May 4, 2008
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1 Happy Cinco de Mayo!
2 The fun thing about Cinco de Mayo is it always puts me in the mood for some great Mexican food.
3 Like when you analyze it, it isn't that big a deal to people who live IN Mexico, but we Californians go crazy over it. I love it every year.
4 Except the off ramps.
5 The other fun thing about Cinco de Mayo is it alway reminds me that the day before is my mom's birthday, and that I get to go see my mom.
6 Good gal.
7 But then I think I've mentioned that once or twice around here.
8 I saw her yesterday and within seconds we talked about our neighborhood and all it's memorable characters when we were both so much younger.
9 Like the lady down the street who used to punish her wayward sons by making them walk around the block with their underpants on their heads each time they would do something wrong.
10 Yesterday my mom told me that their parents got caught growing weed in their backyards.
11 Not weedS you nincompoops!
12 Amazing what one letter can do to change things. Yeesh.
13 Weed. Marijuana. Mary Jane. Pot. Grass. Crypto. Trees. Fire. Dank. Herb. Purps. Boo Boo.Grapes. Dope. Sticky. Chron. Green. Bud. You get the idea.
14 I don't mean to date myself, but when I was a wee lad in South San Francisco, weed was pretty much not even talked about. It was considered madness, reefer madness, and it would turn perfectly sane people into lunatics and drooling wolves.
15 I remember as a kid talking ot my dad about the great swing drummer for Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa. I told my dad that I loved Krupa's work on Sing, Sing, Sing and the irrepressible Drum Boogie.
16 Anytime I would mention Krupa to my dad, he would always look at me a bit pained. And then he'd get his tough guy on and say with utter disdain, "Krupa? He was a hophead!"
17 I never went further with it, figuring that Krupa had needles dangling off his arms, and a bent cigarette defining his subservient allegiance to heroin and poppies.
18 He actually got three months for possession of pot.
The Immortal Gene Krupa19 Different times.
20 Dad was probably repeating what a lot of others were saying about Krupa.
21 I knew a few people who experimented with pot back in the day.
22 It isn't safe, but it also doesn't turn people into wolves and junkies.
23 If anything, it just prepares them for senility.
24 I remember this one guy in college who claimed there was no evidence that marijuana...
25 Well, he was actually taking a huge hit off a joint, sucking some of it into his nostrils, and then looking up with bloodshot eyes, and addressing an entire room, as he sucked the thing down an eight-of-an-inch roach, to which he surgically attached an alligator clip he stole from the back of my teevee.
26 "There is actually no evidence," he began, "that marijuana..."
27 ...
28 He stopped abruptly, and I would have thought he had conked out were it not for the fact that his eyes were still open, and his face frozen with what one could only call a stupid grin on his face.
29 ...
30 Coo-coo. Coo-coo. Coo-coo.
31 And then he started a laugh that began low and continued on one long note. He had nothing else to say, and just laughed and grinned, his red eyes twinkling with David Crosby precision.
32 I decided then and there that this stuff was more dangerous than anything I had ever encountered, and I instantly traded my hippy clothes in for an Izod shirt and golf pants.
33 Incense, peppermints indeed.
34 I'm gonna go now. All this talk has given me a hankering for a Jack Taco, the devouring of which at 3 a.m. was at one time considered Truth.
35 Enjoy your day.
36 Peace.
~H~
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