The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 248: I'll Attend His Graduation in a U-Haul

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Adam Carolla talks frankly about growing up invisible, his podcasting leap of faith, and how he brought his construction work ethic to comedy.  

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Episode 248 of a little podcast Chuck likes to call The way I heard it with Mike Rowe This is a fun one I think they're all fun but you can have a professional comedian on as a guest and not have anything less than a fun time

were it otherwise than what you would have is a tragedy of a podcast. We don't want a tragedy. No. This is more in the comedy area, not the tragedy area. I consider Adam Carolla, a friend of mine, although we've never really hung out and done friend stuff. He's just one of those guys I've listened to

for the last 10 years. I was a guest on his radio show back in the day in L.A., several times on his podcast over the years. Once not too long ago, over here at the Palace of Fine Arts, that comes up early in our conversation, Chuck, and I could not remember for the life of me what it's called, but it's called the Palace of Fine Arts. That's where I saw it. He pointed that out, and you're like, no, no, it's something with Palace in the word in the title. Well, he says performing, and I thought, no, it's not that. What the heck is it?

Did he say it wrong? Yeah, he said it wrong and I said it wrong. But once upon a time when I lived inside of the Republic of San Francisco, not far from a beautiful building called the Palace of Fine Arts, Adam showed up, invited me on, and we had a fun time. So I wanted to have him on the podcast because, you know, after talking to Dan Carlin, we had a great conversation with a guy who was in radio, but in a pretty small, modest way, and then became huge in the podcast space. Well, Adam was also in radio, but he was in radio in a huge way. Yeah. He was a very big deal, right? Remember Loveline with Dr. Drew. He was doing his morning show and he was one of those guys who could have wound up, I think, hosting a late night show, just like his old buddy Jimmy Kimmel. But he didn't. He went another way and I've always been interested in the commute he chose because he was a very,

very early adapter in the podcasting world. And for a long time, I mean, it still comes up if you Google him today, the most downloaded podcast in the world. I think he's in Guinness, right? Yeah, he was in 2011, I think was the year that a record was official. So who knows what it is today, but. Yeah, the industry's changed. The landscape has changed. But Adam hasn't. He continues to be this jagged little pill who always takes the reverse commute. He's friends with our friend, Dennis Prager. They did a great movie together called No Safe Spaces. Who was the director we had on? a Justin Folk. Yeah, also a great guest. So what I really like about this conversation is that a lot of comedians, they don't, as Tim Allen said, you know, I don't feel like I'm doing my job if I'm not

telling jokes. And it's hard to have really an honest, just a couple of guys talking conversation with somebody who's always on. But this conversation is just about as relaxed and real as you could hope to have. If you're a regular listener to Adams' podcast, you might learn some new things about the guy. And if you're not really familiar with him, listen to this and learn what you can in terms of somebody who really played the cards they were dealt, who was a tradesman at heart, who was a working carpenter for years, who loves what he loves, but finds the humor and pretty much anything, and is still found a way. I mean, you've got to agree, dude, he's clawed out a genuine nifty. for himself. Oh, it's a big niche. He's got a little bit of an empire over there in Burbank.

I know it's been a while since you did a show in person. I think when this drops, actually, you're going to be on his show remotely. So it'll be dueling podcasts. It'll be pretty good. Fun. Yeah, it's impossible not to have a good time in the presence of Adam Carolla. And he is here now in an episode that we call, I'll attend his graduation in a U-Haul. I can't remember exactly what precipitated it. But those words came out of Adam's mouth, and I thought it would be a suitable title. Yeah, he's a great guest. He's a smart guy.

And the thing that I like about him the best is that he doesn't put any airs. He like you, Mike, is the same, whether the camera's running or it's not running. He's pretty authentic. And he's got a carpenter's work ethic in the business of show. And that's pretty cool. Yeah, it is cool. The funny thing, though, about authenticity is when you do it right, it's very, very difficult to distinguish between that and apathy. And I thought you were going to say that, you know, the thing about sincerity, it's like once you can fake that, you got it made.

So, you know. No telling how far you can go if you can fake the sincere thing. He is a genuinely sincere guy. He is Adam Carolla, and he is our guest today. This is what our conversation sounded like. Episode 248, I'll attend his graduation in a U-Haul. There he is. There he is.

What an entrance. As I live and breathe. Yeah. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm pretty good. This is my old buddy Chuck.

You guys have a chance to meet before? Mm-hmm. Yep. Well, what'd you think? Impressive, forgettable, somewhere in between? My feeling is we'll see how this goes. I get that a lot. The king of managing expectations.

By the way, Chuck, do you remember this sweatshirt? Wasn't that given to us by the Olympic team or something? No, it was given to you. I stole it from you about 25 years ago when I was visiting in L.A. No. And I've kept it at him because it's a USA sweatshirt made for the Olympics that year in China. Yeah, it has to be the punchline. Well, you can keep it.

Thanks. It fits like a glove. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw you, and I can't remember if it was there at your studio or backstage at that theater in San Francisco. You were doing a show? Yeah. Yeah. At the Performing Arts Palace or something over there? Yeah, the Something Palace. That's what it was near the Presidio.

I hope it's not been that long, but maybe it has. We might have done something long distance. I apologize. I don't know about you, man. Like the last couple of years, things were already smeared together. Yeah. And just kind of a boulea base, just a hot mess of memory fragments. And now it's even stranger.

And I've got these huge chunks in time where I'm like, did I see Adam? Was that like 2009 or 2020? According to my notes here, it's 2017 is when you were last on my show. Have we started, by the way? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I'll move forward accordingly, yeah. Obviously, we've not been doing this nearly as long as you,

but it seems like the whole notion of beginnings and endings. I mean, do you recommend them? Is it best to actually start and actually finish, or is that just a fantasy? Yeah, should things be bookend? I don't think in this long format world that you're waiting into, that it needs to be a decisive. beginning, but I do, and I require it here, I get the countdown with the finger because to me,

that's part of the reason I got into the business, is to have some guy wearing a headset, do the five, four, three, silent, two, then finger. It just feels like show business to me. It's like, I want my manager to call me kid when I'm in my 70s. Speaking of managers, is Dixon still in your world? James Baby Dahl Dixon. Yeah, he's my old-time agent. Well, he's in my world, but Stephen Colbert's in his world,

and John Stewart's in his world, and Jimmy Kimmel's in his world. So he has a lot of larger satellites orbiting his planet. So, you know, I get a little side love during his refractory periods, but in general, I'm on my own. I never had an agent or a manager, not a proper one. I have a business partner who's a pretty good attorney, and she was desperate to get me some kind of representation years ago,

and she introduced me to this guy. Everybody called him Baby doll? Baby doll. Yeah. And he was great. He was reppping you at the time. I think you were still doing your radio thing, and of course, John Stewart.

and that's as close as I got to being legit. And now one of the things I always think of when I see you is, you know, I wonder if he still has the agent. I wonder if it still makes sense because your business, man. If we were actually going to start somewhere, I would start with that. And I'm sure you're sick of talking about it. But the niche that you've carved and the little rocks, the big rocks, the way somehow or another, this thing is still on its feet. Could you have done it without a manager? Do you ever wish you would have?

