Adam Carolla
Adam Carolla is an American radio personality, comedian, actor and podcaster. He hosts The Adam Carolla Show, a talk show distributed as a podcast.
Carolla co-hosted the syndicated radio call-in program Loveline with Drew Pinsky from 1995 to 2005 as well as the show's television incarnation on MTV from 1996 to 2000. He was the co-host and co-creator of the television program The Man Show, and the co-creator and a regular performer on the television show Crank Yankers. He hosted The Adam Carolla Project, a home improvement television program which aired on TLC in 2005 and The Car Show on Speed in 2011.
Carolla has also appeared on the network reality television programs Dancing with the Stars and The Celebrity Apprentice. His book In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2010, and his second book, Not Taco Bell Material, also reached The New York Times bestseller status.
Carolla has made numerous guest appearances on political talk shows as a commentator. He hosted a weekly segment, "Rollin' with Carolla", on Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor.
Early life
Adam Carolla was born on May 27, 1964, to Jim and Kris Carolla. Carolla has stated he was born in a doctor's office in the Westwood neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California, although some sources list his birthplace as Los Angeles County, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley and his parents separated when he was young. Carolla was not given a middle name by his parents; on his driver's license application he listed his middle name as "Lakers" as a joke. The application was processed without notice. His maternal step-grandfather was screenwriter László Görög.Carolla was raised in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. He attended Colfax Elementary School, Walter Reed Junior High, and North Hollywood High School. Carolla did not receive his high school diploma until years later as it was held by the school until a library fine was paid. Carolla can be seen paying off the book and receiving his diploma in an episode of his 2005 television show, The Adam Carolla Project.
During his youth, Carolla played Pop Warner football for seven years; he later suggested that being involved in sports saved him from a chaotic home life. During his senior year at North Hollywood High School, Carolla distinguished himself in football. In December 1981, he was named to the First Team Offensive Line, Central Valley League, one of 8 leagues at the time in the LA City Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. In October 2020 he spoke of being recruited by "7 or 8" schools including UC-Davis, Cal Poly Pomona, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
He began living on his own at the age of 18. He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, a community college, where he was placed on academic probation before dropping out to work in a series of jobs, including carpet cleaner, carpenter, boxing instructor, and traffic school instructor. Although broke, Carolla, his friends, and roommates owned a 1963 Cadillac limousine.
In the early 1990s, Carolla studied improvisational comedy with The Groundlings and was a member of the ACME Comedy Theatre troupe.
Radio
In 1994, Carolla volunteered his services as a boxing trainer to prepare Jimmy Kimmel for a bout being staged by KROQ-FM's morning radio program Kevin and Bean. Kimmel was a regular on the show as "Jimmy the Sports Guy" and he was set to fight another KROQ personality in a boxing exhibition which was being billed as the "Bleeda in Reseda". Carolla parlayed this opportunity into a long-running friendship and business partnership with Kimmel as well as a recurring role on Kevin and Bean as cranky woodshop teacher, Mr. Birchum.''Loveline''
In October 1995, after being signed to the William Morris Agency by Mark Itkin, Carolla was offered the job of co-hosting the evening radio call-in show Loveline. His co-hosts were the physician Drew Pinsky and metal DJ Riki Rachtman. Carolla received the offer after Pinsky heard him on Kevin and Bean ''Loveline was broadcast on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles and was syndicated nationwide on the former Westwood One radio network.While the format of the program was primarily that of a call-in show wherein listeners would ask questions about sex and relationships, Carolla would often spend much of the show ranting about various topics from fart jokes to extended parodies of radio morning shows, including mocking the format's penchant for useless and repetitive weather and traffic reports. In contrast to the reserved, thoughtful Pinsky, Carolla served as the loud, funny side of the show. Carolla's character was described by one reviewer as "a toned-down version of Howard Stern minus the huge ego".
In a late-2003 Loveline episode, Carolla said that Hawaiians are "dumb", "in-bred", "retarded" people who are among the "dumbest people we have". The comments were met with anger in Hawaii and resulted in Loveline''s cancellation on Hawaiian affiliate KPOI.
