Ellen's Neat, Sweet Tweet

Ellen DeGeneres has tweeted the following to her 24 million followers: 

US marijuana sales might top $2.3 billion this year. I'm not saying I support it. I'm just saying it's now available in the Ellen Shop.
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 22, 2014

At last check, the little Tweet that Could had 31.5K retweets and was favorited 44,300 times.

I've never heard Ellen say she's smoked pot but she sure can dance. And some of her bits: about forgetting where she put her car keys, or losing track of time, or spending a morning petting her cat instead of working -- well, they sound like she's had experiences like many other Mark Twain award recipients have (including Twain himself). She even voiced a forgetful fish in "Finding Nemo."

DeGeneres slipped in a mention of buying rolling papers in her 2000 special The Beginning, and did a funny bit about rolling papers when she was the first woman to host the Oscars in 2007. She will be hosting again this year on Sunday, March 2.




In September 2013, she interviewed Norwegian brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåke on her talk show about their intentionally terrible song "What Does the Fox Say?"

"I don't know a lot about Norway, but I'm gonna assume marijuana is legal there," DeGeneres joked, before finding out that "fox" in Norwegian is slang for the weed. "It all makes sense now," she said.

UPDATE 10/17 - Ellen has responded on air to a video titled, "Does Ellen Smoke Weed?" She said that the Ellen depicted from 20 years ago might have smoked,  and that one of her writers smokes, but says she doesn't.

Carol Burnett and Hawaii 4-2-0

Eighty-year-old comedy icon Carol Burnett plays a brain cancer patient who goes in search of medical marijuana on a new episode of CBS's Hawaii 5-0. 

Explaining to her nephew why she ended up in the slammer, Burnett's character says, "I needed some grass. How was I to know the guy was a narc?" She had to go to the street, she says, when "Those fascists at the dispensary wouldn’t take my card." [This is a problem for out-of-state medical marijuana users: their own state's cards aren't usually honored elsewhere.]

A subplot on the show had President Obama visiting the island for Thanksgiving; a joke about "the days of Strawberry Fields" followed.

Compounds in marijuana have been shown to kill brain tumor cells without negatively impacting the surrounding healthy cells.

Burnett joins other aging actresses (Polly Bergen on Desperate Housewives; Charlotte Ray on ER) celebrating the healing power of the holy herb on TV.

It might be Burnett's most controversial TV appearance since Friendly Fire, the 1979 drama in which she played a woman whose son is killed by friendly fire in the military.

It's interesting that she would take the role of a marijuana user, because she released a memoir earlier this year about her eldest daughter Carrie Hamilton, who's widely reported to have been addicted to marijuana, cocaine and quaaludes, starting in her teens.

Hamilton died of lung cancer in 2002, at the age of 38. Around 1978 she was a pot smoker, according to a 1979 People magazine story. A study in the American Journal of Public Health concluded, "In March 1978, 13 (21 per cent) of 61 marijuana samples from the southwestern United States were found to be contaminated with the herbicide paraquat, a pulmonary toxin, in concentrations from 3 to 2,264 parts per million. The source of the contamination was an aerial spraying program in Mexico, supported indirectly by United States funds." 

The CDC's website says, "If it is inhaled, paraquat could cause poisoning leading to lung damage. In the past, some marijuana in the United States has been found to contain paraquat." (No mention of the US Government's role in spraying paraquat.)

Friendly fire, indeed.

Burnett was deservedly awarded the Mark Twain Prize at a ceremony that aired tonight. (Twain was observed to be under the influence of hashish in 1865.)

Also tonight, Rhianna won the first-ever Icon award on the American Music Awards telecast.

High Lily, High Lily

My favorite line from Lily Tomlin's masterful album "Modern Scream" comes from this mock question:

Interviewer: "Lily, is it true you have a drug problem?"
Lily: "Yes, it's so hard to get good grass these days."

As one of the two "tokin' women" honoring George Carlin when he posthumously won the Mark Twain Prize,  she opened with, "I flatter myself to think that George and I somehow drank from the same comedy fountain. Or should I say 'inhaled'? Or perhaps I shouldn't."