Well, there's a difference between an agent and a manager, just to be succinct. But in Baby Dolls, an agent who sort of acts like a manager, technically. But he's technically an agent. When I started podcasting, it was, you know, there wasn't anything to it. And nobody really saw any revenue streams. And so there wasn't really much push from guys who came up in the era where they're trying to get you into a, a sitcom or book deal or onto some reality-based TV show. Podcasting was kind of neither here nor there.

So it was always kind of my little side experiment to do with what I may. Well, the thing that I was chuckling about when I was thinking about that whole San Francisco deal, you know, people don't understand this business in so many different ways. but your manager, your agent, call him what you will. He was nowhere around when you were squatting backstage, signing books. Chuck, there must have been like 400 books back there. He's got a live show to do. It's a sold-out house.

He's got some drink he was introducing. Was it like Mangria? Mangria. That's right. Right? So all of this is backstage. People are running around. And I just kind of wander in.

I'm just the guest on the show. and Adam is sitting on the floor surrounded by books, trying to get, I guess, some sense of how the evening is going to unfold in your mind while you're signing books. I mean, I really respected that moment because it was the opposite of glamorous and you were doing everything you had to do, which included signing a book for everybody. And so, yeah, the agent can't help you there. it comes down to work. I try to explain to people that I used to work for a living, you know, regular carpentry jobs. I was a carpenter, a good portion of my adult life.

And so I worked and I understood what work was. I think some comedians and some people have sort of different paths to show business. And some of them are, you know, they worked bartending at a cool joint, got a lot of tips and phone numbers and stuff like that. Other guys had jobs that were semi-related to show business, like they were a tour guide at Universal Studios or something, where it wasn't exactly standing on stage with a mic in their hand. It was sitting next to a driver with a mic from a CB in their hand.

But they were talking and telling jokes and anecdotes and things like that. my life was much more blue collar, you know, drive a truck, pull up, roll out with your tools, and just work, you know, eight, nine hour days, 40, 50 hour weeks and go back to your bad apartment kind of job. So when I got into radio, TV, show business, whatever we're calling it, I never really thought of sitting in air conditioning as a job. Just the notion of sitting seemed very anti-work to me. My work was, I guess I worked at a McDonald's when I was, you know, in high school and I worked the grill, so I just stood behind the grill.

And then later I got in a carpet cleaning and that was just standing with a carpet wand. And then later I got into construction labor and that was just standing there with a shovel or broom. And then I became a carpenter. and that was more just sort of standing and working, just the idea of sitting and even doing something that wasn't directly related to the work you're being paid to do.

Like, I'm answering some email on my phone, you know, or I'm checking my rotissory league baseball scores or something. Like, my version of work was you stand and you work. And maybe you're up on the roof or maybe you're underneath the place in an underpinning where you can't stand, in which case you're digging a footing on your belly or something like that in the dirt. But I thought work meant standing. And when I got a job where I sat down and talked into a microphone in an air-conditioned room,

I sort of ceased to look at it as work. Well, what about like this mindset of a tradesman? We've talked about this before, and my foundation is in the midst of another round of these work ethics. scholarships. I find myself as I get older thinking more and more, not about the physicality of the work, but just the way you think about your craft. And my pop telling me years ago when I screwed up a foundation poor, this is my granddad. I was determined to follow in his footsteps. It was so clear that I was meant to do that, but for the recessiveness of the handy gene. He was the guy who said, look, you can be a tradesman, just get a different toolbox. And

And I thought of that when I saw you multitasking that night. And I've thought of it a lot over the years when I think of my friends in this industry who have done well. They do a lot of different things. And they come at the work like a jobber. Yeah, I do a lot of different things. You know, maybe some of that diversity as I think about it. And I've never really connected these thoughts before.

But there were a lot of guys in the trades that were sheet, rockers or tin knockers or HVAC guys, electricians, foundation guys. I think sometimes people think, oh, this guy's just a builder. But the job site's made up of, you know, the foundation guys form it, pour it, put the rebar in, strip it, then the framers come in and they frame and then the insulation guys come in or the electricians or the plumbers and I start roughing out all their stuff. I always had construction jobs where I was there from the beginning, and we would do the foundation work, or it could have been a slab, raised foundation, whatever it was, footings.

And then I was there till the very end when we were building an oak stair rail and a hearth over the mantelpiece, over the fireplace or something. And I was hanging doors and doing base and case and everything. and that's kind of how I worked. So I wasn't a drywall guy. I always kind of felt bad for the guys who just, they just hang sheet rock and then they go to the next job, and then they hang sheet rock and go to the next job.

I thought that seems pretty repetitive. It'd be nice to frame the place, then hang the sheet rock, then mud and tape the place, and then you could paint it, and then you could do the crown molding, and then you could do the base and swing the doors and things like that. So I guess I kind of looked at show business that way, where, you know, you could do a radio show and then you could do a TV show and then you could write a book and then you could do a podcast and then you could do some live shows and you could do some stand-up shows. And I guess I sort of went back to my old training of when I was a carpenter doing all the different types of jobs. They all were under the umbrella of builder, but they were all different.

jobs, and I guess this is all under the umbrella of entertainment, but very different jobs. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse, and it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a

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way to hire. The language matters a lot. Do you see yourself as a builder who just kind of got into a different sort of format or as a comedian who can make things when he has to? What did it feel like after doing all that radio and all that other stuff for all those years to suddenly start working on a show about contractors and about building? That must have been either super weird or maybe not. I don't know.

What was it to catch a contractor? Yeah, I've done a couple of building shows over the years. That was one that was pretty popular. It was my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I like doing improv. I like doing stand-up stuff. I love sort of man on the street and that kind of stuff. And I liked building.

So this was sort of a combination of the building and the stand-up, not necessarily stand-up comedy, but just sort of on your feet, no teleprompter. kind of improvisational roots kind of a vibe. And I like that show because I felt at home because when I would enter those badly hacked up kitchens or bathrooms or entry halls or something, whatever the contractor were busing, whatever his job was supposed to be, I would like look up and go, you didn't go with a double top plate.

