Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

Overview

In his second book, Adam Carolla—author of New York Times bestseller In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks and chart-topping podcaster—reveals all the stories behind how he came to be the angry middle-aged man he is today.
 
Funnyman Adam Carolla is known for two things: hilarious rants about things that drive him crazy and personal stories about everything from his hardscrabble childhood to his slacker friends to the hypocrisy of Hollywood. He tackled rants in his first book, and now he tells his best stories and debuts some never-before-heard tales as well. Organized by the myriad "dumps" Carolla called home—through the flophouse apartments he rented in his twenties, up to the homes he personally renovated after achieving success in Hollywood—the anecdotes here follow Adam's journey and the hilarious pitfalls along the way.
 
Adam Carolla started broke and blue collar and has now been on the Hollywood scene for over fifteen years, yet he never lost his underdog demeanor. He's still connected to the working class guy he once was, and delivers a raw and edgy, fish-out-of-water take on the world he lives in (but mostly disagrees with), telling all the stories, no matter who he offends—family, friends or the famous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307888891
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/12/2012
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

ADAM CAROLLA is a radio and TV host, comedian, actor, and host of the Adam Carolla Podcast. Carolla is well known as the co-host of the radio and MTV show Loveline, the co-creator and co-host of The Man Show, and as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

Interviews

Why a memoir? Why now?

Because I've had sex with a lot of famous people and I need the cash. I've got a pretty bad bath-salts problem.

Of all your jobs, which one still gives you nightmares?

Carpet cleaning. To this day I refuse to enter a building if there's one square foot of carpet in it.

If you had to do one of them again now, which one would you choose and why?

I would go back to being a boxing instructor, mainly because I weighed 177 pounds.

Any words of wisdom/advice for kids today who start out in a “dump with a dirt lawn”?

Read my book and remember, you're only limited by your own ethnicity and gender.

Where would you be today if Jimmy Kimmel hadn't been around?

I would be hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Editorial Reviews

Former Man Show co-host and podcast phenomenon's manly-man memoir about the awfulness of poverty and the crappiness of wealth and fame. Carolla (In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks, 2010, etc.) supplements his income as a famous podcast-show guy by doubling as a writer--or more specifically "ranter," as in this latest autobiographical harangue. Warming to the author's sense of humor depends on how you relate to a 47-year-old male who still calls women "chicks" and uses junior high scatological terminology like "ass mud." Here Carolla takes vengeful aim at all the human beings who've pissed him off over the years, which seems to be pretty much everyone he's come in contact with except his stepgrandfather. He rags on his over-the-top hippie parents for their un-American voluntary poverty and humorless activist causes; he rebelled against them in high school by becoming an obnoxious jock. His early 20s were full of crappy jobs and gonzo hijinks with buddies whose existences appeared to center around getting wasted and peeing on stuff. Carolla admits his love for lighting farts and recreational flatulence in general, gaseous coming-of-age hobbies that, not surprisingly, proved useful in his first gig as a host on Loveline in the mid-'90s. He got his big TV showbiz break when he met established comic Jimmy Kimmel and created the Man Show; next thing he knew, he was making serious dough and living in a house in the Hollywood Hills. The first half of the book showcases Carolla's unrelenting bitching about all the manual-labor jobs he toiled in; the next chronicles his firsthand discovery that Hollywood success pretty much sucks too--except now he can pay his bills and doesn't have to share his apartment with someone who isn't a hot chick. Another full-on blitz of 40-something white-male rage, lightened very little by the occasional potty-humor anecdote.

Kirkus Reviews