Adam Carolla Ranks His Worst Cities to Perform In

"I was playing a free show for students at the Mansfield, PA, college campus where it was snowing outside. We had some Domino's thick crust pizza that was cold. Since it was free, 41 people showed up in a place that held 400 all spread out and sat there. That's where I told the guy who was supposed to introduce me (who had three pages of Wikipedia on me) to just say something like, 'You know I'm from the Man Show and I have a podcast, here's Adam Carolla.'

When he went to introduce me, he was like, 'Our guest should be very familiar to you all.' So I then walked up from the green room on the wings of the stage and waited. Eighteen minutes later - after I told the guy to pare it way down - he was still going. Then he went on to say something like, 'He also had a successful TV show in 1999 called Love Line, and went on to syndicated radio.' 

"I was in Cabo San Lucas at one of those villas you get at a charity auction where the guy goes 'you and nine of your closest friends can go to this Casa de whatever.' It's where Jennifer Aniston hangs out. You have your own beach, you have your own butler and pool. You can't go eight feet without running into a papaya.

It's a place where there are no clocks and when you get up you don't know what time it is and there's a guy just standing there asking if you want fresh papaya juice. It's a goddamn utopia and you're just puttering around with Jimmy Kimmel and the rest of the cool, beautiful people just doing whatever, whenever. [Jimmy Kimmel] won this thing at a charity auction and probably spent $50 grand to get it. He invited me and Lynette (Carolla).

But then, I had to split early to GO TO ADDISON! I stayed at a Red Roof Inn across from the place and I remember very clearly two things: when your bed and your TV point the same direction, that's not a good sign. You want your TV at the end of your bed so you're staring at your feet. When you're doing the move when you're moving the TV and you're blocking the corridor from blocking the bathroom, and then you have to turn yourself on the bed, never a good sign. 

Then the second harbinger of doom is after the show, when you have your $6 bottle of Pinot Noir that's on your rider. You get to drown your sorrows in the wine as you watch chicks play high school basketball on ESPN3 after you're done signing all this stuff at 1am and they have some some basic cable thing. Your choice with the red wine is a black ceramic mug found in the bathroom or a cup made of cellophane that collapses under the weight when you hold it. 

"Seattle is always the best, and we ended up here after Mike August told me we were booked in Seattle. Then I found myself, at some point, walking around a nice little community called Kirkland, Wash., and I asked him, 'Is this Seattle?' and he's like, 'It's 28 miles away from Seattle, but I had to give you a name that you've heard of.'

The theatre wasn't the theatre. It was either a Papa John's or a Pizza Hut, but it was a place that wasn't formally built to do comedy. When you stood up on the 14-inch riser, your head lifted one of the drop ceiling cork boards. You could actually check the AC system up there. 

This is when I made the mistake of telling Mike August to book me wherever, whenever because I needed money because I was out of work. Not only did we agree to do two-to-three shows a night, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know you were supposed to have an opener or a middle. I was doing an hour and 45 minute shows on my own with no act.

The comedy is after doing it all on Saturday, Bean from Kevin & Bean called me and said Luke Burbanks is around Seattle and asked me to do his podcast. I sat down at his house for an hour and a half at 5:30 and drove back to Kirkland to do the three 110 minute shows.

Now the good thing was the club said we set the weekend record and that it will never be broken because we sold out six shows in two nights. But as close to Seattle as that was, it wasn't Seattle.