Kamala Harris Address Cannabis, and Joe Rogan, in Her Book "107 Days"

Kamala Harris's new book "107 Days" about her presidential campaign says of her time as District Attorney of San Francisco:

"I was one of the first elected progressive district attorneys, looking for ways to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail rather than put them in it. I didn’t seek jail time for simple marijuana offenses. My Back on Track initiative, connecting offenders with services and jobs, and also taking care of their mental health by doing things like hooking them up with counseling and gym memberships, worked so well it became a model for other jurisdictions. It is true that prosecution rates for violent crime increased on my watch. If you rape a woman, molest a child, or take a life, consequences should be serious and swift. I don’t apologize for that."

Cannabis comes up only one other time in her book, discussing negotiations to be interviewed by Joe Rogan on his podcast. "I wanted to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast on October 25. He chose Trump instead," she recounts.

"I wasn’t in the weeds on any of it. I left that up to my staff," Harris writes. "They’d suggested topics that might interest Rogan’s audience, such as cannabis, social media censorship, and crypto. Rogan’s team said they just wanted to discuss the economy, immigration, and abortion. Again, I was fine with that."

Trump and the UK's Cannabis Connections: Shakespeare, Kipling and Orwell, plus King Charles and Princess Kate

In what must have reminded the Brits of Billy Bob Thornton's portrayal of the US President in "Love, Actually," Donald Trump made his second state visit to the UK, where he embarrassingly read a speech that praised British authors Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, Lewis, Orwell, and Kipling. "Incredible people," he ad-libbed after reading the list. 

At least three of those authors have possible cannabis connections, as do King Charles and Princess Kate. 

Clay pipe fragments excavated from Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon home were found in 2001 to contain small amounts of cocaine and myristic acid - a hallucinogenic derived from plants, including nutmeg. In Sonnet #76, he wrote that a "noted weed" inspired his creativity. His father dealt in contraband sheep's wool. 

Rudyard Kipling was given "a stiff dose of chlorodyne" to treat a bout of dysentary in 1884 at the age of 18. This mixture of opium, tincture of cannabis, and chloroform "hit him with the force of a revelation. In modern parlance, it 'blew his mind,'" writes a biographer. A character in Kipling's novel Kim, says, "News is not meant to be thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly - like bhang." 

High-lights of the Smithsonian "Entertainment Nation" Exhibit and Report from DC and Mt. Vernon

The “Entertainment Nation” exhibit at the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, DC, highlights several Tokin' Women and men, and other sheroes and heroes. It opens with a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," and the guide told us the exhibit was years in the making. (Garland was 13 years old when she sang "La Cucaracha" in a film short.)

The first Tokin' Woman I caught was Bessie Smith, with copy that said, "Pioneering African American blues women such as Bessie Smith sang about the virtues of economic and sexual independence from men...in 'Any Woman's Blues' she laments her affections for a man who continues to let her down." Smith also sang about reefer in "Gimme a Pigfoot" (1933). 

Included in the exhibit are Billie Holiday's 1939 recording of "Strange Fruit" and the Aretha Franklin album cover, "Young Gifted and Black" (a Nina Simone song), in front of the dress worn by Billie Jean King when she defeated Bobby Riggs in the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes." 

The Day Georgio Armani Died and All the Dominoes Fell (for Me)

When fashion designer Georgio Armani died on September 4, commentators noted how influential the Armani suits were as worn by Richard Gere in the 1980 film "American Gigolo." The plot had Gere's character, a male prostitute, framed for a murder after he begins an affair with the wife of a California senator and his handler sends him on a kinky sexual assignment. 

Sexual blackmail is the undercurrent of much of our politics these days, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal comes close enough to Trump for him to pull out every possible distraction he can.  It made me think of the handmade sign I saw held by a Russian man at the "pussy power" march I attended after our Groper- and Grifter-in-Chief was first elected: "Trump is Kompromat," with a hammer-and-sickle image. 

Women Get Short Shrift in Hank Williams and Leo Tolstoy Biopics

So, finally women's stories (aka herstories) are being told, but often through the lens of men. Two biopics I tuned into of late tell the story of women married to famous men, and the miserable lives they lead trying to steer their husbands away from their demons, and have their own ambitions squashed. 