He went to the single top plate. And I'd look down and go, he's not using treated lumber for the bottom plate. and the layouts all screwed up. He's supposed to be 16 on center, and he didn't head out this opening, and this is a bearing wall. How are we going to pick this load up? And he didn't use any Tico clips for the rafters or whatever.

It all just came rushing back to me, like all the nailing schedule on sheer wall or all the stuff that I was immersed in for so many years. It became like, oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember doing this. I felt sorry for a lot of the contractors were busting because I was like, eh, could have been me or one of the guys

I went to high school with, really. Yeah, but every comic you've ever seen, bomb, every actor you've ever seen make a bad choice, every bad career move in Hollywood. To me, anyway, it's almost always preceded by a shortcut. And everything you just described

in the construction world, every problem. You know, it's not just graft. It's not just bad guys trying to gouge people. Most of the shoddy work that's going on today is happening because people are in a hurry. They just take shortcuts, and shortcuts lead to long delays, whether you're on stage or trying to get the drywall up. You didn't take shortcuts, but you took a lot of divergent paths. And now for the life of me, I never know where you're going to pop up. The business with Dennis Prager was fascinating. Seeing you pop up on Fox from time to time is terrific. Your books are fun. The podcast is great. All of it, you don't seem to take shortcuts. And now all of a sudden,

you seem to be occupying some really interesting space in the culture where people are asking you to weigh in on some pretty big ideas. And that's got to be, I guess, weirdly gratifying. Yeah, that'll be a good name for a book of mine, weirdly gratifying. Because it is. I'm flattered when people ask my opinion and I always give it. I don't think you have an option not to give an opinion, especially if you're asked to give the opinion. And like I said, I'm flattered that they want to send over the van and, you know, you've done that, mic you up and put a little powder on and get your opinion on the subject. For me, I try not to say no to things that I think could be an experience.

And a lot of this stuff falls under the heading of an experience. And I think people say they probably spend too much time wrestling with the idea of, will it be a good experience, will it be a bad experience, will it be a lucrative experience, will it not be a lucrative experience? I think people distill it down a little too far. My feeling is somebody says, would you like to try making a documentary with Dennis Prager? And I think, well, that sounds like an experience.

And then it's sort of off we go. Was it? Yeah. Well, I love Dennis. So I knew just be an excuse to kind of spend some time with a guy I just love chatting with. But it never goes exactly how it's going in your head when it's being pitched to you. And that's the experience part. You know, if you could kind of see it all lay out in your head and it all laid out that way,

then you've preempted the experience part of it. You kind of worked it all out. You know, they asked me if I want to do dancing with the stars, and I said, yeah. And they said, you want to do a celebrity. apprentice? And I said, yeah. And they said, you want to enter professional trans am race and race a crazy corvette? And I said, yeah, if you think about it much past that, you might say no. But go back to the thing where you say if somebody asks you, you're a public figure and somebody ask you for an opinion, you're kind of duty bound to give one. I agree. I think that's one of the

few obligations we kind of have, if you're lucky enough to have a platform and maybe a little influence, you glossed over the part where having an opinion can destroy you, where remaining silent can be deemed just as violent as any sort of articulable speech that somebody else would call hate. That's what I took from Dennis's movie, in part, the threat of speaking out and the fact that the whole thing was falling apart on college campuses. Just talk a little bit, if you would, about the weirdness of that. The place where George Carlin wanted to go in order to speak freely has now become the place where comedy goes to die, I think, as Bill Maher said.

Yeah, well, you know, we're kind of living in a weird upside-down world where we're approximately the same age. I grew up and, you know, my family was pretty hard left Democrats and they didn't like the CIA and they didn't like the FBI and the Republicans were always cheering on the CIA and the FBI. And now the Democrats are cheering on the CIA and the FBI and the Republicans are raising a weary eyebrow and saying, you know, I don't trust you, not so fast. So there's this cyclical kind of part of life. You think about the most base, human, emotion, or attraction.

You just think about music, okay? Like everyone loves music. Two-year-olds love hearing music. You know, 82-year-olds love music and you think music. So, okay, as a metaphor. But you go, all right, we had the 70s, Crosby Stills and Nash and Neil Young and bands of that ilk. Well, what was next?

what was next was disco. It was Donna Summers and the village people. The year span between Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and the village people was like two and a half years. And then it was all that. Forget about protesting the war and atrocities abroad or whatever justice they were singing about. It was cocaine and boogie and disco balls.

It was literally a reaction to what came before it. And then the disco, kind of gave way to punk. Punk, it's the opposite of disco. No more spandex and glitter balls. We're going to put a safety pin through our nose and get up here and spit on people. Then the punk gave way to the glam rock,

you know, the 80s, Cinderella's, and warrants, you know, big hair, makeup, you know, the opposite of punk, you know. And then what happened after we saw enough big hair bands out there in spandex. We went right into grunge. We went right into Nirvana and Soundgarden,

which was the exact opposite. You know, it's not a coincidence that we go the exact opposite. So we're kind of geared that way. The college campuses where this is for free speech and this is where people can say what they want and share these ideas and people come

here, even if they hear things they disagree with, this is the place to do it, so on so forth. Two, conservative black generals who gave a speech where they're being literally chased off a campus. Yeah. But to me, from a cyclical standpoint, that's kind of how we roll. You think you get to the point where the minute of thing becomes cool, it starts to feel suspicious.

And the cool thing to do might just be to be on the outside of cool to take the reverse commute. My buddy Chuck sitting here between us like a Christmas ham 40 years ago, I can't imagine a less cool thing to do than singing in a barbershop quartet with two other Jemokes dressed identically in tuxedos and tennis shoes. We called ourselves semi-formal, F-O-U-R-M-A-L. We were terribly clever. Terribly. Terribly clever. And we would just go around Baltimore. We'd sing on street corners. We'd sing in restaurants. We'd sing in restaurants. We were terribly clever. We were. We'd sing in nursing homes. Sometimes we were invited.

Mostly we weren't. And we were singing songs that were written before my mom and dad were born. And it was so uncool that it felt really hip. You know what I mean? And so when you look at all the different acts today, musical acts, all the different things you can follow, I wonder sometimes if it's really more about who you hate,

than it is who you love. How do you measure it? How do you feel about Britney Spears? How do you feel about Justin Bieber? Do you still listen to the standards? You're right. It's a big part of it, and it's tough to articulate.

But damn, there's a lot of music out there, is there? Yeah, I think music has sort of become... And by the way, there's an a cappella band I saw a million years ago, open for John Hyatt, called the Baltimore's. If that jogs... No kidding.

memory in your head. I don't know if they're from Baltimore. I've talked to John Hyde about it before, but they're called the Baltimore's. I think the time we're living in is look back, we're using all these metaphors, music. We'll look back on hairstyles. You look at a picture from a New York Yankees game in the 40s and every guy had the same haircut, right? They're all the same. And then at some point, some of those guys got into the 60s and all of a sudden the sideburns started coming down and the dry look was in. And it wasn't just about the kids, you know. I mean, watch a sitcom from the late 60s, the boss guy who's uptight and he's 65 years old still has the long hair. Like go back and look at pictures from the 70s. It wasn't the kids. It was everybody.

Yeah. Women had their hair. This is how they did it. And men, there's a lot of like one haircut for a guy, right? And now you look around and you see that guy's got a clean shaved head, that guy's got the man bun, that guy's got the hair down, that guy's got the short cropped. You know, when I was growing up, if a guy had a buzz cut, he was in the military, ROTC, or he was being punished by stepdad who like caught him drinking Mickey's Big mouth or something in a van and said, come on, you're getting your hair cut. Like, was literally a short-cropped haircut on a dude meant that guy's punished or his dad as a warden at a prison or something.

So now you look around and there is dozens of hairstead. There is no one hairstyle anymore. We've never really lived in an era that didn't have, I mean, you can go back to the guys with the powdered wigs and the founding fathers and you can go all the way through. We don't have a haircut. We don't have a beard. We don't have a mustache. We don't have anything.

Everyone's doing whatever it is they're doing. There'll be no more marking of the eras by the haircuts with the old pictures. The ladies all hate those pictures of them from the 80s with the teased out hair and the bangs. States are gone. And I wonder if everything is that way now, food, music. Everyone is just doing whatever. I wonder too, but by the same token, I don't think you ever shake that. I think it migrates.

Like right now, for instance, you're right about the hair. Fashion is different than style. And style is different than attitude and personality. But we still, as a country, will always find a token or a totem. How about masks, right? What do you think when you see somebody driving around alone in their car wearing a mask? Right? Yeah.

I go, hi, Mom. How you doing? At some point, a thing whose original purpose was purely functional and 100% utilitarian has become a sign of something else. And I don't know exactly what it is, but I think that we always are going to look for those things. Look at what I'm wearing. I mean, geez, it's a sweatshirt that says USA. somebody sees me walking down the street wearing a red sweatshirt that says USA it was made in China. They don't know that.

What do you assume? Do you see a patriot, a fascist? Do you see a guy that bummed his buddy sweatshirt 20 years ago and never gave it back? That's what I see. Who knows what all this means, you know? I think it morphs. You know what I mean? Like what did the American flag mean several years ago and what's the American flag mean now?

It's funny when it's used as a pejorative. These guys driving around their pickup trucks with the American flag swinging out the back of it. It's like, if we do live in America, you know, I'm not going to eviscerate the guy for having an American flag hanging out of his pickup truck. And then you see the American flag on a pair of jeans or something, and it kind of means something else.

And it morphs, and obviously the mask has become that sort of symbol, as you said, for something. It's interesting in that, I don't know why it popped my head, but people are wearing a mask for no reason now. But what's also in fashion now are jeans with holes in them. That you bought that way. That you bought that way, Maiden Shina, I'm sure, but maybe Vietnam. How did that happen? Or a trucker's hat that's pre-worn, you know, where the cardboard on the bill is pushing through the front lip, you know? It's very interesting. It's also kind of weird symbolically. Like, you know, I never worked a day in my life, but I'm going to dress myself up like I've been hard at it for the last 20 years, you know?

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U.S.S.S.A. Didn't they sell jeans like? that a while back? I was going to say somebody showed me a pair of jeans at Neiman Marcus that were selling for $790. Yeah. And they were covered in mud, not just rips. They were muddy at them. Like literally covered in dirt. And as the dirty jobs guy, I felt I had a certain permission to weigh in on that. This is probably six, seven years ago. What can you say about a society that starts buying their clothes not only dirty and distressed, but breathtakingly overpriced.

It also made me think of these little stickers that people used to put on their car fenders that mimicked bullet holes. It's another thing, too. Right. So gangster. I get the synthetic wood steering wheel. It's not real,

but you're trying to look like a nardy wheel from a Ferrari from the 60s, but not sure what message you're sending to the populace at large with the fake bullet holes in the fender of the Camry. But I've never enjoyed that part of life. I've always wanted to kind of fly under the radar. You know, I'm a car guy, but I don't drive anything flashy or Lamborghini or anything like that. I own a lot of interesting cars and race them sometimes. I would never do the, hey, look at me, sort of red Ferrari down PCH guy.

You know, it's funny, I don't think Jay Leno would either, but he's got a garage full of, hey, look, at me cars. No, Jay likes being looked at. Look, I love Jay, but let's not get it twisted. I've been in Jay's Stanley Steamer, and we were driving around you, I'm sure you've been to a shop. and a shop borders up against the Burbank Airport. And we got that Stanley Steamer and we found herself, you know, driving down San Fernando Boulevard or one of the main drag there that goes behind the airport. Then we turned on to Hollywood Way. And at some point, we turned into the airport.

And I was like, Jay, I don't have a flight schedule. And he's like, eh, I would just say hi. You know, we turn and it's, you know, me and Jay and a Stanley Steamer. Just going through the airport like we're on a parade waving to everyone. Jay does enjoy that. I would say in a kind of healthy way. He likes being that guy. He's on something new every day just about.

I think he gets pleasure out of it. I know he does. I just saw him last month, I guess. I was down there. I did his show again. We basically had a garbage truck race. Like who could pick up the most trash can. the fastest with this high-end, state-of-the-art, automated side-loading garbage truck.

It was very funny. It was great to see him again. But the thing that always strikes me about that guy is, like us, I think, has a real appreciation for an honest day's work. He could be doing anything he wants to be doing. And he's so patient with his crew. He shows up. He doesn't have any ego in it that I can see. He's just happy to drive a garbage truck one day. Yeah. That's amazing to me. I mean, look, I've showed up at a shop many times where he's been underneath a car, like just wrenching on a car. I think he understands that we're in a crazy business and that he is probably drawn to that for some sense of an anchor or a crazy business. or base or some sort of calming presence.

I know he likes cars, but he's really drawn to being there, being at a shop, turning wrenches himself. And I remember when I was interviewing Tucker Carlson once and went out to his place and he rides a bicycle around with flip-flops and pulls in and does the show and so on and so forth. And I said, this is quite a departure from the scene, New York and blah, blah, or Washington, D.C.

