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

So I have filled a warehouse with rare and vintage cars, and guess what, you’re not getting any of them! I want you to have that hunger, too. I want you to want cars. More important, I don’t want you to think that you can get something for nothing. I took you guys to a warehouse full of cars once, and I did not like what I saw, not one bit.

The day after Thanksgiving 2014, I brought you to the garage of my old friend Jay Leno. Do you remember walking around his hangar full of more than one hundred and thirty cars? We had to take a golf cart to get around that place it was so big. When we got there, Jay was out in one of his steam-powered cars. He was doing exactly what you’d expect him to be doing, wearing all denim, tooling around in a car from over a century ago that only a millionaire with no kids can afford or have the time to enjoy. He was living up to every stereotypical image you’ve ever seen of him in tabloids. It was like going to a fat guy’s house and finding him on the toilet eating a giant turkey leg. I recall that you kids were pretty bored at first but, eventually, you, Natalia, looked at a car and said, “That’s my car, that’s what I want to drive to school.” It was a Dodge Viper. Among all of Jay’s cars this was your first pick. This is a pretty garish and nutty car and at the time it came out, it had the biggest engine you could get in a sports car. The only reason someone would buy this car is to do donuts on their ex’s lawn while high on prescription pills. It’s all engine and clutch and no backseat. But you had made your taste known.

That’s not the part that concerned me; it was what happened next. As we started walking back to the front passing forty acres of cars, you stopped and decided you wanted a different car. You changed your mind. It was like when someone is at the diner, orders the club sandwich but then looks at the table next to them and sees a Reuben, and calls the waitress back to change their order, annoying both the waitress and your dining companion. Your pick this time? A Ford GT.

This will run you about 300K. But then, another 180 yards down, you changed your mind again. You sent the Reuben back and ordered the surf and turf. You pointed at a McLaren P1.

This is a one-and-a-half-million-dollar car. It’s not the most valuable car in Jay’s collection, some of the older ones are worth far more, but that was the one that had the highest original sticker price. By the time you’re in high school and thinking about cars and reading this, that McLaren will be a cool six mil. That’s my concern. You have expensive taste. And seeing Daddy’s collection, you might have the impression that it’s normal to have a couple of Lambos lying around. It’s not. Just like all other things in your life that you might desire, I want you to earn it. You, too, Sonny. After Natalia pointed to that McLaren, you jumped in and said, “I’ll take one too,” like you were ordering a side of hash browns.

So, now that we’re a little more realistic about cost, let’s think about the future. When you are ready to lay out the cash for your first ride, take a moment to reflect before you sign on the dotted line. Don’t get anything too small or too big. I know you, Natalia, you’ll want the zippy little car. You have that daredevil gene. You’re going to want something cute, fast and sexy, but you’re not going to know how to drive it. I knew a girl in high school who had a Triumph Spitfire, a tiny little convertible. I’m a big guy, and the one time I sat in this car, I realized that I could hang my hand out and touch the ground. It has no airbags, crumple zones or anything to offer as far as safety. It’s a cute car that a cute sixteen-year-old would surely die in if a big guy with a big Ford F-250 with the lift kit stopped short. Not so cute. You’re a rich white girl from the hills, so, statistically, this is how you’re going to die, anyway. You’re not going to get killed in a drive-by, you’re going to be killed in a drive-over, when that Ford F-250 smashes you as you’re texting behind the wheel. Let’s not do anything to stack the deck, shall we? To make sure that you abide by my wishes and stay safe, I have mandated in my will that when I die from exhaustion due to my work schedule your mother implement my safety plan for your first car: a line of tires strung around it like on a tugboat. This is fully legal, and only costs about ten bucks a used tire. Then every six months you go without an accident, we’ll take one off.

Now, you might flip the script. You might want to go with something big. You could be that little chick who wants the giant Suburban as a way of overcompensating. We always talk about guys driving big trucks as a way of making up for a small penis. If that’s true, why is it that I always see little chicks climbing into giant SUVs? I think it’s a power thing. It’s the only time when you are in motion with your head more than five feet from the ground. I also think women like bigger cars so they can carry around all their extra shit.

So, Natalia, you’re either going to have a small car that is too fast for you or a big car that you can’t handle. No matter what happens, I’m sure as you spin your wheels I’ll be spinning in my grave.

Either way, you’ll need insurance. Though when I see insurance company ads, I’m not sure that insurance is even necessary. I mean, according to these ads, the only time you can get into an accident is if you’re having a good time. Crashes only happen if you are having fun with friends, particularly friends of a different race, who are sitting in the backseat. I don’t mean driving drunk kind of fun, just jovial, laughing with your ethnically diverse friends kind of fun. And then, bam . Next thing you know, you get T-boned by an Escalade. I’ve never seen a commercial where someone totals their car if they’re just going eyes forward, hands on the wheel, with a stern look on their face. When I drive I look miserable and I’ve never gotten in an accident. Kids, that’s my tip. Skip the insurance and drive angry. Hands on the wheel at ten and two, and wear a look like Bill Belichick at a press conference, and you’ll never get into a wreck.

Unfortunately, by this time I’m sure there will be a nationwide government mandate on carrying car insurance, so just pick one and get on with your lives. The amount of car insurance commercials currently on television is astounding. I hope it won’t get worse once I’ve departed. You’d think that there was a huge difference between auto insurance companies by how fiercely they compete. But, honestly, they’re all pretty much the same. And yet, they keep coming. More and more commercials for more and more companies, all offering basically the same coverage. It’s like when they say you spend a third of your life sleeping. This is true. What they don’t say is that you’ll spend more than half of your waking hours viewing car insurance commercials.

To the insurance company CEOs reading this here’s my offer: I’ll switch my insurance to the one with the lizard and Lynette’s to the one with Flo, if you’ll agree to never show those ads again. Deal? Hopefully by the time you kids are reading this, we will have invented a chip you can put into the television that knows you already have insurance, and blocks those ads so you can get on with the business of working to pay for it.

While I’m on automotive innovations, let’s talk about car-door openings. Hopefully by the time you’re buying your first car, the auto industry will have figured this out. Why is it that when car doors open they only have two settings? It doesn’t just flap open like the door on your house, it opens to one place and stops, and then it hops to the next place and stops. The first one is just enough to get a little air in and let a little fart out. It’s a crevice just wide enough that maybe DJ Qualls could crawl out of his Denali. The next place car doors stop is where it slams into the door of the Camry next to you in the Best Buy parking lot. That opening is wide enough for the guy from The Blind Side to step out of comfortably holding two bags of groceries. It’s either too open, or not open enough.