Adam Carolla, performing at House of Blues, opines on Jesus, gays

When Adam Carolla was young, he worked as a carpenter by day, and by night he performed improvisational comedy. That means if you give him a premise, he'll run with it like an improv pro.

So I ask him: "Who was a better carpenter -- you or Jesus?"

"I didn't gouge the elderly. That's the difference," he joked without even pausing to think about it. "I definitely know I'm a better carpenter than he was.

"I don't want to say he was a 'hack,' but he did a lot of butt joints instead of a lot of dovetail, finger joints, dados and rabbet joints. I know before he painted stuff, he didn't prime stuff properly.

"There's also a story that Job told about him using 8-penny vinyl-coated sinkers when he was doing some shear wall, instead of 10-penny ring shank nails ...

"He didn't have modern oscillating spindle sanders and routers and things to work with back then. He must have had a bow saw ... and a mallet.

"And what did he die at -- 33, 34? Sometimes, it takes guys to get in their 50s and 60s to really learn that craft. He had a flatbed donkey with a 'No Fat Chicks' license plate frame.

"And who were the laborers back then? Like: 'Ah, go down to Home Depot and get some Macedonians. They work cheap.' "

Carolla says he's a better podcaster than Jesus would have been.

"He'd get preachy."

OK, so that's Adam Carolla on Jesus.

Next, let's talk about gay people.

On the one hand, you'd think a gay organization would give Carolla some kind of award. On his podcast -- the most downloaded podcast in the world -- he frequently praises gay people as the best people in America.

"I've said a thousand times that the gays are not part of the problem, they're part of the solution," Carolla says. "I wish there were a higher percentage of gays in our population, because we would have a better populace."

Here's his case:

"They don't commit a lot of violent crime that I know of. They pay their taxes. They put a lot into the tax pot, because you have both parties working, most of the time.

"Their lawns are kept up, their houses are kept up, real estate values go up."

As he has said on his podcast quite a few times, all you have to do is look at Santa Monica Boulevard -- it's run-down in presumed heterosexual neighborhoods.

"Then go three miles toward the west, and it turns into Boys Town, and it's basically a golf course," he says.

"I'd like to be recognized by GLAAD," Carolla says.

On the other hand:

"GLAAD is pissed at me, because I had the temerity to say: All things being equal -- and that's the part they never hear -- if something happened to me, I'd rather have my kids raised by a heterosexual couple rather than a gay couple."

He makes this argument by saying "a couple of billion years of nature" is designed thus: "Mama does this, Papa does that."

And yet, Carolla keeps saying that all things aren't equal between gay people and straight people -- because gays are better.

He'd still prefer a gay couple raise his kids, rather than a crappy straight couple (if he and his wife died), as long as that couple "had more money, had a better minivan and lived in a better school system."

Anyway, he's resigned about one thing: "I'm not going to get one of those awards" from GLAAD.

Carolla returns to the House of Blues on Saturday. His last show there in December held a sellout crowd, with lots of locals. Carolla is intensely popular in Vegas. His old radio show was a ratings winner here.

That December experience in Vegas was great, he says, except for one thing. After the show, he stayed up late, then woke up a few hours later to check out at 5:45 a.m.

He was tired and groggy. And there in the lobby of Mandalay Bay, he was faced with hundreds or thousands of marathoners, getting ready to race, stretching and eating power bars.

Carolla was wearing dirty clothes, holding a suitcase full of dirty socks and underwear -- "completely hung over" and "trying to cut through this crowd that's spry and happy."

"The only thing that makes you feel worse when you're hungover is being around people that went to bed at 9 o'clock -- sober -- and have been up for a few hours watching the news and ate a nice breakfast and are wide awake."

Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Contact him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.