Adam Carolla (born May 27, 1964 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American comedian, comedy writer, radio personality, television personality and actor. Carolla achieved fame for several broadcast stints: Co-host of the radio show Loveline, from 1995 to 2005 (and its television incarnation on MTV from 1996 to 2000); co-creator and co-star of the television program The Man Show (1999-2004); co-creator and performer on the television program Crank Yankers (2002-present).
Carolla currently hosts The Adam Carolla Show (see section below), a weekday morning radio program broadcast from Los Angeles and syndicated in eleven west-coast markets.
In 2006, Carolla completed work on The Hammer, an independent film that he co-wrote and co-produced. He plays the lead role in the film, opposite Heather Juergensen. The film premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, and was released on March 21, 2008.
On June 16, 2008 Carolla was selected to host an American version of the popular BBC show Top Gear to be aired by NBC in the fall of 2008.
Carolla was born in Pennsylvania to an Italian-American father, Giacomo "Jim" Carolla, and a Hungarian-American mother. Adam's parents failed to give him a middle name. As a joke, he wrote "Adam Lakers Carolla" on his drivers license application. His drivers license still gives his full name as "Adam Lakers Carolla."
Carolla has claimed in his standup routines that the name "Carolla" is Italian for "small Japanese car" (though the car, of course, is spelled "Corolla").
Adam grew up in North Hollywood, California, located in the San Fernando Valley. His family is often a topic on his radio show; he claims that his parents were uninterested in his upbringing, and still have no interest in his life. He describes his family as good people, fair and honest--but often claims that they were opposed to anything that involved getting off the couch and doing something. He also alleges that his family was incredibly cheap; Carolla would get small amounts of money, usually coins, for his birthday instead of gifts, and he did not go to any funerals growing up. After his parents divorced, Carolla split time between his mother and his father.
Carolla attended Colfax Elementary School, Walter Reed Junior High, and North Hollywood High School. Carolla never received good grades, graduating with a 1.75 grade point average. He claims to have majored in ceramics. Carolla never received his high school diploma, because (as he claims) he owed the library $19.95 for a copy of We The People (ISBN 0-385-41903-1). Because of this, he also did not participate in his high school graduation ceremony; but he claimed once on Loveline that no one had ever asked him to produce his diploma.
He was voted class clown and was the captain of his football team. Carolla played Pop Warner football for many years; he later suggested that being involved in sports saved him from a chaotic home life. On The Adam Carolla Show, Carolla once related an incident in which someone attempted to recruit him to play football at Marshall University and the University of California, Davis, but he was not interested in college.
He began living on his own at the age of 18. He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, a junior college, where he was placed on academic probation before dropping out to work in a series of jobs, including a carpet cleaner, carpenter, boxing instructor, traffic school instructor, and metal worker.
After Carolla had established himself as a comedic pundit on Loveline, he frequently joked that his role on radio was "philosopher-warrior", and his title was M.B.V. (Mayor of BoobVille). Promotional posters and billboards introducing his self-titled radio show in early 2006 carried the caption "Adam Carolla: American Genius".
Carolla claims that his goal from youth was to write comedy. He did not envision working on-air on the radio, or on-camera in movies and television. In his spare time he worked on his comedy skills, training with The Groundlings and attempting stand-up, but he didn't believe either of these were a good fit for him. He did perform sketch comedy with Acme Comedy Theatre for a few years, during which he worked with M.D. Sweeney (later, his business partner in a restaurant venture), Paul Rugg, and John P. McCann (with whom he wrote and performed a number of sketches involving Manly Men Doing Manly Things).
During Carolla's early twenties, while working in various jobs, he grew fond of listening to talk radio. In his late twenties he heard an ad on the radio seeking a boxing instructor to train Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel was, at the time, a radio personality on the KROQ morning show Kevin and Bean as "Jimmy the Sports Guy." Carolla met Kimmel at the radio station, and the two became best friends. Carolla asked Jimmy how he could get into radio; Jimmy replied that Carolla should create a character. Carolla eventually joined the show's cast as "Mr. Birchum," the ornery and misanthropic Vietnam-veteran shop teacher.
