President Me (13 page)

There are different variations on this theme, all of them telling you you're an asshole but really showing that they are, like “I'm a Bitch, but I'm Not Your Bitch,” “Expensive but Worth It,” and my favorite of all time, “Yes I Do, but Not with You.”

VANITY PLATES AND NOVELTY LICENSE PLATE FRAMES:
A lot of times vanity-plate guy is also the bumper-sticker guy. But there's something slightly worse about vanity-plate guy. Bumper-sticker guy could have slapped those on there when he was drunk or bought his piece of shit with the bumper stickers already applied. Vanity-plate guy went to the DMV and paid extra to let you know a little something about himself. Vanity plates usually fall into two categories. Half of the time I end up asking the person I'm driving with to help me decode them like I'm on
Wheel of Fortune
. There's a ton of this in L.A., directly tied to the narcissism of show business—“CR8IV,” “INTHBIZ,” “4CTOR.” Except the only thing any of these creative geniuses has ever written was their stupid vanity plate and the only thing they've produced is outrage in me. I recently came across someone who apparently lives in the hills near me because their vanity plate read “HILDWLR.” And the frame around that plate said “On a Clear Day I Can See Forever.” I've got to admit mixed feelings on that one. I don't know if I love this person or hate them. Either way, I quietly want to be them. Kind of like how I want to be the person who taps the shoulder of the guy who's got twelve items in the ten-items-or-less line and says, “Excuse you?” Don't you feel like these people are happier than you? I have the same hilltop view but I don't care about it nearly that much. I wish I got the same pleasure out of my success as this person and wanted to proclaim it, literally, from the hilltops.

But that person was actually successful, they lived in the hills and drove a nice car. I've seen a bunch of bedazzled license-plate frames lately. Just eight bucks' worth of fake plastic rubies hot-glued around the frame. Are you trying to fool us into thinking you're classy with something you purchased at a kiosk in the mall? “Wow, she's so rich she has a king's ransom attached to the back of her Taurus!” Just like the chick dating “Fuck Off and Die” bumper-sticker guy, I want to interrogate the boyfriend of this chick and find out why he lets her leave the driveway. I recently pulled up behind someone with a license-plate frame that read “Not Spoiled, Just Well Taken Care Of.” She was driving a bone-stock Camry with cloth interior.

Then the other day I was on the 134 Freeway and got behind a middle-aged woman in a sea-foam-green Prius. First off, I don't understand that color on a car. That color is only good for guys like Robert Blake to wear as jewelry when they get into their seventies. But even more egregious than the color choice was the license-plate frame. It read “My Other Car Is a Yoga Mat.” What is so noble about yoga that we need to know about you and your special relationship with it? Were any wars ever won with yoga? Did yoga save any children's lives? Why do I need to know what you're into? As the great Dana Gould said on the podcast when I told him about this, “I like masturbating but you don't see me with a license-plate frame that reads, ‘My Other Car Is a Blurry Fist.' ” We get it, you do yoga and are therefore better than me. Just drive, bitch.

And that's the point with all of the above. Why do I need to know you? Do you think I give a shit that “Tennis Is My Racquet” or that you're the “World's #1
Dr. Who
Fan”? Is any of this helping us get to where we need to go—literally or symbolically? How is your bumper sticker helping you get ahead on the road of life? I'd like to convene a panel of very successful people to have a sit-down with the “Fuck You” bumper-sticker, stick-figure-family-decal, and novelty-license-plate-frame people. I'd moderate it. I'd ask, “Bill Gates. How many bumper stickers do you have? None, okay. And your net worth? Thanks. Bill Gates, everyone. Up next, Richard Branson. Richard, what do you drive? And how many bumper stickers do you have? None as well? Interesting. And net worth? Thanks. Okay, now the guy with the decal of Calvin pissing on the Yankees symbol and the light-up-skull license-plate frame. What's your net worth?”

