Jambands.com - Need We Say More?

Published: 2008/07/22
by Dean Budnick

It may not surprise you to learn that a book written by two self-avowed stoners has long been in the works. But although Pot Culture has been in the pipeline for a while, its authors have not been sitting idly on their couches, packing bowls to the Simpsons theme (altogether). In 1995 Shirley Halperin began her career by founding Smug magazine and so began a path that has led her to Rolling Stone, Us Weekly and most recently, Entertainment Weekly, where she serves as senior writer. Co-author Steve Bloom has contributed to Rolling Stone and Soho Weekly, while his resume also includes an extended stint as an editor at High Times. Pot Culture is subtitled The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language & Life and that it is but such a description fails to capture the spirit and humor of the book, which offers essays on music, television, movies and plenty of celebrity interludes from the likes of Jonah Hill (How To Make an Apple Pipe) Rob Thomas (The Art of Scoring) and Ray Manzarek (My First Time).
A few weeks after the publication of Pot Culture, Halperin and Bloom appeared as presenters at the Jammys. A few weeks after that, Halperin sat down for this conversation, which also touched on a magazine that went awry (_Heads_), Leslie Wests Rock Band fever at the Jammys and Halperins longstanding relationship with the members of Phish, which once resulted in a late night phone call from the band in search of Hebrew lessons
Pot Culture is quite an all-encompassing endeavor that includes both cultural history and culinary tips. Was that your intent going in?
I wanted it to focus on the slang, that was the original idea. It was an idea I came up with in college. I thought it would be really fun to have a dictionary of stoner slang. That was the original thought, this would be fun, an A to Z dictionary of the ways stoners talk.
Then it just expanded. I looked into what pot books are out there because there are a lot. Most of them are about growing and they have the Playboy model, big buds and centerfolds for people who drool over that. But people like me really dont care about that and are much more into the culture and how people interact. That was a lot more interesting to me. Im never going to grow pot, I dont know how to grow it and I didnt particularly want to learn but I do love watching stoner movies and listening to Dark Side of the Moon, stuff like that.
I had the idea but I put it on the backburner for a while. After I tried Heads, that magazine I tried to do, that kind of turned me off to the idea of doing something independently within the hippie stoner movement because it was kind of a bad experience. But after a few years I saw Harold and Kumar was gaining in popularity and when I saw that Weeds was a successful show on cable television, that really kicked this whole thing and made it happen. I said, Okay, the world is ready for this book, because it seemed like a mainstream acceptance that hadnt really been there or at least not in a long time.
So thats what motivated me but it took years for this idea to marinate. Then I also figured out I could do the celebrity angle with all those celebrity interviews and stuff. Thats something I acquired when I was working at Us Weekly and Rolling Stone. I just got to know a lot more celebrity stoners and they were pretty out about it. Im pretty out about it, Im not too secretive about itexcept with my parents who didnt know the book was out until three weeks ago.
Your mom is a well-known scholar [Dr. Halperin teaches in the Hebrew department at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City], I was going to ask you what she thought about the book. Is it true that your parents didnt know anything about it?
They didnt know anything about it. I kept it secret for so long. All my family was in on it, except my parents and my grandparents in Israel. It was killing me actually, I was tortured by the fact that I was working on it for so long and was so stressed about it and started promoting it and couldnt tell my parents, who I talk to like every day.
It was kind of difficult, so I finally had to tell them. Originally, I was going to tell them on Passover which was April 19 this year and it just didnt happen. I tried to call my mom but she said, Oh, I going into subwayOh were about to sit down to dinner So I decided Id call her the next day on 4/20 which was the day the book was released and the day we had our book release party in LA. And then I decided not to do that because I thought theyd be mad and I didnt want it to ruin my party (laughs).
So I waited another day, but every day Id say, Todays the day, todays the day Im going to tell them. I finally told them on the 21st, the day after the book came out and my mom took it surprisingly well. My dad I dont think was so thrilled but my mom said she was proud and she just took it really well. I love my mom shes great. I was so scared, I felt like I was twelve or maybe fourteen years old again.
I really thought they were going to be mad. And the reason without getting too far into it, is I was a stoner in high school and got into a lot of trouble and I just thought it would still be like that even though Im 35 years old. Its literally 17 years, twice the time that Ive been alive and Im still feeling like Im in high school.
There are a number of celebrity cameos in the book. The first one is by Jonah Hill, who demonstrates how to smoke pot through an apple. I was a little surprised that his manager and publicist allowed him to participate. Im curious if you faced interference from a variety of handlers who just didnt want their client in the book, even if the actor or musician in question was up for it.
Not really, although there were some that didnt work out for scheduling reasons. B-Real from Cypress Hill had a photo shoot scheduled, he was going to demonstrate how to make a cone joint and then it just didnt happen.
I was surprised that Jonah went for it but I have connections to Jonah through his brother who manages Maroon 5 and Maroon 5 is also in the book, so its all sort of incestuous. But yeah, hes a super cool guy.
We also did a second printing and added an essay by Seth Rogen on stoner movies. He wrote about his favorite stoner movies of all time and whats the point of having a stoner in a mainstream romantic comedy like 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up, what does it lend to the story? He was someone I really wanted and for scheduling reasons didnt work out but as soon as we heard there would be a second printing, we added another good one.
Adam Levine is another person that I didnt expect to see in there, as Maroon 5 tends to be positioned as a rather mainstream act.
Adam Levine was a really big Phish fan. He saw a lot of shows when he was in high school and we got along and first bonded because of that. He mentioned it somehow and I was like, You smoke weed, you like Phish, were going to get along great. I did a story on Maroon 5 for High Times and the purpose of it was to make them not seem like such goodie goodie pop TRL guys. They smoke weed and theyre a little more adventurous than they might sound. After I did the interview with them in High Times, I had a conversation with Adam and asked if he would do 5 Albums To Get High To. He said yes and it happened. Yay. (laughs).
Somewhat along these lines, you were on staff at High Times and now that youve written this book, are you ever concerned that as a result the DEA or some other government agency, would pay unwelcome attention to you as a result?
Bloom would probably say no but I am. If Im worried about how my parents react
But the thing is I live I live in California and California is a very different vibe than New York when it comes to weed, medicinal and recreational. The laws are a little more lax and the paranoia isnt there. So you get this false sense of security. *You now work at Entertainment Weekly, after some time at Us Weekly. Were you ever concerned that writing this book would carry some of stigma with those publications or others? *
I worry about that but Ive been fortunate in that my bosses have all been very, very cool. Us Weekly is published by Jann Wenner who started Rolling Stone. I would be shocked and extremely disappointed if he was an anti-pot guy. Its one of the reasons I went and worked there. I look for companies that are going to be cool, that are not going to insist that I change my lifestyle. So Us Weekly was one of those places because Jann Wenner runs it. I started working on the book before I got the job at EW but they were very cool about it too. EW is an arbiter of pop culture and this is the ultimate assessment of pop culture, so it kind of fits in a weird way.
You mentioned Phish a while ago. I remember there was that piece in Smug a long time ago
Yeah, 95. *Can you talk a bit about your perspective on the band over the years? *
I have a long history with the band. I met them when I was in college but I was a huge fan even in high school. I was a very early adopter of Phish. I didnt completely drop the Dead but made the transition from Dead stickers to Phish stickers way earlier than a lot of other people I knew. I was a huge fan, they changed my life, they really did. Going to those shows completely opened my mind up to this world.
I met those guys when they were on the H.O.R.D.E. tour and Fishman and I became friends. We spoke on the phone and I went to a bunch of shows, as many East Coast shows as I could. Then I went to Israel for a year abroad and he came and hung with me for like 10 days. He came and just did a tour of Israel which was awesome. Thats where I learned about the music business, all that time in the car driving around, he just taught me how the music business worked and I thought, Oh, I can work in the music business. I was 19. (laughs)
And as the years went by I really did get to know those guys. When they were making the Rift record they wanted to put the song Jerusalem City of Gold on in it at the end but they didnt know the words. So while I was still living with my parents, I got a random call at midnight on a weeknight from Mike Gordon. They were literally in the studio recording Hoist and he asked me if I could transliterate the song and speak it out for him so that theyd sing it properly.
I had all these really crazy experiences with those guys and I was a huge, huge fan and believer but I kind of dropped out of it after I started the magazine and kind of went indie rock. We did that interview for Smug but I wasnt so much involved in the scene, although I still went to New Years shows.
When I worked at High Times I did some stuff with them but then I kind of lost touch with those guys. But they still made a huge impact on my life, so I wanted to acknowledge them in the book. I gave them that page and I really wanted to use a C Taylor Crothers photo, so I went to great lengths to get permission to use that picture. I just think theyre great and such a special cultural phenomenon that who knows if well see again. And now that its not here, I miss it.
I hope they get back together and do another tour, I think that would be awesome. I had such great times on Phish tours, really some of the greatest moments in my life. And at the Jammys the cool thing was seeing all these people I havent seen in ten years, and it felt very inclusive, very welcoming. *Speaking of the Jammys, what moments stood out for you either backstage or on the stage? *
When the four guys were about to go to accept their Lifetime Achievement Award, I was standing next to them. I hadnt seen Fishman in a long time, we were sort of catching up and I hadnt exchanged words with Trey in a while. Everything just looked perfect, exactly as it was. Maybe they were a little greyer, a little less hair whatever, it really was just such a flashback. Not an acid flashback, just a regular flashback (laughs).
That and Leslie West backstage watching people play Rock Band, requesting that they play Mississippi Queen. It was just so surreal. (laughs)
You mentioned Heads earlier, can you talk a bit about your experience there? I can remember your enthusiasm when it was all set to launch and then things took an unpleasant turn. Unless dredging it up is too much of a drag for you
Its a little bit of drag. Its one of my big regrets that I couldnt quite make it work. Basically I was working at High Times and they had this magazine Hemp Times which was their sort of way of doing a non-weed stoner magazine but it wasnt really the right formula because who wants to read about rope? (laughs) I was trying to pitch High Times on the idea of doing a cultural magazine thats all about travel and music and movies and TV shows that has everything to do about pot but its not about pot, its about the people. And that was my big catch phrase, Its not about the plant, its about the person.
So thats what I was trying to do with Heads, make a magazine for stoners thats not all about centerfolds and prices and growing and all that stuff. Its about the cultural impact that stoners have had and that keeps regenerating.
So I wanted to do this magazine and I found a willing investor in Canada but we had opposing thoughts on parts of Heads and Smug, which I was publishing with him as well. And when we decided to shut down Smug, I gave him the rights to Heads. I just couldnt do it, it was too difficult. Being an independent publisher is one of the toughest businesses to get into. So I let it go and I kind of always regretted it because it would have been a great product and I think they actually had a pretty good magazine. I dont know if its still around but I used to see copies of it and it looked fantastic and I still feel that theres room for it. I wish High Times would have jumped at the concept when I first threw it out there but cest la vie.
Its sort of what I was trying to do in book form and it really came out exactly the way I wanted it to. The way it looks is exactly how I had envisioned this thing for a long time. It looks great, it reads the way I wanted to, nobody gave me any trouble in terms of we have too many photos, so Im psyched. Things work out the way theyre supposed to ultimately and I think thats what happened. *In terms of writing the book, how did you divide up the workload with Steve? *
That was pretty clear cut. Steve handled almost everything that came before 1980. He did all the 60s stuff, he did all the major people in the marijuana movement. He had his generation that he was writing for and speaking to and I was doing more my generation. We do have 20 years between us, were a generation apart. I handled the Harold and Kumar end of things. I handled most of the celebrity interviews because those are the people I have a lot of contact with, so it was a very clear division of labor. It worked out perfectly because I didnt know enough about pot in the 60s and 70s to write about it with any sort of authority but Steve certainly does. Hes had 25 years as an editor at High Times, he knows what hes talking about. And were really good friends. Weve stayed really good friends after all this time and weve been through a lot of drama together, especially with Heads and Im so happy that Steves a part of this, hes a really great guy. *Final question, now that its been published, do you have a favorite entry or one that stands out for some reason or another? *
I really like Rob Thomas essay on how to score when you dont have weed because he was the first person to sign on for the book. When I talked to him about it years ago he said, I would love to write an essay about how to bring up pot in casual conversation, how to do that dance where you need to figure out if someone partakes or not. It was his first idea and we never changed it. With some of the celebrities I sat down and said, Can we do this instead of this? because we needed things to fill in certain places. But with Rob, his idea was the original one. It was so funny and well-written and its probably my favorite thing in the whole book because it was an idea that we had so long ago and it actually came to be. You see, we stoners follow through