A few years ago, about 3+ now, I met Adam Carolla at Laughs Comedy Spot in Kirkland, WA.  As a comedian and near deviant in my early 20’s, the work of Adam and Dr. Drew on “LoveLine” was a life-saver.  Not only that, Adam’s humor and sensibilities match, and often surpass, my own.  When I heard he was coming to my home club I immediately did everything I could to help facilitate the evening.  And naturally I didn’t want to act like a total dumbass because Adam’s like the older brother a lot of us wish we had or needed.

Fast-forward to a few things Adam has said about his life and that night in particular.

1) Adam’s wife once told him, paraphrasing, that he has a way of “Bringing out the idiot in people,”  I heard this years after the night I’m writing about, but it rang true that night.  As part of Adam’s weekend, he was going to jaunt across the parking lot from the club to a bar called the Liquid Lime, wherein he’d sign autographs, take photos, and then try to beat it back to the club a mere 70 yards away.  Instead of walking out the front door, or walking all the way from the club to the Lime via the backdoor, I was asked to drive Adam and Mike August, his road manager, over in somebody else’s 1990 Camry.  So I did.
Cut to IDIOT TIME.
I gotta get Adam back to the club so we all head out the car which is parked right in the front of the Lime.  I’m 8 steps ahead of them so I can unlock the car, open doors, and get back around the comedy club and drop ’em off.  First I need to unlock the…
I need to unlock the Camry… Stupid button… What the… Unlock the …
I pushed the button, held the button, etc for about 10 seconds which is an eternity in the world of Adam’s Efficiency Sphere.  At which point I hear what equates to “Nevermind, dumbass, I’ll walk.”  It was actually “Hey, I’ll just walk.”  The Idiot had been brought out.  And I don’t think Adam’s being an asshole at this point, it’s just embarrassing and he’s just a guy who would rather not deal with speedbumps, and it ain’t personal.

So I manually unlock the car, alarm goes off, we get in hastily and I hit the button to unlock it and stop the alarm.
The alarm stops, I start it up and we go.

As we enter the back of the club I hand the keys back to the owner of the Camry, a guy who’d been hired as “Security” for the night.  Nice enough guy.  I say “Your unlock ain’t workin’,” and he goes, “Oh yeah, I heard the alarm! HA HA HA I should’ve told you it was broken.”  Yeah.  You should’ve.

2) Adam has referred to this particular weekend as a gauntlet, which went from I think 4 shows to a whopping 9 shows over 3 nights.  He’s just so damn popular people wanna get close to him, and Laughs was exactly the spot to get close.  Adam’s a worker, a do-er, and this was a weekend that put everything else I’ve done to shame.  9 shows, 90min at a go, on-stage alone.  Fuggin’ amazing.  Since then he’s only done bigger venues and fewer shows for more money, deservedly-so.  It’s a great model to follow; if you can get to the same audience with less repetition, you’re not working harder, you’re working smarter. And less.  And that’s good.  No need to burn out making people laugh.  Truly a hard working entertainer and philosoteur.

They say “Never meet your heroes,” because the shine’ll come off the bust.  Not true.  Adam’s a dude doing what he does, and great at it.  I haven’t hit the Bucket List item with Adam, which is getting invited to Jimmy Kimmel’s Football Sundays and catch a Mangria buzz.  But until that happens, we’ll always have a fritzed car alarm story.