And he just said to me, everybody in this business is insane and miserable. They're all miserable. And I didn't want to go down that path. Maybe Jay kind of does that with his cars and his wrenching and his work at the shop. Maybe there's something about him that have seen enough guys drink themselves to death and all the bad divorces and substance abuse and the highs and lows of the career and everything else, that he just went, I must get underneath this Duesenberg and turn this wrench for X amount of hours a day for my sanity. Yes.

Adam, yes, that's what I was getting at earlier, this business of approaching your work like a tradesman, even though it doesn't have anything that optically people would associate with the trades. I think Jay does the same thing. I think Tim Allen does the same thing. And since you brought him up, I think Tucker does the same thing. I've been down there. You're talking about Boka, right, all the way down? Just so people understand.

Think what you will about Tucker. Say whatever you want. This guy has figured out something that most people in the news, most people in entertainment will never figure out. He spent six months a year down there where his wife grew up. and another six months in the summer up in Maine, where he'd grow up, broadcasting out of what sounds like a barn. I assume it was the same setup at him. When you're down there in Florida, he's broadcasting out of what appears to be the second floor of a strip mall in a room about the size of my office.

And he puts out just an incredible amount of content every day. and he's doing it in like the most unlikely place. And for whatever reason, he just gets bonus points. It's like broadcasting a national show out of a treehouse. If you can get away with doing that, that's satisfying. Weirdly gratifying, maybe. Well, a couple things. Leno has almost every car, but he does not have a Tucker.

I've never seen a Tucker at Leno shop. Number two, I'm happy and sort of flattered to say that every time I see Tucker, at least every time he comes to my studio, he points out that I was the inspiration for him doing that. He saw me working where I wanted to work sort of amongst my cars and tools and my place. And he said, yeah, why am I not doing that? why am I taking a town car sitting in traffic down to Manhattan, like, or D.C. or wherever he was, why can't I just do it from where I want to do it? Obviously, if COVID has taught us anything, that's kind of the new world order.

God, it's just so true. Let's riff on that too then, because it's one thing to say that you've done a whole bunch of different things like a tradesman, but I always looked at you as, like you were in the machine for a long time. Was that when you left? What was at K-Rock? Was that the whole leaving radio? I want to know what baby doll thought of that, and I want to know how it felt initially to leave whatever system you were in, whatever machine you were in, to literally start, you know, you're on the part of the map that says, here be dragons. At least you were, once upon a time. Yeah. I always thought to myself, from Jump Street career-wise that I wasn't going to put it into the hands of the judges.

A lot of it was my upbringing. I grew up sort of invisible, kind of being ignored. The beginning part of my life was tough. I didn't catch many breaks. And I kind of learned from my parents, but just kind of from parents, bosses, foreman, teachers, managers and stuff, I was just like, I got this thing where like, no one's going to do anything for you. You're not going to win based on somebody going, hey, that kid's got it, you know, it's just never going to work. I had that seared into me.

I think it was probably my family. They weren't fans. They didn't take much interest. I was just kind of on my own. And I kind of got this feeling where it's like you're somewhere between invisible and disliked. So you would like to get into show business. I remember I had a roommate that was in my later 20s, and I showed up to the dining room, and we rented a house, you know,

and he was just sitting there filling envelopes with, he had his headshot in there, he had his bio on there. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm just sending these out to agents. I didn't say anything to him, but I was like, that's going right in the garbage. You think someone's going to open this menel envelope and go, Oh, Ralph, this guy, I'm Aaron Spelling.

Finally. I'm going to put this guy in the next Beverly Hills, the 90210. Like, I remember who's, no one's going to do that. No one's doing it for me. I don't know if they're going to do it for you, but they're not going to do it for me. If I want to do something in this business, I'm going to have to create something that people want and pay for. I was always that way. You know, nobody cast me really in anything.

You know, the man show is the man show. because we created the man show. Crank Yankers was the same thing. It's basically always been that way. I've always had it in my head that if you want something, you have to go out and sort of make it and create it, and it's not going to be a thing where they tap you to host the late night show or good morning, whatever.

Radio ended. They flipped the format. I was doing mornings syndicated in, I don't know, 10 cities or something. I just went and thought, well, now it's time to do it for yourself. I never thought about it much. I didn't look back much. I didn't really get into the checks and balances too much. I just kind of went, well, this is what you're doing now.

And that's what I did. Did you have kids when you made that decision? Yeah, twins, young twins, two years old. Oh. And was your wife working? No. No, she was not. Balls, balls, balls, balls.

The balls on you. I don't know. I'll look at my calendar one day. I got about a year into podcasting. It was costing money because of the bandwidth. There was no model for revenue. I wasn't really making any money. Some bigger radio, you know, syndicator or whatever sort of came knocking.

And all of a sudden there was a contract. It wasn't tens of millions of dollars, but it was seven figures and three years and seemed like the kind of thing you would have wanted to sign when you got cut from your radio job. I do remember I was out doing a show on the road and the podcast. It was just starting to get a little bit of traction and so on and so forth. And we were way down the road with the negotiations and the deals and Baby Doll was knee-deep in it. and here's how many vacation days he gets every year and blah, blah, blah. And it was to give Baby Doll as full credit. I was playing some show in Wisconsin or something.

I just woke up on a Saturday morning and I just said, I called Baby Doll and I just went, hey, listen. And he just went, you don't want to do the contract to you? And I said, no, no, I don't. And he was like, normally Baby Doll goes into, baby, what are you thinking? No. You know, what about the kids? Sweetheart, baby.

He's called Baby Doll, but it's only because he calls everyone baby. Right. To his full credit, he just went, yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll let him know. He's hung up the phone. He probably could have talked me out of it at that point, but. Yeah. That's when his stock goes up for you, right?

Mm-hmm. That's hard. I mean, it's a hard decision for you, but if you're into somebody for a percentage, you're not just managing their career, you're managing them. Right. Yeah, and there's nothing in it for him in the podcasting. So he left money on the table. So what now, man?

Are you burned in Hollywood? You were talking to Megan, Megan Kelly the other day. And like Netflix, I was just talking to Chuck about it. Why don't you have a special on Netflix? It just seems like such an obvious thing to do. And you mentioned that maybe it wasn't an option. for you and that surprised me. I don't think based on what I've gathered from the prevailing winds of Hollywood.