Lily inhaled on screen with Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda in the  1980 movie "9 to 5," at a pot party that bonded the characters in a deliciously wicked plot to improve their workplace conditions. (It's true: pot leads to communism.) Tomlin's "Tasteful Lady" is a great send-up of the kind of "Mothers Against Everything" that would put the clampdown on cannabis.

Yet I had never heard Tomlin fully "out" herself as a pot smoker until the October issue of Culture Magazine, whose cover is graced with Lily rocking a black bowler hat.

Asked if she's an advocate for marijuana legalization, Tomlin replied, "Yes, yes. Of course."

She said she doesn't have a doctor's recommendation, and asked, "Can you get me one?...I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. I don't use everyday. I'm not that fresh and hip." To the question, does she have any favorite of cannabis strains, Tomlin replied, "I wish I was that sophisticated."

At 72, Tomlin is back on TV as the mother of Reba McEntire in the upcoming ABC sitcom Malibu. She'll appear onstage on January 19, 2013 at the Sunset Cultural Center in Carmel, CA.

In May, Tomlin and longtime writing/life partner Jane Wagner were honored by Sen. Barbara Boxer. Maybe the two should have a toke, and a talk. UPDATE: Maybe they did. 

UPDATE 9/14: Tomlin will receive a 2014 Kennedy Center Honor. The gala will be broadcast on December 30. (Many other Very Important Potheads have received the Honor.) She and Jane Fonda will co-star in the new Netflix series Grace and Frankie.

Veggie VIPs Rock US Postage Stamps; Madonna First Female VIP to Rock Superbowl

Several VIPs (that's Very Important Potheads) will grace US Postage Stamps as part of a new series honoring "vegetarian icons" picked by PETA. McCartney (again) joins Woody Harrelson (natch), Chrissie Hynde, Natalie Portman and Pythagoras on the stamps, which are due to go on sale later this month.

It's just been announced that Hynde will open a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles along with Ellen DeGeneris, another of the 20 vegetarians to get a stamp. (Ellen's never admitted to smoking it, but joked about it when she hosted the Oscars in 2007.) Hynde's "Legalise Me" is the theme song in the new VIP video.

It's a good bet some of the other top vegetarians also toked. Pamela Anderson wrote a letter to Obama in 2008 in favor of legalization. Joan Jett covered the trippy 60s song "Crimson and Clover" and thought pot-puffing actress Kristen Stewart did a great job portraying her in a 2010 biopic. Leo Tolstoy explored the use of hashish and other intoxicants in his 1890 temperance essay "Why People Become Intoxicated," but his conclusions seem based on his experiences with wine and tobacco.

Lots of other cannabis connoisseurs have been honored with postage stamps, including Bessie Smith, Bob Hope, and Mark Twain, whose stamp came out this year. Also given a stamp in 2011 was pioneering African-American writer and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, in whose 1931 film "The Exile" VIP Louise Cook appeared.

And it's been announced that Madonna will appear at this year's Superbowl halftime show on Feb. 5.

As well as turning a suburban spa salesman onto pot in her 1985 movie "Desperately Seeking Susan," the world's most successful female musician admitted to smoking pot and taking Ecstasy in March 2008 upon her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Material Girl (worth an estimated $325 million) is far from the only pot lover who's appeared at America's biggest sports fest. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers rocked the stadium in 2008. At Superbowl 2005, Paul Mc Cartney played "Get Back" with the lyric, "Jo Jo left his home in Tucson Arizona, for some California grass." In 2004, Willie Nelson played along with country singer Toby Keith, he of the famed tune, "I'll Never Smoke Weed With Willie Again."

At least one member of last year's halftime act, The Black Eyed Peas, is a known pot smoker: rapper Taboo (né Jaime Luis Gomez) was arrested near LA in March 2007 after marijuana was found in his car. The Peas just appeared at the nation's tree-lighting ceremony along with Kermit the "It's Not Easy Being Green" Frog and President Obama.