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

Автор книги: Adam Carolla

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Rats: You’ll eventually get one of these lovely vermin in your house, too. No matter how manly you think you are, Sonny, when you see that little rat tail scurrying, you will turn into a 1950s cartoon housewife. You’ll be up on a footstool on your tippy-toes, freaking out. I don’t know why rats scare us so much, but they do.

It would be weird to explain our relationship with rats to an alien. They give us our greatest scientific advances, but if we see them in our kitchen at night, we go after them with a tennis racquet. Apparently, we share many biological attributes with rats, but we still want to kill them. We don’t have that range of emotions with dolphins, for instance. It might be a grudge because rats spread the plague. Plus, in the ’80s, there were all those vans painted with evil renditions of rats with fangs cheating at cards. Rats get a bad rap. They’re not looking for trouble and when you turn on the light they run away. It’s not like you come home and a rat is banging your girlfriend. I think the real problem is their posture. Rats always look like they’re up to no good. In Disney movies, the hero always has great posture and the villain is always hunched over. Hummingbirds have great posture and we love them. But the rat is our mortal enemy. We’d all probably have rats as pets if they would just hit the chiropractor and take care of that scoliosis.

Snakes: You kids already know that where we live we have rattlesnakes. You may have been too young to remember when our dog, Molly, was bitten by a rattler. A year or so later, our gardener found a rattlesnake as he was making his appointed rounds with the hedge clippers. Because of those two incidents, your mom decided that not only did we need to get Molly rattlesnake-aversion – trained, but we needed to have the snake wrangler come out and safety proof the place for you two.

First off, I’m not even sure if what the gardener found was an actual rattlesnake. There are nonpoisonous snakes that look like rattlesnakes. They’ve taken on that camouflage, so birds of prey and coyotes won’t go at them. What the snakes didn’t factor in when evolving that camouflage was the fireman who gets called out by Lynette to chop them in half with a flathead shovel.

So, anyway, despite me and my wallet’s protest, the snake-proofing guy came and laid down a powder that smelled like mothballs and tampons put in a Cuisinart (by the way, Mothballs and Tampons is my favorite morning zoo team). He sprinkled this powder in a big circle around the perimeter of the house. This all seemed like a good plan until my assistant, Jay, piped up with, “What if there are snakes that are already under the house? Doesn’t that just keep them in?” Thanks, Jay, for working the wife up all over again. You’re fired.

Flies: Every house has flies. That’s just inevitable. They’re called house flies for a reason. Amazingly, we’re well into the 2000s as I write this, and we still don’t have a great way to kill them. Inevitably, you’ll get that fly buzzing around and go looking for a flyswatter and not be able to find it. It’s a twenty-nine-cent item, but you’ll only buy one and thus spend an hour looking for it. This very thing has happened to me. Just like everything I attempt to locate in my own home, someone had moved the flyswatter to some random drawer seemingly just to fuck with me.

Everyone thinks they’re a ninja with the bar rag or T-shirt when it comes to flies, but you never manage to actually get the fly that way because the whoosh of air you create just pushes it to safety. And the catch-and-release plan never works either. It’s nice to think that maybe that fly was a good person in a past life and you should give it its freedom, but it never pans out. I had a fly in the house once, and after chasing it around for an hour, I cornered it in the bathroom, then sucked in my stomach and slid out the crack in the door to give it a time out. But to the fly the bathroom is Valhalla, like a fat guy getting trapped in a Fogo de Chao. Eventually, I found the flyswatter and sent it to the big shit pile in heaven.

My point is that you’re going to get these things a lot, so don’t go for the fancy Sharper Image flyswatter that kills with electricity. That shit never works. They’re always trying to invent new fly-killing technology. This one uses lasers to shoot them down in midair, this one kills with telepathy; you put on a hat and think bad things about them. Just buy a half-dozen of those classic cheap plastic flyswatters and keep one in every room.

Must-Haves for Your First Abode

On that note, let me give you a list of other stuff you’ll need to have in your home.

Blue LED Clock: This thing is a life changer. Totally worth the money. It sheds enough light so that you can find your way around at night. It doesn’t need to play an iPod, it just needs to illuminate the room so that when you get up to take a piss you don’t trip over the dog or have to turn the light on and wake up the wife or husband. It’s not so bright it cuts through the eyelids, either. It’s a nightlight for grown-ups, it keeps the room in a cool light and isn’t shaped like Spiderman.