And when I say Hollywood, I would include New York and Sundance Film Festival and Tribeca film festivals and things like that because I make a lot of documentaries that do not get accepted to Sundance and Tribeca, even though, you know, they're 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, but they can find no purchase over on Sundance. Netflix is kind of equally that way, although I did have three documentaries on Netflix, but it was really just because of timing. We'd actually made one about Carol Shelby, and we made one right before Ford v. Ferrari, the Christian Bale Matt Damon film. I made a movie called The 24-hour War,

which was Ford versus Ferrari at Lamont. It was a documentary. And so everyone was kind of into Shelby and, you know, Lamont and whatever. And I just had two docs finished on both those things. And we did sell those to Netflix. But most companies are, there's kind of two components to a company now. There is what is your product and then what is your ethos? You know what I mean?

And it used to be just what's your product? You know, if your Coca-Cola, that's your product. And if you're Sears, that's your product. And it was just, we never really thought about what the ethos was of a computer company or beverage company or, you know, it's like Subaru's are made with love, but Subaru also makes attack helicopters for the Japanese army. So which is it, Subaru? The answer is it's neither.

They're trying to convince you that's who they are. I mean, you watch the Subaru commercial. They don't talk about rustproof warranties or bonderized steel or suspension travel or horsepower or drive train warranties or sticker price or gas monies. It's just they talk about love. It's a guy with this dog on the beach. Right. We barely see the car.

Right. That's the one that kills me. They also make attack helicopters. Right. They're made for, you know, shoot anti-tank missiles. So with love. Right. What's the song that plays?

He's out there. It's his dog. His dog is old. You're my buddy, my pal, my friend. It still gets me. It's like the old man of McDonald's. But you're right. Yeah.

They're selling puppies in love. So Netflix is selling puppies and love and trying to make money at the same time, but there's the kind of ethos side of it. They don't like me. It doesn't work well with them, the things I say, hanging around with Dennis Prager, going on Tucker Carlson, so on and so forth. They don't abide by that. So I'm perceived as an agitator maybe or just no persona non grata,

But there's no play at those types of businesses or film festivals or any of that for me. What do you think of what's going on over at The Daily Wire? Well, I just did six stand-up specials, basically, for the Daily Wire. And I have other projects going over there. And the Daily Wire is essentially what you create when you lock out a lot of creative people who disagree with you politically or physically. philosophically. You know, I'm not going back onto a construction site. I want to keep doing comedy and keep creating content. So what happened was is they created the daily wire. They keep creating the daily wire. They're essentially playing right into the hands of the daily

wire. They're making them grow by leaps and bounds every year by becoming more politicized in fields that don't require it. You make content for kids, or you make Coca-Cola, or you make razor blades, or whatever it is. Shut up and make razor blades, but they won't do it.

They can't stop themselves from doing it. They have to take all these stands, and so they essentially created this place. It's essentially, you'll only allow Italian food in your city. Well, someone's going to open a Mexican joint. And you're going to get upset about it,

but that place is going to do great business. And you created the line that's going down the street to that Mexican food place because you said all we can do is Italian. That's all. Yeah. You created it. That's the way I look at it. Where does it end?

Do you think there's going to be a conservative alternative for razors, pens, pencils, sofas, baseball caps, turtlenecks, microphones. How far does it go? You're just looking at stuff in your office and yelling. It's all I got. It's all I got. Red sweatshirts with USA on it. Pink windsuit.

Wooden flags. Zippers, paper clips, ballpoint fans. Side of beat. Coasters. I think it kind of ends two ways. One of two ways. I think it ends when businesses knock it off and just sort of get back to business and stop walking around like peacocks and preening on whatever social justice issue comes down the

pike every Tuesday. They either knock it off or the Daily Wire creates conservative land right next to Epcot Center. Those are the only two. ways to go. So if you were a betting man, are they going to knock it off? They're going to come to their senses? Because look at Elon Musk,

for God's sakes. I mean, Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring, they're doing what they can do. They've got as much bandwidth as they have. I think it's terrific, personally. But then all of a sudden, you wake up and you look at Elon Musk. There's a guy who knows how to be a billionaire.

Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. And so, okay, it's kind of fun to imagine conservative land living next to Epcot Center. That's a long tail. This guy could buy Twitter fast. And what in the world does that mean? I think he is doing kind of what the Daily Wire is doing, which is they created Elon Musk.

They took this platform that was supposed to be, you know, this open market of ideas and started steering it a direction. which is what they do. They just get hold of entities and start pushing them a direction. It got pushed that direction and enter Elon Musk. He's not showing up because he wants to buy another company. He's showing up because he's being beckoned in his world. It's the siren song of censorship and is pulling him toward this thing. And most of us just sit around and sort of shrug our shoulders, but he can cut a check. So once again, they created Elon Musk. I think Elon probably would have been happy just to be, you know, working on condos on Mars and seeing if it get the yoke to work a little better on his Tesla. But he's getting pulled into this because they pulled them in.

Now, I think there's this feeling of like, why is he entering this? He's not entering it. He's been compelled to enter it. I suppose he's a version of Jay and you and look, we can do whatever we want. We got pretty good cards and we're all kind of in our world's navigating. Elon's world is just bigger. He's changing the way we drive. He's taking a big swing at space. But in relative terms, I don't know what's bigger than saving free speech. I guess he's compelled to do it, but everything I've seen and read suggests to me that there's a guy out here having a ball. He's just having a ball with this. I think he's having a ball with it because as much as the left, first off, it's never-ending bully talk and they have so much compassion for anyone who was bullied in a junior

high. It's bully, bully, bully talk. And the reason they talk about bullying so much is because they're bullies, essentially. They get everyone fired. They try to get people the platform to fire from their job, the sponsors that drop out, blah, blah, blah. They're the definition of a bully. And I think he has fun bullying the bullies who never stopped talking about bullying. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble. Daughter, of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks,

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Well, is there a version of Netflix? Can it be the Daily Wire? Can they get that big over time? I have no idea. I still haven't got my head around what will happen as a matter of practicality. if he buys that thing for $43 billion. And suddenly, you're welcome. Everybody's welcome.

I just think that has filled so many people with dread. I'm having fun watching it. I don't know if their dread or fear or whatever their hyperbole is is actually real anymore. You look back and you go, remember, I don't know, three and a half years ago, Trump was like, I'm going to move the embassy

to Jerusalem. We're going to move it out of wherever it was in Israel. All right, everyone heard that. Their panties got in a bunch, their hair caught on fire, and it was going to start World War III, right? Remember the Middle East was going to burn down.

