PHOENIX, AIRHEADZONA, IS A STRANGE CITY, MAN!

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Hey, man, is it 2010 already?
Whoa! That musta been some good sh#t I was smokin'!

Last Monday afternoon I was driving home after having gone out for lunch, and as I pulled up to the traffic light at the intersection of North 35th Avenue and Cheryl Drive in the vicinity of the Metrocenter Mall, I happened to glance over to my left and saw some Chicano-style graffiti spray-painted on a wall. Nothing unusual about that. I mean, sometimes I get the impression that there isn’t anything except dried graffiti paint holding the entire city of Phoenix together.

But then suddenly my mind said: Whoa! Wait a minute there, dude! Did that REALLY say what it looked like it said?

So, I did a double take and sure enough, that’s EXACTLY what it said! A big smile spread over my face and I think I even chuckled out loud.

On Tuesday, I called my brother Nappy at work and asked him if on his way home he would swing by that location and take a picture of the graffiti with his cell phone camera. I definitely wanted to make a photographic record of this before the city had a chance to paint over it (that is if this bankrupt city can somehow find the funds to paint over it).

My first thought was to save this thing for use in my next installment of ‘Sex, Tattoos, & Violence R Us’ on my other Blog ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’. But my second thought was: Nah! This is too funny and too hot to wait. And besides, who knows when I’ll be putting together another installment of ‘S.T.& V. R Us’?

So, I’m posting this now while the graffiti artist’s work still exists and before it has been faded by the Phoenix sun into a Seattle-grey. Who would have ever expected to see something like THIS spray-painted on a wall in 2010? . . .
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[Photos by Nappy McCarthy]

My Brother didn’t even complain 'too much' about driving there to photograph the wall because there is a special, little rebellious place in both of our hearts for Cheech Y Chong.

Back in 1973, a neighbor living across the street from us in Santa Monica, California, had the new Cheech Y Chong LP ‘Los Cochinos’ and we would occasionally go over there to his house to listen to the album, knowing that we were hearing things that our tender young ears were not meant to be hearing. That was back before the words “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” were printed on the covers of recordings of this type. But nevertheless, we could tell that some nasty things were being said, even if we didn’t actually understand all of them. Young Rebels were we! Sneakin’ in the movies and listenin’ to “dirty” records.
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[Cheech Y Chong: "Los Cochinos"]

Some of these comedic sketches made such an impression on our minds that both Nappy and I have been quoting from Cheech And Chong on a regular basis – actually, on a “weekly” if not a “daily” basis – for nearly the last four decades.

Although neither of us McCarthy Bros. were dope-smokers, it’s guaranteed that not a week passes without either Nappy or myself (or even both of us) using at least one of the following Cheech And Chong lines:

“You just gotta know how to lay it on them dudes, man.”

“Hey, we did it, man!”
“We were so slick, man!”

“What's the hassle, man? Are you giving us a hassle, man?”

“Oh, wow, man, you drive just like Steve McQueen!”
“Yeah.”

And, let’s face it, anyone with a lick of sense knows that it ain’t officially Christmastime until you’ve heard the classic Cheech And Chong Yuletide skit ‘Santa Claus And His Old Lady.’ Funny stuffs, man, funny stuffs!

I’ll never forget the time about six years ago when my Nephew was here at the house and started telling me this funny joke he’d heard recently. He had barely gotten into the Cheech And Chong skit ‘Cheborneck’ before I interrupted him and said, “Dude, I was laughing at that joke 20 years before you were even born!”

Speaking of “Cheborneck”, a few years before my Ma passed away, I had actually taught her a little C & C. Whenever I said to her, “Let’s go eat”, she would reply, “Yah, eat!”

Yah, no doubt about it, Cheech And Chong could be downright crude and rude, but let’s give them their due: whether you ever smoked a doobie or not, C & C comedy sketches like ‘Sargent Stadanko’ [sic], ‘The Strawberry Revival Festival’, ‘White World Of Sports’, and ‘Basketball Jones’ represent the highest form of lowbrow comedy. In my opinion, ‘Pedro And Man At The Drive-Inn’ [sic] is one of the funniest comedy routines ever conceived, representing Cheech And Chong’s high-water mark. (There’s that word “high” again.) Man, if you don’t think 'Pedro And Man At The Drive-Inn' is funny, you need to loosen your tie and drink yourself a smoke!

Truthfully, I never go a week without quoting from one Cheech Y Chong routine or another. And, NO! – I’m NOT ashamed of that!

In fact, a few of you may have recently read my Blog Bit here at ‘Stephen T. McCarthy STUFFS’ titled ‘O’Dogherty Interviews McCarthy’, and if so, you were probably mildly puzzled when at one point I said right out of the blue, “Tell them that you heard it here first on Roller Derby.” If you asked yourself, “Where the hell did THAT come from?!” I’ll answer that question for you right here and now: That line was ripped off, man, from the Cheech Y Chong skit ‘Evelyn Woodhead Speed Reading Course’. So, now yaz know.

But, really, to find “Cheech & Chong” spray-painted on a wall in 2010! . . . What can I say, man, but that Phoenix is a very strange city.

Cheech: “It is not, man.”

Chong: “It is too, man.”

Cheech: It is NOT, man!”

Chong: It is TOO, man!”

~ Stephen T. McCarthyman

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