[420 Girl]

Considering the chances they’ve taken over the years with their careers, law enforcement, and likely a few shifty back alley dealers, it’s surprising to find out that Cheech and Chong, the duo that brought stoner culture to the masses, don’t even gamble when they’re at a casino.

“No, we don’t do that. We’re smarter than that. We know not to go there and lose all our money,” laughs Shelby Chong, Tommy Chong’s cheerful wife and the opening act for the perpetually high duo on their reunion comedy tour, Cheech and Chong Light Up Canada. They’re in their room at the casino’s hotel room, and moments later, she passes the phone to her husband and the Edmonton-born Chong further elaborates with his characteristic laid-back hippie drawl.

“I’m a gambler,” Tommy Chong retorts. “I took a big gamble putting my wife in the show. It paid off. Now I got her signed to an exclusive contract so that when she goes out on her own tour, I’ll own a piece of her.”

Later on, the twice-divorced Cheech Marin notes his own type of high-stakes living: “I’m getting married again,” he laughs.

It’s a toss of the dice to go out on the road 25 years after they’d parted ways, but so far it’s worked out well for the iconic potheads. Tickets have been selling like prime BC hydro and the guys insist that people should make an attempt to catch them this time around, because they’re not getting any younger.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see two legendary comedians and Shelby,” the 70-year-old Chong states. “It may not happen again. I’m at that age where getting out of the bathtub is a dangerous experience.”

“We were going to call it the “Catch Them Before They Croak” tour,” adds the 62-year-old Marin.
Without a new album, movie, or TV show (even though they are working on a script for the sequel to Up In Smoke), the tour has still sold out, proving that the duo’s cult status and brand of humour still resonates today, competing in a field of comedy that is somewhat more fleeting.

“I saw Steve Martin on Letterman and he’s promoting the Pink Panther,” says Chong. “I never saw the first Pink Panther. I’m too much of a Peter Sellers fan to ever really enjoy it. And I’m a big Steve Martin fan, but not when he’s being Peter Sellers, you know?”

“We have a very strong sense of who we are and what we can do,” Tommy continues. “That’s why it was so easy to go back what we were doing, because we never really stopped. People criticize us by saying, ‘Well, he’s just playing himself.’ If you can make millions of dollars playing yourself, that’s wonderful—as opposed to making money playing somebody else. That’s the thing with Steve Martin. He’s playing Peter Sellers for money. I’d rather see him play Steve Martin for laughs.”

“It’s very non-threatening—we’re not malicious in any sense,” says Marin. “We just go out there and do scenarios that are classic and don’t necessarily have a time or place.”

After their initial breakout success of the 1978 film Up in Smoke, the pair released numerous successful albums and movies before going their separate ways in 1985. Both got involved in television, with Cheech starring in Nash Bridges and Chong starring in That ’70s Show. In their spare time, Cheech got involved in collecting Chicano art and golfing, while Chong used his celebrity status to become one of the leaders of the movement to decriminalize marijuana. There had been rumours for years that they would reunite, but both life and their individual pride got in the way. After planning to get back together in 2003, the duo was derailed when Chong’s marijuana paraphenalia company was raided and he was sentenced to nine months in prison. Looking back on the experience, Chong describes the slammer in a serious, though stunningly fond manner.

“First of all, you get humbled. If you’re not humbled before you go in, you become humbled—that’s the whole point of prison. Prison is to bring you to your knees, make you humble. Once you accept that, everything’s fine. Ego is just another word for fear. An ego is a false sense of who you have to be in order to survive. You lose your ego and there’s nothing but the real you left.”

“But jail is a phenomenal learning experience, because you’re in school 24 hours a day. You don’t have to worry about anything but what you’re going to read. Can you imagine that?” Chong continues. “All you have to worry about is what you’re going to read for the next nine months, what you’re going to study, what you’re going to get yourself involved in.”

“I was on a desert, and it was a protected hunk of land because of endangered desert species. There were scorpions and tarantulas, and that’s where they go to breed. There were also wild jackrabbits that would come out in hundreds on the lawns in the grass on the prison grounds. There were packs of wild dogs that had been abandoned by humans roaming the desert, packed together like wolves. I got a dining experience—I got to eat with [people from] almost every country in the world, from Malaysia, to China, to Korea. Because I was a celebrity, I got invited to all their going-away parties. I took high school while I was there, I took a horticulture class, and I learned how to grow grass of all things. It was a defining moment of my life. I really enjoyed it.”

After he walked out of the prison gates to freedom, the pair tried again for several years to reunite, until a 2008 meeting at Cheech’s house finally brought the grumpy old couple back together.

“It turned into a big yelling fight,” Chong explains. “But I’m deaf, so I really didn’t hear half the things he was saying. And he doesn’t listen, so he didn’t hear anything I said. When I got home, I emailed him and told him that it was just nice seeing him again and even if we didn’t work together, we could still be friends. And he emailed me back and said ‘yeah, I’m up for that.’ The next thing I know, we’re on the road.”

Even though it took them a quarter of a decade to come to terms with each other, neither Cheech nor Chong say that they dwell on the years they could have had together. All of their individual gambles over the years ultimately brought them to this point.

“I don’t have any regrets about my life at all, especially now that Cheech and I are back together,” Chong reflects wistfully. “That was my payoff. I went through that and now I’m on the road with the two people I love the most in the whole world—Cheech and my wife—and we’re all working together. I mean, that is so sweet, you have no idea. It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world, man; there’s nothing to describe it.”

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...next-move.html