Christoph Waltz + Jim Carolla (Carolla Classics)

Summary

Adam Carolla Show: Christoph Waltz + Jim Carolla (Carolla Classics)

Date: May 22, 2026
Host: Adam Carolla
Guests: Christoph Waltz (from episode 130, 2009), Jim Carolla (Adam's dad, from episode 454, 2010)

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Episode Overview

In this Carolla Classics episode, Adam Carolla’s team revisits two standout segments from earlier years:

1. A 2009 interview with Christoph Waltz, right after his breakout performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, offering a look at his unexpected rise, reflections on acting, and experiences on set.
2. A 2010 Thanksgiving chat with Adam’s dad, Jim Carolla, that delves into Italian-American family history, quirky family traditions, Thanksgiving memories, and the Carolla family’s unique personalities.

The episode blends Adam’s signature comedic interviewing, heartfelt family talk, and lively banter into an engaging, nostalgia-filled two-part classic.

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Part 1: Christoph Waltz Interview (from Episode #130, 2009)

Main Theme

A deep dive into Christoph Waltz’s sudden Hollywood ascent off the back of “Inglourious Basterds,” his multilingual performance, and a behind-the-scenes look at working with Quentin Tarantino.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Waltz’s Career & Breakout Role:

• Adam is effusive in praise for Waltz’s performance as Hans Landa, predicting (correctly) that Waltz would win the Academy Award. (01:34, 08:06)
• Waltz explains most of his work prior had been in German-language movies and TV. (02:30)
• The uniqueness of Tarantino’s casting approach: insisting on native actors for each nationality represented. (11:33, 16:39)

Multilingual Performance & Acting Approach:

• Waltz discusses his ability to “fake” Italian for his role, sharing a humorous anecdote about convincing someone with his faux-Italian.

  “You take English words with Latin roots … string them together like opera. … It works.” (Christoph Waltz, 03:08)
  “Guard acresta belladonna vinicua … that actually meant nothing.” (Christoph Waltz, 03:59)

• Adam marvels at Waltz’s seamless movement between languages and subtle performance as a villain.

  “The way true evil is, because true evil doesn’t come out and scream, ‘I’m evil.’” (Adam, 15:00)

On Tarantino and the Filmmaking Process:

• Waltz describes Tarantino as both artist and genre master:

  “He is the lead actor in all his movies. … You get all your money’s worth and more.” (Waltz, 09:35, 19:11)

• Importance of working with strong scene partners and great writing:

  “You depend on your partner like one Bedouin on the other, you know, for survival.” (Waltz, 06:41)

• The farmhouse opening scene as a “one-act play” with classical dramatic unity:

  “It has, you know, really all the classical criteria for a play … unity of time, place, action.” (Waltz, 05:59)

• Tarantino’s aversion to traditional casting taping—prefers live, script-in-hand meetings. (20:02–22:18)

On Improvisation and the Finished Film:

• Waltz dislikes improvisation, preferring to deliver what’s written:

  “Not only am I a very bad improviser, I hate it. … I wanted to do Quentin’s stuff.” (24:34)

• Notes the finished film was “100% congruent” with what was shot. (26:30–26:54)

Reflections on Fame and Opportunity:

• Waltz speaks humbly about his sudden success and possible future roles, joking about non-German parts and accents. (30:10–31:27)
• On the meaning of performance:

  “You want to really try to excel and in a way, push the envelope to find out what it is that you can do.” (Waltz, 14:14)

Memorable Banter:

• Adam repeatedly jokes about wanting Waltz to give a secret “shout-out” to him at the Oscars—by picking his nose or clearing his throat—if he wins. (35:44–37:19)
• Playful discussion about the “life after Basterds” and Waltz’s single/divorced status:

  “You’re going to be the toast of the town. … You can speak to them in that French accent. They’re going to melt like butter.” (Adam, 39:41) “If you don’t mind, I’d like to call you for advice on that.” (Waltz, 39:46)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Adam, on Waltz’s performance:

  “It was easily the best performance I’ve seen in years … you kick Swayze’s ass and Keanu Reeves’ ass.” (31:44)

• Waltz credits “great partners” on-screen:

  “Only be as good as your opposite … you depend on your partner like one Bedouin on the other.” (06:41)

• On wanting to do comedy:

  “A comedy would be lovely … with some spirit behind it and … a good-looking leading lady and a nice paycheck…” (Christoph Waltz, 38:32–39:22)

Important Timestamps

• 03:59 – Waltz’s demonstration of fake Italian
• 05:29 – Analysis of the opening farmhouse scene as “classical drama”
• 07:59 – Discussion of tension, release, laughter in Tarantino films
• 20:02 – Tarantino’s casting approach
• 24:34 – On improvisation vs. the script
• 26:30 – Comparing film finished to what was shot
• 35:44 – Oscar shout-outs and banter
• 38:32 – Waltz on future comedic roles

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Part 2: Jim Carolla (Adam’s Dad) Thanksgiving Interview (from Episode #454, 2010)

Main Theme

A humor-laced, personal conversation exploring the quirks, family traditions, and history of the Carolla clan, centering on Thanksgiving memories, eating habits, and Italian-American heritage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Family Dynamics & Holiday Traditions:

• Adam playfully interrogates his dad about the “Hell yeah” soundbite, swearing he never actually said it. (41:47–43:28)
• Thanksgiving for Jim growing up in South Philadelphia’s Italian enclaves—more Italian roasts (braciola), less standard turkey. (45:15)
• Adam notes the disconnect between his father’s family’s food traditions and Jim’s own minimalist eating, marveling at the “granola and cottage cheese” dinners. (46:16–50:38)

Jim’s Relationship with Food:

• Jim explains a history of overeating as a child contributing to a later-life embrace of simplicity and “eating lighter.” (51:14–51:41)
• Discussion about family culinary apathy—marriages with women who did not cook, store-bought Thanksgiving, minimal enthusiasm over food, with Adam poking fun at their culinary disinterest. (53:02–53:40)

Surprises about Jim’s Personality:

• Adam discovers his father actually is a sports fan (huge Clippers and Eagles fan)—despite never displaying it or discussing it growing up. (54:18–57:05)
• Jim reminisces about his Philadelphia childhood, moving to California, and how family ties faded over the years, leading to an oddly small and distant extended family. (58:04–80:05)

The Carolla Family Tree and History:

• Jim traces roots back to Casabona, Sicily, sharing how multiple relatives became musicians and settled in South Philly.
• Funny notes about the surname shifting from “Carollo” to “Carolla” for ease.
• The poverty of immigrant experience: three generations crammed into rowhouses, with even the family moving by horse and wagon as late as the 1940s. (71:28)

A Dysfunctional, Dry-Humor Family Retrospective:

• Adam and Jim riff on relatives who worked little, had few children, or resided in family basements for decades.
• Discussion of infamy and mischief: Uncles with mafia connections, cousins who lived in cellars to avoid syndicate retribution, and a Carolla uncle who did time in prison for the mob. (102:38)
• Adam’s grandmother is described as comically stoic—even moving into a house after her brother’s suicide and greeting the news with “Good riddance.” (88:09)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Adam, on Jim’s non-traditional approach to food:

  “Sort of like what a raccoon would do if he got into the house.” (49:33)

• Jim, on being an unlikely sports fan:

  “You don’t know a part of me that likes sports … there’s a whole [side]. … I’ve been hooked on sports.” (54:18)

• On family estrangement and poverty:

  “We lived on the third floor of my father’s sister’s house … there were like 12 or 17 of us in the house, so that was our first place.” (69:42)

• On Adam’s grandmother’s legendary callousness:

  “She always said, ‘Good riddance,’ and moved into his 900 sq. foot home.” (87:25)

• On family giving:

  “Their birthday present was a dime for every year you were on the planet.” (108:29)

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Important Timestamps

• 41:47 – Adam confronts Jim on the “Hell yeah” audio drop
• 45:15 – Thanksgiving in the old Italian neighborhood
• 50:38 – Adam on Jim’s minimalist diet
• 54:18 – Surprise revelation: Jim was secretly a big sports fan
• 69:42 – Jim’s recollection of three families sharing a crowded house
• 87:25 – Grandmother’s stoic reaction to family tragedy

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Memorable Segment

Jim closes the segment with a jazz-inspired “theme song” for his podcast, singing to the Carolla audience—ending the episode with warmth, family banter, and a touch of quirk. (125:04–129:21)

“With each word you say, your tenderness grows / Tearing our fears apart … ‘Cause we love you and the way you listen to us…” (Jim Carolla & Producer, 127:05–129:26)

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Episode Highlights

• Christoph Waltz’s wit, humility, and deep dedication to the craft of acting.
• Revealing backstage stories from the making of “Inglourious Basterds” and working with Quentin Tarantino.
• A rare, candid look at Adam’s family history, layered with classic Carolla humor and deadpan dialogue.
• The Thanksgiving “food apathy” tradition, odd family ties, and a totally unique cranberry sauce recipe.
• Jim Carolla’s unexpected musical tribute to podcast listeners.

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Summary Table of Notable Quotes

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |------------|-------------------|-------| | 03:59 | Christoph Waltz | “Guard acresta belladonna vinicua … that actually meant nothing, but she might have understood over there …” | | 06:41 | Christoph Waltz | “You depend on your partner like one Bedouin on the other, you know, for survival.” | | 09:35 | Christoph Waltz | “He [Tarantino] is the lead in all of his movies. That’s why they are so great.” | | 15:00 | Adam Carolla | “Because true evil doesn’t come out and scream, ‘I’m evil.’ It slides in quietly and does its work.” | | 24:34 | Christoph Waltz | “Not only am I a very bad improviser, I hate it. … I wanted to do Quentin’s stuff.” | | 39:41 | Adam Carolla | “You’re going to be the toast of the town. … You can speak to them in that French accent. They’re going to melt like butter …” | | 49:33 | Adam Carolla | “Sort of like what a raccoon would do if he got into the house.” | | 54:18 | Jim Carolla | “You don’t know a part of me that likes sports … there’s a whole [side]. … I’ve been hooked on sports.” | | 87:25 | Adam Carolla | “She always said, ‘Good riddance,’ and moved into his 900 sq. foot home.” | | 127:05 | Jim Carolla & Producer | ” … those comments that we love to hear touches our foolish heart. Oh, lovely. Keep those hearts expanding, keep that breathless charm …” |

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For Listeners Who Missed It

This two-part classic episode is a rich blend of film nerd analysis, fresh Oscar history, and the affectionate but offbeat tapestry of Carolla-family Americana. Whether you’re a Tarantino devotee, acting buff, or curious about how Italian-American families really celebrated Thanksgiving, this is a must-listen for both comedy and heart.

Tune in for the next installment of Carolla Classics – and, as always, get it on!

Transcript

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[Adam Carolla]

Welcome to Cruel Classics. I'm your host super fan Giovanni. This is the podcast we play the best moments, highlights and fans like the clips from all 17 years of the Adam Carolla Show. If you would like to access the AD free archives, the Adam Corolla show, the Adam and Dr. Dream Drew show, as well as the podcast Beat it out, make sure to check out Adam Carolla's substack adamcarolla.substack.com and if you'd like to request a clip, please email us classicsamcarla.com now on to the clips coming up first we have Adam Carolla show episode 130 from all the way back in 2009 with Christoph Waltz. One of the biggest gets for a guy was super early in his like Hollywood career. Right off fresh of Inglorious Basterds, Adam saw a preview screening obsessed with the movie. Really cool interview. Adam was super excited to do it. It's a real flashback to another time. I hope you guys enjoy.

Yes, get it on.

Got to get it on. No choice but to get it on. I'm not screaming right now because I'm in the presence of what I believe is greatness. Christoph Waltz has joined us. Kristoff is in Inglourious Basterds. That is obviously the new movie by Quentin Tarantino. Kristof, I believe is going to win an Academy Award. I watched a movie, I got to see a sneak preview of the movie just the other night and I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. But I left that theater so impressed by your work and everybody I was with was trying to figure out where you were from what other movies you'd been in. And somebody said I've never seen that guy in another movie. And I said when you're really good actor, people don't recognize you from movie to movie because you turn in into that role. But have you been in other movies that we've seen?

[Christoph Waltz]

No, I don't think you have seen anything that I was in. I do the past, the past 10 years, virtually all of my stuff in Germany. So you Know, German speaking area being my, my sort of playing field.

[Adam Carolla]

The one of the things that was so impressive about your performance in the movie was you spoke German and you spoke English and you spoke French and even Italian at one part, one point. Now I know you speak German, you speak English, you speak French, Italian. Did you have to learn for the movie?

[Christoph Waltz]

I didn't really learn it. I knew how to fake it before. You know, this is something that you really can do. It's a lot of fun to do that. You take, I tell you how to do it. You take English words with Latin roots and there are plenty of them and you string them together like, you know, as if you were talking Italian and make it sound like opera. You know what, it works. I conversed at one, you know, one occasion in Italy for about two hours with this beautiful lady. For about two hours I was, you know, sort of discussing sort of semicultured, sort of half sophisticated, blah, blah, because I was interested in the lady.

