Respect Authority

I realized something about myself yesterday. See, while some potheads find themselves so jaded as to lament the existence of a weed-related holiday (Aaron), many of us - myself included - take pride in the thought that thousands, nay millions, of Americans got so high yesterday that they forgot 4/20 is also the anniversary of Columbine, and Hitler’s birthday. (Just think, if THOSE people smoked a little bit of herb, maybe the world would be a different place today). 

Yet even though I more than willingly overlooked the fact that I happen to smoke nearly every day, thereby making a holiday celebrated by smoking less than significant, I found myself a little intrigued by the tone of 4/20/2009. 

Given the recent relaxation of marijuana-related law enforcement, and the more subtle shift in national perception of the drug, it should come as no surprise that yesterday was as much about activism as blunts and bongs. Massachusetts voters, who decriminalized the drug last November, were out in force, and in Illinois, medical marijuana supporters readied a TV ad campaign in support of a bill that would legalize marijuana use by patients with debilitating conditions. Two New York senators are expected to introduce a similar bill on Tuesday, less than a month after the state did away with many of its cumbersome Rockefeller Drug Laws. Oh, and High Times magazine crowned “Miss High Times.”

Regardless of how quickly or slowly decriminalization and legalization come about on a national or even state-by-state level, there’s no question that the stigma of marijuana, the red-eyed, unshowered, hitting-girls-on-tricycles-with-your-car stigma that makes your average pothead snort in disgust and say things like “I live above the influence of this fucking public service announcement,” is dissipating, and with that dissipation comes the inevitable “movement.” Doctors, politicians, advocates and activists who had in the last few years laid low are suddenly making themselves heard, most likely because it seems people are starting to actually consider listening. Read More ›

Well I never!

First they taunt us with ironically entertaining but completely brainwashing D.A.R.E sessions, then they infiltrate our televisions with endless public service announcements. They even put a damper on our ability to drive through a McDonald’s high without double-checking for pigtail-wearing girls on tricycles. And I hate doing that! 

And now, of all the things, they’re trying to steal our day. Indeed, some anti-drug advocates are using April 20 — according to the Wall Street Journal, a day when “marijuana smokers around the country light up for an unofficial holiday celebrating pot that stems from smoker slang ‘420;’ thank you WSJ, bastion of all that is hip and knowing — to start a movement against pot that cites not only health and legal reasons, but moral ones. American pot smokers, the North Coastal Prevention Coalition claims, are unwittingly supporting drug cartels in Mexico. 

Five years ago, this sort of holier-than-thou attitude would have gotten any coalition a series of puzzled looks. “What’s a cartel? What’s Mexico?” but these days it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore story after story on the escalating violence across the border, the vast majority of it stemming from Mexico’s biggest industry: las drogas. Read More ›

I’ll be the first to admit I do a lot of stupid things when I’m high. Why, just last night I paused reality television to satisfy a sudden and very strong urge to watch at least five YouTube videos of animals doing silly things - like running into walls, or attacking babies. Oh how I laughed, and laughed.

But this is something I’ve never done. A Nebraska man who was trying to calm down his over-hyper cat stuffed the poor thing into a boxlike homemade bong, and proceeded to smoke up with her inside. 

The 20-year-old faces animal cruelty charges, to say nothing of good old fashioned drug charges. Moreover I think someone should consider sending this genius to engineering school, because if this was somehow an effective bong construction, then we all have a thing or two to learn.

The thing is though, and it pains me to say this since nothing would give me greater pleasure than getting my own furry friend high, cats don’t seem particularly fond of weed. It’s sort of like dogs and peanut butter: they’re curious about it, primarily because it makes that significant journey from humans’ hands to their mouths, but when given the opportunity to partake it’s mostly confusion and slight distaste. In fact, when Godzilla - my own cat - is demolishing my expensive Pottery Barn loveseat with his talons, it’s not harsh words or the threat of beatings that deters him, but rather a well-aimed plume of smoke between the eyes. That or a squirt gun. 

So word to the wise. If your cat starts acting up, let him. I personally take great pleasure watching Godzilla tear ass from one of the apartment to the other, or chase imaginary bugs, or entertain himself with a sock full of catnip. In fact, having a cat when you’re a pothead is sort of like a 24-hour America’s Funniest Home Videos, in your own home. A stoned cat, on the other hand, would probably just eat a ton of food, throw it up on your carpet, and then go to sleep.

