Adam Carolla - President Me: The America Thats in My Head

Id like to acknowledge everyone from It Books and HarperCollinsLynn Grady, Brittany Hamblin, Mandy Kain, Heidi Lewis, Sharyn Rosenblum, Michael Barrs, and Paula Szafranski.

I should also thank Lynette; Sonny; Natalia; my agent, James Babydoll Dixon; my lit agent, Dan Strone; and especially my editor, Carrie Thornton, for making me write these acknowledgments when I wanted to leave this page blank and move on with my life. Its that dedication and attention to detail that made this book great.

In Fifty Years Well All Be Chicks

Not Taco Bell Material

Those of you who enjoy my podcast know how much I love the self-satisfied sniff that blowhards do after they feel like theyve made a really strong point or clever analogy. Well, Im no exception. Throughout President Me youll see this to show how proud I am of what youve just read. If you hit that graphic and didnt dig what I just laid down, go back and read it again. Its really good.

And to signal when a new law, executive order, or policy is about to be mandated, youll see this graphic. I pulled this image out of my extensive collection of vintage gay erotica. I remember seeing it... perhaps Ive said too much.

Lets get into this.

ADAM CAROLLA is the author of the New York Times bestsellers In Fifty Years Well All Be Chicks and Not Taco Bell Material , as well as a radio and television host, comedian, and actor. Carolla is well known as the cohost of the syndicated radio and MTV show Loveline and the cocreator and star of The Man Show and Crank Yankers . He currently hosts Catch a Contractor and The Adam Carolla Show , which is the Guinness World Record holder for Most Downloaded Podcast and is available on iTunes and AdamCarolla.com.

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Its no secret that the American economy is in a shambles because we do a fantastic job of consuming products, but when it comes to making those products, we leave that to our friends in Asia. This hit me hard two years ago when I was in my garage on Christmas Eve putting together a canopy bed for my daughters American Girl doll. Not only was I devastated to realize that my daughters doll was going to have a better bed than I did when I was a kid, but I noticed all the parts were labeled Made in China. I thought, Game over, America. The AMERICAN GIRL dolls are made in China. Is there a sadder statement than that? The only thing worse is that Im now seeing a lot of products labeled Hecho en China. Our country is now full of goods made by people who dont speak English for people who dont speak English.

Why is all our stuff made abroad? Because its cheaper and the government (if there even is a government where all this shit is being manufactured) gets the fuck out of the way. Thats not to say Im down with the child-slave-labor sweatshop stuff, but the massive overregulation we have here in America is not going to make this trade disparity go away. As president, Im going to get out the big book of commerce codes and take a crab comb to it, because until my administration fixes this, no intelligent American businessman is going to bother trying to compete.

THE TALE OF RED WINE AND RED TAPE

I can tell you this from firsthand experience as a small business owner. Many of you probably know that I hock a little product known as Mangria. For those who dont, heres a quick background story.

I drink red wine every night. It helps knock me down after a stressful day. One night I went to pour my second glass and came up a little short. I only had half a glass left. All of you fellow alcoholics have felt this heartache. You turn the bottle over, and a hummingbird beaks worth of merlot trickles out. I blame the lack of uniformity. I feel like some wine bottles are heavier when empty than others are when theyre full, because the glass is thicker than the windows on the presidents motorcade. Then some have that inny belly button on the bottom that goes up three inches. That divot displaces two glasses of wine, Im convinced. You can drop a digit on that thing and your finger will just keep going. Sometimes you grab the bottom and your finger goes up an eighth of an inch, but other times its like youre finger-blasting Rebel Wilson. I dont want to have to give my wine bottle a prostate exam to figure out if Im going to be able to get drunk.

So with the half glass and half buzz mocking me, I got mad, went mad scientist, and dumped a little vodka in there. At this point I was looking for function, not form. Well, it tasted like ass. But I wasnt going to waste good booze. There are children in Africa who go to bed every night without a buzz. So I went to the fridge and tossed in some orange juice. Much better. I now had my prototype for a powerful sangria. The next day when I was discussing it at my AA meetingI mean, on the podcastI dubbed it Mangria. It started kind of as a joke, me mixing up batches of the stuff and bringing it to Kimmels for football Sunday. Then people started requesting it. Eventually, after a lot of talk about it on the show, someone from a winery in Napa approached me about bottling my concoction. As of the time of this printing, we have sold over two hundred and eighty thousand bottles.

This all came through hard work, innovation, and captured opportunities. But it was sure as shit not the result of the government. I built it. All the government has done is get in the way and take money at every turn. Its one big bureaucratic clusterfuck.

First, the shipping is a problem. Were still not able to ship to every state. That is the biggest complaint I hear when Im on the road. How come I cant get Mangria in Maryland? I was on a plane sitting next to a guy from Massachusetts who wanted to try some, but thats one of our no-ship states. You know Massachusetts; its not a big drinking state. Most of those Sox games are dry. Its like an Amish barn raising there.

And getting it into stores is rough. You have to deal with a completely mobbed-up distributor system that is totally at the mercy of the various state agencies.

Why the fuck cant we get on the same page? Im pretty sure alcohol has been around for a few years now. And we all love it. Shouldnt we have figured this out after Prohibition ended? Its not like wine is this new product that hasnt been fully tested. People in Mississippi and Minnesota both love wine. Why should I be able to sell my product to one but not the other?

That problem isnt just with the state governments. When it comes to the feds, they really slow your roll. Mangria almost didnt make it to market because of the red tape around the label. Anytime you bottle wine, you have to have your label approved by the Tax and Trade Board of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Thats right, the ATF gets to decide what I put on my product label. So when we first attempted to put it out, we wrote a little blurb for the back of the bottle about how it was created. It went like this: