societal bargain. Men were supposed to bring home the bacon and women were supposed to cook it. That just isn’t the case these days.

One morning, I walked in to see Lynette watching a rerun of I Love Lucy. It was an episode in which Ricky was complaining to Lucy about how hard it was being a working man, and Lucy returning the complaint that it is very hard cooking, cleaning and keeping up a house. Then it went into the hackneyed sitcom premise of them switching roles. I feel like that lame-ass idea was part of every sitcom produced before 1990. Lucy had to get out the help-wanted ads and find a job, which she inevitably failed at, but Ricky also learned a valuable lesson by fucking up the eggs and toast that he had to make for his breadwinner wife.

So I’m watching Lynette watch this show about gender roles after having made my own coffee and breakfast, which consisted of dumping some Planters peanuts into a cup. I realized that this premise would never fly today. Men have work-work and housework. It’s demeaning for women to cook and clean. But if a man decided he wasn’t going to go out and earn a living, he’d be considered a deadbeat. My house has a maid, and my kids have a nanny that I pay for. If my wife was the one out working, and I was the one getting mani-pedis and sushi while the maid cleaned and the nanny took the kids to soccer practice, all her friends would say, “Why are you still with that moocher?”

Not an exaggeration, by the way. I came home from a gig at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, probably the biggest venue I’ve ever played, to find green and blue nail polish on Sonny’s fingers and toes. The androgyny part aside, the thing that really pissed me off was that Lynette had taken herself and the kids for mani-pedis, while I was sweating my ass off onstage with Jay Mohr in front of 1,850 people.

Nowadays, telling your wife “I have to work” gets you a disappointed sigh. This is the worst period in history to be a dad. It used to be that if you worked and provided that was enough. On the weekend, you tossed the ball around with your boy or had a tea party with your little girl, and that was plenty. Now we’re expected to be present for every kindergarten graduation and bowel movement our kid makes, applauding them the entire time, while simultaneously keeping the bank account full. And all the loser dads who have trust funds or wives who bring home all the money make earners like me look like shit.

So I don’t agree with the assertion that I’m an asshole misogynist because I think it would be nice to smell a little pot roast when I come home. Going through a ten-hour day, and then coming home to flip a coin to see who’s going to head down the hill and pick up the Chinese food that then eliminates the money earned in the last hour of that ten-hour day just sucks.

I suspect that this is because the workplace has changed. At the turn of the last century, guys used to go to work in a hole in the ground or out on a farm or in a factory. They’d come home covered in coal dust, except for the salt outline from their sweat stains. That was if they even came home at all. Work was more dangerous back then, and thus was appreciated. So when their ass hit that wooden chair at the dinner table at the end of the day, there was some fucking lasagna waiting.