Devotees of Carey’s stand-up act won’t be surprised to see him working blue. Some fans of ““The Drew Carey Show,’’ his G-rated ABC sitcom, however, might be more shockable. Comedy-book buyers, beware: on the Paul Reiser-to-Howard Stern continuum, this naughty tome is a lot less ““Babyhood’’ and a lot more ““Private Parts.’’ Carey happily owns up to his stripper fixation, pornaholism, pierced nipples and other personality kinks with the attitude ““Hey, I’m just a regular guy from Cleveland.’’ The scary thing is, he may be right.
When ““Roseanne’’ lost touch with reality last season (after the show caught up with the star), viewers in search of blue-collar comedy, and a new hefty hero, made season two of ““Drew Carey’’ a hit. They connected with this crew-cut goofball’s ““Dilbert’’-like workplace and brain-dead beer buddies. In its first season, some critics cried ““Friends’’ clone, an idiotic comparison considering the show’s defiantly unhip sensibility. ““Not everybody’s a hip urbanite,’’ says Carey, 39, sounding sincere even though he’s speaking from a cell phone in Los Angeles. Other critics were simply irritated by Carey’s used-car-salesman delivery. ““The season’s most annoying new star,’’ said NEWSWEEK. ““Yeah, that was the pilot,’’ says Carey. ““I would have said the same thing. It makes me cringe now.''
Someday he might feel the same way about this book. Already, the tabloids have zeroed in on his revelation that he was molested at the age of 9. ““I personally can’t stand celebrity autobiographies that go on and on, page after page about their troubled childhoods,’’ he writes on page 124. He offers no details about the incident, and by page 128, he’s moved on to his nipple rings. A couch-shrunk celebrity might have connected the two dots. But Carey brought himself back from the brink of suicide with Tony Robbins’s self-help tapes, not therapy. Just another way he’s refreshingly unlike most Hollywood celebs. He behaves badly in public (sleazy women, loud drunkenness) and doesn’t apologize to the media for it like, say, Kelsey Grammer. ““I have a normal libido,’’ he protests. ““You shouldn’t have to apologize for having a sex drive.’’ One chapter revels in the time a ““Hard Copy’’ crew caught him on tape paying a woman in New Orleans $100 to bare her breasts to a braying crowd. Hey, it was Mardi Gras! An ex-marine, he proudly admits that after the L.A. riots he bought himself a few assault rifles, handguns and plenty of ammo. ““You’d be crazy not to,’’ he says. An ex-geek (before joining the corps), he suffered so deeply from peer pressure as a teen that he now seems determined to defy it. At first ABC reportedly wanted him to grow his hair, lose the geek glasses, maybe start hanging out in coffee bars. He refused, understanding that he needed to remain true to his art, and that he wasn’t going to meet strippers in a coffee bar.
