Streisand Smoked With Sellers, But Not with Seth

UPDATE 11/23: Streisand's new memoir My Name is Barbra contains the revelation that she lost her virginity after smoking marijuana, something she claims she did only "rarely" before and after. The affair didn't end well, but the experience was illuminating. She writes, "At least it gave me some more material to work with....When I sang about wanting someone, for the first time I actually understood it."  

Writing about her first husband Elliott Gould, she says, “I wasn’t a pot smoker, although I do remember one night in LA when we went out with Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland. I must have had a puff or two of what they were smoking, or else I just got a contact high, because we were giggling all through dinner. At one point we were making up all sorts of crazy flavors for ice cream.”

Later in the book, she recounts calling her lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman for help after producer Ray Stark gave her a hash brownie at a party without telling her it was loaded, causing her heart to race. 

10/15: Streisand is included in the new book  Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

"It's still illegal?"

On Wednesday's Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Seth Rogen was praised for being brave enough to come out of the closet as a pot smoker, and was asked about others he'd smoked with: Snoop (check); James Franco (no); Paul Rudd and Sarah Silverman (yes, "a lot"). Rogen hadn't smoked weed with Willie, he said, but Cohen said that he had.

Perhaps the most surprising answer came when Rogen was asked if he'd smoked with Barbra Streisand, who played his mother in 2012's The Guilt Trip.

"No, but we talked about it a lot," Rogen said, adding, "She smoked weed with Peter Sellers though. That's the craziest shit ever!"

It's rather too bad Rogen and Streisand didn't toke up, on or off screen, in their "for airplanes only" movie, in which Streisand's character drinks when she needs to blow off steam, instead of using something more interesting (and less harmful, according to our President).

La Streisand tells George Segal, "Now I'm going to make you happy" as she lights a joint to share with him in the 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat. 

She recounted to Rolling Stone in 1971:
 
"Since I get nervous in places like Vegas, it occurred to me to do this funny little routine - actually telling the audience about my hangup. The point was, you shouldn't rely on emotional crutches. It was almost a sermon - no crutches, people; crutches are a no-no. Then at the end, I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band. It was great - it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out."

Barbra, The Way She Is by Christopher Anderson (2006) says Streisand's role in The Way We Were was dependent on her appearing at a McGovern rally organized by Warren Beatty on April 15, 1972 at the LA Forum (pictured above). According to David Crosby's book, Stand and Be Counted, after a second standing ovation at the McGovern event, Barbra stopped to talk to the crowd, reprising her Vegas act.

Speaking of her stage fright, she said, "I was even more scared until I spoke to friends of mine, also performers you know, and they were telling me. . . that in order to conquer their fear. . . some of them drink. But I really hate the taste of liquor so I can't do that. Some of them take pills, but I can't even take aspirin." At that moment she took an exaggerated drag of what appeared to be a joint. After huge laugher and applause, she made a confused face and asked, "It's still illegal?" Taking another toke she spoke through clenched teeth (as though holding the smoke in) she said, "We should face our problems head on."

She then sang, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" (with the trippy lyric, "You'll feel part of every mountain, sea and shore / You can hear, from far and near, a world you've never heard before.") She received a total of six standing ovations. Listen to a recording of her marijuana monologue.

Streisand's current husband, James Brolin, played a pivotal role as an outgoing drug "czar" in the anti–drug war movie Traffic (2000). Her first husband, Elliott Gould, said in 1974, "I have no problem with drugs." Not even marijuana? he was asked. "No one has a problem with marijuana," he replied. The actor told Playboy in 1970 (while married to Streisand), "I'm able to switch into certain inner places with marijuana. I've also taken a couple of trips that have been incredible." Gould puffed pot in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and appeared in the pot-friendly "Oceans 420" movies.

ADDENDUM 3/20: Streisand has published a HuffPo piece on carbon farming as a solution for climate change.

4/16: Anderson now claims Streisand had an affair with Prince Charles, who's been pretty open to medical marijuana. In December 1998, Charles surprised a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer by suggesting she try medical marijuana. Karen Drake, 36, said: "He said he had heard it was the best thing for relief from MS. In February 2000, Charles visited Trench Town, Jamaica, the neighborhood of late reggae legend Bob Marley, and was greeted by Marley's widow, Rita, and former bandmate Bunny Wailer. Mrs. Marley gave Charles a red, yellow and green Rastafarian knit hat with false dreadlocks, and the prince put it on.

11/15: Streisand has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski, who introduced an amendment in June to prohibit the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration from using money to interfere in state medical marijuana laws.

Miley Tokes, Gaga Chokes : All in 24 Hours!