[Adam Carolla]

Give us a little taste of what that would sound like if you were doing your Italian gibberish.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, it would sound like guard acresta belladonna vinicua, vinicua belladonna haciende de la sofa. You know, so, so that was. That actually meant nothing, but she might have understood over there to, you know,

[Adam Carolla]

come to the sofa. Yeah.

[Christoph Waltz]

If you. Exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

If you kind of, you know, there's a. I'm not going to give away too much. And again, there's going to be a lot of ass kissing going on in this interview because you were such a tour de force in this movie and it was such a coming out party for you, I guess here in the United States.

[Christoph Waltz]

I tell you, it is. I still don't know what's happening.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, be prepared for a couple of things. A definitely there's going to be a lot of Academy Award buzz surrounding your performance. Performance. Now I'm guessing it's going to be in supporting actor, but it really should be in the leading actor because you had a ton of dialogue in every, every, every accent and really probably had more time on stage than a lot of the people who will be nominated as best leading actor. Well, you see, and I say stage. I mean on camera.

[Christoph Waltz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, it sounds good because at some time you could, you know, there are moments in, in that where you can actually, actually take it for a stage. Absolutely. That first scene, the first scene was

[Adam Carolla]

so dramatic and so you were so good in it, but it just so tension filled.

[Christoph Waltz]

I wouldn't be surprised if, if this scene cropped up on a stage pretty soon, you know, it is a one act play.

[Adam Carolla]

It really is.

[Christoph Waltz]

And it has, you know, really all the, all the classical, all the classical criteria for a play, you know, the unity of time, the unity of place, the unity of action. You know, what is happening is happening in original time. You know, you don't have, you don't jump back and forth between locations. You stay in this one room and it's still, it's still at the same time cinematic as cinematic can be.

[Adam Carolla]

So, so many great actors in this film and so many new faces, at least to me. Even the guy you're acting with in the farmhouse and the opening scene, Denis

[Christoph Waltz]

Minochi, a French actor, was terrific. So we all know, we all know you can only be, only be as good as your opposite in an interview, but also on stage, also on screen, you know, you depend, you depend on your partner like one Bedouin on the other, you know, for survival.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

But I've still seen movies where I went, that guy's good.

That other guy sucks.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, you know, I mean, that scene

[Adam Carolla]

couldn't have been as great as it was if he wasn't as great as he was.

[Christoph Waltz]

Exactly, exactly. And you know, let's not forget the point of departure there. We were talking about the drama. You know, it's the writing, it's what you have on the paper in front of you.

[Adam Carolla]

It was, it was a movie that was very intense at times, yet had more laughs than many comedies. You see, that was probably almost a relief from the tension. Quentin Tarantino, sort of a master at building a lot of tension up. And then somebody says something that's not even a joke, but it's just such a purging and such a relief to hear something that they get a huge laugh.

[Christoph Waltz]

That's what laughter is. That's why the sound of laughter is explosive. Yeah, it's release from tension.

[Adam Carolla]

You know, he did a. Tarantino did a great job at that. Again, a lot of great performances in this movie, but Kristoff's was definitely the one that's going to get the Oscar nodded. I'm sorry if you're a superstitious guy and you think I'm going to jinx you. But I guarantee, I guarantee, may Kristof be struck by lightning if he does not get the nod for best supporting actor. And again, I will also guarantee, mark my words, just like I said, Paul Abdul wasn't coming back to American Idol this season. I guarantee that if you took his time on screen and he just Ran a stopwatch to it. He would have more time than the guys who get nominated for leading man.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, you know, thanks very much. I'm extremely flattered and honored. The thing with the time on screen, you might be right. I didn't, you know, use my stopwatch yet, but that's not real. Time on screen is not really the measurement for supportive or leading actor. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, take it in the literal sense of the word.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, who was the lead actor in this movie?

I don't think it was Brad Pitt.

[Christoph Waltz]

The lead actor is.

[Adam Carolla]

I think it was you.

[Christoph Waltz]

The guy who sets out to accomplish a mission if you want, you know,

[Adam Carolla]

maybe Tarantino was the lead actor in this movie.

[Christoph Waltz]

I agree. I agree 100%. He is the lead in all of his movies. That's why they are so great.

[Adam Carolla]

And I will say this about Tarantino movies. I've enjoyed the lion's share of Tarantino movies. It's the same thing. I mean, you, you enjoy, you know, you're watching a Tarantino movie, you're having an experience. And, you know, reservoir. Reservoir Dogs I probably liked better than, well, maybe one of my favorite Tarantino movies, maybe better than Grindhouse, for instance. But either way, you know, you're watching a Tarantino movie, even if you have, you like more than others.

[Christoph Waltz]

Something interesting I observed in Cannes at the festival. They were, you know, enthusiastic reactions and somewhat, you know, cool reactions. And the cool reactions were all the, all the smart alecs, to say the least, who knew, you know, the experts who knew what to expect from a Tarantino movie. Now, if there's one thing that you rightly can expect from a Tarantino movie is that it's not going to be what you expect.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Christoph Waltz]

The enthusiasts all kind of, you know, tuned in into the movie, into what it was, the new thing, you know, they didn't want to be the experts who can predict. And so, hey, this is why I go to the movies.

[Adam Carolla]

I feel that way about Oliver Stone when he's doing his thing as well. I feel like whether you loved it or hated it, you knew you were watching an Oliver Stone movie. And there's not too many guys you can say that about. So what was it now?

What was the process like?

How did you get hooked up with Tarantino?

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, the, the, the. How I got hooked up with him was traditional casting. Really. The casting agent in, in Germany who, you know, suggested a group of people to Quentin for the German parts because Quentin, being Quentin, insisted in this, this authenticity that all the German parts are being played by German actors. All the French by French, Americans. By Americans. Yeah. Of course, you know, in the interest of, you know, making this a box office success, you know, they tried to talk him into. Into casting American stars, but he insisted he wanted Germans for Germans.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

So. Well, thanks, you know, that's

[Adam Carolla]

as far as you. And again, I know for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, you're gonna think I'm laying it on a little thick. Once you see the movie, you won't think I did enough ass kissing. So please understand that this is a tour de force and obviously going to open doors for you here in the United States. In your mind, were you content just to go on doing German movies or did you always want to make the hop to the States?

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, one doesn't contradict the other. I was, I should say, kind of resigned to going on making German movies. You know, not that this is the worst. You know, it could be, you know, you could be in Ghana trying to get a movie together. It would probably be a lot more difficult. And so we have. We have something that resembles, you know, albeit remotely, an industry in Germany and in Austria, but it's mostly geared towards tv. So, you know, TV is a different form of production, different form of attention, different form of work altogether. And that's not really what I kind of set out to do when I started out. Well, in the interest of making a living. Yeah, you do it, of course. And, you know, understand me correctly, please. I was always privileged. I did the good stuff with the good people. But there's a ceiling, and that ceiling is somewhat low.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, you want. I mean, I think ultimately when you make a movie, and it's not just vanity, but whether you make a movie or you paint a painting, you want as many eyeballs on it as possible.

Yeah.

[Christoph Waltz]

But you also want as much, you know, you want to spend as much, as much attention as you can possibly get together for making this one thing happen. So you don't want to just churn it out because the program needs to go on the screen. You want to give it your full attention, and you want to give it everything you've got. And you want to really try to excel and in a way, push the envelope to find out what it is that you can do.

[Adam Carolla]

And this is a movie.

Yeah.

And then you want as many eyeballs on it as possible.

Exactly.

[Christoph Waltz]

So, you know, you take a car on the road, you want to see how much it can do and not

[Adam Carolla]

just practice parking this movie, by the way, I'M now thinking can easily run in Germany and would probably have less subtitles in it than it does in the United States. And it could run in France and might have less subtitles in it than it did in the United States. My only objection with the movie was there was a huge man with a bald head that was sitting in front of me and I had to keep sort of almost squatting up to get to the subtitles because there's a lot of fast talking and you gotta, you gotta stay with it. But really, the way that Kristof toggled between German and English and English and French was really, really impressive. Like, at first it felt like a trick, and then you realized it wasn't. He was actually, actually doing this. And again, in this scene in the farmhouse was the most memorable. But it happened way more than once in this movie. And your character was just such a great villain because so soft spoken and so understated. And really the way true evil is, because true evil doesn't come out and scream, I'm evil. It slides in quietly and does its work.

[Christoph Waltz]

It needs that quiet slide for it to be true evil. You know, something that screams out of it might be evil, but it's not really, you know, more often than not, you manage to dodge it, you know, when it screams out.

[Adam Carolla]

So Tarantino wants authentic actors to play these parts. So you get the call from your agent, Quentin Tarantino's making a movie and you're familiar with his work, you're a

fan of his work.

[Christoph Waltz]

Of course, of course. I've seen all his movies. And I've seen them, you know, most of them I've seen several times.

[Adam Carolla]

And you don't, you, you don't. Now, when a Quentin Tarantino movie goes to Germany, do they subtitle it or is it enough different versions?

[Christoph Waltz]

You know, they have this, this what I consider a pest of dubbing, you know, so all of a sudden you

[Adam Carolla]

get mister, got a white guy doing Samuel Jackson.

[Christoph Waltz]

Exactly. Yeah. And trying to talk jive.

[Adam Carolla]

Sounds like Sergeant Schultz.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, that's what it is in a way. You know, it's maybe not sergeant Schultz, but Sergeant Schmoder.

[Adam Carolla]

Anyway, you know, they call a Quarter Pounder in France. Yeah, so. So you got. You, you'll see.

[Christoph Waltz]

So. But.

[Adam Carolla]

But you get your hands on the English version, right?

[Christoph Waltz]

Yeah, but they always have various, various versions at any given time. You know, you can see the dubbed one if you want, but you can see the original one and you can see a subtitled one. That's how it usually is in the Bigger cities. But, you know, in smaller cities or in the country, you get the dubbed version.

[Adam Carolla]

And when you go to the movie theater, you get the dubbed version.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, I mean, that's what I'm saying. You know, on a dvd you get all three versions simultaneously. You can switch back and forth between them, but in the movie theaters, you get those three versions. You know, you get an original one, a subtitled one, and the dubbed one.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're a fan.

[Christoph Waltz]

So I'm a fan to a degree. You know, a fan to me always implies a little bit of a non critical approach. And I have a critical approach, you know, because I think it's more fun that way.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

[Christoph Waltz]

So. But there are.

[Adam Carolla]

You didn't like Grind House. You're not going to make any bones about that.

[Christoph Waltz]

I tell you something. Grindhouse, or rather Death Proof, that part of Grindhouse was something that made me understand a very, very important element as I consider it, that Quentin is the master of genre. By taking genre and lifting it onto the level of art. We're talking about a different, you know, a different level of perception here.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

And. But he does not leave the genre behind. So if you. If you choose to watch a. Watch a genre movie that, you know, you get, you get all your money's worth and more.

[Caller Kevin]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

If you choose to watch a piece of art, same thing happens. You get your money's worth and much more. So this is true mastership where no one gets left behind.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're a fan. But again, as somebody who does it as well, you watch with a critical eye. You know, he's making this movie, he's going to shoot it in Europe. Right?

[Christoph Waltz]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

And he's looking for German actors. You get the call from your agent and you go down and do you tape? Well, you go meet with him.

[Christoph Waltz]

No, you meet with him. That's another thing.

[Adam Carolla]

First thing. Because sometimes you tape stuff and then.

[Christoph Waltz]

Exactly. Through that, I have no idea. I have no idea what he's seen. You know, there's plenty of stuff that I did that he can watch, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

Over the past, you know, three decades. So I have no idea. And I actually. I don't want to know. They sent me a script. That's how it starts. They send you the full script. You don't usually get the whole script anymore. You get a few pages.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

I personally, you know, can't do anything with a few pages because I need

[Adam Carolla]

to know how it's read all 700 pages.

[Christoph Waltz]

So I read all the 700 pages, you know, and at first I couldn't quite take it in, you know, it was a bit too much, and I'm a bit too conventional.

[Adam Carolla]

But literally, how many pages was that script?

[Christoph Waltz]

Because I think it was 180, something like that.

[Adam Carolla]

180?

[Christoph Waltz]

I think so.

[Adam Carolla]

Most scripts are hundred pages, so maybe

[Christoph Waltz]

it was 165 or something like that. I don't know. So it was just from my system, a bit much to digest, maybe, because I kind of sensed that how much there is in there, you know, I didn't just consume the thing and say, well, you know, I like the story. So I. What I did was I. I went back to. To review all Quentin's movies in order, starting with Reservoir Dogs. And then I watched, you know, Pulp Fiction and then, you know, as they go on Jackie Brown, right, Kill Bill and added. Added Inglorious Basterds as a reading to myself. That helped me enormously. And that's when I discovered this with what I just mentioned about Death Proof before, you know, that we're talking about all these things at the same time. You don't approach a Tarantino script or movie just from one angle because you're gonna miss out.

