Directing Capitol Records

by John Schoenkopf

Oklahoma is not Los Angeles. Hell, it's not even Bakersfield. So much so that they'll actually arrest you for having the gall to possess a gram of marijuana. Trust me, I know. They just let me out their hoosegow last night.

Now, they only held me for an hour or two, and the good constables over in Chandler are some of the friendliest jailers you'll ever meet (assuming you have a broken taillight and a gram of marijuana and are driving through Chandler, Oklahoma). 

During my stay there (about two hours), they peppered me with questions: Are you an actor? No. I am the advertising director at LA Record. Are you a model? No, I am the advertising director at LA Record. Do you surf? Sure. Then they called their friends to brag.

"Hey, it's me, [fill in officer's name here, replete with a slow, twangy drawl].... So, after I left your house, not ten minutes go by and I pick up this dude with a broken taillight and get him on possesion of marijuana ... and get this ... he's from California ... and he's the dee-rector of Capitol Records! No, he really is! I saw his credentials and everything! It was a real nice BMW.... Yeah, and he's young, too! Shit, I don't know why he's out here. I think his parents are from Oklahoma ... OK ... I'll tell you more about it when I get there."

What the fuck, cop?

But the mere fact that I was being criminally processed for probably the most docile and socially acceptable thing I'd done all day (having a broken taillight, posessing a gram of marijuana, and driving through Chandler, Oklahoma) brings me to a larger question:

What the fuck, Oklahoma?

I've lived in L.A. my whole life. Before weed was legal, weed was basically legal. When I was in high school, a cop once pulled me over in Lawndale, asked for my address, recognized my Hermosa Beach alley, knew my neighbor, and gave me some pot to smoke with him at a later date that he'd “confiscated” from some less localey kids an hour earlier. 

With over 1,100 legal dispensaries of the stuff and a 70-year crime low, Los Angeles is at its proper place in the fore of coolness. There's a place on Melrose Avenue where you can legally smoke on the sidewalk at a cafe I once sold an ad to. You can even blow your bonghit on the passersby, if you're an asshole. Another cannabis club I frequented back in the day has a vending machine where you slide your money in, and hash pops out.  And to most brilliantly illuminate the high-mindedness of California society, there is a specially designated marijuana smoking section at the Oakland Coliseum during A’s and Raider games. Now, THAT'S a great way to keep fan violence at a minimum, particularly when your fanbase is the RAIDER FANBASE.

Marijuana (and let's be real here, most of us “patients” are perfectly healthy) is safer than any other form of legal intoxication. Alcohol addiction will make you shake in the morning until you spike your coffee urn with Stoli. Pills are just gross, and incredibly life-ruining. Go ask some of my cousins who like smoking Oxycontin off tin foil just how safe those things are. And I guess you could always spin around in a circle until you're dizzy, but that is socially unacceptable.

So without legal weed, we are left with the other illegal drugs: Crack? Totally got a negative Q Score, and with good reason. Please visit Tampa Bay, Florida with Daryl Strawberry for further clarification. PCP? Unless your goal is to take out four cops on your way to jail, I wouldn't recommend it. Heroin seems like a full-time job, with no time off, and you get that obnoxious “feel sorry for me” thing in your voice, and nobody wants that. Cocaine is so damn expensive, and the post-cocaine depression that immediately follows is a total bummer. Meth is just flat out freaky, and if you need dissuasion from trying it, go to a Midwest Wal-Mart at tweaker hour and check out just how sexy it can make you. Twisted, freaky, tweaky meth. Yikes.

Marijuana, in non-enlightened states is on this list of do-badders.

Let's recap for a moment what exactly marijuana does to you: It makes you eat Chinese food on your Grandma's couch while watching a totally boring baseball game. Not that bad. (Granted, eating Chinese food on your Grandma's couch while watching a totally boring baseball game does in fact create its own set of problems, namely, loserdom, but it beats any of the aforementioned troubles your life will become engulfed in if you go down any of those other drug paths.)

As it stands, and I'm sure will continue to stand (hey, the Senators here are Coburn and Inhofe) your choices in Oklahoma are: Drink alcohol (but not more than will get you to a .08), take prescription pills all day and night, or go sober.

After last night, I'm going sober. Here we come, NA Meeting.

I break no laws anymore. I'd made an exception about the pot thing: if I were going to be in Oklahoma for a minute visiting fam, then I'd be doing it on my stony terms. But my stony terms, when in Rome, actually were pretty selfish. My poor cousin Alex who has never smoked anything or drank anything alcoholic in his life was frisked. By a cop. My poor mother, who has definitely smoked plenty, and drunk some alcohol too, was in the car at midnight driving to bail me out of the Chandler holding cell. These people were affected negatively by my insistence that I was right and Oklahoma's laws were wrong.

Well, I am right, and Oklahoma's laws are wrong, but that's not the point. The point is, as much as I love pot, I can't smoke it anymore. At least until I un-addict myself to it.

And by the way, it was a Honda.

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