Not only are these people losers, they're dangerous. They're so concerned with you getting to know the real them via their car exterior they've forgotten the point of a car is to fucking drive. And we need to fix that. As you know, I'm a big proponent of shaming. Your car's horn is a mobile shaming device. It lets the idiot in front of you know to wake the fuck up and get going. I'm even into the “honk-through,” where if I'm the third car in line, the douche at the tip of the spear is refusing to turn right on red, and the guy in the middle in front of me won't honk, I give him a blast from the horn to attempt getting him to honk at the zombie at the head of the line. I had this happen recently where the guy was sitting at a green arrow. Not just a right on red, he had a green arrow telling him to go, and he was still sitting there. When I honked at the guy in front of me he flailed his hands like “What do you want me to do?” I want you to honk, you asshole. Let's get going. I eventually leaned on the horn so it was blaring nonstop like I was in a car accident and my lifeless corpse was laying on top of it. What I'm saying is that if someone honks at you, you're supposed to react in some fashion. It means something is wrong. Just sitting there until the light turns green as if you were deaf is not the plan. And that's why I'm furious with Union 76 gasoline, who now has a billboard campaign all around Southern California telling drivers
DON
'
T
BE
A
HONK
-
AHOLIC
. They have cute little phrases like
GIVE
A
HOOT
,
DON
'
T
TOOT
,
WHY
THE
LONG
BEEP
?, and
BLAST
TUNES
,
NOT
TOOTS
. Bullshit. Honking is an incredibly useful tool, especially here in L.A. We need twenty times more honking, not less. People here are driving around texting while high on prescription medications. Honking is necessary. It is a right. It is American.

That said, just like the right to bear arms, it can go too far. That's why I've come up with an idea I think will make people's lives a lot easier, would aid our great nation, and wouldn't cost a penny. We need a double honk. The honk that takes back the honk we just laid out.

Not too long ago I was behind a big SUV. It was a Denali with a smoked window in the back and I couldn't see through it. We came up to the light and the driver of the SUV wasn't venturing out into the intersection to turn left. But I didn't want to honk because I couldn't see around his mammoth SUV or through his window and thus couldn't tell if George Clooney was in front of him in his Smart Car. So we just sat there and the signal went from green to red and I realized there was no Clooney, no one in a Miata, no clown car. Nobody turned left. This guy was just zoned out and the signal cycled. I thus gave him the “C'mon, buddy, wake up. We both could've made that one” extend-o honk. He clearly felt bad because when the signal then changed to green again, he not only went into the intersection, he went WAY into the intersection as cars were coming down the hill toward him at a fast pace. It was dangerous. He was trying to thread the needle in between a Winnebago and an M1 Abrams tank. I wanted to hit the horn again so I could tell him not to worry about it and that he didn't need to get T-boned because of my honk but I thought that would just make it worse.

That's why we need the take-back honk. Nine times out of ten when you honk at a guy you get flipped the bird. But every now and again you find the guy who is so racked with guilt that he attempts to commit hara-cari. So how do they know it's the take-back honk? We agree on it, as a society and a culture, like we did with the peace sign, the middle finger, or the Macarena. So henceforward the quick double “toot-toot” is the take-back honk. The honk withdrawal. If we get on the same page about this the next time I do it, the Denali in front of me it won't end up in a ball of flames.

AN AUTOMOTIVE CALL TO ARMS

Let me end my discussion of traffic issues with a story. You know how politicians always choose some random Joe Six-Pack to tell a story about to illustrate a big sweeping idea? Especially during town halls or big speeches? Well, I'm not doing that. I'm going to tell you a story about me, Joe Twelve-Pack. Something happened to me that should happen to no American. As president, it will be one of my goals to make sure that our transportation system is fixed so that this fate never befalls one of you.

Driving used to be cool. Think of all the songs written in the fifties and sixties about cars and driving. You could learn more about engines from the Beach Boys' “Little Deuce Coup” and “Shut You Down” than four years at a trade school. How about now? It makes me sad when I come across young men who have no interest in cars or driving. The world has turned upside down. Girls today will say things like “I'll blow the guy underneath the bleachers but I don't want to
date
him.” And guys will actually utter the phrase “I'll drive in a pinch, but I'm not interested in getting my license.” I think it's because they're spoiled. When I was a kid I wanted to drive because I wanted to flee. I had nothing to keep me at home. Kids today don't want to drive because in their room they have sixty-inch plasma TVs and a laptop with their social networks and all the porn their cocks could desire.