Carolla was offered the job of co-hosting Loveline with physician Dr. Drew Pinsky in 1995, replacing Riki Rachtman. Pinsky selected Carolla personally, after hearing Carolla's earlier radio work. Loveline is a syndicated radio program produced by Westwood One, and was also a television show on MTV for four years. On Loveline, Carolla often gave extended commentary about matters having little to do with the official subject matter of the show. Common topics included: Carolla's dislike of the negative effects of religious zealotry, criticism of celebrities, and complaints about politically-originated policies that make little sense, such as junior colleges, traffic/parking enforcement as pure revenue-generation, superfluous red left-turn arrows, and other "wastes" such as the abundance of police officers available to serve traffic citations while none seem to be available for important issues like counter-terrorism, and incessant radio weather and traffic reports. ("How many traffic reports have you listened to? Thousands. How many times have you actually changed your route based on a traffic report? That's right! Never!") His impassioned criticisms and observational humor became a central characteristic of the show.
During his time on Loveline, Carolla gradually drew an increasing fanbase to the program. Carolla, on Loveline after earlier attempts at traditional stand-up comedy, eschewed traditional stand-up methods, such as scripted comedic "bits". Carolla has claimed that he has no "act", referring to himself as a "comedy factory, as opposed to a comedy warehouse", distinguishing himself from comics who prepare material. Carolla preferred to use his time on the airwaves—and the subject matter of Loveline as an inspirational springboard—to launch into rants in a similar fashion to Dennis Miller. Carolla's presentation of his views frequently fits the description of black comedy. While Carolla distinguishes himself as being self-educated, he frequently refers to his formal education in abysmal, self-deprecating terms. He attributes his layman's perspective to his unconventional upbringing, often claiming it has left him as an—albeit successful—adult with "NO self-esteem, as opposed to LOW self-esteem". Carolla claims to have genuinely forgotten several of his own past jokes, insights and innovations that have caught on with fans, attributing his forgetfulness to his "no self-esteem". Carolla has commented on radio that on several occasions, fans have recited back to him his own ideas from past broadcasts, and he genuinely does not recognize them as being his own.
Loveline expanded into its largest number of radio markets while Carolla was co-host. During his final shows, the fanbase that he had cultivated was, in his own words, larger than he expected. Carolla often claimed that he had no idea of the effect he had had on his audience, saying frequently that, among the small staff in the Loveline broadcast studio, "no one cares"; he repeatedly drew attention to the apathy of his co-workers—with extended, comedic complaints about the staff, including Pinsky (they both stated they had become very close during their work together). Once it was announced that he was leaving Loveline after its 10 most successful years, Carolla became the subject of large online petitions to keep him on Loveline. He wrote in response, on fan website The Loveline Companion, that he was deeply moved by the large number of fans and the depth of their dedication. He repeated these sentiments on-air during his last few Loveline broadcasts, consciously breaking from his black-humor comedic tone to thank his fans in earnest, explaining that the opportunity for his own morning radio show similar to Howard Stern's was an opportunity he could not pass up. He expressed that in retrospect, he didn't view Loveline as a job, and that he would have continued on Loveline if his schedule would allow it; however, he made it clear that it would not.
On November 1, 2005, Carolla announced that he would leave Loveline to pursue a position in morning radio, replacing Howard Stern — with Stern's approval — in a number of West Coast markets. Adam's last night on Loveline was November 3, 2005, to allow him to have time to prepare for his morning debut in January, 2006. He stated that he would love to continue to do Loveline by recording it immediately after his morning show, but Westwood One insisted that the show must be broadcast live. On October 25, Infinity Broadcasting officially announced that it would be replacing Stern with Carolla on several radio stations in the western United States.
On January 3, 2006, Carolla began his new morning radio show, The Adam Carolla Show, on stations in Los Angeles (where the show is based), San Francisco, Palm Springs, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, Las Vegas, Oakland, Reno, Burbank, Fresno and Sacramento.
The show staff was modified slightly during its first year. At the start of 2007, it saw its largest staff change; the three primary on-air personalities would be Carolla himself, Teresa Strasser, and the newly added Danny Bonaduce.
As of June, 2007, the show has seen an overall increase in ratings in its primary market of Los Angeles.
On January 2, 2008 the show went through another lineup change, most notably, Danny Bonaduce is no longer to be part of the on-air trio, being moved to the afternoon slot on KLSX with his own show.
Carolla began his first original television series with The Man Show, along with partner and close friend Jimmy Kimmel, on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2003. He left The Man Show at the same time as Kimmel, after having been reportedly offered $50,000 per episode to stay on. Carolla has continued his work with Kimmel as a writer and regular guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live. With partner Daniel Kellison, they are the heads of Jackhole Productions and created another television show named Crank Yankers for Comedy Central, which revived the Mr. Birchum character.
Carolla has also done voiceovers for cartoons, including Commander Nebula on the Disney animated series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Death on Family Guy (replacing Norm MacDonald who only did one episode) and Spanky Ham on Drawn Together.