[Adam Carolla]

So you finally meet him.

[Christoph Waltz]

So I finally go and meet him after, you know, doubting that this is for real several times over. And the others reassuring me that, no, it is meant as the real thing.

[Adam Carolla]

And you do one of the scenes from the movie.

[Christoph Waltz]

I go and meet with Quentin and Lawrence Bendo is there too, and expect, you know, this whole. Whole, you know, a room rigged with equipment and nothing. Two gentlemen, you know, sitting there across the table from me, conversing very. In a very civilized manner. And.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're not being taped or anything like that?

[Christoph Waltz]

No, no. And you know what? I loved it. I loved that very moment, you know, because nowadays you go into these casting situations with people who make their first movie and they don't even look at you because they're so busy with their bloody gadgets all around you.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Christoph Waltz]

What. What is it that they want to tape? Who is it that they want to show it to? You know, what is it that they want to do? Do they put it online afterwards or. I have no idea. No, Quentin was sitting there with his script and I was sitting there with mine, and we sort of toyed, you know, played with the scene, sort of ping pong back and forth, and we ended up doing the whole thing.

[Adam Carolla]

The whole script, the whole thing.

[Christoph Waltz]

Quentin played all the parts.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, not just your parts.

[Christoph Waltz]

No, I. I only did my part, but Quentin did all the Others. He did the.

[Adam Carolla]

He did the French chick.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, he did everything. You know, the French chick actually is one of his fortes.

[Caller Scott]

Wow. Really?

[Adam Carolla]

I'd like to see him do that.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, you should.

[Adam Carolla]

She was beautiful, by the way.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, she still is.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, she is.

So by the time you got through that, did you feel confident? Okay, this is it.

No.

[Caller Kevin]

No.

[Christoph Waltz]

You know, a very strange thing happened to me. I felt exhilarated and enthusiastic and, you know, infected by the krintenbag, and I left. I said goodbye. It was great. I had a wonderful hour and a half or however long it took. And I said to the casting agent there, I said, if this should have been it, hey, you know, I mean, what. What else do I need to hope for? I spent a fantastically inspiring time with them, and, you know, everything's all right. So they. A week later, they called me back about a week later, and we did more or less the same thing all over again. Now, Quentin was better as the bear Jew.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

The bear Jew is one of the

[Christoph Waltz]

characters in the movie, and he excelled

[Adam Carolla]

in that, so he upped his game, too.

[Christoph Waltz]

And he also was fantastic as Lieutenant Hickox.

[Adam Carolla]

Was he doing accents and stuff?

Yeah, of course.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And the shoot itself. Now, what's he like on the set? How much improvisation goes on?

[Christoph Waltz]

To tell you the truth, I have no idea how much improvisation goes on, because I personally, not only am I a very bad improviser, I hate it. And, you know, one might have something to do with the other, and I did. Yeah, I didn't want to do that. I did not want. I wanted to do Quentin stuff. I wanted to make Quentin's movie. I wanted to find out what's in Quentin's script. You know, he. He's created these. These characters, and he made them clash against each other. And it's all. You know, it all comes from him. So I thought, why would I want to impose my little bit in the form of, you know, sort of gauche improvisation?

[Adam Carolla]

And when you see the final product, how different is it than the movie you remember shooting?

[Christoph Waltz]

I consider it 100% congruent.

[Adam Carolla]

Really?

[Christoph Waltz]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

So it's.

It's the same. They didn't lose this scene.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, you know, there are little adjustments. Yes, of course, you know, when you see it play and, you know, when you run the movie, then you might discover a few things. That's a normal process of filmmaking. But what. Everything there is on the screen is like that on the page.

[Adam Carolla]

And how many days, for instance, again, we keep referring back to the sort of cabin scene at the opening, which is just one of the best scenes of a movie I've seen in many, many years. Maybe since Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro were arguing in their kitchen in New York. I mean, there were so many scenes that.

[Christoph Waltz]

Banging away at the TV screen. The TV set.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, yeah, that I, I, you know, we put the rag around his hand, he told him to punch him in the face. The cabin scene was a great scene. The scene where they were down in the basement pub was a great, there many memorable great scenes. But like for instance, how many days does it take to shoot? Let's just say that cabin scene.

[Christoph Waltz]

The cabin scene we had split in, in the location bit, which was I think a week and then some, a few days in the studio afterwards. So I think.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, I see. Interior, exterior.

[Christoph Waltz]

No, we did interior there on location too. But there were different, you know, different shots that, the various shots that you could only do in the studio, like overhead and.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Christoph Waltz]

And more complicated things and, and you know, the stuff that, where the lighting

[Adam Carolla]

was a bit more, More some special effects.

[Christoph Waltz]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. All of that was, was done in the studio because it's easier done in the studio. But all together it might have been, I don't know, eight, nine days.

[Adam Carolla]

It's nice to have a budget, isn't it?

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, sometimes it helps. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think if, if the, the, the date wouldn't have been set through, through Khan. You know, the festival started on, on May 13th.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

And by the way, Kristoff won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, by the way. He's too modest to bring that up, but he did slip me a note to tell me to bring that up first. He asked if we'd be on camera. I told him know, and they kicked me in the shin. Yeah. So they wanted to have it ready for the Cannes Film Festival.

[Christoph Waltz]

Absolutely. So had had this date not been set, you know, I'm sure we would have spent more time with.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, that was your hard out, as they say in the business. But as I always tell people, when it comes to budget, you know, people think low budget films means no special effects, but really what it means is no time. And thus, if you're doing a low budget version of this film, you have one day to shoot the cabin scene. And you're just not going to get, no matter how great you are and your other performers are, you can't get the scene that we saw up on the screen and in Glorious Basterds if you have one day to shoot that scene. And you've probably experienced that.

[Christoph Waltz]

Impossible unless you rehearse it for about eight weeks, you know, and then you put it on like a play. But still in a day you wouldn't get it because you wouldn't get all

[Adam Carolla]

the shots, all the angles and all the effects and everything else. And again, just the tension you could cut with a knife. So now as far as your career goes, this obviously going to kick doors open for you. You're going to be in great demand.

You'll.

I'm guessing you're already fielding offers for roles to do out here in the States. Now you're gonna get roles that are non German officer roles, I assume. And so you can do an English accent or just an American accent, as it were.

[Christoph Waltz]

You know, I think, yeah, possibly. I don't know, but I guess I could. But I think what I'm saying is there are so many, so many fantastic parts that are not really tied to a nationality walk on the street here in Los Angeles. How many accents? Apart from the fact how many people do you meet who don't speak English at all?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, look,

here's what I want to tell everyone to do. Just dial a wrong number in Los Angeles and see if the guy who

picks up the phone speaks English.

That's how, that's how you know, you might, might be time to move once in a while. You dial that wrong 818 number and

you just get that crazy accent on their line.

You realize almost every time I dial the wrong number, I get something other than English. I don't get Lord Fauntleroy picking up the other line.

[Christoph Waltz]

Travel around the world by dialing wrong numbers.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're getting. I'm guessing there's early buzz. People in the industry have seen the movie, the words out on you.

[Christoph Waltz]

It really is. And I'm blown away by it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

And. And again, you deserve every accolade you get. It was easily the best performance I've seen in years. I mean, it really, it really is. Now I just go home and watch Point Break over and over again on cable. So I don't see a lot of great performances. But you kick Swayze's ass and Keanu Reeves ass. No, I, I don't see a ton

of like art house movies. But the thing that was so impressive

about your performance is again, the performance in one language would have been a tour de force in three languages somehow brought it, brought it to another level. And it was just that much more. Just that much more impressive. And also being one of the scariest guys you've seen on the screen since Hannibal Lecter, without ever really raising his voice, was a great piece of acting. So I'm.

And.

And also, you know, I do a little acting myself.

[Christoph Waltz]

And right now, you do

[Adam Carolla]

every 90%

of the stuff I see.

I think to myself, I could do that. And I'm sure you, you know, we

all do that in life.

[Christoph Waltz]

And probably you. You have a good reason to say,

[Adam Carolla]

right, most of the time.

And then I look at your performance and Inglourious Basterds, and I go, no way. Not in a million years, not a thousand classes, not with a hundred dialect coaches, could I pull that one off. So, you know, when I see Rob Schneider do a movie, I go, eh, I could do that. When I see your work, I go, wow.

No way.

So I'm guessing, are you working on

your next project already?

[Christoph Waltz]

No, I'm not working on my next project already, but it approaches. It'll happen kind of soon.

[Adam Carolla]

And what about your aspirations as far as getting behind the camera, directing, writing, that sort of stuff?

[Christoph Waltz]

Yeah, well, I mean, aspirations is one thing, you know. Yes, I have great aspirations. I've done one, I've written four. You know, working with Quentin puts you in your place. That doesn't mean that I'm now deterred, and I throw it in and say, look, if I can't work on that level, then it doesn't make any sense. That would be childish because, you know, that would kind of mean that. That I attempt that level. I don't attempt that level because, you know, it's important to kind of. It's important to test the limit, but, you know, it's also important to know it or keep it sort of in sight.

[Adam Carolla]

Have you met anyone as passionate about moviemaking as Quentin Tarantino?

[Christoph Waltz]

I don't think there's anyone like that.

[Adam Carolla]

And working with him, I mean, he's a little bit eccentric as well.

[Christoph Waltz]

He's completely eccentric, but. But, you know, that's on top of everything else.

[Adam Carolla]

And is it. Is it. Can it be difficult to work with him?

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, I'm sure it could be. For me, it wasn't. I love the man and I admire him to the degree where I'm just prepared to, you know, leave sort of my own agenda behind. You know, it's not important. I really. And I mean that in all seriousness, I considered my job to supply the material for Quinton's edit and, you know, just sort of be the agent, the go between, between what he wrote and the finished movie. That's A fantastic way of doing it, not just with Quentin, but with Quentin, it's worthwhile. If you don't work with Quentin, you might run into a problem, you know?

[Adam Carolla]

Can you mention me in your Oscar speech?

[Christoph Waltz]

No.

[Adam Carolla]

About.

If you do one of those things, there was a American entertainer out here by the name of Carol Burnett, right? And when she would do her show, at the end of her show, she would tug on her ear. That was her saying hi to her mom or grandma or something. Now, obviously, it's going to seem a little out of place when you're thanking your agent, your publicist, your wife, your kids, and Adam, Carolla, that's going to seem like a non sequitur. But if you could just.

[Christoph Waltz]

Not in that order.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm just saying if you could just pick your nose or tug your ear or do a motion so that when I was at home, I'd go, did you see when he did that arm fart move? That was for me again, maybe it's

[Christoph Waltz]

just, you know, I don't know, maybe that's. I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

Again, maybe it's just a clearing of the throat. One of those things that's just.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

It's gonna.

[Christoph Waltz]

Like, people with Tourette's learn to sort of compensate by. By making noises over there.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, just a quick grunt. If you could just do that as you were approaching the mic, and then get on with the laundry list of

people you'd like to thank or may or may not have been important in your life or not. Mainly, I think those people to thank lists are based on how pissed off those people are going to be when you see them later on. I don't know that it's how much you like them, it's how pissed off they're going to be when you see them.

But it's just a throat clear that'll

let me know that moment you're thinking of me. And that obviously, I wouldn't say I

was responsible solely for your win, but I would say I certainly set the

wheels in motion by lavishing this kind of praise on you so early in the process.

[Christoph Waltz]

I'm really grateful. And if all I need to do,

[Adam Carolla]

by all means, it could be a YouTube sensation. So in

it now, you live. You go back and forth from London

[Christoph Waltz]

to Berlin and, yeah, that's about it.

[Adam Carolla]

And I. I assume you'll be coming out here and making. Making movies.

[Christoph Waltz]

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind one bit.

[Adam Carolla]

And I'm assuming there's projects that you can or can't talk about.

[Christoph Waltz]

Yeah. No, I don't. They're projects that I don't talk about because. Because, Because I want them, you know, I want them more or less done before I talk about them.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you want to do, for instance, what Would you like to do a comedy?

[Christoph Waltz]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Would you like to show that range?

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, yeah, show that range. It's not so much as, you know, it's along the lines of what we were talking about before, you know, not so much showing the range, but I would like to exercise the range, you know, and employ the range because that's where I get my fun. And then, you know, inevitably, yes, it would result in showing it, but it's. I'm, I'm. I'm really interested in doing different. Different stuff. Well, I like any actor, really. You know, so a comedy, A comedy would be lovely. You know, a comedy with some spirit behind it and, you know, you know,

[Adam Carolla]

brains and guts and a good looking leading lady and a nice paycheck would be.

[Christoph Waltz]

She doesn't have to be leading, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right.

Speaking of ladies, you're single, right?

No, married.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, divorced.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, divorce.

Oh, good, that's single.

[Christoph Waltz]

That can. Yeah, could end up single.

[Adam Carolla]

And you're going to be the toast of the town. And you can speak to him in

that front French accent. They're gonna melt like butter in your sweaty spot.