How can a girl get attention these days in the media meatgrinder Penthouse once depicted on its cover? When a young woman has to resort to licking and riding construction equipment in the nude so that we'll listen to her song, it's our society that's really reached a new low.

You can't blame Miley Cyrus for needing to compete with the hired nude girls in Robin Thicke's idiotic "Blurred Lines" video, and you gotta admit she came in like a wrecking, twerking ball to take Thicke out, even casting a female dwarf as him in her performance last night at the European MTV awards in Amsterdam.

To cap it off, after winning "Best Video" for "Wrecking Ball," Cyrus pulled a joint out of a Chanel bag and lit it onstage -- and no one was talking about anything else. (TMZ has the unedited and edited-for-the-US nonsmoking version.)

Cyrus's blunt move out doobed Lady Gaga, who smoked onstage last fall at her concert in Amsterdam, saying, "It has totally changed my life and I've really cut down on drinking. It has been a totally spiritual experience for me with my music.”

But just when we were celebrating the reality that women could come out of the cannabis closet without repurcussions to their careers or personal lives, Gaga labeled herself as addicted to pot, grabbing back headlines she hasn't enjoyed exiting her egg.

How to get attention, ladies? Like Joni Mitchell did, or Grace Slick, or Chrissie Hynde: With talent and hard work. Let's stop watching our music on YouTube and open our ears and hearts to the sound again. We've got a lot more to fix than the pot laws.

UPDATE 12/7/2013 - Gaga's views on marijuana are getting as hard to keep up with as her fashion statements. She now says smoking pot makes her feel 17 again. What could be wrong with that? 

Martha Stewart On Rolling a Joint with Andy Cohen

UPDATE 3/24: "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart" on Max interviews Stewart's fellow prisoner Susan Spry, who was serving time on a meth charge when they met at Alderson prison (where Billie Holiday was also incarcerated). Stewart wrote a note of recommendation that got Spry the job she still holds after she left prison.

The series reveals that part of Stewart's rehab/rebranding after her prison stint included appearing at the 2015 roast of Justin Bieber, during which she gave tips on making a shiv, and joked about smoking a joint (and having a three-way) with him. She now says (upon posing at age 80 for the cover of Sports Illustrated), that sitting next to Snoop at that roast "cemented" their relationship. 

“He smoked all day long,” Stewart told the LA Times. “All he did was smoke, and everybody was in such a good mood and we were all roasting each other. And luckily, Snoop’s secondhand smoke really kind of eased the pain for me a lot, and it was hysterical because I just felt, ‘OK, I’ll go with the flow here.’ After like 6 billion views around the world, it turned out to be one of the best things — and it cemented my relationship with Snoop.”

UPDATE 9/20: Stewart has announced a line of CBD edibles. "The flavorful citrus medley of wellness gummies includes Meyer lemon, kumquat, and blood orange, while the delicious berry medley includes red raspberry, huckleberry, and black raspberry."

6/13 - Huffington Post reports that Martha Stewart, the woman who does everything perfectly, also knows how to roll a joint. Or so she said in an interview with Andy Cohen, where she also said she almost asked for a puff off a sloppily rolled one she'd seen on the way to the studio. "That would have made for a very interesting interview," quickly quipped Cohen. Perhaps Stewart ought to demonstrate her joint-rolling skills in an upcoming show, as Canadian historian Pierre Berton did in 2010. 



It seems Stewart had her eyes opened to the injustices of the drug war when she took a prison rap for the true stock manipulators who bankrupted our country. In her 2005 holiday message from prison, Stewart wrote, "I beseech you all. . . to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking."

In April 2013, Stewart said on The Today Show that she and Snoop hang out and bake brownies together. It's true: Stewart and the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg baked brownies and rapped together about the green kind on her show in 2009. "Why not bake 'em at 4 hundred and 20 degrees?" asked Snoop. 

In 2017, the Martha Stewart and Snoop Dog: T-Mobile Super Bowl Ad won a Tokey Award for Best Commercial:

 

In 2014, Stewart offered free patterns for craft projects made with her hemp/cotton yarn line. She commented upon the September 2020 release of her CBD edibles line: "I've found that CBD supplements are a simple way to enhance my own health and wellness, especially when it comes to managing the stresses of daily life. I set out to create the most delicious CBD products on the market, drawing inspiration from some of my favorite recipes and flavor profiles from my greenhouse and gardens. 

"My wellness gummies closely resemble the French confections, pâte de fruits, rather than the sticky, overly sweet versions you might find elsewhere. Created in collaboration with top researchers and scientists at Canopy Growth, I am very proud of the end result: wellness gummies, oil drops, and soft gels that taste as wonderful as they make you feel."