From August 2005 to November 2005, Carolla hosted the talk show Too Late with Adam Carolla on Comedy Central.
Also in 2005, Carolla was featured in a home remodeling program called The Adam Carolla Project wherein he and a crew of old friends renovated his childhood home. The 12 episodes aired on the cable channel TLC (The Learning Channel) from October through December 2005.
In 2006, he appeared on the special summer series Gameshow Marathon as a celebrity panelist on the Match Game episode.
In August 2007, Carolla guest hosted Jim Rome Is Burning.
Recently, he has appeared as a guest on several episodes of Comics Unleashed.
On the February 18, 2008 broadcast of his radio show, Adam announced that he would be one of the contestants on the next season of Dancing with the Stars. Later in the broadcast, it was revealed to Adam that his partner would be Julianne Hough. He was voted off on the April 8, 2008 episode after his performance of the Paso Doble.
On 16 June 2008, NBC announced Carolla would be a host for Top Gear, the American adaptation of the BBC's motoring television show with the same name.
Film
In 2006, Carolla finished work on The Hammer, a semi-autobiographical independent film in which he stars opposite Heather Juergensen. The film is based loosely on his real life and is filmed at a gym he helped build with his co-star, Ozzie, which is played by Oswaldo Castillo, his friend in real life whom he met while building the gym when they both worked in construction.
The film made its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and shortly thereafter received a positive review in Variety.
In 2003 Carolla had a cameo appearance in the film Abby Singer.
Adam has written a new movie titled Deaf Frat Guy: Showdown at Havasu. It has been sold and will begin filming shortly.
On November 9, 2003 Loveline was cancelled by Hawaii affiliate KPOI after Carolla referred to Hawaiians as "the dumbest people". He also claimed that you could take over the islands with a Bic lighter. Undeterred, Carolla has also called Hawaiians "the lowliest of all God's creatures." Carolla later issued a public apology.
On July 6, 2006 conservative pundit Ann Coulter called The Adam Carolla Show an hour and a half after she was scheduled as a featured guest. This was the second time she had been late or absent on the show. On the July 6 show, Carolla amicably greeted Coulter, saying "You're late, baby doll" before she complained that she had been given the wrong number. Carolla then joked to Coulter, "How did you get the right number? Just dialed randomly — eventually got to our show?" At this point, Coulter seemed to take on a more antagonistic tone and insisted that she was "really tight on time." Carolla then hung up on Coulter, telling her, "All right, well, get lost" and proceeded to say:
Listen, you bitch, don't call in an hour and a half late and tell me you're tight on time. Of course you're tight on time, you're an hour and a half goddamn late calling in to a radio show. Just take your crappy book and go pitch it to your stupid cable outlet.
Carolla claimed he did so due to her lack of professionalism, stating that it had nothing to do with her political views, which he stated he was quite open to hearing. Carolla frequently and publicly chides media personalities whom he considers "blowhards."
During the week of June 25, 2007 on The Adam Carolla Show, Carolla mused — during a news segment discussing Coulter's recent controversial statements regarding John Edwards — that he himself had, to his surprise, become a "cult hero" for hanging up on her on his radio program a year earlier. Carolla joked that his "cult hero" status was probably more due to the public's dislike of Coulter than to public approval of himself.
On September 28, 2002, Carolla married Lynette Paradise. Lynette gave birth (via cesarean section) to their first children, twins Natalia and Santino "Sonny" Carolla on June 7, 2006. On The Adam Carolla Show, Adam repeatedly mentioned the birth was originally scheduled for June 6, but that he and Lynette decided to push it back one day as to avoid the symbolic 666 (06-06-06).
An avid car enthusiast, Carolla has owned a BMW M3 E30-generation model, an E46-generation M3, Datsun 510, an Audi S4, Jaguar sports coupe, MINI Cooper S, Nissan 350Z, Aston Martin, Lamborghini 350GT, Ferrari and 1984 Nissan 300ZX Turbo (The original Newman Sharp car driven by Paul Newman and Fitzy to an SCCA national championship in 1984).
Since 2000, Carolla has, on-air, referred to himself as "literally a millionaire" (with hyperbolic emphasis on the word "literally"). He has used his income history to illustrate to listeners the benefits of being self-motivated and making improved life choices.. His 2002 report (including annual reported earnings through 2001) was read on the air during the April 01, 2003 episode of Loveline. His 2006 report (including annual reported earnings through 2005) was read on the air during the April 10, 2007 episode of The Adam Carolla Show and is as follows.
Asteroid 4535 Adamcarolla is named in his honor.