[Christoph Waltz]

If you don't mind, I'd like to call you for advice on that.

[Adam Carolla]

Believe me.

We're going out clubbing. This has been a treat. Christoph Waltz.

[Christoph Waltz]

The treat's on my side.

[Adam Carolla]

I was so impressed and so happy that I saw the movie just days ago and so excited that I saw it because otherwise I would have just been sitting here doing. Well, we would have been talking about me.

[Christoph Waltz]

Well, you know, we do that next time.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

And wow, again, this is, this is going to be. I think it's going to be a big movie and I think it's going to be even bigger for Kristoff. And then what about before we let you go, future plans with Quentin Tarantino as that?

[Christoph Waltz]

You have to ask him. I mean, because if you asked me about my plans with Quentin Tarantino, the poor man wouldn't ever do anything else.

[Adam Carolla]

You'd love to work with him again.

[Christoph Waltz]

You know, you could say that again.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, the movie is Inglourious Basterds. It's in theaters as we speak. And Christoph Waltz again, I believe, going to get an Academy Award from this. Until next time, this Adam Carolla for Christoph, my good buddy. The Wii's and all our Fabulous interns, San. Mahalo.

All right, this is Adam Corolla, show 130 with Christoph Waltz in the studio. Coming up next, we have Adam Carolla, show 454. This one's from the following year in 2010. It's the Thanksgiving episode with Jim Carolla and Brian Bishop. And the cranberry sauce recipe as well. Adam goes in depth with his dad. It's a fun interview. I hope you guys enjoy.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Get it on. Got to get it on. No choice but to get it on, man.

Date.

Get it on. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Good day. Ball. Brian.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Yeah. Hello.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, good day, dad. Dad's here and he's brought his horn. Dad, were you confused by the drop of your own voice? Play the one that everyone thinks is you saying, hell, yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Now, I've tried to tell people that the phrase hell yeah has never passed your lips.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Hell yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Hell yeah. Is that me?

[Adam Carolla]

Have you ever said the phrase hell yeah regarding anything?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Not that I remember.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, even when the Eagles scored a touchdown in The Super Bowl 1977, did you say, hell yeah?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't remember.

[Adam Carolla]

I've never seen you pump your fist or go, hell yeah. Or goddamn. That's right. Or high fives all the way around. Not you, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, I've done that.

[Adam Carolla]

You said, hell yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I mean, I've pumped my fist and I was glad the team scored. And yeah, I get very excited about

[Adam Carolla]

it back when Red Grange scored for the old Washington Senators, 1931. But I mean, dad, you're not a demonstrative guy. Hell, I try to explain to people. You did not say, hell yeah. You said, yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

That's not you saying hell yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

There's about that voice that's saying that. You're saying, it's not me.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, no, it is you, but you never said, hell yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

You said, yeah. You were saying, yeah, but you've been saying, hell yeah. Yeah. I try to explain to strangers that you don't say, hell yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. I don't know, I might have said, hell yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't think so.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

All right, hell yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm just saying, I've known you for 46 years. I've never seen you or heard you say, hell yeah. Hey, dad, you want to feel old?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Hell yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Your youngest son is going to put reading glasses on to do a spot for Jeremiah Weed.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Oh, great.

[Adam Carolla]

This Turkey Day Jeremiah Weed reminds you to forget about the old fashioned Southern tradition. Focus on the new turducken or turducken. I should say. How do you do the turducken? Very easy. You prepare it with Jeremiah Weed. How does that work? Jesus Christ, I have no idea, but it sounds delightful.

[Jim Carolla]

Can you imagine that?

[Adam Carolla]

This is why the terrorists hate us. We found. We took an owl, we stuffed it into a turkey.

[Jim Carolla]

A bourbon soaked three bird.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh my God. John Madd would go insane. Visit Jeremiah Weeds Facebook page and find

out all about the world famous Jeremiah Weed turducken recipe.

Either way, love me some Jeremiah Weed. And thank you. Yes, especially that, that cherry mash, my favorite.

90 proof.

The wife likes the.

Likes the vodka.

That's got a. It's the iced tea vodka, Nothing better. And good people, good folks, spend some time with them. And hell of a product. So Jeremiah Wheat. And again, check out that turducken. Just go to Facebook at Jeremiah Weed and check it out. All right. I don't know where I should start. Should I start complaining? Why wait? All right, remind me to talk about the soup, which is a show I was supposed to do today that I didn't do. Not today. Thanksgiving. We taped this the day before. But dad, let's talk about you for a second. What was Thanksgiving like for you back in the day?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Let's see. Yeah. When we were talking about the group that came over from Sicily. Well, we all kind of ended up in a very small neighborhood, Valley on the 15th street in South Philadelphia. Most of the families were there in Paisan. So within that one street, maybe two, there were all these people, all these folks from overseas. And what happened in all different people's houses, the aunts, my father. There were five sisters and my father was the only male. And these were women that were great cooks. And they would make grave. Well, quite. Mostly. Not so much turkey. I would say it's like an Italian to recall it. It's like a brajol. It's kind of a. Kind of beef rolled up with a stuffing inside.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, sure. Brasol. And they do that fish that I can't think of the name of right now. That's sort of a bacala. Bacala. Where they do the bacala. Yeah. And that. So they do a sort of Italian feast. Now, what happened? Adam, I'm very curious about this because you grew up in a traditional environment around people that cooked and cooked well, as you just mentioned. Yet as an adult, you seem to shun women that cooked or had no interest in it yourself. I mean, like I remember dinner growing up, you'd have some cottage cheese with some raisins in it and like a little Honey on top. Most guys, you know, they want some pot roast or some potatoes or, you know, for dinner. I mean, not. We weren't camping and it wasn't breakfast time for dinner. A lot of guys want a steak, you know what I'm saying? Or even if they're trying to eat healthily, they still want some chicken breast or some fish or something. You're always a guy that seemed to just eat like granola with some cottage cheese and a little stream water on there. And I thought, what is weird? You had no sort of eating. Eating requirements.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Is it. Is it. Is that accurate?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I'm really thinking of it now. I ate lighter as I got older.

[Adam Carolla]

But you never said, like, we're going out for a steak.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, not steak. No.

[Adam Carolla]

Or anything really. Like, we never went like, I'm starving. We're going out. We're eating big tonight. I bust my ass this week.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. No, I didn't.

[Adam Carolla]

Why not? Were you not hungry?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, I was hungry, but I kind of learned. I used to make do with what

[Adam Carolla]

was there, but there wasn't anything there. That's what I'm trying to explain.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, do you mean when we were in the family or when I was.

[Adam Carolla]

I just mean, like, in general. You managed to somehow steer away from dinner like. Like. I mean, just like saying, you know, we're going out, we're eating. I want. I'm making a. I'm. I'm firing up the barbecue. Did you ever fire up a barbecue?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Very rarely.

[Adam Carolla]

Very rarely.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Did you own a barbecue somewhere down the line.

[Adam Carolla]

But I mean, a lot of people have.

You know, they love it.

They love to eat, they love to go out, they love to. Do you feel. You don't. You're not that person.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, no, no, not really. I'd rather be home.

[Adam Carolla]

Not eating, though, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Let's take tonight, for example. I was alone. Lynn was out. Her family's in from Portland, and she picked him up at the airport. I was pretty much by myself thinking, well, shall I, you know, what should I eat tonight? Be occurred to me. And this is what I decided. I looked in the refrigerator, and there was some bologna, and I.

[Adam Carolla]

A couple slices of tarragon. You made a sandwich?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I made a sandwich and had a little leftover spaghetti from the night before. And I heated that up and a couple of graham crackers.

[Adam Carolla]

Graham crackers, right.

Doesn't mean.

It was sort of like what a raccoon would do if he got into the house.

But, I mean, he never went like,

hey, man, we're Eating Chinese and we're doing it tonight. I want some of that sweet and sour duck, you know, or whatever. It was always just kind of to survive.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's just to survive, but what I ate I liked. Even if it was granola or, you know, I don't know, hamburger. I don't really eat hamburgers.

[Adam Carolla]

Not a passion of yours?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Right. And yeah, food is in particular. As I get older, even it's more so not. There's not a strong special interest in. I mean, I like something good and I make something for myself sometimes, but I like scrambled eggs and in other words, very. I'm eating more simply as I get older.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh no, dad. This has been going on for a while now. You may think this is something that's just. Come on.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, it's going. Whatever it is going further then.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, you're going to have like o. A bowl of dust and a melted ice cube. You're about five years away from that. That's dinner. That's Thanksgiving. So my dad managed to marry women that sort of shared his disdain for food or at least something. I don't know what, I don't know what happened, dad, but how did you come from that place where all that food was going around and all the women were in the kitchen cooking and all the Italian food to have some tarragon and some non fat cottage cheese.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Now, I also at that time like weighed 240 pounds.

[Adam Carolla]

So maybe there was an issue there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, I mean, in other words, I was encouraged to eat and I was eating a lot and I was getting obese and it took me a lot of years to get the eating thing, even down to a way that I wouldn't be overeating, gaining, gaining weight and so on.

[Jim Carolla]

Did you know this by the way,

[Adam Carolla]

that he was fat? Yeah, yeah, I knew he was fat. The idea that somebody sort of broke

you of your, you know, and your

relationship with food and early on is. Is good, but didn't pay dividends for me.

I like to eat that.

That's what, that's. That that's what happened. And I could never figure out what the hell was going on because I always felt like somehow you never had that relationship with dinner. Like it was. You never. I never saw you eat bacon and scrambled eggs or say like I want a stack of. I want a lumberjack stack of pancakes for breakfast or something. Was always just like little bits and pieces here and there. It seemed like it was never seemed

like food was your.

Was your Thing my curse was I was never not hungry. And Dad, I think you were always full or something. I don't know what the hell was going on. And then my dad married two women that essentially didn't cook. But he didn't. He wasn't into it, so it was a match made in heaven. Right.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I don't. Lynn cooks.

[Adam Carolla]

Lynn goes to Gelson's for Thanksgiving.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Oh, you mean. I don't think. Oh, you just talk about Thanksgiving.

[Adam Carolla]

That ain't cooking. I mean, that's not a. Someone who loves cooking goes nuts on Thanksgiving.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, she's. She's made a few. But no, if you talk about food in general, nightly food.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Then this. I mean, she always. Takeout thing. But she's very tasteful. I mean, she buys good takeout food and. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that. That's the problem with Lynn as far as cooking. But she's not a cook in a sense of. She could if she really wanted to. And from time to time has cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah. Not all. Not.

[Adam Carolla]

I went to. One year when I went over to their house for Thanksgiving, I went to the Gelsons and bought a turkey breast because dad had got a honey baked ham. And I wasn't down with that. I like turkey.

[Jim Carolla]

Honey baked ham is fine, but no bird in addition to that.

[Adam Carolla]

No bird. No bird. Just a honey baked ham.

[Jim Carolla]

The ham and the bird together are fine, but the bird must be there.

[Adam Carolla]

Bird must be there. And then another time we went to Vince and Pat's, I brought my own cranberry sauce because I was not going with the canned shit that Pat was digging out of a. Out of a can. But dad, am I nuts or am I right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, you tend to jump to conclusions. You get some kind of half facts down, and you really build something on that. For example, you don't think I'm a sports fan. You don't think, you know, if you would see me watching a Clippers game on a Monday night and seeing me jumping out of the chair. That poor team that never wins a game.

[Adam Carolla]

You like the Clippers.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, and I'm really rooting for them and so on. And there's a whole. You don't know a part of me that likes sports, that watches.

[Adam Carolla]

I played sports for 10 years. You weren't. You never liked sports?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, no, no. But that, that was You. You, you. You assumed that. No, I always liked sports.

[Adam Carolla]

All right. I never knew it.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

We never discussed it.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Well, how were you up to what was going on as far as, like the NBA in the early days. Were you following any of that stuff?

[Adam Carolla]

I was. We never talked about it.

[Christoph Waltz]

Really?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I don't know if we never talked about football.

[Adam Carolla]

It wasn't really a topic. I just assume you didn't like it.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, no. Hi. You know, I've been hooked on sports.

[Adam Carolla]

On football, not football.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, every sport. I mean, my basketball getting worse now baseball. I followed the old athletics when I was a kid. When Connie Mack ran the athletics. I shy park and flood like.

[Adam Carolla]

You like football on the pro level?

Not.

Not anything lower than that.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right? That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. All right. Well, if it got to the show, maybe that would have done something.

[Jim Carolla]

The only thing worse than not caring at all, I was like, oh, yeah, I was a big football fan back then. Didn't feel much like talking to you about it, dad.

[Adam Carolla]

We didn't talk. We didn't have any real football related discussions. I mean, past. Past an eighth grade or something.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know. I mean, maybe if you remember it that way, I don't know, I could have.

[Adam Carolla]

I may have gotten a scholarship to play football somewhere at some point. Work that out. All right, dad, tell us. This is a shock to me that you're a big sports fan.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla]

Clippers fan, too.