''The Adam Carolla Show''
In October 2005, Carolla was announced as the host of a new morning radio show on the Infinity Broadcasting network. His new show would replace the popular syndicated Howard Stern Show in twelve of the 27 markets in which Stern had been broadcast including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, and Portland, Oregon. The Adam Carolla Show debuted in January 2006.In early 2008, actor Gerard Butler sat in and observed Adam Carolla on The Adam Carolla Show in order to prepare for his role in The Ugly Truth as a cynical and crass talk-radio host allegedly based on Carolla.
On February 18, 2009, The Adam Carolla Show was canceled as part of a format switch at KLSX to AMP FM, a new top 40 station. The final show was Friday, February 20, 2009.
Podcasts
''The Adam Carolla Podcast''
Carolla started a daily podcast on February 23, 2009, at his personal website, which would evolve into the ACE Broadcasting Network. The first Adam Carolla podcast was downloaded more than 250,000 times in the initial 24 hours, and by the third podcast, it was the number one podcast on iTunes in both the U.S. and Canada. During the debut week, the Adam Carolla podcast recorded 1.6 million downloads. In the second week it recorded 2.4 million downloads. By the fourth episode of the second week, featuring former Adam Carolla Show sidekick Dave Dameshek, the show was downloaded more than 500,000 times. Adam stated that bandwidth cost more than $9,000 a month as of May 2009.At the end of 2009, The Adam Carolla Podcast was selected by iTunes for its end-of-the-year awards as the Best Audio Podcast of 2009.
On the April 4, 2010, episode of The Adam Carolla Show, Carolla referred to Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao as a "fucking idiot" and said of the Philippines: "They got this and sex tours, that's all they have over there. Get your shit together, Philippines." A spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called Carolla an "ignorant fool". Carolla subsequently apologized via Twitter.
On May 18, 2011, Carolla noted on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that The Adam Carolla Show had taken the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast ever from previous holder Ricky Gervais by receiving 59,574,843 unique downloads from March 2009 to March 16, 2011.
In 2010, Carolla posed for the NOH8 Campaign. In August 2011, Carolla released a podcast where he mocked a petition to the producers of Sesame Street that demanded Bert and Ernie get married on air. He said on air that gay activists should "ust get married, and please shut up" and that "Y.U.C.K." would be more memorable acronym than LGBT, and referring to transgender people he asked: "When did we start giving a shit about these people?" GLAAD characterized the previous remarks by Carolla as offensive, including an assertion that "all things being equal", heterosexual parents make better parents than homosexual parents. Carolla responded: "I'm sorry my comments were hurtful. I'm a comedian, not a politician."
"Patent Troll" Lawsuit
In 2013, Personal Audio filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Lotzi Digital, Inc., producers of The Adam Carolla Show and several other podcasts on the Carolla Digital Network, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The suit alleged that owner Adam Carolla and his network of content infringed on Personal Audio's patent 8,112,504.Using the crowdfunding site FundAnything.com, listeners contributed more than $475,000 to support Carolla throughout the legal proceedings.
Personal Audio dropped the lawsuit July 29, 2014, stating that the defendants were not "making significant money from infringing Personal Audio's patents". However, Carolla countersued, having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars mounting a defense against claims he deemed unfounded. Among claims sought by the countersuit was a request that the initial patent be invalidated. On August 15, 2014, Carolla and Personal Audio filed a joint motion to dismiss after reaching a settlement, the details of which were not made public but included a six-week "quiet period" during which neither party could speak to the media. Both parties' claims were dropped without prejudice and, as such, could be refiled at a later date.
Television
1996–2004
From 1996 to 2000, Carolla and Dr. Drew hosted Loveline on MTV, a television version of the radio show. Carolla and frequent collaborator Jimmy Kimmel created and co-hosted sketch comedy series The Man Show on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2003. The show was controversial due to its humor, with many critics accusing it of being sexist due to its portrayal of scantily clad women. He left The Man Show at the same time as Kimmel. Carolla has continued his work with Kimmel as a writer and guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He also appeared on an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast around this time.Carolla and partner Daniel Kellison are the heads of Jackhole Productions. The two created the television show Crank Yankers for Comedy Central, which revived the Mr. Birchum character. The show premiered in 2002 on Comedy Central and returned to MTV2 on February 9, 2007, running again until March 30, 2007. The show screened in Australia on SBS Television and The Comedy Channel between 2003 and 2008. The show was again revived in 2019, returning to Comedy Central.
Corolla also starred in the role of Spanky Ham for the Comedy Central adult animated series, Drawn Together.