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We have a billion plastic snap-lid containers in our kitchen, and my kids can do whatever the fuck they want with them. I value my relationship with them more than a food-storage container. I can get a new one of those at the grocery store, I can’t get a new son or daughter at the supermarket. At least, not without ending up in an Amber Alert situation.

Speaking of those containers. Because I’ve got twins, I’m getting everything in the jumbo size now. I go to Costco and come home with a huge vat of mayo

So here’s my solution. Why not equip every jumbo-sized container of mustard or barbecue sauce with a little escape pod on the side, like the dock of the International Space Station? Just a small container that holds two ounces on the side, so when you’re done with the five-gallon bucket of Dijo

2. EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED, FAKE IT…

Both historically and currently, my parents haven’t been able to give a shit about shit I give a shit about.

My father would read a book in his living room every Friday night. Ironically, the light by which he was reading was partly supplied by the lights from the North Hollywood High football stadium where I was playing. He never worked on Friday nights, he just preferred to stay home and read Leo Buscaglia rather than see me play for the North Hollywood High Huskies. He wasn’t interested in football and that was that.

This is a trend that continues today.

Last year, my dad called to say he wanted to come over and see the twins. I told him they were out on one of their many activities; I believe it was seeing the Harlem Globetrotters. I started going into how the kids were constantly jet-setting and doing amazing stuff. As an example, I casually mentioned, “I just did the voice in a big Disney movie, so they were walking the red carpet last night.” I waited a moment for him to ask the name of the movie, and what my part in it was. Never happened. He just moved on. That, or he thought I was lying.

It’s not like Dad hates the stuff that I do. It’s just not on his radar. He’s not the Great Santini, he’s the Great Doesn’t-Give-A-Shiti. For the entire time I have been doing my home-improvement podcast Ace on the House he’s called it Ace on the Roof. And on the very first morning of my radio show after I took over from Howard Stern, I famously gave him a ten-thousand-dollar challenge. There were five questions of Adam Carolla trivia. I told my dad that if he got the first one right, he’d walk away with ten grand. My very own ten grand. It wasn’t money the station had put up, and we didn’t have a sponsor. I had my checkbook next to me as I gave him the questions. I was that confident in his impending failure. With each question, the payday would be cut in half. So if he screwed the pooch on the first one he still had a chance at five thousand, then twenty-five hundred, and so on.

Now, bear in mind, this is my father. His best financial year ever was about forty-seven thousand dollars. He now had a chance to make more in one minute than in two months of the best year of his life, and all he had to do was provide some well-known facts about his own son.