[Adam Carolla]

Clippers fan. Why the Clippers, Dad?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know, though. I don't know, but I got. I got onto them early and I haven't been able to get rid of them. But did you see the game? The last. Last night game?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, nobody shot that game. You were the only person that saw the game.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

They played New Orleans 11 and 1 and they're 1 and 30.

[Adam Carolla]

Bill Simmons saw the game?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla]

He's a season ticket holder.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

And it was a great game. Very exciting.

[Caller Scott]

All right.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Christoph Waltz]

All right.

[Adam Carolla]

And who's your football team?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Of course, for years it was the Eagles. I grew up in Philadelphia and we used to go on Sundays. Sure, yeah. Eagles was on my team.

[Adam Carolla]

You know the name of the North Hollywood football team?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

The Bear? No, that's a dog. Wait a minute. I can picture the Hollywood Hounds. No, Hollywood. Some. I can see a picture of it, but I can't. The Bulldogs or something.

[Adam Carolla]

That's close enough. All right, I'm just checking. All right. So, dad, let's talk about your. Your family growing up.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

Let's talk about Thanksgiving. What. What that meant to you. You guys would go out, you'd have. You'd have the big feast, and at a certain point, you come out here to Southern California, you get married, and then what's Thanksgiving turn into.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, the California Thanksgiving all had to do with Chris and her parents. It seems like we had at her house a lot.

[Adam Carolla]

You went to the grandparents house?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Grandparents house, yeah, Lotsi and Helen. I didn't really have any family. I had Vince, had a cousin Vince and sometimes we went there, but mostly Lotse and Helen.

[Adam Carolla]

I really stand out at the grown ups table and at the kids table.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that,

[Adam Carolla]

dad? You hear that voice?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh boy.

[Adam Carolla]

Dad, play a couple of those. Let's see.

[Christoph Waltz]

Let's see.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How should I know? How would I know that? How can you possibly expect me to answer that?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh boy.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow. Really brings up some feelings. You hear that voice? That's after 30 years of therapy.

That's not.

When you had her pops play that first one one more time.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh boy.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. She should have had a flag made up and flown it over the house. It said, how could I know that?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that?

[Adam Carolla]

You know what that was? Dad, do you know what that game was? We played, I think the first year we're on the radio. We played a little trivia with her and we asked her questions. She played Damachex. You don't know who Damoshek is, do you? Yeah, you do. How do you know Dham?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I remember him from the radio show.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow. Played Damashek's mom, who lived out of state, played Chris in a trivia competition. And every single question that was asked of her was how would I? How could I? Nobody would. And then Damek's mom would give the answer a beat and a half later.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know?

[Adam Carolla]

That never quite seemed right. Did you ever, ever ask her a question that she ever answered?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

She must have answered. So. Not that I can think of any.

[Adam Carolla]

I asked her one time, I said, how much does my stepdad John make a year?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

And she said, how should I know?

[Adam Carolla]

I said, well, I said I'm rich. I don't want any money. I'm a rich guy. But I'm just ballpark. Just curious.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that?

[Adam Carolla]

But just is it 50 grand or is it 100 grand?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that?

[Adam Carolla]

I was just like, you don't know how much Your husband of 20 years makes a year?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How should I know?

[Adam Carolla]

I was like, mom, I'm not asking down to the penny. And I don't. I'm not a junkie who needs to trying to get some money off you. I'm a rich guy.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Possibly expect me to answer that.

[Adam Carolla]

Just give me a ballpark. Ballpark Ballpark? No. No way. Now here's the question.

Lying or did it?

Doesn't know.

What do you think?

As a psychologist?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I think she. I think she doesn't know.

[Adam Carolla]

She doesn't know how much her husband of 20 years in a job that he's been at for 35 years makes when he is the sole income provider for the house. Do you think she doesn't know?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

You know, there's a chance she may not know that that never came up.

[Adam Carolla]

What's worse, lying or not knowing?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How would I know that?

[Adam Carolla]

So you think. No. If you're a gambling man.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Could be. It could be that that was never said. She never asked and he never.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't have to fill out paperwork. Then she have to sign, you know, the taxes, tax returns and stuff.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know. How would I know?

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

How should I know?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, Fountain of information. So you came out here and. And we, we toggle between Helen and Lazzi's place and also the Bruno's place. Your cousin, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Vince, right.

[Adam Carolla]

What happened with Vince? What was there something in the drinking water or something? Like what was. Vince is a laid back guy. I like Vince a lot, but Vince had this old world sort of Italian, I don't feel like working kind of, kind of thing. Like was it, was there, is there some cultural thing? Was your dad this way? Whereas like the ladies worked and the guys played pinochle. Vince seemed to come from that.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, Vince. I think Vince early rebelled against being put into the system of the tailor shop and you know where.

[Adam Carolla]

Remember he didn't rebel against his wife going to work every day.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No.

[Adam Carolla]

You have such a problem with that?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't think he had any problem with that. But I don't know his gender though. And here he early started to like 10 bar and do things on weekends and he had one period where he worked. Oh God, what was that? He worked at some large market in Philadelphia.

[Adam Carolla]

But he said it wasn't for him early on, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, yeah. And he, he's gotten by his wife.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, he hasn't gotten by. She got by well for him.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

They, they did it together, right?

[Christoph Waltz]

They did it.

[Adam Carolla]

They did it together. Like somebody pushes the car and the other guy steers.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, she would have to agree to it. I mean. Yeah, yeah, okay. She didn't want him to work.

[Adam Carolla]

But was it. Was your dad, was your dad that way at all?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, my father really tried to make it as a musician and, and didn't really. Didn't work a day job. This was like in the 30s in my growing up, it was a terrible depression. Nobody was working. But he, he wouldn't have worked anyway.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that's the thing.

Why wouldn't he? What do you mean he wouldn't have worked?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I mean he didn't have a craft that he would do. The only thing he knew was that trombone and playing the trombone. He didn't have any skill or anything else. My mother was a hard working woman, worked in the sweatshops until the war. So the 30s were generally terrible. I was using that term the other day. Sheriff's out. I don't know if they use that.

[Adam Carolla]

Sheriff's out. Yeah, sheriffed out.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Sheriffed out. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

Michael Moore knows how that works. Yeah. That sheriff show up and evict you

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

essentially because you run out of money. In fact, that was a line that was used all the time. You know, we're going to be sheriffed out unless we can do.

[Adam Carolla]

There was now gay slang. Dad.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

What? No, gay.

[Adam Carolla]

It's now gay slang. By the way, I went. Brian will tell you after the show

exactly what it entails.

[Jim Carolla]

Better yet.

[Adam Carolla]

I'll show you better yet. But don't empty that spit valve yet, old man.

[Jim Carolla]

It's a five word description.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. So sheriffed out. So it was a tough times back in South Philly, but is there a thing that I've noticed. Not so much with our family, but I've noticed is there's a cultural Italian thing where the guys kind of hang back and let the ladies do the cooking and the cleaning and the sweat shopping. Did your dad have some of that?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, my father remember was really. He didn't grow up and the usual sense of going into the tailor shops early, learning the trade and he skipped that through. I mean he worked a little bit at that time. He didn't work very much during the Depression period. WPA he was on. I think he did something. I think he did music in the WPA where they would have.

[Adam Carolla]

What's a wpa?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, something Roosevelt. What's it stand for?

[Jim Carolla]

The Works Progress Administration.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, oh, I see.

Yeah. It was part of that system or part of that. Right, yeah. And.

But he would play.

Yeah, he was a morale booster.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, that's right, something like that. And in fact, then the only time during the war, let's see, in the 40s, things opened up for us because then my mother went into the making uniforms and I was working overtime and a lot and my father. And I'm just remembering now things, the first time he's ever been actually going in the daytime, but Things were so bad, they needed people so bad they go into those, particularly in. I'm trying to think of the name of the Baldwins.

[Adam Carolla]

The locomotive work.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

The big locomotives or the brothers.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

The big locomotives work. Anyway, they switched over from engines to tanks.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

So that was a period where he. He worked in Eddystone.

[Adam Carolla]

Your dad had a gig.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

The war broke out, essentially, and got your dad employed.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

But then the war ended.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right. And that's when he worked, like in the parts department. But they played the marches at the lunchtime to keep the morale up and down, all that.

[Adam Carolla]

What do you think your dad was a philanderer, do you think he had a couple ladies on the side?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I think so. I don't know for sure, but I think so. I think a woman in particular. I think he did.

[Adam Carolla]

And was he sort of. Like I said, he'd sort of like to. Not quite. It wasn't on the grift, but he was like kind of doing his own thing a little bit.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And not at which you wouldn't call him a great family man.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, no, He. He did his thing. He hung out with musicians and he always wore a suit. In the world that I came from, the men were all, you know, going to the factories and. But he always had a suit on from the moment he got up in the morning. He got up in the morning and put on a suit. It was really. And he would go to the union, the musicians union, and would hang out with different leaders and so on, trying to get to work and. Yeah, so he would come home like 4 or 5 o'. Clock, he might put on the water for the pasta. My mother and my mother worked in a factory and she had to walk home and she never took any transportation.

[Adam Carolla]

Didn't want to spend the money, I think so.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

And the way that was worked out, that might have been better even to walk through side streets and where the factories were wasn't kind of on a main thing.

[Adam Carolla]

She got home and she cooked him dinner, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, yeah. She would do something. I mean, she prepare something the night before or something. And that'd be the first time that our little family. We were small, mostly Italian families were large. There was only three boys. And that's because my mother and father had a lot of problems too. And we're really struggling to stay together. So we had a small family and that's the time we'd get together.

[Adam Carolla]

He'd eat and then what? You wouldn't do any homework, would you?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, no, I didn't. No. I was really struggling. And I didn't do homework. We lived in a very. Let me try to recall this for a moment. We lived on the third floor of. Of my. My father's sister's house. There were like 12 or 17 of us in the house, so that was our first place.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm just laughing because every time you get some guy who's basically doing the sort of reparations for slavery sort of stuff, I just start laughing. Like, believe me, the Corollas did not. We didn't own. You didn't have any plantations or any slaves or any. How many people did you own back in the day? How many yards? Just in acres, actually, square footage. We couldn't tally all that. Lived on the third floor of a piece of shit. Right. With a bunch of other people.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right. Families mixed together. My brothers lived down with my cousins, and I had a crib made for a very young child. And I was 32 by then.

[Adam Carolla]

Dating.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Dating. And I couldn't. The crib. My feet were out the bottom of it. But that's the only. That's the only bed.

[Adam Carolla]

But eventually you guys moved into a place that was your own, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Now that. Yeah, we found a tiny house then. That was. I would be our. To my knowledge, our first real. It was very small.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

And when we moved, we're moved by horse and wagon. And that might be there. That might really. There was a fellow in the corner that owned a little chicken store, and he had a horse and wagon. That's what he would use. And we'd asked him, because he would do it for $5 or something, if he could move our furniture a little bit that we had. He said, yeah. And I remember him out front while we were loading things and the horses. Two horses he had. And the horses. Quick to the next house. Yeah, that's a big. I remember.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't know what year your mom passed away.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Early 80s, 83.

[Adam Carolla]

83. Your mom passed away. Did you fly back for that?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Yes, I did.

[Adam Carolla]

Seemed extravagant for some reason. But your mom passed away, and I remember her house was, you know, bought and paid for. And in 83, there was this crazy sort of real estate boom out here that was houses all of a sudden that were selling for 40, 50, 60,000, were selling for 110, 125,000, $130,000. I didn't have much to build it on, but I was just doing a kind of a math, which is somebody at a house that's completely paid for and they just died. You got to whack. It up with a couple of your brothers. But hell, that means 40, 50 grand is coming our way. The house sold, I think the house sold for like $17,000.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

That's in 1983. That under $20,000.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yes, three story house.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, three story house. Well under $20,000 in, in the 80s. So couldn't have been doing too good over there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, we paid, see, during the war again, I have one brother, my youngest brother went into the war, Ralph. You got those sabers from him.

[Adam Carolla]

Japanese sabers.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, yeah, I remember him. Anyway, during the war, while he was away, we had a relative, a paisan, real estate. And that house that stole for 17, we paid 4,500 for in what year? During the war? So 44, 45.

[Adam Carolla]

And by the way, you want to talk about the entrepreneurial spirit, that's why the Corollas are rich. 4043. But in 83, almost $17,000. Enough to buy fairly nice used car. Very nice used car.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Fairly nice.

[Adam Carolla]

And only 40 years later too. So, I mean, you talking about, you know, you do that, you that eight, ten times over the course of a lifetime, you're Gonna, you have 60 grand in the bank, a lot of used cars. So now what relatives do I have? Because I, I don't, I don't know. You have, you have Ralph and you have Mario. Both your brothers are deceased. Mario has a kid, Ralph never had a kid.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right, right.

[Adam Carolla]

So.

