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

Trust me. A guy could move into a studio apartment with a Victoria’s Secret model and within two days he’d be ready to shiv her with a sharpened toothbrush.

The bottom line is that you can live in a three bedroom for nine years or a one bedroom for nine months. Also, more square feet usually means more than one television, and separate TiVos. There’s no sense in getting in a fight with your old lady because Top Gear and Top Chef come on at the same time.

A Nice Yard: A house is more than just the four walls you sleep in. You need that yard to throw a baseball, chase the dog around and, this one is directed at you, Sonny, take a piss in.

Yes, Natalia (and all you other ladies reading this), you’ll never quite understand what a power move this is. Taking a piss in your own yard feels so liberating. Being a dude has its cons for sure, like dying several years earlier, but a big pro is that you can literally pee anywhere. Imagine you’ve been driving home with a bladder full of piss. Instead of having to fumble with your keys, unlock the door and race up to the bathroom, you can just step out of your car, unzip and water the bushes. Because those bushes are yours. If you did this in your apartment complex you’d be arrested, and if you did it on someone else’s lawn, they’d shoot you with rock salt. This is the patch of ground that God created and that you worked hard to own, and no one can stop you from putting your urine in it. Go for it. Plus, that stuff has a smell and it might ward off some predators.

And on that note, Sonny, I’m guessing you’ll be about my height, so when you buy that first house, make sure the bathroom sink is at optimal piss height, too.

A Cul-De-Sac: If you can manage it, you want to live on a cul-de-sac. That way you don’t have assholes like me zooming up and down your street plowing into my future grandkids on their hoverboards. And make sure it’s called a cul-de-sac. There is a big difference between a cul-de-sac and a dead end. They’re both streets that have no outlet but at the end of one is a back entrance to a golf course, and at the end of the other is a couch with raccoons fucking on it.

Basement: This might be a tough one to pull off if you stay in Southern California, or the Southwest in general. For some reason there are no basements out here. Basements are great. It’s like adding a second or third story to your house. And it’s always fifteen degrees cooler down there.

I’m thinking about this more for my future grandson. Without a basement, where is he supposed to lose his virginity? Every kid from the East Coast or the Midwest lost their virginity in a basement. Growing up in SoCal, we had to go out and hump in a car. If you had a compact car, it sucked. Getting it on in the back of an ’82 Honda Civic could literally cramp your style.

Plus, there’s just something truly great about going down those creaky wooden stairs to a basement workshop and refinishing an old coffee table, playing a few games of darts or grabbing a Sawzall and dismantling a hooker corpse. Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Bar-Free Windows: Windows with bars are something you want to avoid, and an immediate sign that you should move on with your house search. This may not resonate with people outside of Los Angeles, but almost all the houses here have bars on first-floor windows. That’s how much this town sucks.

Here’s how you know you’re in a horrible neighborhood: There are bars on the windows of the houses, but the bars in the neighborhood have no windows. Heavy.

Make sure you get a home inspection before you close. Just understand that there’s going to be shit to fix. Every home is a fixer-upper. Don’t walk away from a good place because you don’t like the paint job or a few windows are drafty. There’s always something to do, and you should appreciate that. Make the home yours. But here’s a bit of paranoia you can just ignore, and that is mold inspections. I don’t think humans would exist if mold could really kill us. We currently have a very bizarre relationship with mold. We devour blue cheese and penicillin, but will freak out if we find it during a home inspection. This is just white people panicking over nothing. Ironically, you never hear about black mold affecting black people. It’s always the wealthy white folk who also coincidentally have allergies to lactose, gluten and life.

Okay, so you’ve found your dream house; now it’s time to purchase it. Just like your first car, don’t come crawling to me. You’re going to have to earn it just like I did. I didn’t ask your grandfather to take out a second mortgage on his piece of shit in the Valley to help me out. Not that he would have, anyway. So unless you’ve married a rich guy or carved out a nice career in gay porn (that goes for either of you), you’re going to need a loan.

Here’s what you need to know about the mortgage process. There is no such thing as good credit. There’s only bad credit and not bad credit. Every real-estate transaction I’ve ever made required me to sign a Library of Congress’s worth of paper and go through FBI level interrogations. I’ve done several sizeable real-estate deals and every time it’s the same. I’ve never defaulted on a loan; I’ve never been foreclosed on. I should have the kind of credit where I can walk into any person’s home and say, “This is my house now, get out.” But I’m still treated like a guy who operates a forklift and is trying to buy his first one-bedroom town house.

So you’ve secured your home, signed the deed and changed the locks. Now it’s time to move. Here’s a few things that you should be aware of.

First, don’t do this yourself. That couple of hundred bucks you shell out on movers will be the best money you ever spend. Not only are you saving your back, you’re saving your friendships because without hiring movers you’re going to rope your poor buddies into doing it and they’re going to resent you later. You’re essentially saying, “Here’s a job that I’d pay a stranger five hundred bucks to do, but since we’re so close I’ll give you a six-pack of Heineken.” And you can almost guarantee that it will be a friend who accidentally drops the heirloom china or breaks your framed autographed picture of Mr. T. You’ll never see the mover again, but it’s going to be awkward hanging with your friend who tripped and dumped Nana’s urn on the lawn.

So hire movers, and then lower your expectations. Something is going to get scratched or broken. It’s just part of the process. Don’t be an asshole to the poor bastard who’s wearing the back support just trying to make a few bucks moving your fridge.

In fact, here’s another tip: Tip. Moving is so expensive that people usually just pay the fee, call it a day and then complain when the dresser gets scratched. They never think to add a gratuity for the guys literally doing the heavy lifting. So tip the guys in advance and maybe they’ll take a little extra care. They’re used to getting nothing but attitude at the end of the move when they’re covered in sweat and dreaming of a cold beer and Vicodin. They’ll appreciate the extra cash, trust me.

Make sure you give the tip out when all the movers are together. I’ve noticed in all of my moves that there is always an alpha mover. He’s usually the older of the two guys, the cagey veteran of the moving van. If you tip that guy when he’s alone, you know he’s just stuffing it in his pocket and stiffing the poor college student working at the moving company on weekends. Make sure the wealth gets spread around and gets in their hands in advance, so they’ll put in a little extra hustle and not put an end to your end table.