First I watched I Saw the Light, the 2015 biopic of Hank Williams, who penned an astonishing number of great country songs in his short life.  Bob Dylan has named Williams as a key influence in his work (just after Woody Guthrie). Nora Jones and Dylan are among the many artists who have covered Williams songs. 

Tom Huddleston as Williams is sufficiently lanky, and does a fine job singing and moving like Hank did onstage, even on "Lovesick Blues," with the characteristic yodeling that earned Williams the moniker "Lovesick Blues Boy." The song's performance at his 1949 Grand Ole Opry debut is depicted, without showing the six encores he earned that day. 

We see precious little of Williams's performances in the film, which instead focuses on his turbulent relationship with his first wife, Audrey Sheppard—well played by Elisabeth Olsen—and his mother, played by the always-excellent Cherry Jones. As depicted, Sheppard, a singer/songwriter herself, did much to advance Williams's career, and wanted to share the spotlight with Hank, but she wasn't considered an asset to his career by the (male) musical hierarchy. Hank's alcoholism and womanizing, along with the usual life-on-the-road challenges, helped to tear their marriage apart just before his tragic and untimely death in a car accident in 1953, at the age of 29. 

Using her married name Audrey Williams, Sheppard did have a recording career, starting with "Leave Us Women Alone," where she seems to have had her say at last. 

Next I watched "The Last Station," depicting the last days of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, in an Academy Award-nominated performance by Christopher Plummer. Playing his wife Sofia "Sonya" Tolstoy is the also-Oscar-nominated Helen Mirren, depicted largely as a money-grubbing shrew objecting vehemently to the machinations of his acolytes, who encourage him to give away his personal property and the copyrights to his books, instead of leaving them to his wife and children, (The couple had 13 children, 8 or 9 of whom survived into adulthood.)

Pitcher Tug McGraw on Smoking Grass (not Astroturf)

I did some investigation after spying a meme purporting that pitcher Tug McGraw once said, when asked if he preferred grass or Astroturf, "I don't know, I never smoked Astroturf." Turns out, it's true, and there's more to the story. 

Sly's Stony Name and Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations"

It's a sad week when we lose two musical luminaries: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson. 

Sly & the Family Stone's Greatest Hits was one of the first albums I selected from the Columbia Record Club my family belonged to just after my 13th birthday. It opened with, "I Want to Take You Higher" and was full of positive, uplifting messages like, "You Can Make It If You Try" and "Everybody Is a Star." 

"Everyday People," the band's first #1 hit, was a perfect transition for me from nursery rhymes to rock and roll,  in the rhythm of a jump-rope rhyme with a funky twist: 

There is a blue one 

who can't accept the green one 

For living with a fat one, 

trying to be a skinny one 

Different strokes for different folks 

And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby 

Ooh, sha-sha 

We got to live together 

 

The man who became known as Sly Stone was born as Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in the Bay Area city of Vallejo in Northern California, where he performed gospel music starting at the age of 4 or 5 with his siblings (and future bandmates) Freddie and Rose. Already a successful songwriter and music producer by the age of 19, he produced Grace Slick's song "Somebody to Love" for her original band The Great Society. He soon became a popular D.J. at the San Francisco radio station KSOL.

In his memoir "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," he writes of that time:

That was when I completed my name. Back then, when they added a new on-air voice, they usually made up a DJ name. I was already using the Sly from the blackboard, but I didn't know the rest yet. "Sly Stewart" didn't sound quite right. Someone at the station, maybe Tom Johnson, tried to pin "Sly Sloan" on me. That didn't work at all-you couldn't even get it out of your mouth right. "Give me a few days to think of something better," I said. It didn't take that long. 

I went on the air and introduced myself as Sly Stone. I was cooking with a bunch of ingredients. It sounded right. I was already smoking marijuana. And there was a tension in the name. Sly was strategic, slick. Stone was solid. (Ray Charles would even have a song called "Let's Go Get Stoned," too, but that wouldn't come out for a few years yet.) Once I had my name, I started making up little rhymes around it and putting them on-air. I'm Sly Stone of KSOL, goodness for your mind, body, and your soul.