And Mario has one girl, Maria, but just one girl.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

So with not a lot of productivity going on here with the family, it's a weird, it's weird. Mom doesn't, Mom's an only child as far as I know. She never, she doesn't know her biological dad. I don't know if he had any other kids or whatever, half somethings or whatever. So you have to sort of picture this. There's Maria, who's living on the east

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

coast, lives in New Jersey. Incidentally, she was trying to work something out where she would come in and see you when you're in Philadelphia.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I was only there for about 11 hours or something like that. So you have three, you have three brothers and your three Italian, I mean, all together, there's three, you have two brothers, two full blooded Italian brothers. And between the two of them they have one daughter. And then you have a son and a daughter and then that's it with the Corollas. Right. Better hope that kid of mine don't go gay. That's it. Are there no other Corollas?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, I don't think there's any corollas left that I know of? No. Yeah, that is. Well, first with Ralph. His wife made it clear early that there would be no children, so he wanted them. So that was over with just Connie, Vicki.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, Vicki, sorry. Is Vicki still alive?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, Vicki died. Vicki died before Ralph, though. Ralph was the one that was sick and she was healthy and died just suddenly. Yeah, so that was clear. And Mario was married just for a short while and had the child and he never married again.

[Adam Carolla]

And he lived upstairs in your mom's crappy house for the better part of his life.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, he was away for that short time that he was married, but then he came right back and. Yeah, he was with my mother to the end, till 83.

[Adam Carolla]

That's a sort of sad, lonely.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Did you guys talk much or have much in common? Doesn't seem like you had much in common with him.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, not at all with either one of them, really. Ralph. More later on. Now, Mario. Mario was crippled and was born. Both he and I were born with the club feet, but his was a severe, severe case of it. He was quite crippled. Wore a shoe with high shoe, a brace on it. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And was he. What did he do for a living?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

The Baldwin's locomotive factory was where almost most of the mails. I don't know where it started, but all began to filter into that factory. It wasn't in Philadelphia. It was In Chester, about 15 miles. Eddystone, I think it was a little town. And they all seemed to end up there. All the people in the block. Bisons, the males ended up in. And then Mario became a crane operator on. What do they call the roof, slides along Gantry crane. Yeah, along the roof. And he did that. He did that for a lot of.

[Adam Carolla]

Let's give it up for the ace man with the gantry call there, please. Thank you. Thank you. Well, come on. I threw out gantry. He drove it. I didn't know he drove, but I know what kind of crane you're talking about. This is amazing.

[Caller Kevin]

Thank you.

[Adam Carolla]

You hewell knows. So now your brother. So you left Philadelphia and you essentially really didn't see your brothers or your mom too much after that, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No. When I would go back and there would be phone calls, but no Mario, I never. Never heard from him. Never called. He just never.

[Adam Carolla]

What do you think he would have said? Screw that guy. Thinks he's all hot stuff, moving to California? Or was it just like, huh? Who cares?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, who cares? Mario's like in his own world. He just. He's A strange little guy.

[Adam Carolla]

But how about your mom? Like, did you not. I know she was religious and you, you guys didn't see eye to eye on probably a whole bunch of stuff. And she, she was from a different generation, but it was almost like a thousand years ago or something, right?

[Jim Carolla]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Didn't seem to be anything there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No.

[Adam Carolla]

He would call her on, you know, Christmas or birthday or something, but it didn't seem like I got to see my mom.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No. My mother, when I, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

How did she screw that up?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, one thing I was. I didn't think you were going to have any more children. So when I was born, it was really trying to work out how they could rid of me. Actually,

[Adam Carolla]

It seems counter. Brian over here, for instance, Brian said, you know, has a very tight knit group, Italian family. Oh yeah, half Italian.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

These.

[Adam Carolla]

The sort of casualness that, you know, the three brothers and the mom, the dad passed away too early. But the sort of casualness that people had about the families is borderline bizarre. Like just I see him, I see him, they don't. I mean, it seemed like 20 years would go by without anyone seeing anybody.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, yeah, it was really an alienation within the family. Let me just.

[Adam Carolla]

You think your mom didn't want you?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I think things really got bad between them. But let me give you a little bit of background so you understand why my father, the only male in this family of all these women, he was revered by them. There's nothing they wouldn't do with him. They brought him food. They would bring food for him and not the rest of the family. It was all to do with him. He was the.

[Adam Carolla]

That's the Italian sort of male syndrome.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. When my mother, when my, when my mother. When they married, my mother, who was lived in Chester, lived near that factory. I have that written on our family situation. We haven't talked about that. But then she came to live in that Sicilian block with all those sisters and who just revered him. And it was really hard for her. They treated him like a prince and they treated her like she was not worthy of him. So that's part of the alienation and that carried over to our family. And my mother always said that, you know, you're just like your father. You know, she was. She was angry at me a lot. She took a lot out on me. Of course she said, you look like him, you like music, you know, you'll be a good for nothing the way he is. And you know, you end up not working the way he did.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, so there was that, yeah. Should have got Vince in the room at the same time. So she was going down that road. So there's no love loss there, really. I mean, she was your mom, but really she. You didn't feel the connection?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Later I really felt sorry about it. When I was, you know, old enough or did enough little work on myself to see things, I was annoyed. I didn't like the way she treated me anyway. But later on, I really see the life she lived and the predicament she was in.

[Adam Carolla]

She had a horrible, miserable life.

Right.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

She really worked in sweatshops all her life. It's really, really. I mean, she kept the family together, you know, for men that really wasn't. And had all these sisters around him saying how wonderful he was. And she was saying, what the hell are you talking about? He won't even support the family. You think he's so good.

[Adam Carolla]

No. When he died, it wasn't really much of a financial blow to the family.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, not at all. For the folks that don't know, he was killed on A1. He died on a one nighter. We both did a one nighter together. I was in one.

[Adam Carolla]

Playing music, by the way. People understand that.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

That's right. They wouldn't know what a one nighter is. And anyway, we both met at the corner. I went with a young band, a young jazz players, and he went with an older group. And they were going out to one of the biggest field hospitals. And at that time, I wish I could think of, during the war, Valley Forge. Valley Forge. A large surgical medical division there. And on the way, on a winter night, his van turned over. He was the only musician killed. And I went on my one nighter. And in fact, at the end of that night, at the end of that, what came back is that James Carolla died in this automobile accident. Now, the first impression was here was this thought it was me that I died. Now there were two James Carollas, and I was, you know, a young kid with a jazz band. And he was with these mature men. So it'd be that drugs or something, and I'm the one that died. But they'd wait for me to come home. And one of us was going to come in that front door. Either he was or I was.

[Adam Carolla]

And thank goodness you got through there. Think about the world and how it would have changed. All right, we need to take a quick break. Be right back with Pops Corolla. He's going to play his horn. I'll give out the cranberry sauce recipe. All that still Coming up on the very special Thanksgiving episode,

[Podcast Producer]

Sam, Ram,

[Adam Carolla]

Jim, Carolla, everybody, on our big Thanksgiving extravaganza. Bull Brian is with us. Pops, you brought some paperwork with you that sort of had the Corolla family, the family tree laid out. And I'm interested in this because I don't know most of it, but then secondly, I'd like to record it for posterity because I realized I don't really know anything or much about your side of the family. Mom's side of the family history was never really. Wasn't a lot of scrapbooking that the Corollas did and weren't really. I know it's funny because I know everything about my step grandfather's family because he was a talker, but I didn't know anything about. I mean, I know, I know Grandma hated her brother and hated her dad and hated everyone else, but mom wouldn't talk and I didn't really feel like I got any information on what was going on from back in the day. By the way, I'll tell you the level of vitriol my grandmother had for her brother, which is when he killed himself with a gunshot to the head, her attitude was good riddance. That is. That's pretty powerful stuff there. Yes. I mean, that's not even indifferent. That's put a gun in his mouth.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yep.

[Adam Carolla]

See you on the other side. And then moved into his 900 square foot home. And when I said to her anything was weird moving in, and she said, what do you mean? I said, moving into a house where the guy shot himself. Why? I said, because he shot himself a day earlier in the house and then you moved in? What are you asking? I said to her, I said, grandma, you know, if someone kills themselves in a house in the state of California within six years, realtors have to divulge that to the new buyers. And she said, why? You understand some people have feelings about that stuff. And she said, what difference does that make? I said, wow, that's a tough.

[Jim Carolla]

Pragmatic.

[Adam Carolla]

Pragmatic, by the way, pragmatic to the end. It's one thing to be 23 and telling God to take a hike. It's another thing to be 93 and telling God to take a hike. You know what I mean? I mean, all of a sudden you know that people do that. There's no atheists in foxholes. Oh, she, she would have been one of the atheists in those foxholes. I mean, it just. Interesting, interesting woman. Never wavered, never, never gave it up. Never wavered. Took it right did not. Did not soften up at the end. Did not get sentimental. There was no. I mean, you know, I talked to her about this stuff at the end, when I say at the end, you know, a year before she died, just stuff about her brother, her dad, that kind of stuff. Trying to get a little history. Glad that fuck was dead. But she was 93. Like, she didn't do a. Like Robert would have been, you know, 97 years that he lived. And, you know, looking back on it, you know, he killed himself when he was 39. And at the time it seemed like he was old, but it was such a young part. Now it's just good riddance. Good riddance. Like it wasn't an ounce of it. And he must have killed himself in his mid-30s.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, yeah, something.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, he wasn't an old dude.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, no, he was young.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Moved right in the house. Wanted to know what the deal was. I was like, what room did he kill himself in? I think it was your grandfather's office. Just drag the body out of the do. Put some carpet over the blood stained floor, I guess. Jesus Christ. By the way, that's the difference between North Hollywood and New Orleans. North Hollywood, there was no ghosts. Yeah, that was in New Orleans. No one would have gone back. They would have lit a candle and lit some sage and exorcised the place. Clean that place out. Yeah. No, just move right back in. No problemo. And again, it's one thing, you know, old man dies in his sleep, brother kills himself.

[Jim Carolla]

This is your mom's mom. I mean, your mom's.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, yeah, call her that. Yeah.

[Jim Carolla]

And no, no, no one ever addressed what the brother may have done to deserve such a scornful rage.

[Adam Carolla]

She always says she chased him around with a knife and was violent, blah, blah, blah. I don't know if he molested her or what he did, but he was. He was physically a terror, evidently. And for some reason, although always suspicious to me when people say the parents were awesome with him, but horrible with me, as if. As if Lynette and myself could be the world's greatest parent to Sonny and be, you know, a horrible, abusive set of parents to Natalia. Do you know what I mean? It's either you're good or you're bad, but you're rarely the greatest ever to this and the worst. I mean, it. There's. There's variations. Don't worry, we'll be better to Sunny. But it's not going to be night and day.

[Jim Carolla]

Well, no, in 16 years for sure.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's not gonna be night. It's not gonna be the best and the worst. That's for goddamn sure. All right, you guys, bite your lip for a second. Let me talk about one of our greatest, oldest and best sponsors. That's right. ProFlowers. ProFlowers.com. oh, do they have a deal for you. 1999. 1999. You can go to proflowers. They have a huge selection and bouquets. Like I said, bouquets for under 20 bucks. Plus you get a free glass vase when you type in the code word ace. If you never tried proflowers, give them a shot. I do them all the time. It stays fresh for at least a week. They give you a little packet that keeps everything fresh. The vase is no bs. It's nice. You put the stuff right in there. Call them 1-800-proflowers and mention ACE. Or better yet, go online proflowers.com. hit the little microphone in the upper right hand corner. Enter my name Ace in the password section. Proflowers.com. you want to get this deal? Toss in my Name [e-mail]. what else do we have? Oh, good. Go to meeting.

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Great sponsor, great company. And they're a company that's going to help your company.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

How?

[Adam Carolla]

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All right, dad, you have the family history there? Yes. Yeah, we got the. We got some calls coming up here. What do you want to. We'll give a little family history. Give a little family history.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Okay. Family on my father's side came from Casabona in Sicily. It's a small town in the mountains and I can't think of that seaport, right 90 miles from that seaport. It begins with an L. My memory is not. I wish I could think of that. Anyway, that's where they were, and that's where they grew up and lived. Anyway, one of the first person to come to the United States is Serafino Popilia. He was a young man. He was my father's mother's brother. And he was a musician. He was a horn player. And he arrived in 1899. And I think he joined some paisans because he ends up. He ends up in South Philadelphia. And I've seen him a couple of times. I seen him when he was kind of old, but by the time I remember seeing him.

[Adam Carolla]

Thick Italian accent. Did he speak English?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, he spoke English. Yeah. Yeah, he did. He spoke it well, too. And he was a good horn player. And he worked in California. He ended up in California. He was part of a whole troupe of brass players that are in our family. All the men, Sila. And it was all just brass. Everybody played trumpet, trombone, French horn, and came to America to seek their fortunes in America, but also to have an opportunity to play music.