Do you see him? If you squint a bit it even looks like he’s puffing on whatever it was that got me seeing faces growing out of the fucking street in the first place.

Who knows, it’s probably just Jesus or whatever.

Hangovers have always existed, even before color was invented!

The dark shadow of suicidal gloom enveloping you after enjoying a few too many glow sticks the night before? Call up Dr. Green. Or perhaps you’re a real bad ass, and drank a few too many glasses of red wine while watching America’s Best Dance Crew, so now your brain is pulsating more than Mario Lopez’ pants every time he locks eyes with JC Chasez? Dr. Green’s got an herbal remedy for that too. However, if you’re not a devout vegetarian, you could just drink some more wine, but I find alcoholism doesn’t really compliment the taste of Frosted Flakes all that much.

Obviously, the easiest way to avoid a hangover is to simply not drink at all, but that’s no fun (except for not feeling like a drowned, bloated corpse the entire next day, I guess). Plus, just like how nobody liked the militant straight edge kid in high school, once you graduate to the adult world of working full time, paying bills, and being able to afford better drugs, nobody likes a teetotaler either. Because they make people feel guilty about their drug problems, and that’s not very nice at all!

Some may say it’s irresponsible to encourage substance abuse as a cure for substance abuse, but I say, that’s why God blessed us with so many different varieties of drugs in the first place! Imagine a world where there weren’t vines flowering with beautiful PCP blossoms every Spring, or proud groves of crystal methamphetamine trees. I mean, fuck, Kentucky would have to find a new state tree in that case!

Curing a hangover isn’t about making good choices; after all, if you knew how to make those you wouldn’t be hungover in the first place. It’s about making less bad choices, and personally, I’m of the opinion that skipping out of work so you can smoke marijuana all morning and chase it with a couple glasses of scotch is a lot healthier than eating all that greasy diner food the hungover many tend to gravitate towards. By noon, you’ll be ready to start drinking again!

Just when you were starting to think that maybe graffiti would be a fun endeavor to try, notorious L.A.-based crew, the Metro Transit Assassins, goes and gets themselves arrested. Conveniently, the contraband confiscated in the process only proves once and for all that graffiti really is a fun endeavor to try… until you get thrown in jail. And isn’t that just the case with everything fun these days? And by everything, I mean pretty much just drugs.

The MTA is responsible for L.A.’s single largest tag, a monstrous three-story-high, half-mile long signature on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. You know, that festering trickle of runoff and slime, a brook at best, babbling only because of the ferocious bacterial life within, that skateboarders sometimes do really cool tricks over? Regardless, the MTA so kindly graced L.A. with a veritable landmark and how does the city repay them? By putting them in cuffs and confiscating all their guns and weed. Pretty fucking ungrateful if you ask me.

Their work is not your typical crudely drawn ejaculating penis or alien giving the finger scrawled in alleyways and along the subway tracks. One has to be pretty fucking good, and organized, to deface something as huge as the L.A. river bank. And it shows — one of the suspects arrested drives a $60,000 BMW, and another member of the crew, well-known graffiti artist Smear, has recently sold pieces to wealthy collectors. Their operation is, or was anyway, on a scale equivalent to that of their massive acts of public beautification. Indeed, the term “high rollers” works on so many levels here that I think I just popped some of the pun receptors in my brain.

Meanwhile, the cost to clean up the tag is also proportional — the city estimates it will run about $3.7 million to remove the three lumbering block letters, as extra measures must be taken to keep the 400 gallons of paint used to create the tag from running into the river. After all, one wouldn’t want to contaminate all the blood-encrusted syringes and filthy condoms that live there.

Nonetheless, these guys are in some shit now, and it’s considerably deeper than the Los Angeles River.

Olympic gold medalist - fourteen times over - Michael Phelps was busted over the weekend after a photo surfaced of him smoking weed out of a massive bong. Since the pic was taken well after Phelps had traded out his Olympic Speedo for regular clothes, the revelation has no bearing on his gold medal status, but does - for the morally conservative - call into question Phelps’ status as a role model for America’s youth. 

