What is it with stoners? Everyone I know who is into weed as a way of life seems to feel like they’re a part of some giant club that’s secret but totally exclusive. Every time they decide to toke up, they want to listen to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and Cypress Hill, like they somehow, all of a sudden identify with these people because they too smoked weed. What? Drinkers don’t do this. When I’m having a few beers, my taste in music doesn’t change. I don’t all of a sudden want to hear Janis Joplin any more just because she was a drunk. And in fact, I almost never want to hear the Doors when I’m drinking, because I would rather be happy. In fact, when I drink, very often I listen to Peter Tosh.
And nowhere is this more evident than with movies. If you ever walk into an apartment, and it is thick with smoke and a distinctive smell, guaranteed the movie on the TV is one of these: Half-Baked, Reefer Madness, The Big Lebowski, Harold and Kumar, or any number of Cheech and Chong flicks. That’s it. Apparently, for most, getting high means that you are totally in the mood for sitting around and doing nothing and watching others get high and actually do stuff. And if you fall into that category, Comedy Central’s Home Grown is for you. It comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s all about the weed. Sketches, skits, clips, and actual full shows from Comedy Central’s mostly-impressive roster of shows. Pretty much every mention of drugs from Comedy Central over the last two years is crammed onto one DVD.
This includes full episodes of the always-excellent Sarah Silverman Show, the not-so-great TV Funhouse, the solid Root Of All Evil, the hit-and-miss Reno 911, and the bizarre but funny Strangers With Candy. The Sarah Silverman show contained here is the one where she walks around in blackface the whole episode to “see what it’s like to live as a black person”. All of which is staggeringly politically incorrect, and decidedly funny. The reason this episode makes it onto the “drug disc” is that her two gay friends, Steve and Brian, get incredibly high on medicinal marijuana and freak out some. It is the best episode featured on the disc. The TV Funhouse episode is a Christmas episode, where all the puppets drain Doug’s spinal cord, synthesize the fluid inside, and get wasted on Christmas Cheer. That one is pretty lame. Skip it, unless you’re too wasted to use the DVD remote.
The Root of All Evil - one of the best new comedy shows on TV, features Lewis Black as a judge deciding which of two things is the Root Of All Evil. Like, Dick Chaney vs.
Paris Hilton. Or, in this case, Weed vs. Beer. Which is hilarious. The
Reno 911 episode is all about the cops trying to get to Burning Man to do a drug sting, but makes it onto the drug DVD because there is also a marijuana sting at a head shop. The episode has moments, but there’s a bizarre freaky-hooker thing that goes nowhere and some pretty lame jokes. And Strangers With Candy, which is a show that never really got airplay here in
Canada, gets on just because it’s always in some way about drugs. It’s a TV show about a 46-year-old woman who has lived through a 35-year drug and prostitution binge, and is now picking up her life where she left off, as a freshman in high school. This episode sees her making drugs to become friends with the popular girl in school, and killing her with those drugs. This show was recently made into a movie which was pretty great, and at least that’s available in
Canada. Also called Strangers with Candy - recommended by Cynical Cinema!
After the episodes, there are sketches from other shows. Three from the Sarah Silverman show, two sing-along karaoke segments from Drawn Together (also recommended by Cynical Cinema - and do people who are high like karaoke?), three Crank Yankers and Viva Variety. The best sketch on the disc comes (of course) from Chappelle’s Show, because all the best sketches of the past five years come from Chappelle’s Show. It’s an amazingly smart and hilarious send-up of Show Business in general, all within a six-minute sketch. He takes on a movie role (with Susan Sarandon) in his Lil’ Jon character. He endorses a breakfast cereal. But the funniest bit of all is his send-up of MTV Cribs, that show where viewers get a tour of the most ridiculous, painfully overdone mansions in Hollywood, always owned by some rap star who has managed to become so rich, so fast, while still being so stupid, that they will spend 4 million dollars on (in this case) a White-Panda-Fur-Coat.
Then there are the extras. Just bizarre stuff, that I guess Comedy Central feels are ideal for the stoners. In point of fact, stoners will watch anything and think it’s fantastic, so maybe that was the thinking that went into this. There is a halfway decent comedic parody of those Canadian Hinterland Who’s Who spots, about spiders on drugs. There are three short animated films from The Animation Show (reviewed last week by Cynical Cinema), including the gory and bizarre “Rabbit”. There is a documentary piece, made in 1971 about marijuana. All of this makes sense. The stoner crowd that I know absolutely LOVE to watch programs ABOUT weed while they’re high. Why? Who knows? This is why they watch Reefer Madness, which is really just a dreadful nonsense movie. I think it’s because stoners can’t really have a conversation about anything BUT weed, because they have no actual knowledge. So watching programs about weed with other stoners allows them to seem really smart about at least one thing. “Whoa, man! Did you see the size of that bud? You gotta plant it in goat manure facing Southeast to get buds that big! Duuuuuuuuude.”
And then - the most bizarre feature on this disc - a full episode of “The Joy Of Painting”. This is that TV show that ran on public-access TV in the 80s, that has somehow become a sort-of remembered part of our culture. Bob Ross, in a half hour, paints a painting that is remarkably good, and teaches the people at home how to do the same. He has an enormous afro, and he talks in the most obnoxiously soothing voice ever. And yes, a voice CAN be obnoxiously soothing. It’s not an oxymoron. Anyway, there is an episode of THIS show on the Comedy Central Homegrown DVD. The disc seems aimed at the aged 17-30 demographic, all of whom would be completely unfamiliar with this show. And is this really a favourite of stoners everywhere? Who knows. Who cares? Stoners, after all, will watch anything and everything.
And there is a lot of anything and everything on Comedy Central’s Homegrown DVD. Everything for the wake-and-bake set, anything for the chronic, and only a small amount for the rest of us. It’s worth picking up as a sort of guide to Comedy Central, an overview of the talent on their roster, but only the potheads could enjoy the whole thing.