[Adam Carolla]

It's amazing. I never got sucked into this lifestyle. The mansions, the yachts, the women, the lavish surroundings. It's a wonder I didn't gravitate toward the horn, too. Yeah, it was tempting, but I went another direction.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Right. So then, 1902, Vincenzia, that's one of my. One of the sisters, my father's sister. She came over in 02. Anna Carolla, another sister in 03.04, Mariano Carolla, which was my father's father, and his son Jim Carolla.

[Adam Carolla]

How'd you find this stuff?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Out of some relative, went on immigrants, immigrants.com and got this.

[Adam Carolla]

And the Corollas were the same. Now, see, you gave me Vince's. I should say Ralph's Purple Heart that he won in the island campaigns. Her brother, World War II. And he. On the Purple Heart, it said Carollo.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And I said to you. How come he spelled it Corollo? And you were Corolla. And you said. Yeah, that's what you said.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I. I always know it. That's growing up as a child, somehow. Long, long. The way to make it shorter, rather than.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't know, you make it shorter. Just got rid of an A and put an O in there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, but the way. Corolla Carollo there is a little more.

[Adam Carolla]

A little more calories burned with the Corolla Carollo.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know where that change took

[Adam Carolla]

place, but it was not original.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, Corollo is The real name.

[Adam Carolla]

Wait a minute. Carollo.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, okay. So he just. Well, the reason he went with Carollo is. That's the original way.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, that's the original way. Yeah. And that's what he went with. Right.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, there you go.

[Jim Carolla]

In fact, you have to admit, Corolla is a lot, a lot easier. I mean, the Corolla, the Falls.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, Corolla is easier.

[Jim Carolla]

Else, Corolla. You got to purse your lips, make an O.

[Adam Carolla]

It's a calorie burner. Yeah, that's why Jeff Lift Schultz changed his name to Jeff Ross. Yeah. Night and day. You want to work in show business. Maybe that's what held back some of the horn players was that big O at the end. Some of the greatest jazz saxophonists on the planet. But yet the ocean.

[Jim Carolla]

By the time you get to the O and Corollo audition over, your lips are tired, for God's sake.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Must have been a lot of that. Yeah. Although, you know, it worked for Guy Lombardo.

[Jim Carolla]

There's always an exception that proves the rule.

[Adam Carolla]

Wasn't Guy Lombarda.

[Jim Carolla]

There's always an exception that proves the rule.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, but he had a nice short first name. If it was Giuseppe. Wait a minute. Lombardo. It probably would have never worked if

[Jim Carolla]

you take a break in the middle.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. So he went with the Corollo.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, Ralph. Ralph always used it, I heard later, like, in school. And he stayed with the Corolla.

[Adam Carolla]

What do you think Mario went with?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I think Corolla. I think he went with the A. Yeah, I think my mother did, too.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Okay. So we're up to. So anyway, the father comes over, and my father's with him, and they come over in 1904. So my father's four years old when they reached, I think, the New York they landed. And they came to, of course, South Philadelphia, where the paisan's and family is. Then 1905, Concetta Carollo, now that's my grandmother, and the last daughter, Mary, came. Those two came together in 1905. So Concetta the mother, and Mary the youngest child, and they came over together. And finally, in 1906, the last one was Jenny Carolla, I think it was her oldest sister. And she came over in 1906.

[Adam Carolla]

Did somebody die in a fire?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, that's on my mother's side.

[Adam Carolla]

Your mom used to talk about that. Now I'm really getting interested. Yeah. What the hell? Was she just trying to freak everyone out? I can't remember that story.

Story.

But I just Remember as a kid sort of being horrified by the story of some little girl dying in a fire?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Her young, younger sister. I don't know how it was in the backyard. The tree was on fire and. Yeah, the sister died of burns in that fire.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I remember grandma. I mean, not. Not your mother, but my grandmother out here laughing hysterically when she heard about saying she probably deserved it, and then moving into the tree house shortly thereafter,

[Jim Carolla]

wondering why someone might have disclosed why someone burned in the treehouse.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. What's the big deal? She had it coming, I think she said.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

So that kind of takes care of the Carollos.

[Adam Carolla]

Came here a little bit. A little bit late in a way. I mean, all 19 somethings, you know, not like 18, 50, whatever.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, no, no, that's right.

[Adam Carolla]

So they all came here and they all settled in Philly. And then your mom's. What was your mom's name?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I'm a Traino.

[Adam Carolla]

What was her first name?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Louise Matreno. Yeah, I'm a Traino, just like you say. I'm a Train. I'm a Traino.

[Adam Carolla]

Should have changed. I'm a trainer. So we could. So she could have had a hit single. So she was the Carollos. The Carollos hooked up with the Amatrenos, Right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. My mother's father jumped ship.

[Adam Carolla]

She later changed her name to I didn't want a third Sono. That was later.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Her father jumped ship in Marcus Hook, which is a kind of oil. Was an oil refinery from the bay. The ships used to come in there. I think he was on one of them. And he jumped, shipped and got. And that's why he ended up in Chester, Pennsylvania, because that's where. That's where that refinery is. It's very close to Philadelphia, maybe 15 or 20.

[Adam Carolla]

So she's from Italy, too?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, she was. She was born. Yeah, some of them were born in Italy and some. Some of her sisters were born in Italy, but she was born in America. My mother.

[Adam Carolla]

Ah, that's where the slave ownership comes in. I knew it. I knew there had to be some of that in her past. And what was her family?

What did they do?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

So her father jumped ship and said he got into Chester and some way he ended up getting his own barber shop. That's where I pick it up. I don't know what he did before that. Yeah, his own barbershop and he sends for his family and there's a few children. And my mother and her brother were both, I think, the only two born in the States.

[Adam Carolla]

She had a brother?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Did he have any kids?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No.

[Adam Carolla]

What's up with the no kids policy? Yeah, there's really just no family around. There's like. It's. It's weird.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, that's the brother that was in a kind of a mafia syndicate.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm sure you guys weren't Chinese and not Italian. Fit right in over there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

But now that you mentioned that, yeah, Joe did not. Well, Joe never married.

[Adam Carolla]

Joe was her brother.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And he was the mafia connection.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, yeah. He was a gambler and he was kind of in the small time part. I had an uncle that I'm coming to has really got into big time, but he was always on the run. He messed around with the money and. And they were. The syndicate chased him, and he ended up at my mother's house a lot. And he lived in our cellar, hiding. Hiding? Yeah. And I remember my father saying, what are we? We're crazy.

[Adam Carolla]

No, he wasn't home.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Maybe he never even cared. Straightening his tie upstairs and heading out to play pinochle years later.

[Jim Carolla]

You lived in a service porch.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, they were in a basement, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, your basement.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I remember that house. I remember it had. It was a sort of brownstone. You know, it was like the kind of thing where, you know, it was real west side Story shit. Like the kind of stuff people would have been hanging out on on summer nights and snapping their fingers and just

walk, you know, cobblestone street.

The house was sandwiched in. It was a row house. It was sandwiched in between two. You know, if you would have punched a hole in either one of the two sidewalls, you would have went into the neighbor's house. But the thing was, you know, 14ft wide but 60ft tall. You could get on the roof, you could go in the basement. It was three stories, but didn't have any width to it or any backyard or front yard.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Now, one side was an alley. The one side was a home, but there was an alley.

[Adam Carolla]

Right, Right.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And a backyard. Just had sort of the clothesline.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And a little back door going from the kitchen. And I remember that house. Stairwell, creaky stairs, sort of right in the front, right by the front door,

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

and a stable directly behind it that came right up to our Abbott's milk horse and wagon. Abbotts. I don't know if that's even around anymore. But anyway, they had a large delivery right next door to us. But where they kept the horses at night. All my life, I remember, of course, I slept in that back room. And the odor Coming from that room that I heard kicking horses most of the night as these horses slept. Yeah, that stable. I've forgotten about that. That was right near my window.

[Adam Carolla]

Long gone, I'm sure now.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Long gone now.

[Adam Carolla]

But now, who was the dawn of Atlantic City?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. One of my mother's sisters married this fellow. I'm just called him Vito. In fact, we had dinner with you. I don't know if you remember him. This is, I think, a surprise for you. He. In the later years, towards the end of his life, when he gave up his whole don of Atlantic City world, he made kind of a final trip. He came to California and stopped off to see us, and we had dinner at a restaurant. And you maybe were about 7 years old by that time. He was retired and the whole world was over for him. But he was affiliated with the mob, and he. At one point, the mob needed him. They needed somebody that had. It was very political. They had to hand over somebody to the police, almost like. Of course they had the police all paid off and so on. And my uncle knew that if he would take the blame for something, that he would have to serve a. He would have to serve some time in prison, but they would take care of the family and they would set him up and. And in fact, he was at Mormensing Prison, which was only right around the corner from me, of how close we all are. And I remember the second floor of it was a double when we played half ball. And I used to say, my Uncle Ralph,

[Adam Carolla]

like handball.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Hitting the ball. Hitting the ball, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Against the wall, Right. He's up there.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

He's up there in the double.

[Adam Carolla]

Who was the guy? This seemed very peculiar to me, but there was one guy who we visited with once or twice, and he said, hey, go check that phone, that payphone. Check the change slot and see if there's something in there. And I said, why, you know. All right. You know, there was a quarter in there or something. And I thought, this guy doesn't seem like a Corolla was my first impulse. And secondly, who is this rich guy sort of throwing money around? And I don't know if it was him or it was somebody else. I felt like this was back in Cherry Hill or something. Something like that. But I just remember that's the memory I have of somebody putting some money into the change slot of a payphone and telling me to go check and see if there was something in there. Being surprised.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Giving you a kid a quarter.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. Oh, boy, that would sound like my Uncle Joe.

[Adam Carolla]

My dad hung out with mostly high rollers like Vince and Pat Bruno. Would they give you a dime for every dad? Do you understand that their birthday present was a dime for every year you were on the planet?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

What, I could go to my car ashtray right now and empty it out on the table and come up with that. What is that?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. It's not good though, is it?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

It's like they're making some gesture, but they're not piling it on, piling it off.

[Adam Carolla]

A two dollar bill would be piling up.

[Jim Carolla]

We're showing an incredible amount of response.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what they want is they understand that once you break $3, that's when the kid goes off. He starts buying himself a deluxe four wheel drive, 30 year old. Yeah. I think at some point they either went from nickels to dimes or maybe even dimes to quarters. Yeah, that's a pretty literally good coin.

[Jim Carolla]

Was it at least the thing where when you turned 11, you got 11 quarters and we turned 12, you got 12?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Okay.

[Jim Carolla]

I wasn't like a new dime for every year you. You were around.

[Adam Carolla]

No, there was a card. It was a card that had pockets in it. I know, but the pocket took the dime. So if you turn nine, you got nine dimes. Okay.

[Jim Carolla]

I thought it was like, oh, you're tall, you're 12, here's your 12th dime.

[Caller Kevin]

Four of it.

[Adam Carolla]

No, that would have been horrible. No, this was wildly generous compared to that. But the money in the phone machine still seemed a little out of character. We got some phone calls. Dad, you want to try talking to some of the people? Some of the Thanksgiving memories that people have? Nightmares perhaps? Hey, Tom. Uh oh, Tom from Kentucky. Uh oh, you there, Let me try this. Scott.

[Caller Scott]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Scott from Orlando.

[Caller Scott]

Hey, how's it going? Adam.

[Adam Carolla]

Hey, did you have a relative that was the Don of Orlando?

[Caller Scott]

No. No.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. I'm asking my dad. Yeah, because it'd be funny if his name was Tony, because it'd be Tony Orlando and then he'd be the Don of it. Well, you can do the math on that. Right, but what's going on, Scott?

[Caller Scott]

Well, one year my mother went off to India on a trip during Thanksgiving. Now preface this. When we were growing up, she'd give me and my brother money, or my dad got home to run get something to eat. In elementary school, I was the restaurant critic of the school.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, you were. The school had a restaurant critic?

[Caller Scott]

Yeah, because it was. Was me. Because she'd always give us money. We go over the back fence hit the restaurant here, you know, ligget Rexall Crystal, MD Fried Chicken.

[Adam Carolla]

The 11 year old restaurant critic sounds funny. I found these fish sticks to be. They were assertive but without being pushy.

[Caller Scott]

Exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

I recommend the corn dogs highly.

[Caller Scott]

But then dad would come home, she'd fix something for him and, and he'd go, what about the boys? She goes, I've already taken care of the boys.

[Adam Carolla]

But they do that for Thanksgiving.

[Caller Scott]

Well no. Okay, here's Thanksgiving. So she's gone off to India. So we decide take me, my wife, my daughter, my brother and my dad, we go to Cocoa beach to this fine restaurant and have Thanksgiving there. And they roll out the stuff and my dad and my brother back home, they box up everything they got left, leftovers for three or four days. Greatest Thanksgiving meal we've ever had. Mom comes home.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Caller Scott]

First thing my brother's got to say is wow, we had the greatest Thanksgiving ever.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Rubbed it in her face. Your mom just made freak. Frequent trips to India around the. Around the holidays.