Even sadder is that one of these “I'm not into driving” guys is in my own family. My sixteen-year-old nephew Casper was staying with me for a couple of days and I had been teaching him how to drive. He had a learner's permit and had only driven two times. I wanted to make a man out of the kid and that means getting some time behind the wheel of a car with some real horsepower, in this case 510. I took him out on the freeway on the way back from the podcast. When I asked how he felt about it, he said, “I'm scared.”

I decided Casper needed a little more time in the captain's seat and since this was over the Fourth of July weekend—we were going to an event and Uncle Adam was probably going to have a little too much Mangria—it was a perfect opportunity to teach him the very important skill of designated driving. But when it came time to leave the beach, head through the canyon, and go back to the Carolla compound, Casper balked. It was too dark and he didn't feel comfortable. I felt a little too “comfortable” but did the math and decided that a buzzed me was still a better driver than a scared teen with too little experience and too much power under the hood.

We eventually got onto the freeway and at a certain point I felt the familiar rumble of a flat tire. We had a blowout. Because L.A. is such a piece of shit the freeways are constantly full of nails, broken glass, pallets, mattresses, hooker corpses, and other debris. (Ironically we had taken my wife Lynette's car because mine had a slow leak from a screw in the sidewall of the tire and I didn't want to risk it.) So I pulled off onto a street to change it. As with all things in my life, when it rains it pours. I had fucked up my back earlier that week and there is nothing worse for a bad back than changing a spare tire. Leaning into the trunk, undoing all the mechanisms, lifting a twenty-pound tire without being able to bend your knees followed by a lot of squatting, yanking, and wrenching is a chiropractor's description of hell. So I really needed Casper to step up to the plate on this one. I asked him to grab the lug wrench. His response made my heart sink. “The what?” I swallowed the vomit that had just come up and showed him what it was. I then told him to put it on the lug nuts. Again, “The what?” After I woke up from my trauma-induced coma I told him, “Okay, just hold your phone up so I can use it as a flashlight.” This was about ten at night. He had no problem with that.

This being a German car made in 2012, it doesn't come with an adequate jack, just a cheap little piece-of-tin shit. Sadly they don't even expect people to change tires anymore, so they don't bother giving you the equipment you need. Well, this jack did half the job. It lasted long enough to get the car up and get the tire off, but then it popped out, leaving the whole car pretty much flat on the ground (what I didn't realize until later is that the rear passenger-side tire was blown too).

We were parked across a residential driveway and of course if I block someone's driveway for ten seconds, that's when they pull up. And it's never a guy named Murph who has a garage full of tools and is going to pitch in and help out. It was an Armenian who when I asked if he had a flashlight said he didn't. I was thinking, “I bet if I offered you ten grand to produce a flashlight you'd go back into that house and find one damn quick.” He wasn't a bad guy and he even went into his trunk to get his jack, which, of course was the exact same jack I had. We tried anyway. No go. By now, my buzz was completely gone.

So I told Casper to call UberCab. But they needed an account number, billing address, etc. It's now midnight and pitch-black and I don't have the zip code or mailing address of my money manager where all of that shit goes. So we tried calling Audi Care, the car is under my corporation's name. I told Casper to just call a regular cab while I backed the car up to clear the driveway. I did this—making the most horrible sound a car guy can hear as the bare brake rotor ground against the pavement. But as I got out, just to really rub it in, I looked up and saw the “No Parking 10
A
.
M
.–12
P
.
M
. Street Sweeping” sign. (Later, when I told Lynette about this nightmare, she asked, “Why not leave a note telling them you couldn't move the car because of the tire?” I thought, “How quaint. Thanks, Aunt Bea. It must be great to be you, to think that this is going to work with the L.A. parking gestapo.” I could have a rusty piece of rebar going through me impaling me on the hood of the car and they'd work around my blood and dying moans to leave a ticket on the windshield.) So, having no real option, we left the car with the intention of getting up early and getting back there before the meter-maid vultures started picking at the carcass. Casper and I took a cab home, got in about 1
A
.
M
., and I had a highball to soothe my aching back, bleeding knuckles, and broken soul.