Dimmer Switches in the Bathroom: In that same vein, there’s nothing worse than when you hit the bathroom in the middle of the night, turn on the light and have your eyeballs scream. That ends up waking you up completely, and you will struggle to get back to sleep. Or you piss in complete darkness and end up urinating into the potpourri dish, not noticing until someone decides to take a sniff and thinks, “I didn’t know they made asparagus potpourri.”

There’s something about pissing in the dark that makes even the calmest among us freak out. Once when I brought Natalia over to Jimmy’s for football Sunday, I took her for a piss in his first-floor bathroom. This is a small bathroom, with just a toilet and a sink. No windows. So when you shut the door there’s no natural light (unless that’s what you’ve been drinking). Well, after Natalia took her pee, Daddy decided to make a little water, too. And, as always, she decided to fuck with me. The light switch is inside the room and while I had my back turned out went the lights. While Natalia was laughing hysterically and I was yelling, “Turn the lights on,” I noticed that I wasn’t hearing the splashing of my tinkle hitting the toilet water. I started to panic and overcompensated trying to find it again. I ended up covering not just the floor and toilet in piss, but also a copy of Bill Simmons’ book, Basketball, which was next to the toilet. Sorry, Bill. On the bright side, Jimmy definitely had to buy another copy.

Plus, when it comes to bathroom lights, you can never find the switch. There’s no uniformity. Some bathrooms have the switch on the outside, some are on the inside, some are on the right side as soon as you enter the room and some are on the adjacent wall above the sink. So what you end up doing is feeling around in the dark like Helen Keller, running your hand over every crevice in the tile wall that is covered in years of fecal particulate. Can you think of anything other than the underside of the toilet seat that you less want to be running your hand over?

So when you have your own home you should install some dimmer switches with the little LED in them. (I love LED lights, in case you haven’t noticed.) That way, you can find the toilet without pissing all over the place, and turning your shower into a golden shower, you don’t shock your eyeballs with the overbright overhead light and you don’t have to see how bad you look at four in the morning in your underpants.

Flashlights: I love me a good flashlight. It’s something everyone needs, in every room of their home. You need one in each room because you never know where you’ll be when the power goes out and you may just end up killing yourself on the stairs trying to find the flashlight in the dark.

That said, be careful what kind of flashlight you choose. Hopefully, the flaws with current flashlights will have been addressed by the time you’re buying your first house.

Why do flashlights have to take fifteen different types of batteries, have fifteen different ways to turn them on, and have fifteen different settings? Can we get a little industry consistency? You know that setting where you can twist the front end and can illuminate an entire mountainside, or you can twist it tight the other direction and get a laser beam that will burn a hole in a piece of plate steel? Why? Shouldn’t a flashlight just have a medium setting that we all agree on?

Then there are the ones that load the batteries from the front so that when you twist thinking you’re making an adjustment, the top pops off and you dump them on the floor. Then there are the ones that take the batteries in the back but turn on by twisting the top. One takes four D cells, the other takes five C cells, another takes two AAs, while one is green and is powered by good vibes. Enough already.

Wouldn’t we be living in a utopia if they were all just backloaders that took C cells, had an on/off button that was made of rubber and was red so it didn’t blend in with the black of the goddamn flashlight? The bestselling flashlight in the world is a MagLight, which is traditionally black and has a little black rubber button. How the fuck are you supposed to see that at night when the power is out, which is the only time you’d ever be using it anyway? It’s ironic that the device you need for light needs light to be activated. It might as well be solar powered.

Can you add a low-battery light, too? A little amber LED that tells you you’re going to make it down the street to walk your dog but you’re not going to make it back on those batteries. Everything else has a low battery warning – your phone, your smoke detector, your old lady’s vibrator – why not your flashlight?

But again, they’re cheap so just buy one for every room. Just don’t buy black ones, for Christ’s sake.

Disaster Kit: If you do decide to settle somewhere along the San Andreas Fault, you have to be prepared. I’m always surprised at how cavalier people are about disaster prep. I think it’s our fear of death. We don’t want to consider what we would do in case of an emergency. It’s like picking out a gravestone. I would say that your average American has less than a day’s worth of water set aside for a disaster. This is especially important here in California earthquake country, but every part of our nation is prone to some sort of disaster: hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, flash floods, race riots. You’ve got to get that disaster kit together. Tons of water, flashlights and batteries, crank-powered rechargeable radio so you can tune in for emergency messages, canned food and cash. Everyone forgets about cash. If the grid goes down, so do the ATMs.

