Saturday, April 26, 2014

High Times and other Tales of Daze Gone By

VERY SERIOUS MONKEY BIZZ

The new issue of HIGH TIMES is out and there's a 2 page ad in it that i completed a month or so ago for my good friends over at SERIOUS MONKEY BIZZNESS (Made in the USA!).

   The set-up for the "GET SERIOUS" comic page is all the weird/funny names for pot these days. Had no idea that there are so many strains and so many names for those strains. Last time I bought pot it was called …uhhhhh …pot!
This is how i read, real close …and backwards
   I don't smoke anymore, quit EVERYTHING around '91, but a friend (thanks, Rob! RIP!) gave me one of his medical marijuana joints a few years ago and one night, after completing a very long and grueling production deadline, I figured it was time to spark that puppy up (I don't usually talk like that …for some reason, writing about pot just brings the hipster-doofus out in me)! After just 2 hits, all the reasons why I ended up quitting suddenly came rushing back. Here it was, 2 or 3 in the morning, and I'm sitting in the relative security of my upstairs studio, when I became thoroughly convinced that SOMEONE, …no idea who, was watching me and that I would soon be getting a late night visit from one of our local police officers, who would then drag me off to jail, where I would be locked up and never seen or heard from again. Yikes …that all-encomposing, cloud of paranoia that I knew too well from my long lost youth, was paralyzing my brain once again. What the hell was I gonna do? I was gonna lose my family, my house, my job… everything! I closed the curtains, turned off the few lights that were on and tried my best to calm down. Luckily, I was so exhausted after working for 30 hrs straight that I ended up just falling asleep under my desk. (It's a BIG desk… there's alotta room under it)
   But in hindsight, maybe i wasn't so paranoid. Back in high school (go Rams!) I got busted carrying a pound of pot in a briefcase (briefcase? …that's a whole 'nother story). (Yes… I was a pot dealer! Not a very good …or smart one, apparently …never got rich doin' it, just enough to have some pocket money and all the skunk weed I could smoke!)
   This was back around '72, in good old Michigan, when people were getting LIFE sentences for having just a friggin' joint! (Free John Sinclair!) I was charged with dealing, as an adult, so I was sure I was goin' to the state prison for a very, very long time. I was convinced this was my dismal fate all the way up till the trial …until the judge declared "case dismissed!" WTF?! (although back then we had to actually say "what the fuck?", cuz "WTF?!" hadn't been invented yet.)
For a larger, more readable version click HERE
   Turns out, cuz of a little legislative snafu, I was now a FREE MAN! Saints be praised!
Seems that Michigan (and a lotta other states) had changed their laws for pot possession… small amounts were now misdemeanors and people convicted of dealing were going to get even stiffer fines and longer sentences (life, plus…?). But when the laws were changed, they wrote the old laws null and void on a certain date and, for some unknown reason, the new laws didn't go into effect until 30 days after that. So… for a month … EVERYTHING WAS LEGAL! Joints, lids, ounces, pounds… for all I know, tons, too.
L-E-G-A-L! 
   I couldn't believe it! I just walked out, shit-eatin' grin on my face! And those poor cops and prosecutors… they had all their evidence and all their files ready to go. They couldn't do a thing to stop me!
(Cuz I got off scott-free, a lotta kids at school thought that I had cut a deal and had become a narc for the Madison Heights police department. I tell ya… I only WISH that I had been that smart! Woulda saved me a lotta sleepless nights!)
   So did i learn anything? Well, I didn't sell pot again! Switched to hashish …much easier to conceal! HA! Don't need no friggin' briefcase for those little grams of hash!

The entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well, even back then!







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