Hey, Isn’t That a Mamas & the Papas Song?

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

The first time I saw paparazzi photos of Paris Hilton’s giant bag of weed, I felt a giant suck of sadness. Could smoking weed be a pastime for bratty douches now, instead of just a really great way to watch TV? It was sort of like when Liz Phair went and recorded a tweenybop album, for tweenagers, because the misfits who loved her just weren’t enough. Didn’t you think marijuana was for cooler people than Hilton and her consorts? Shouldn’t they stick to Ketel One and cocaine? And where has Miss Hilton been lately, anyway? Good lord, I had to leave my house yesterday for a carton of cigarettes and a sixpack, and all the tabloids at the 7-Eleven had on offer was that Jessica Simpson had lost her dog, something about some Kardashian, and some people in Hollywood (including some Kardashian) really are too fat. There wasn’t even any Jon & Kate gossip. I think my 7-Eleven gets its deliveries late.

There was a trio of Estonians maybe in front of me in line, taking a long time as they chose their dinner from 7-Eleven’s revolving meats, and a guy behind me with two Bud tallboys and a banana for strength. The Estonians comprised a tall goth girl, the lumbering giant from Moonraker, and the handsome and sinister brains of the gang. The guy behind me was tiny (four-ten?) and weird and most certainly schizoid; he reminded me of a young homeless man I bought breakfast for in college, who picked his nose and slyly ate it, thinking if he turned his head I wouldn’t see. I was frizzy-haired and makeupless, in cozy stretch track pants and an orange cashmereish sweater with a salmon salad stain from when I’d lain on my sofa and held the bowl to my bosom, the better to shove it into my maw, before realizing unless drastic action were taken—the drastic action of getting up off my couch—I would end my night without Marlboros and beer. In that sad 7-Eleven line, I was its queen.

It is hard for me to get off my couch, because I’m a little depressed and that’s where my only friend, the television, is, not because I’m stoned. But if marijuana is the reason you can’t get off your couch, you should switch from indica to sativa. It’s the kind of marijuana that makes you clean your kitchen—though if you want your grout really properly scrubbed, buy a friend some meth.

My friend Paul (not my boyfriend Paul), he with the hot girlfriend of last week’s column, is an environmental engineer by trade, and has been unemployed far longer than I. In that time, he’s run for a City Council seat, taken factory work alongside the developmentally disabled (because they were hiring, not because he’s a tard), and is now a student at Oaksterdam University, learning everything there is to know about the care and cultivation of the Devil’s Weed, so as to open a club. All that energy! He’s like Martha Stewart sort of, but with a hotter girlfriend and no social couth. Meanwhile, six months ago, I once baked a pie.

This may read as an indictment of weed, since I’m hanging out with homelesses in 7-Eleven, unable to work my way out of a paper bag. It’s not: it’s an indictment of having too much in savings, so I haven’t been forced yet to look for a job outside the field in which I was trained.

In a down economy, when there’s not enough work, marijuana makes things nicer, and not only for autistic kids, though it’s a lovely story that you should read. For everyone! It’s like Wellbutrin without the side effects (insouciant paranoia and edginess and frighteningly fast mood swings, and when I took it to “quit” smoking cigarettes, I could feel my brain cells wrathfully crackling) and we could all use a little of that. Faith Popcorn invented cocooning in the early 1980s, when Reagan’s recession made the yuppies stay home. When things get go-go again, we can get out of our track pants, head to the disco, and watch Paris Hilton snort rails. Until then, there are worse things that could happen to Los Angeles than a pot club on every corner and a chicken in every pot.

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