You’ll also need a generator. My agent James “Babydoll” Dixon was talking to me once about various home improvements he was making, and I suggested getting a generator. Not the cheap one with the ripcord to start it, I’m talking about a real one that’s the size of a jukebox, that you pipe natural gas into and costs a couple of grand. You get an electrician to hook it up to the necessary circuits in your house: fridge, television, upstairs bedroom. You could even do one for the whole house, but that would be crazy expensive. I got into detail and told him exactly which one to get. A day or two after Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012, Babydoll managed to get to a computer and sent me an e-mail saying he wished he had listened to me when I told him to buy that generator. So be smart and listen to me now.

House Alarm System: I have mixed feelings on this whole issue. I think they are a good thing to have, and, of course, I want you guys to be safe, but I have not had great luck with these.

If I had to do it over again, I would do without a house alarm, even if it meant being bludgeoned in my sleep every four to six years. Alarm systems are so much hassle. There are always technical issues and almost daily dog-set-it-off situations. Life’s too short, in my opinion.

At our prior abode, I had a bad sensor on a window that once made the alarm go off at three in the morning. The LAPD showed up at my house, shortly followed by TMZ. Enough said.

Also, let it be said that some of the diciest people you can let into your house are the guys who install home-security systems. These guys are losers who fell into that job. They didn’t dream of this as kids and then go to Home-Security Installation College. These are guys who barely graduated high school and took the first gig they could to support their Oxycontin addiction. Ironically, the guy who installs alarms in your house generally has a longer rap sheet than the guy who might try breaking in.

The only ones who are worse are handymen and contractors. Trust me, I know.

Catching Contractors

Long before I was on the show Catch a Contractor, I knew that these guys were unethical dirtbags. Remember, I spent years working with, and for, them. No one gets into construction because they love drywall, it’s because they hated school. If these guys could do anything else they would. Contractors live job-to-job, cutting as many corners as sheets of CDX ply, looking to stiff you at every turn. Every piece of lumber they rescue from a dumpster at another job site and then use at your house is one less that they then have to purchase and can thus convert into beer money.

Typically, contractors are three-time losers. A lot of them have sex offenses. They’re not always full-on rapists but a lot of “I was twenty-seven and she was seventeen but she looked twenty” kind of stuff. And every one of them has at least one DUI. The second you leave these guys alone in your house, they can’t decide whether to raid your pantry or sniff your panties.

So be cautious, get plenty of references, check their licenses online and check out their work in person when you are hiring a contractor. Never pay more than a 10 percent deposit to get started. Put together a payment schedule based on phases of the job: when rough plumbing and electrical are complete and the wall can be closed up, that’s a draw. When the walls are closed and the nailing inspection on drywall is signed off by the inspector, that’s another payment. And remember: change orders, change orders, change orders. This is documentation of an approved change to the original estimate. When you want something altered from the original bid, get it on paper. That’s where shit always goes south.

And get multiple bids then take the one in the middle. The one that’s too high means the guy is overcharging you; the one that’s too low means he’s cutting corners, is a hack who’s in over his head and is going to screw you. The easy rule is to throw out the bid from the guy who pulls up in a tricked-out Humvee. If the next guy pulls up in a converted ice-cream truck with a lumber rack, you can toss that one, too. You’re looking for a Ford F-150, three to seven years old, with a crew cab and cloth interior. Practical and durable, just like the job you expect him to do.

And do as much work as you can by yourself. (This goes for both of you. Don’t underestimate yourself, Natalia. You might not do any framing or toilet installation, but you can certainly swap fixtures and pick up a paintbrush.) Not only will this help you avoid the scumbags that I used to work with, and am currently busting on Catch a Contractor, but it will instill in you the pride in ownership that’s supposed to come with purchasing a house. It’s yours, you worked hard to buy it, so take care of it yourself.

Home Improvement and Self-Improvement

When you have your own place I’d recommend that once a year you throw a party. It forces you to get your shit straight. Hoarders don’t entertain. Your house is no different than your crotch. Let me explain. You show me someone’s genitalia and I will tell you if they’re single or have been in a loveless relationship for twenty-five years. They only clean up if they’re getting laid. It’s the same thing with a home. In both cases, if no one’s coming over you’re not trimming the bushes.

Having a party means that you give yourself a deadline to clean up, too. When we had your second birthday party we had it at a house I had bought as an investment property in Malibu. Now, since this wasn’t where I was living day to day, the maintenance and home improvement would sometimes get away from me. I used your party as an excuse to kick my own ass into gear and finish it up. I still had people laying down sod during the party, literally. Guests were bumping into guys laying down turf and the paint was still drying. But we got the shit done.

