Title: In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy

Author/Narrator: Adam Carolla

Publication Year: 2011

Pages: 272 (audio length: 6 hours 42 minutes)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Humour

Source: Audiobook version purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

“A couple years back, I was at the Phoenix airport bar. It was empty except for one heavy-set, gray bearded, grizzled guy who looked like he just rode his donkey into town after a long day of panning for silver in them thar hills. He ordered a Jack Daniels straight up, and that’s when I overheard the young guy with the earring behind the bar asking him if he had ID. At first the old sea captain just laughed. But the guy with the twinkle in his ear asked again. At this point it became apparent that he was serious. Dan Haggerty’s dad fired back, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, son.’ The bartender replied, ‘New policy. Everyone has to show their ID.’ Then I watched Burl Ives reluctantly reach into his dungarees and pull out his military identification card from World War II.”

It’s a sad and eerie harbinger of our times that the Oprah-watching, crystal-rubbing, Whole Foods-shopping moms and their whipped attorney husbands have taken the ability to reason away from the poor schlub who makes the Bloody Marys. What we used to settle with common sense or a fist, we now settle with hand sanitizer and lawyers. Adam Carolla has had enough of this insanity and he’s here to help us get our collective balls back.

In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks is Adam’s comedic gospel of modern America. He rips into the absurdity of the culture that demonized the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, turned the nation’s bathrooms into a lawless free-for-all of urine and fecal matter, and put its citizens at the mercy of a bunch of minimum wagers with axes to grind. Peppered between complaints, Carolla shares candid anecdotes from his day to day life as well as his past Sunday football at Jimmy Kimmel’s house, his attempts to raise his kids in a society that he mostly disagrees with, his big showbiz break, and much, much more. Brilliantly showcasing Adam’s spot-on sense of humor, this book cements his status as a cultural commentator/comedian/complainer extraordinaire.

Nominated in category: "Humor"

This is one of the books that I only heard about this year because of the Audies; sadly, I did not enjoy it as much as the others. In fact, “dislike” is too mild of a word. I downright hated almost the entire experience of listening to it.

First, I’ll give you something good to start with: Carolla’s narration is punchy and entertaining. And once in a while, from time to time, he said something that legitimately made me laugh, without also cringing at the inanity (or offensiveness). But for most of the book, the cringing wasn’t even accompanied by a giggle.

For starters, within the first couple minutes – or possibly only one – of the audiobook, Carolla refers to the “pussification of America”. It only goes downhill from there.

Here’s a brief list of the things that bothered me enough to write them down as I was listening:

• While talking about how men bother him when they say that their wives are their best friends, he says: “Your best friend is supposed to be the guy you go to to bitch about your wife getting fat.”
• He constantly refers to people as “douchebags”.
• When talking about homosexuals (not for the first time, I might add), he says that there are “two kinds of gays”: “there’s the ‘I love to chug cock’ gay and then there’s the ‘I’m not gonna help you move’ gay.”
• At one point he says, “So let’s quickly review the retarded society we’ve crafted.”
• He actually states: “My editor wants to rape me with a mop handle every time I call this a book on cassette.”
• He tells a story about the difference between toilets for men and women, and in referencing the complaint that women have about men not putting the seat down and then them “almost” falling in at night when it’s dark, he congratulations women who do fall in for “not being fat”, and says that the actors in Precious will never have that problem.
• He says: “I get labelled a misogynist all the time, but I’m simply pointing out that men and women are different – or at least they used to be.” He then goes on to elaborate on this, and finishes the section with a few absolutely ridiculous remarks, including telling women: “you’re worse people than we are, but you live five years longer”.
• When talking about people complaining about a method of torture that involves shooting a gun in the next room and then the interrogator claiming they have show your partner, he says: “Are we turning into such cock-chugging homos in this country that we’re really upset about this?”
• When talking about the disposable ketchup packets that you get at fast food restaurants, he then segues into: “And don’t get me started on soy sauce! That’s an even bigger abortion!”
• Near the end of the book, he actually utters the words: “I’m into gun safety as much as the next white supremacist…”, and then goes on to say that “the best form of home security is a confederate flag”, because then it implies to people that you’re a gun nut and that you’re a dangerous person to try to rob. Then he continues with “if this feels too racist for you, the next best thing is a ‘don’t tread on me’ flag”, which apparently has something to do with the NRA?

Yeah … and that’s only the stuff that I bothered to keep track of, and that was short enough to include concisely.

Seriously.

Need I say more?

Rating: