Monday, January 6, 2025

Nikki Glaser Lights Up The Golden Globes

Shimmering in a silver gown and an equally sparkling wit, comedienne Nikki Glaser opened her first-ever solo-female hosting of The Golden Globes with a drug joke. 

"Welcome to the Golden Globes," she greeted. "Ozempic's biggest night." She followed by noting what a powerful room she was playing to, saying, "You can do anything, except tell people how to vote." That zinger landed, as did the rest of her strong and confident set.

Doing her crowd work mistressfully, Glaser pointed out the "legendary" Harrison Ford, saying she spoke with him backstage. "I asked him if he would rather work with Zendaya or Ariana, and he said Indica....so we're going to find him some." Ford—who has never outed himself as a pot smoker despite Carrie Fisher doing so—scowled at this, but Glenn Close sitting next to him smiled beatifically. (Close puffed pot with her pals in "The Big Chill.") 

The female nominees and winners were an interesting bunch, largely actresses like Kiera Knightley and Amy Adams starring in dark thrillers. The most interesting-sounding one, "The Substance," won Demi Moore the Globe for her performance as an aging actress taking a drug that turns her into a younger version of herself.  Moore gave The Speech of the Night, relating that this was her first award after working for 45 years in the field, and being told she was merely a "popcorn actress."

Also nominated were Kate Winslet for "Lee," in which she portrays war photographer Lee Miller, who took Man Ray away from Kiki de Montparnasse, and Angelina Jolie for her hallucinatory portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas. Pam Anderson (appearing makeup-less) was nominated for "The Last Show Girl," for which Miley Cyrus's song "Beautiful That Way" was nominated. Best Song, and a Best Supporting Actress trophy, went to Zoe Saldana's work on "Emilia Pérez," about a south American drug lord who undergoes gender-affirming surgery. It was sweet to watch co-star and co-nominee Selena Gomez chant, "Zoe, Zoe, Zoe" before Saldana was announced as the acting winner. Accepting the Best Musical or Comedy Motion Picture prize, the movie's transgender star Karla Sofia Gascon gave a historic and moving speech.

Another winner was the Portuguese actress Fernanda Torres for "I'm Still Here," in which she portrays Eunice Paiva, a mother and activist coping with the forced disappearance of her dissident Brazilian politician husband, for which Frenchwoman Coralie Fargeat was nominated for Best Director. The only other female Best Director nominee was Payal Kapadia, the Indian writer and director of "All We Imagine As Light," about two Malayali nurses living together in Mumbai. 

Adrien Brody won for "The Brutalist," a 3 1/2 hour movie about an architect who flees post-war Europe to live in the US, which also took Best Director and Best Drama Motion Picture. Also on the male side, Colin Farrell won for playing a comic-book character ("The Penguin") and Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a stoner in "A Real Pain," written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who paired, and smoked, in Adventureland (2009) and American Ultra (2015) with Kristen Stewart. Culkin's"Succession" co-star Jeremy Strong was nominated for his pitch-perfect portrayal of Ray Cohn in "The Apprentice," Daniel Craig for "Queer," based on a William S. Burrows novel, and Timothée Chalamet for playing Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown" (in which Suze Rotolo is strangely fictionalized).  

Ali Wong took the Best Stand Up Performance prize away from Glaser, Seth Rogen, and a few other men. Viola Davis got the Cecil B. De Mille Award, presented by her "Doubt" co-star Meryl Streep, but disappointingly, it wasn't presented during the telecast. Nor was Ted Danson's receipt of the Carol Burnett award. 

 

With a dizzying number of costume changes, all fabulous, Glaser stopped herself from performing "Pope-ular," wearing Glinda's pink dress and magic wand from "Wicked" along with a pope's hat in homage to "Conclave." I suppose the Religious Right or Catholic church would have had a conniption fit had she continued, but I'd rather have seen the Martin Short treatment he performed in "We Need a New Prescription" on SNL ("Don't snort snow and don't smoke holly/ Here's my plan to make you jolly.")  

During her hostess duties, Glaser admitted to having plastic surgery done, and it's too bad that her great moment of fame came just as her face is almost unrecognizable to me. I won't say it's the worst face job since Matt Gaetz, because that's something she might say (and it isn't true). Jean Smart, who again won a Globe for "Hacks," which also won the Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy prize, ate some gummies on the show, but only for pain after she has plastic surgery. 

Glaser—who has an off-again, on-again relationship with weed—does her homework, writing lots of jokes and trying them out in clubs before going onstage for her now-famous roasts. She read a series of jokes she didn't feel she could tell the crowd to their faces on the Howard Stern show the next day, and they all had Robin Quivers (and me) cracking up. 

And Glaser wasn't entirely kidding about Ozempic: The show was sponsored by Lilly, which got a screen credit at the end of the night just before advertising its newly approved obesity / sleep apnea drug Zepbound. The Ozempic theme song is to the tune of "It's Magic," but we know where the true magic does and doesn't lie.  

ADDENDA: Culkin has been in the news since his win, after opening up to The Guardian about the time he slipped a real joint onto the prop table before Mark Ruffalo and an unnamed actress smoked it onstage. Ruffalo told the tale (without naming Culkin, and pantomiming passing a joint to Nicki Minaj) on the Graham Norton show. After taking a big stage-sized hit, "I thought, 'I'm really feeling it tonight!'" he said, adding that he got the best reviews of his career that night. Although the audience gasped when Ruffalo said the actress he passed the joint to onstage had never smoked pot, Culkin told the Guardian she said, "Is this what being high is? This is lovely," and co-star Phyllis Newman said, "I haven't smoked pot since the '60s. Thank you, darling." 

Also making the Social Media rounds is Brody imitating a dread-locked Jamaican Rastaman on SNL, with some claiming the 2023 bit got him banned him from the show (something Brody denies). 

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who hosted the Globes five years ago, also opened with a drug joke: 
Fey: "Those of you at home, I wish you could feel the excitement in this room." 
Poehler: "You can smell the pills from here." 

Saturday, January 4, 2025

Two Women To Co-Chair Congressional Cannabis Caucus

Marijuana Moment reports that Reps. Dina Titus (D-NV) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) will be co-chairing the Congressional Cannabis Caucus in the coming legislative session. The powerhouse pair of women will replace outgoing co-chairs Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), both of whom are no longer in office.

Titus tweeted the news, saying, "I look forward to continuing to support the growth of the regulated cannabis industry."

The Congresswoman has been a strong supporter of cannabis since at least 2016, when she voted in favor of the Nevada state ballot initiative legalizing adult-use marijuana, and signed a letter to Pres. Obama asking him to remove barriers to medical marijuana research. 

In 2023, she sponsored a bill to provide $150 million in marijuana research funding for universities over five years, while allowing those institutions to obtain cannabis for studies through partnerships with state regulatory agencies and law enforcement. She also introduced a bipartisan amendment to a spending bill that would have provided protections for military veterans who use medical marijuana in legal states, as well as doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) who issue recommendations to allow participation in such programs.

In 2017, Titus won a Top Tweet Tokey award for her tweet, "At the federal and state level, it is time we puff, puff pass those bills to protect marijuana businesses. #Happy420." After the Biden administration initiated the cannabis rescheduling process last year, she tweeted that it “made no sense that marijuana was classified the same as heroin and LSD,” adding that reclassifying the drug “will help researchers study the medical benefits of cannabis and legal businesses combat the unregulated black market.”

In 2024, Titus's team toured two Nevada cannabis businesses and she tweeted her support for them, and for the hemp industry. Her district includes the Las Vegas strip, which is fast opening cannabis lounges.

The 74-year-old lawmaker has represented the First Congressional District of Nevada for more than a decade, and served as State Senate Minority Leader from 1993 to 2009. She has been rated one of the most effective Democratic members of the House of Representatives by the Center for Effective Lawmaking. She's fought for affordable housing "to be owned by people, not corporations," and has introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage.

A graduate of the College of William and Mary, she holds a master's degree from the University of Georgia, and earned her doctorate at Florida State University. For over 40 years, she has been married to UNLV Professor Thomas C. Wright, the author of a number of award-winning books, most notably on political exile and human rights in Latin America.

Titus's co-chair Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. She was sworn into office in January 2019, making her the first African refugee to become a Member of Congress, the first woman of color to represent Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress.

Upon taking office, Omar made the case that marijuana legalization must happen at the federal level so that individual states aren’t able to continue to disproportionately enforce prohibition against communities of color.

Omar—who cosponsored legislation to deschedule cannabis and penalize states that carry out prohibition in a discriminatory way, as well as a separate bill that would mandate the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study the therapeutic potential of cannabis for veterans—said the country is now having “the broader conversation after legalization.”

The congresswoman was among 12 House members who introduced a resolution condemning police brutality in light of law enforcement killings of two Black individuals that have galvanized mass protests. The measure specifically noted the racial injustices of the war on drugs.

In December 2024, both Omar and Titus joined 12 other House Democrats who urged President Joe Biden to significantly expand his marijuana pardons and issue updated guidance to formally deprioritize federal cannabis prosecutions before his administration comes to an end.  

“Legalize marijuana nationwide. Expunge records for cannabis-related offenses,” Omar tweeted in September 2024. “Let’s end the failed War on Drugs once and for all.”

The Deputy Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Omar was born in Somalia. Her family fled the country's civil war when she was eight and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States in the 1990s. Before running for office, she worked as a community educator at the University of Minnesota, was a Policy Fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and served as a Senior Policy Aide for the Minneapolis City Council. 

Republican members David Joyce (R‑OH) and Brian Mast (R‑FL) are also co-chairs on the bi-partisan Cannabis Caucus, which was founded by Blumenauer and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) in 2017. Caucus co-founder Don Young (R‑AK) died in office in March 2022 and former Jared Polis (D-CO) successfully ran for Governor of Colorado in 2018. 

In December of 2019, the Caucus passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act in the House of Representatives, marking the first time in US history that a chamber of Congress has ever passed a bill to end the federal criminalization of marijuana. Tell Your Representative: Join the Cannabis Caucus.

Monday, December 30, 2024

Cher Repudiates Sonny's Anti-Marijuana Message in Her New Memoir

Chapter 12 ("I Got You Babe") of Cher's new autobiography addresses the anti-marijuana PSA her former partner Sonny Bono released in 1968. 

She writes: 

The mid '60s brought in the counterculture, with ideas advocated by people like beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist who recommended the use of psychedelic drugs for mind expansion. Leary became famous for his "Turn on, tune in, drop out" message, which I thought was dumb. I never took drugs, and the idea of taking acid didn't turn me on. I was already pretty tuned in, and I had no intention of dropping out. 

So, while everyone was tripping, playing acid rock, or marching in the streets to protest the Vietnam war, Sonny and I were the straight, square couple who sang middle-of-the-road songs, didn't engage in drug culture, and now, in the era of free love, we became uncool for being married. 

Sonny was never a "march in the streets" kind of guy, but for some reason he felt compelled to abandon his anti-political stance, and he released a statement condemning the use of marijuana, which made us look like part of the establishment and alienated our younger fans. I didn't want to smoke pot myself, but I didn't care if other people did. My uncle smoked pot, and even my mother sometimes did. Him speaking out against it struck me and our audience as so uncool. 

Sonny & Cher in the '70s
"Drugs might not have been our thing, but I was far more liberal in my views and didn't agree with telling people what they should or shouldn't do," she continues. "His anti-drug stance seriously backfired, because our record sales dropped almost immediately, and offers began to dwindle. [Their agent] William Morris even switched us from the musical concerts department to the personal appearance department, which we knew was the first nail in our coffin." 

"Keeping us relevant and in the public eye required a great deal more time and energy after that, and the more Sonny took on, he moodier he became. Looking back, I think some of his mood swings at this time could have been because he was starting to abuse prescription meds." How ironic. Cher relates that she would sometimes take "a quarter of one of Sonny's Valiums to take the edge off" while dealing with stage fright on the road.

Sunday, December 29, 2024

RIP President Jimmy Carter, Cannabis Decriminalization Advocate




The first president I got to vote for, after campaigning against Richard Nixon four years earlier at the age of 14, was Jimmy Carter. It's been announced Carter has died, after fulfilling his stated wish to vote for Kamala Harris for president, and living through his 100th Christmas. News accounts of his presidency, including his so-called "malaise" speech in which he rightly admonished Americans for being more concerned with their possessions than their deeds, somehow seem more poignant and apt during this Holiday season, when we face living under a very different kind of president.

On his second day in office in 1977, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. During his term, two new cabinet-level departments—the Department of Energy and the Department of Education—were established. 

During his presidential campaign, Carter responded to a candidate survey from NORML stating that he was in favor of decriminalization of marijuana. Six months into his administration, on August 2, 1977, he issued a Drug Abuse Message to Congress stating: 

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal. 

States which have already removed criminal penalties for marijuana use, like Oregon and California, have not noted any significant increase in marijuana smoking. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded five years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations. Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.

Monday, December 23, 2024

Top 10 Tokin' Woman Reads from 2024



1. Trump Chief of Staff Pick Worked for PR Firm that Represents Trulieve Cannabis

Donald Trump has named as his Chief of Staff pick Floridian and longtime Republican operative Susie Wiles, which will make her the first woman to hold that position. 

According to the New York Times, Wiles worked for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm. According to their website, Ballard represents Trulieve, the mega cannabis company whose female CEO Kim Rivers reportedly met with Trump just before he announced he would be voting in favor of Florida's measure to legalize cannabis on the November ballot.

2. Did Trump Plan to Cheat on A Pre-Debate Drug Test? 

Gotta admit Trump is something of an evil genius: his ploy to call for a mutual workplace employment drug test before June's Presidential Debate may well have lead to Biden trying to perform without Jacking Up, with disastrous results for the Democrats, and the country. 

3. Curiouser and Curiouser Cannabis Politics

Among the bizarre political incidents this year, Trump met with the 95-year-old mother of Butler, PA–born schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who has served three years of a 14-year sentence in Russian for bringing a small amount of medical marijuana into the country, just before the candidate spoke at the rally where a sniper shot at him before he could say Marc's name.  
Both our Vice President / Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice President-elect JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis. 

University of Oregon professor Stuart Ray Sarbacker writes, Dr. Sarbacker continues, "The role and nature of the beverage referred to as soma in the Vedic tradition of fire sacrifice (yajña) and its purported psychoactivity has been thoroughly investigated within and outside of Indology. ... Soma is identified as amṛta, literally the elixir of 'nondeath,' of immortality, a name resonating through the millennia of later Hindu narrative and discourse. There are various hypotheses as to the botanical identity of soma, some of the leading candidates being ephedra, peganum harmala (Syrian rue), cannabis, poppy, mead or wine, ergot, amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric mushroom), psilocybe cubensis (Magic Mushroom), and an ayahuasca analog." 
 

Sunday, December 15, 2024

2024 Tokey Awards

Tokin' Woman of the Year: Tiffany Haddish

Tiffany Haddish and her outrageously awesome brand of comedy burst onto the scene in Girls Trip (2017), in which her character smuggles pot onto a plane as only a woman can. She was the natural casting selection to voice the pot-savvy Kitty in the 2021 animated series based on The Freak Brothers cartoons of the 70s, co-starring Woody Harrelson and Pete Davidson.

After announcing she'd given up drinking following a pair of arrests for DUIs in 2022 and 2023, Haddish gave an interview with Jaivier Hasse of Forbes magazine in May of this year in which she talked about her use of cannabis to treat her endometriosis and announced, "I choose weed over drugs."

Raised in foster homes after her mother had a tragic accident when she was 9, Haddish lived in her car at age 17, when she was raped by a police cadet. A teacher gave her a choice between psychological therapy and the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp. Comedy turned out to be her savior.

Cannabis was another blessing. “It made me feel relaxed. It took away a lot of my emotional pain. At first, it was like an occasional thing," she said. "Then, as I experienced endometriosis pain, especially during my cycles, during my period, I would smoke weed basically for a week straight while I was bleeding. And, that changed the game for me. I was able to function. I wasn't like crying and super emotional all the time."

“When I discovered the actual power of marijuana and how it can help relieve that inflammation, bring that pain down… It has helped me so much,” she explained. “I went to Panama and learned about the different things that cannabis can do and how you can use it. I like mixing it [cannabis leaves] with coconut water and making tea out of the flower.”

Never afraid to speak her mind, she added, “There are lots of very productive, business-minded, business-oriented, resolute people that smoke or ingest marijuana in some sort of way, shape or form. There’s a lot of domestic violence because of alcohol. A lot of child abuse because of alcohol, but not because of weed."

"If men got endometriosis, it would probably be something talked about," she continued. "You need to give women the right to be able to smoke or ingest cannabis legally… If you are going to take the right for women to make the decisions off of their uterus, then you need to give them the right to be able to smoke or ingest cannabis legally, completely across the board.” 

Haddish won a Primetime Emmy Award for hosting a Saturday Night Live episode in 2017, the year she published a memoir, The Last Black Unicorn. Her album Black Mitzvah in 2019 won her the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, making her the second African-American woman to win this prize after Tokin' Woman Whoopi Goldberg in 1986. Richard Pryor is named as one of her mentors.

Having conquered every other forum, Haddish released a single CD co-written with Diane Warren this year titled, "Woman Up." Her new book is titled, I Curse You With Joy. She certainly does.

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2024

Sadly, this page has been updated throughout 2024, with an emphasis on women and those connected with cannabis and its legalization, through their lives and/or work. 



Jimmy Carter (October 1, 1924 - December 29, 2024)

Carter "was way ahead of his time when he called on Congress to decriminalize marijuana in the mid-70s,” NORML founder and legal director Keith Stroup said. Read more.



Michael Brewer
(April 14, 1944 - December 17, 2024)

Brewer and his partner Tom Shipley were best known for their song, "One Toke Over the Line," which they added to their set when they ran out of songs while opening for Melanie at Carnegie Hall. It was a Top 10 hit in 1971 until then-VP Spiro Agnew condemned it along with the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" as "latent drug culture propaganda," and the FCC pressured radio stations to ban it. But first, it was performed on the Lawrence Welk show, with Welk calling it "a modern spiritual." Country music's Maybelle Carter was similarly confused, wanting to sing the song she thought was a spiritual, according to her granddaughter Carlene Carter in the Ken Burns Country Music documentary series. 