While catching public figures green-handed, so to speak, is hardly new, neither is this sort of typical anti-drug backlash. We know our nation’s politicians, athletes and executives all smoke weed, or have smoked weed, or have been peer-pressured into smoking weed “without inhaling” - but that knowledge doesn’t keep the country’s anti-drug aficionados from lambasting current and/or former potheads for their transgressions. In the great big world of public-figure America, smoking dope is something you do when you’re young, then spend the rest of your life trying to cover up. Unless you’re Barack Obama, and coming clean stands to help you capture the youth vote.

But for me — for someone who has likened dopey-eyed Michael Phelps to John Leguizamo’s sloth character in Ice Age, for someone who finds the superhuman swimmer something of a nuisance with his retarded face, perfect body and unfunny SNL contributions — for me, this weekend’s big discovery makes Michael Phelps, well, kind of alright. In fact, seeing the manfish take an enormous hit — and his subsequent decision to admit it, apologize and move on — makes me downright like him. Celebrities, they’re just like us! They swim 738 laps two times a day, and then smoke a bowl! 

To be frank, the photo also makes me feel a little better about the fact that I counterintuitively exercise two to three times a week, and smoke nearly twice as often. If Michael Phelps doesn’t consider being drug-free a precursor to being Olympic-caliber healthy, then I sure as hell don’t need to worry about weed’s effect on my treadmill skills. In fact, perhaps it’s high time (no pun intended) I started smoking up on the treadmill. 

And although, when it first came out, Phelps’ SNL skit highlighting his ludicrous daily diet made me scoff — “Fuck you Michael Phelps, fuck you and your calorie-burning gill-having fish self” — well now I totally get it. I’d be on the Michael Phelps diet too - after ripping a two-foot bong.

Back in the day, when my faith in the magazine industry was not yet lost, I made the massive mistake of subscribing to Radar. I say this was both a mistake, and massive, not because I don’t enjoy Radar — rather, it was and is one of my two favorite magazines — but because the process of subscribing to a dying media is trying, frustrating and ultimately heartbreaking.

You see, in a way this was my fault. Being something of a nerd for media gossip, I knew Radar’s unfortunate history: the magazine had already started and folded several times before its latest incarnation, sort of like a determined toddler whose attempts at walking keep ending with crashes into the coffee table.

Moreover, Radar’s latest foray into the great big world of publishing came at a time when magazines were already on the decline: some of the country’s more stalwart titles — Time, Newsweek, Men’s Vogue — were already seeing storm clouds on the horizon, so for a magazine devoted to the very celebrity gossip and snarky commentary reinvented by the mag-killing blogosphere to attempt a print revival — well it was sort of like glossy suicide. Read More ›

The 1960s and early 70s were a tumultuous time due to a cultural upheaval contributed to by the civil rights movement, an unpopular war in Vietnam, a disaster of a presidency and lots of kids having way too much fun getting ludicrously high on experimental drugs and having sex with each other.

Today, we are looking at a convergence of many similar events, some of them shockingly similar, in fact. Iraq is the Vietnam of the desert, and Bush is the Nixon of the new millennium, and the only reason he wasn’t pressured into resignation is because the public’s apathy in the new millennium is as superpowered as our computers. But with this past election, which we keep acknowledging that everyone is fed up with hearing about, and yet continue to disregard this knowledge, the strongholds of apathy seem to have crumbled — which is surprising, really, considering medical marijuana was legalized in several states along with Massachusetts shaming the country once again by outright decriminalizing the wacky. And doesn’t that just explain why it’s a commonwealth and not a real state. With all the pot smoking going on in this country, it’s surprising people even remembered to vote at all.

With the apparent dissolution of apathy, even if it was only a temporary surge due to people being so scared that they actually took the effort to remember how to read so they could follow the news, we see the early groundwork for new culture wars not unlike the social revolutions of the 60s. Obama’s reenactment of Dr. Seus’s Hop on Pop is obviously the most blatant example, considering people under 50 (uninformed hipsters who thought Obama was cute) overwhelmingly voted for that one, whereas the over 50 crowd (insignificant old people) gravitated largely to McWrinkle.

This could be the first clear evidence of the younger generation finally taking hold, and with the great dying off of the old, obstinate farts, there will finally be the opportunity for new ideas and values to take hold. On the other hand, humanity might just go ahead and let us all down again, as it has typically chosen to over the past, oh, half a million years.
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