[Caller Scott]

No, she'll go most anywhere. She's an artist. So she'll go off and you know, draw and get pictures, come back and paint it.

[Adam Carolla]

We had.

We.

Thanks, Scott. When I was going out, I think my mom. At a certain point my mom would just go out of town every Thanksgiving, India probably. And we'd go. There was a restaurant once we went to some revolving restaurant with my grandma. But my grandmother started eating Thanksgiving with the Brooks family and we never ate Thanksgiving with her. After a certain point, I don't know, maybe last 25 years or something like that. It's weird, it's kind of pathetic. But it's weird because when she died a year ago, but I was laughing with my wife, I said this is the first Thanksgiving without grandma. Except for she wouldn't have been here. She would have been at the Brooks's. The Brooks should mourn Grandma not being there for Thanksgiving because. And even one time when we. Now we have the thing at my house and one time she swung by before just to sort of check it out and say hi. But at a certain point it was like 3:30 and she's like I gotta split, I gotta get to. I gotta get to the Thanksgiving dinner. And I thought really? That's it? Again, it's.

[Jim Carolla]

Well thanks guys. Pre Thanksgiving was nice. Now I've got to get to the real party.

[Adam Carolla]

It's funny how you drink everything in because you have 20 years of this retarded indoctrination. And until a sane person enters the Fray, which was Lynette's dad. And Lynette's dad said, where's your grandma going? I said, that she's going to Thanksgiving. Why is she not with her family? And I said, well, she never. She wouldn't. And I went, oh, yeah, I think the old man's got a point here. Maybe he was.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

He.

[Adam Carolla]

They were on a roll. He was. He's a normal guy who was sort of like, I understand why her entire family is here. Why wouldn't she be with her family? And I was like, well, she's got this Jewish family, lives in Newberry Park. They. She wouldn't. Why would she. But it. I never. I never really thought about it until pops in law brought it up. Let's see. I got my cranberry sauce recipe to give out in a second, too. Yes, there was an uncomfortable moment when I brought my cranberry sauce to Vince and Pat's smallish apartment for Thanksgiving one year. And I whipped it out. I had it my lap. And when that can opener popped out, I said, no can do. I ain't on this white trash gravy train. I'm getting some. I cook these up, and I'm bringing them from home.

[Jim Carolla]

Ironically, you made a more white trash move. To supplant the white trash move, you brought your own toppings, right? In a Ziploc?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Pat was not thrilled. She was. She did not. I wonder why she did not. Listen, if you're gonna bust out a can opener on Thanksgiving, you get what you get. Do you know what I'm saying? Dad, do you agree with this theory?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. It's Thanksgiving. You don't. You don't. You cook.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

That's what you do.

[Adam Carolla]

Get out a can opener and. I mean, I could make the cranberry sauce in six minutes, by the way. And it was real fresh. It was warm. It wasn't serrated like the shape of the can and, say, Del Monte on the side of it. The hell's going on with everyone? All right, I'll give that recipe out in one second. Let me just talk to Kevin. Kevin.

[Caller Kevin]

Hey, how you doing?

[Adam Carolla]

What's going on, Kevin?

[Caller Kevin]

Not much. You know, just, you know, your typical Jew in Idaho.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure. What's happening?

[Caller Kevin]

Oh, not a whole heck of a lot. I mean, you know, like holidays for me. Well, just imagine, you know, a Jew mom thinks she can now.

[Adam Carolla]

What are the Jews? How do the Jews do with Thanksgiving?

[Caller Kevin]

Well, for us, we humor my mom. We let her cook a couple of pizzas that are delivered. Yeah. So, you know, it's like when my father was alive. Mayor, us and pieces. Like, my mom decided, okay, I'm dating this girl. She's got two kids. She's my wife now. So the kids are my. You know, they're my kids as far as I'm concerned. But sure, you know, they're over. My brother is over. He's drunk. Keystone. He's hitting on the woman who's going to be my future wife. And my father, who's a perfectionist, who loves to cook but letting my mom cook. They're fighting back and forth. My father decides he's going to fight with my brother, and then, of course, I have to get thrown into the middle of it in front of this gorgeous woman with these two beautiful kids as they're going, yeah, I'm going to marry him.

[Adam Carolla]

Is your brother drunk when he's hitting on your future wife?

[Caller Kevin]

Oh, he'll do it while he's drunk. Stone sober. He doesn't care. He's still hitting on her.

[Adam Carolla]

How does that work, though, where you sort of blatantly hit on somebody in front of somebody else?

[Caller Kevin]

Well, my family, it's very, very easy. I don't talk to him, so it really doesn't matter anymore. It's a Jewish family, you know. I mean, it's like we hang around Italians a lot, you know, I feel

[Adam Carolla]

like the Jews were. Would be above that fray.

[Caller Kevin]

Okay, let me put it this way. My last name. Siegelbaum. And if you know anything about Jewish history and Jewish mobs, you can pretty much figure out who I'm related to.

[Adam Carolla]

Bugsy Siegelbaum.

[Caller Kevin]

Yes. Benjamin Siegelbaum. He's my grandfather's cousin.

[Adam Carolla]

Really?

[Caller Kevin]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Siegelbaum. Seems like something you'd need a flathead screwdriver to clean off your windshield if you park by the beach. You know what happened to the car? Seagull bomb. Yeah.

[Jim Carolla]

Worst Jewish rapper ever. Seagull bomb.

[Adam Carolla]

Seagull bomb.

[Caller Kevin]

Yeah. Thanks.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow, that's nice to hear. Tales of dysfunction from other families. All right, I'm gonna give my cranberry sauce recipe out, which I do every year. There are moments that changed the course of history. Ask not what your country gets do for you. And I've seen the promised land. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

let my people go.

[Adam Carolla]

This is one of those moments. This is the moment that all of human progress has been moving towards. And there are men who move that destiny forward. Jesus Christ. Thomas Jefferson. Henry Ford. Adam Corolla. The time has arrived for Adam Corolla's cranberry sauce recipe. We gotta we gotta re. We gotta recut that liner to Carollo. Tell Mike we'll pick that up, we'll do it in post. All right? Okay. Thank you.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And dad, quickly, before the cranberry sauce. I've gotten the bottom of this. I don't have a middle name. Because you normally name your son middle name after your dad. One of the two dads. Right. And neither one of you liked your dad, right?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, I.

[Adam Carolla]

No, you liked your dad.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, I liked my father.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. I was just trying to do some math. Usually stuff the dad's name in. In the middle there somewhere. You liked your dad?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

He was a good guy.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, he was to me. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

But he wasn't a great. You wouldn't call him a great husband.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No.

[Adam Carolla]

And not a great father.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No. Now probably not a great father, but he. He liked. He liked.

[Adam Carolla]

But you liked him as a guy.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah, I mean, he. Not just as a guy.

[Adam Carolla]

What if you remove the music? What if you got rid of the mutual love of the horn?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I don't know. That's. That's a hard one to know. I don't. I don't know how much different that would have been.

[Adam Carolla]

But you liked him.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah. All right.

[Adam Carolla]

And he was. He was a Giacomo.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

A solid name. Alright, the cranberry recipe. And this is why I get incensed when people open the can of cranberry sauce. Because all you have to do is get one sack of the cranberries, the fresh whole cranberries, this ocean spray sack the size of a brick, and you take a pot, just a saucepan, you put one cup of water in it, you boil it or you get it boiling. And then you open the sack of cranberries and you dump it in the boiling water. Now, the recipe will say then a cup of sugar. But a cup of sugar is a lot. And I say start off with one with a half cup of sugar and then you can mix in a little more as you go, depending on season, to taste, as they say. So one cup of water, it gets to boiling in about 45 seconds. Open this sack of cranberries, dump it into boiling water, dump in a half cup, maybe two thirds cup of sugar, stir it around a little bit, lower the flame a little bit and put the lid on it. About five minutes later, you remove the lid and you have cranberry sauce. You just shut the flame off. That's it, you're done. Now you could start doing the walnuts and the lemon zest and all that other bullshit, but why bother? You've made cranberry sauce. It's good enough. I don't want to see any currants or golden raisins or any of that shit in there. Just keep it simple and overall. Let's keep it simple. I don't want trout on Thanksgiving. I don't want you to take the turkey and stuff it with, you know, jicama and papaya and all this. Just keep it. By the way, has anyone ever had like pumpkin pie, turkey, traditional stuffing, green beans, you know, a pecan pie and cranberry sauce and went this once a year? Once a year. Just make it traditional. Do it like a Norman Rockwell painting. Lay it out, mash potatoes, the whole nine yards, the gravy. Everyone will love it. And then the next day they'll eat Thai food. All right, that is the cranberry recipe, dad. That's where you go. That's where you say something. Yeah.

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Thank you, dad. Thank you for coming out. By the way, you can find Pops on the Ace Broadcasting Network on Life Lessons with Jim Carolla right here on the Ace Broadcasting Network. Dad, it's a little late for you. What time do you go to bed?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Normally I'd be in bed by nine.

[Adam Carolla]

What time do you get up in the morning?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

About 4:30.

[Adam Carolla]

4:30, because that's when the fish are biting. What goes on at 4:30, Dad?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I meditate.

[Adam Carolla]

Thinking about the clippers or what goes through the mind?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

No, I meditate early in the morning, so that's why I'm up early.

[Adam Carolla]

4:30. Wow, that is. It is quiet time at 4:30. How long do you meditate for?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

It's according. If I get. I'm up at 4:30. Because sometimes I go a little later, about maybe about a half hour, 45 minutes.

[Adam Carolla]

I remember one time this rascal slept into 4:55. I was like, what are you on a Quaalude, old man? Yeah, let's go. You got the Epstein bar. Jesus Christ. Almost 5am let's go now.

[Jim Carolla]

Put a mirror under his nose.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh God, dad, you should have gotten a morning radio. I would have paid you to do my job for me. I hated getting up at that hour. Oh yeah, I meditated with Brusca yelling at me for four hours.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

All right, so do any of the music stuff or.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, dad, we've unfortunately gone about an hour and 20 something minutes here, so we got. Yeah, I like the family tree stuff. And by the way, there's all, you know, result. Brian complaining.

[Jim Carolla]

That's true. The Christmas episodes coming up soon.

[Adam Carolla]

The Christmas episodes coming up dad, you hang out for that Christmas episode, and we're gonna get some songs in on that horn.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I'm disappointed.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what song did you want to play? Song?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, you don't want to do any.

[Adam Carolla]

No, let's. That's your song.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Well, I was going to do a scatting thing with you, but I could do just my. I. Can I do a. A theme song for my show?

[Adam Carolla]

All right, let's do that song.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Is.

[Adam Carolla]

Is. As long as it sounds like Sanford and Son, I got no problem with it.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

I need to. Change the lyrics a little bit.

[Adam Carolla]

Are you gonna sing?

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, okay.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

Podcasters.

[Podcast Producer]

Someday when Jim and Ray are low, when the world is cold we will feel a glow. Just thinking of our podcaster audience

[Chris (Adam's Mom)]

and

[Podcast Producer]

the way you listen every week.

[Adam Carolla]

Mike, get to work on a theme song for me, would you? I don't like this.

[Podcast Producer]

You're lovely with your comments, so warm with your questions, so wise. There is nothing for Ray and Jim but to love of you

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

and the

[Podcast Producer]

way you listen to our show. Bridge. With each word your tenderness grows. Terry. Our fears upon. Those downloads that reaches your ipod

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

touches

[Podcast Producer]

Ray and Jim's little heart.

[Adam Carolla]

And your dad said you'd never make

it as a pro.

[Podcast Producer]

Lovely.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

With those four minute waits Keep that

[Podcast Producer]

breathless charm Won't you please arrange it? Cause we love you

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

and the way you listen to us to. Okay, a little trumpet.

[Adam Carolla]

Now, Silver was right about the wing ball. Get that going next week.

[Podcast Producer]

With each word we say your tenderness grow tearing our fears apart. Those comments that we love to hear touches our foolish heart. Oh, lovely. Keep those hearts expanding Keep that breathless charm Won't you please arrange it? Cause we love

[Adam Carolla]

you

[Podcast Producer]

just the way.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

May you listen to us each week.

[Podcast Producer]

Yes. Keep on listening. Keep on listening.

[Adam Carolla]

And I've heard all the great pruners over the years sing a podcast song the moon Podcast Podcast Nakia Blue. And we've all heard all the podcast songs. That was definitely, definitely at the top.

Pop.

[Jim Carolla (Adam's Dad)]

It's a hit.

[Adam Carolla]

Nice job, Pop. Squirrel can be found right here on the H Broadcasting Network. Life lessons with Jim Carollo. That's right. And until next time, I'm Adam Carolla for Bald Brian and Jim Carollo saying Mahala.

All right, that was Adam Carolla Show 454, Adam and Jim Carolla. That does it for today's Kool of classics. Make sure to tune in tomorrow for an all new installment. Until then, I'm holla and get it on.

[Caller Kevin]

Sa.