Jean Jennings (February 3, 1954 – December 16, 2024)

At 14, Jennings was an exchange student in Ecuador where she learned to drive in a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Andes mountains. At eighteen, she bought a used Plymouth Satellite, painted it yellow, installed a roof light and a meter, and joined the Yellow Cab Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she was elected president of the Yellow Cab board. After writing for Car and Driver (1980–1985), she co-founded Automobile, where she continued to write her widely known column, Vile Gossip. Jennings became an undercover spokesmodel at the 1988 North American International Auto Show, and on Good Morning America startled Diane Sawyer, live on air, after calling the new Chevrolet SSR, "bitchin," explaining that it was a hot-rodding term. She taught an Oprah Winfrey Show audience how to change a tire and jump start a car, and edited the book Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings


Anita Holmes Johnson (May 8, 1929 - December 15, 2024)

In 1951, while studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Johnson broke a national story about a cross burning on the lawn of a sorority house because a sister there was dating a black man,. After earning her degree, she got a job at the Washington Post where she was assigned to the woman's desk, ironically so, since she had eliminated the women's page at her college paper. She went on to co-found the Eugene Weekly newspaper in 1991, and remained active at the paper until her death. The EW has published the work of 150-plus journalism students from OU and Lane Community College - more than any other professional news outlet in Oregon. The paper investigated rape allegations against two Eugen police officer who later went to prison, and recently the reported on OU officials' efforts to cover up a string of fraternity party druggings. 
  

Jeanne Bamberger (February 11, 1924 – December 12, 2024)

Bamberger was a child prodigy pianist who performed with the Minneapolis Symphony before she had reached adolescence. She became a Professor of Music and Urban Education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. She also taught at the University of Southern California, and the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she became interested in the education of young children, and particularly in the Montessori method. Her research interests included music cognitive development, music theory and performance, teacher development, and the design of text and software materials that fostered these areas of development. She won both a Fulbright Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote several books and articles, and co-created MusicLogo, enabling students to write computer code to create tunes that could be immediately played out loud.

Mary McGee (December 12, 1936 – November 27, 2024)

The first woman to compete in motorcycle road racing and motocross events in the United States, McGee was the first person to ride the Baja 500. She competed in motorcycle road racing and motocross from 1960 to 1976, then began competition again in 2000 in vintage motocross events. Her last race was in 2012. In 2013, McGee was named an FIM Legend for her pioneering motorcycle racing career. She was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2018. McGee died from complications of a stroke at the age of 87 just one day before the release of the documentary Motorcycle Mary, which aired on ESPN's YouTube channel.

Barbara Taylor Bradford (May 10, 1933 - November 24, 2024)

Bestselling author Bradford sold her first magazine story when she was 10 years old. She went on to become a journalist, columnist and fashion editor. She was 46 when she saw her first novel published: 1979's "A Woman of Substance," the story of Emma Harte, a poor but plucky and beautiful Yorkshire servant who founds a business empire. The book was an international smash, selling more than 30 million copies, and set the template for strong and independent Bradford heroines who would feature in 39 subsequent novels – all bestsellers, many turned into films or mini-series. In 2007, Bradford was presented with the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to English literature. Source.

Alice May Brock (February 28, 1941 - November 21, 2024)

The woman who inspired and co-wrote Arlo Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant," set at Thanksgiving, died a week before the holiday at the age of 83. Brock met Guthrie while she was a librarian at the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts where he was a student, and her eatery in western Massachusetts is forever immortalized in the song, which became an anti-war anthem in 1967 while US boys were still being drafted into the Vietnam war. Brock wrote several books, including “The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook” (1969) and “My Life as a Restaurant” (1976); she appears in a cameo performance in the movie "Alice's Restaurant." A GoFundMe site to help with health and financial issues late in her life raised $170,000 in a few days. A used Hardcover copy her cookbook in "acceptable" condition is on sale at Amazon for $4,629.66. It includes advice on subjects as varied as Your Attitude, Equipment, Improvising And Making Do, and The Supply Cupboard. In 1991, Guthrie bought the re-purposed church in Great Barrington where Alice lived and hosted the Thanksgiving dinner he sang about to house his archives and a community action center. The center hosted its 19th Annual free Thanksgiving dinner this year; plans for an exhibit of Alice's artwork there began just before she died.