If he moved this embassy that people never even heard of from one place, you know, 30 miles down the road to the next place. Everyone on CNN and MSNV, they're apoplectic. They put all the Middle Eastern experts on. They would talk about this,

going to create a holy war that'll never end for a thousand years. All right, then he moved it, and nothing happens. And then they stopped talking about it immediately. So then here's the question. Are they horrible prognosticators, or are they lying? So when they talk about, if Elon Musk takes over this thing, I mean, they're literally making these references, Hitlerian and end of the world and end of whatever the doom and the gloom, whatever it is.

It's basically, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers go out and celebrate after the Super Bowl win. That's going to be a super spread event. No one will walk out of their life. If Sturgis goes down, those bikers are coming home in pine boxes, I don't think they believe it. If they believed it, they'd bring it up every once in a while after it happened or even discuss it ever again. the embassy moving to Jerusalem, I think it was, I've never heard about it again. This has never come up.

If you ask the same people about it now, they'd go, yeah, I don't know, what about it? They're lying, mostly, is what I'm assuming. But I think it even went further the other way, didn't it? I mean, didn't the Abraham Accords basically come out of that? Next thing, you know, people are signing treaties who never signed treaties, and then all of a sudden, oh, there's nothing to, see you over here at all. We don't really want to talk about that story too much. But I think the thing

that's shocking right now as much as anything else isn't the craziness of what's happening. It's the speed with which it's happening. It's not that people are getting things wrong. It's that they're getting them wrong and being proven wrong so fast. Your head just spins, whether it's conflicting science, whether it's the masks thing. You just go down the list. That successful evacuation from Afghanistan, I was literally hearing about it as we were seeing people falling out of the planes. It's not that it's wrong. It's that it's wrong right in front of us. Chuck hears me talk about it all the time, but I swear the emperor's new clothes is the fable for our times.

It's kind of interesting in that I thought cameras being everywhere and everyone having a ring doorbell camera and surveillance cameras, like every intersection, I thought, well, this will be the end of crime. And I was going to be able to get away with it anymore. There's a film of a guy walking up your porch and stealing. It hasn't slowed it down. It's increased it. And I thought a politician saying into a microphone, look, this is not inflation. This is transitory inflation. It's going to go up just a little bit, then it'll even out, then it's going down. But it's not inflation. well, that's now captured in digital form in color. We can see it forever.

I didn't think that guy would take the microphone a month and a half later and go, hey, man, it's like I said, this is inflation. I never said anything about transitory. It's like, we have film of you saying it was transitory 10 minutes ago. I was like, no, we have film of you stealing my Amazon box from the porch of my house. Wasn't me. Nope. Wasn't me.

No. Wasn't me. No. that was you on the film. Not, all right, whatever. Next question. I didn't know we're going to enter into that world where you could just literally say it didn't happen even though it's in front of microphones and lights.

Yeah, that to me is what Let's Go, Brandon, really meant. It wasn't just a clever way to say a rude thing about a sitting president. It was a way for a lot of people to say, no, I hear what their, chanting, and you're telling me that I'm hearing something that I'm not hearing. When you add all of those instances up, not to get needlessly controversial, but the whole business with Leah Thomas, the whole business with the transgender stuff, are you going to believe your lion eyes or not? There's literally a photo, Adam. You probably saw it, but she's standing there in her swimming suit. You can see her block and tackle. You can see her manhood.

I'm not judging anything. I'm just saying on the face of it, somewhere there's a kid out there, like in the Emperor's New Clothes, who's saying, Mommy, that lady has a wee-wee. And if nobody else is going to say it, I think the country's waiting for a kid to stand up

and just say, hey, look, that dude is naked. It's kind of interesting. The gender thing, I'm always wondering, like, where's all the energy come from? and then I realize if you can convince us to think that a male

is a female, pre-op, bearded, whatever, just identifies as a female, I am a female, even though I've made no alterations to my physicality and was, you know, born X, Y, chromosome and everything.

If you can pull that off, then you can pull anything off. Anything. There is no, you know, Afghanistan. So what? You know, so a couple guys fell out of some landing gear. Please, it was a success. Or the next COVID that comes down the pike. Whatever. You take the mask off, but in between bites, then you pull it up in between sips and then it's back down again. If you can pull off that ruse, if you think about

it, you can talk about any, you know, watergate or did those twin towers, did the FBI wire those things in advance or whatever tinfoil hat, whatever conspiracy, Alex Jones thing there is. If you can convince most of Americans that a man is a woman because the man thinks he's a woman and should be able to enter sporting events and ladies' dorms and ladies' prisons, you've now won. You can do anything. There's nothing you can't do in terms of convincing people of things. And maybe it's just for that reason. Well, that's my point. And again, I don't want to read too much into it, but how hard can it be to convince a people that the earth is coming to an end in 12 years if those people have become convinced that there's no real

difference biologically between male and female? You're absolutely right. Whatever you need is to believe, if we believe this one, everything pales in comparison to that. the earth ending in 12 years is wildly doable compared to this. Everything is feasible. If we buy this, we'll buy anything. Right. By the way, it's the same people that buy that and everything else. Sure.

I'm thinking, too, about like some of your best guests, Vinnie, Torturich, right? He's been on your show like 90 times or something. I just met him a month ago. he was terrific. But if you think about the basic claims he's making and the whole conversation around what's good for you and what's bad for you, whether it's plant-based meat versus real meat versus are the cows really contributing to global warming and all that stuff, everything he has to say is going to be a whole lot easier to confront challenge or otherwise dismiss if you've tenderized the fat part. part of the bat with the very thing we're talking about now. It makes it harder for anybody with a mildly contrary view to have an audience. It's interesting. You know, I don't know what percentage of people go along with it just to get along. I assume most people go along to get

along. That's what I at least learn from COVID. Our governor in California, Gavin Newsom, was shutting down outdoor dining and everyone just promptly shut down. And I said, are you guys nuts? He just spent 20 grand moving everything outdoors. And now he's shutting down outdoor dining with zero evidence. That's a vector of transmission at all. There's no published paper. There's nothing.

You guys are just dutifully doing this because this narcissistic a hole has decreed it. I said, no, stay open. Everyone's stay open. Let's defy it. It's like, boom. It's like flicking a light. switch. That was the sad part for me. Well, the sad part for me was that.

Plus, I sat right here in the same chair. I think I was talking to Chuck after the business at the French laundry. And I just said, look, I don't think you can overstate that, but I was wrong. I thought that's it. The next day, the next week maybe, California is going to say, no way. absolutely no way. This is completely bananas. It wasn't that he defied his own mandate. It was that he didn't look scared. And that's the thing I didn't feel like anybody was talking about. Yeah, he doesn't believe it. He wouldn't be out if he believed it. Right. When you believe it,

you believe it and you act accordingly. He doesn't believe it. That's why he went out with so many people. I mean, of course. That's what I was yelling the whole time. People were doing. doing this thing where they were going, he's a hypocrite. He's a hypocrite. Yeah, of course he's, he's a politician. What do you expect? My point is, is let's really drill down on what he was doing. He doesn't believe it. He has data. He's got the information, and he doesn't think of himself as at risk for this or either one of his 22 friends who went out with him. And they all don't believe it. And they're all making policy. So he doesn't believe it. Why should we believe him? why should I be scared was the question that I had hoped more people would ask.

But I don't think we were allowed to. And anything less than a real fearful reaction was immediately put into the category of irresponsible. If you're not scared, it isn't because you're courageous. It's because you're irresponsible. Right. And I don't know how we get back to that. Didn't you think he was done, though? Didn't you think he was done when you saw that?

I thought, well, this is over. He's going to be recalled and that's it, but he's going to run for president, it looks like. I can't imagine what he's running on. I just can't. That hair. His hair. He's running on his hair. Yeah.

Dining Alfresco. There's an episode of my podcast that your listeners can look up from seven or eight years ago where he came in here and I destroyed him if you want to have a laugh. I mean, he's never coming in here ever again, so we'll enjoy it. But he brought up a few things, and I did not let it go. And I showed him no quarter, and he's a bubbling idiot, and I destroyed it. And you just asked him questions, too, if I recall. I think I saw the clip.

He did not have answered for it. Yes. I would not let anything go, and he could not answer any of the questions. Like what? What was your finest moment in that whole exchange? He got up here, and he started talking. talking about predatory check cashing places, and he said that these places prey on black and Hispanic people. And I said, why do they pray on just black and Hispanic people? And he said,

they pray on everybody. And I said, okay, why did you bring up black and Hispanic? And he said, it's all equal. Everyone is struggling. I said, okay, fine. Why did you just bring up black and Hispanic and why are they just praying on black and Hispanic people? And he had no answers. And then I asked him, were they praying on Asians and Jewish Americans and Eastern Indian folk? And he said, they prayed on everybody. And I said, okay, why do you just keep bringing up black and Hispanic? And then he said, because it's in overwhelming numbers. And I said, okay, why is that? And it went on for 25 minutes that way. Yeah.

If you don't like Gavin Newsom, you will enjoy that conversation I had with Gavin Newsom because he got destroyed. What are you going to do? Sorry to sound like your dad 40 years ago, but what are you going to do with the rest of this? You've got the microphone. You've got some good friends. You're well positioned.

You're clearly a jagged little pill that's not so little. What's next? there's like a wash, rinse, repeat kind of version of my life, do another podcast, do another show, you know, go here, do that, write another book, blah, blah, blah. Then there's other projects, stuff with the daily wire coming up, stuff I want to do, stuff that's different. Do a couple car races. Just get up, wake up, go to work.

So no aspirations to, you know what, I retract. It's a stupid question. I think what Mike is asking is, are you going to leave California? I think that's what he's trying to ask you. Oh, yeah, my kids are in the 10th grade, and I'll be attending their high school graduation in a U-Haul. We'll be watching from a safe distance in my U-Haul. You know, when they graduate, I'll honk the horn a couple times.

Charlie, write that down. These podcasts are almost always titled by something the guest says, and it usually happens in the last minute. And I know you don't have a ton of time, but I think this one has got to be called. How'd you say it? I'll attend his graduation in a U-Haul. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's probably the way to go. What's next today? Where are you headed? I'm heading back to the other shop where the cars are. I started early today. I started at 10 this morning podcasting and what else. I have a professional Trans Am race coming up at Laguna, sake next weekend and as a lot of paperwork and doctors, physicals and stuff so people don't

get sued. And I have a bunch of paperwork that I have to have notarized and sent back to Imsa or whoever the race sanctioning body is or what have you. So I got to do that. I got to get a helmet that has a microphone and earbuds. I can, a radio essentially in it so I can talk to people. I'm driving, which I'm not. used to doing and an air system where I can plug a hose into it and blow some cold air on me

because it's a long race. So I got a bunch of car race junk to try to finalize where I head out to Laguna next week. You know, Jay Leno got me the original Rockford car for one of the episodes. Yeah, 77 Firebird, I think. And it was rigged, not quite in the way you described, but it was the actual TV car. so it was full of all of the necessary jacks and attachments and all of that stuff. It really wasn't a great car, but it was such a kick to drive around where Jim Garner had been breaking wind for seven years.

He was a pretty avid race guy, too, James Garner. Oh, yeah. Support your local sheriff. Greatest underrated Jim Garner movie of all time, I think. Agreed. Before we leave, Adam, you have a book coming out called Everything Reminds Me of Something, July 19th. You want to tell us about that? That book reminds me to something.

Yeah, it's a comedy book. I write comedy books. People generally think they're funny. They're very highly rated on Amazon and wherever else. And so if you like comedy books, I've written a few of them, and this will be the next one. Not Taco Bell Material was the first one I picked up. Still solid.

That was a good one. In 50 years, we'll be chicks. That was the first book. which happened a lot faster than I predicted. I wrote in 50 years, Wallytick's like 12 years ago now, and I named it that for a reason. That wasn't suggested by my publisher.

I went, what's going on? And that's why I named it that book. They're all funny, and they're all kind of, oh, yeah, this is what's going on now. Maybe here's what's going on before it actually happens.

There's a little nostridamus, you know, component to them. Everything reminds me of something. It's just the next one coming out and you can pre-order it on Amazon or wherever. Or Adamcarola.com. Yeah. What's, oh, truth Yeller. That's the one on Daily Wire, right?

Yeah, six episodes, one hour specials. Jay Leno's on one. Shatner's on another one. Just watch that. It's a hybrid kind of stand up. I do stand up at the top and sort of a talk show. And it's an interesting format that people aren't used to. they all turned out great and they're all on the daily wire.

Awesome. Well, look, the next time you have me back, if you do, let's talk about Shatner. I was in business with him, sort of, for a couple years, and it was fascinating. I'd love to pick your brain on Shatner. We'll get you back whenever you like, whenever you can. It's already set up. I know a place in... Yes. Oh, is it? Okay. Yeah. I was kidding, but all right. It's the back room of the Palace of Fine Arts. I need some help signing my next book, And I thought, who could I get?

That Adam guy, man, he can sign books. That'll be great. Thanks, Mike. Anytime. Thanks, Jack. Thank you. I appreciate it. Say hey to Vinny.

I will. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people. do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do

is leave a quick five-star review. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is is leave a quick five-star review. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick, even if you hate it. Five-star, especially if you hate it. Thank you.

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