You’re probably going to be tempted, especially when you spend all your money on the down payment and moving expenses, to skimp on the décor and just make a run to IKEA. Please don’t. IKEA is a human roach motel/ant farm. Once you’re in, you can never get out. It’s a giant maze that forces you to look at every single item. That’s where they should have the L.A. marathon, because I’ve easily covered 26.2 miles walking around that place looking for a lampshade. You think you’re going there for one thing and then you find yourself walking around for a full day holding a golf pencil.

I don’t understand how that place operates. The profit margin eludes me. You can get fifteen hand-blown wine goblets for under two dollars. I understand when cheap crap comes from China but IKEA is based in Sweden. Isn’t there some international law against using white people to make cheap shit?

And if you go there with your future husband or wife, be prepared to be going at each other with some forty-nine-cent steak knives before it’s all over. One of you will stop to look at something and the other will keep walking, someone will get lost or forget to write down the number so you can find the dresser that you furiously negotiated over in the warehouse section later. Then you push the weird low-boy shopping cart to the register, send the other person to aisle 162 to get the particleboard coffee table and by the time they drag it back to you, you’ve already checked out or are holding up the line because getting to aisle 162 required crossing two time zones.

Then you’ll send your spouse to get the car and back it into the loading zone. That’s always a disaster because there are never enough spots, and by the time you get home to bust out the Allen wrenches, you’re exhausted and on the verge of divorce.

I’ve done the IKEA run with your mother a couple of times. We have to do a whole war room thing before we head in. “I’m on Bravo team; you’re Charlie company. Synchronize watches, we move in at 0200 hours and attack the kitchen section from the left flank.” It never works. In the end I’m shopping for an entertainment unit and she’s shopping for a divorce attorney.

Plus, even if you just ate at the Chili’s across the parking lot before you walked in, you are still going to eat at IKEA. Two-point-seven hours of smelling Swedish meatballs will break down even Michelle Obama. Swedish meatballs are underrated. They’re savory. Savory’s only competition is horny, as far as what it can get you to do. You cannot be around that smell and those visuals and not get some. The meatballs are cheap, too, like the furniture. It’s like four bucks for a baker’s dozen of delicious little balls. Swedish meatballs are the ukulele of food. They’re the only thing that’s better when smaller. You can’t say that about tits.

No matter what project you’re taking on, make sure to just get it done and over with. With home improvements you have to go start-to-finish with one vision. If you start a bathroom remodel and stop partway through, you’ll never get to where you wanted to go. If you replace the sink one year, the mirror the next and the shower tile after that, nothing is going to match and your bathroom will look like a fucked-up patchwork mess.

If your home improvement projects get away from you, they will become part of your life. You’ll be halfway through redoing your living room and the carpet will be rolled up in the corner. If you get distracted, six months will go by with the carpet roll taking up that space and it will just become like wallpaper, you won’t even notice it anymore.

And on that note, let me close this letter with a wallpaper tale. I’ve always said that when picking wallpaper, just get three choices you feel good about, put them up on the wall, walk out of the room, walk back in, look at them for three seconds and pick one. You’ll be at your purest at that moment. Listen to your gut.

Many years ago, your grandmother, my mom, was redoing her house, including the bathroom. And that bathroom, for a long time, was just bare drywall. She was in a one-bed, one-bath. It wasn’t like this was the bath in the pool house or guest cottage. So one day I asked, “What’s going on with the bathroom?” She replied, “What do you mean?” I said, “It’s been like that for six months, when are you going to finish?” She said, “I’m picking out the wallpaper.” I pointed out that the same four swatches were pinned to the wall for the past four months. She said, “I feel like you’re judging me” and “I don’t like your tone.” I didn’t have a tone. It was said very matter-of-factly. It was starting to get tense. I said, “I’m just trying to help; you’ve been looking at bare drywall for six months. You just have to trust your instincts and pick a swatch and go with it.” Defensive, she said, “I don’t like where this is going.” So I shut up. And as I write this she’s moving out of that house and into year three of redoing the piece of shit my grandmother lived in. It’s a total lateral move from a one-bed, one-bath in the Valley to another. I haven’t visited and I don’t plan to. I’d definitely want to give home-improvement advice, something I’m literally an expert in. But I won’t bother. I can’t. It sends the wrong message. She got defensive for no reason and shut up the expert. This is like going to a doctor and telling him not to share his opinion. The scariest thing that can happen in a relationship is to have the other person not care. And that’s what happened. She got me to not care. So whether it’s home improvement, your career or how you dress, have an open mind and take people’s commentary into consideration. The day people stop critiquing is the day that they stop caring.

So take all of that first-house advice and make use of it. And if by a miracle I’m still alive when you have your first home, remember, I criticize because I care.