#155 - four twenty.

happy four twenty, dudes & dudettes! when you woke up this morn, were you all like "oh man, where's my weed? where's my bong?" of course you were! it's 4/20 & that means that today's totally international smoke pot day! pick your best tie-dyed shirt up off the floor & throw it on, sprinkle yourself with some patchouli fragrance, smoke a big fat one & head out to see a MIND-BLOWING advance screening of phish 3D. your fate has been predetermined by the calendar, bra. get out your hackey sack & rastafari gear & head on down to your local multiplex...or at least go get stoned somewhere. the calendar decrees it. hurry up!

oh wait...you're a square with shiny black shoes who's not hip to what "four twenty" is? oh, man. it's this reference to the time during the day when getting high is even better than usual, because of some cosmic forces of something. it's been scientifically proven, so marijuana smokers across the globe like to say "guess what time it is, dude." dude: "four twenty! time to smoke the pot, homes!" homes: "hell yeah. pot." then they smoke a bunch of pot, go on hulu & watch seven episodes of family guy followed by two episodes of the daily show. or, well, they used to watch the daily show on hulu until viacom yanked it.

anyway, i'm getting off track here. what were we talking about? oh, right...four twenty = marijuana. so yeah, at the current moment, fourteen u.s. states have some sort of legalized marijuana, with california leading the charge. behind california, colorado's been the most active state recently when it comes to reforming the marijuana laws. if you were in boulder today & headed over to colorado university for the annual "4/20 smoke out" & some cop ticketed you, you're in luck. one area attorney is offering free legal representation, so i hope you SPARKED IT UP, cheech. also, he might be able to help you if you catch shit for being in the photo gallery on the local fox affiliate's website.

since on the east coast, there's still an hour left in the day that is 4/20 & even more hours for those of you in weed-happy cali, i'd like to present you with eat!drink!snack!'s  "helpful four twenty suggestion." if you truly want to celebrate 4/20 the right way, call up your drug dealer & arrange for a "sticky icky" transaction. when you have procured said "sticky icky," invite a few friends over. when they arrive, smoke the aforementioned "sticky icky," preferably from an oversized novelty bong. then, put on the marijuana movie marathon to end all weed movie marathons. start with reefer madness, move on to up in smoke, follow it up with dazed and confused & close out with half baked. whilst watching the movies, the following activities are encouraged: smoking more of your "sticky icky," copious snacking, philosophy 101 and random acts of baking & carpentry. before you know it, it won't be 4/20 any more, but the sun will be coming up in a few hours, which means it's probably some time around 4:20am, which means...the clock commands you to get high on weed. happy four twenty!

snack: four & twenty blackbirds pear ginger pie
drink: nectar ales humboldt brown hemp ale

what would four twenty be without a snack & a drink? it'd be a total bummer, man. that's why this weekend i stopped by four & twenty blackbirds, a new pie shop & cafe here in brooklyn named after the line in "sing a song of sixpence." it's a cute lil place on 3rd ave & 7th st that opened up two fridays ago with a number of pies & coffees & whatnot to choose from. after flirting with the idea of shoofly pie, i ultimately went for a slice of their pear ginger pie. to be honest, i'm not the biggest pie guy. pie's often dry & unsatisfying. after ordering my slice from a friendly gal who was working with a few other gals slanging pies, i had a feeling this'd be a different pie.

in the interest of full disclosure, as it turns out, there's a 4:20 on sunday, so i ended up eating the pear ginger pie in the early evening hours a few days ago. yeah, i know. total bummer today. it's like they always used to say back in the reagan years...pot leads to pie. luckily, in this case it was good pot, so it led to good pie. the crust was glazed with some sort of sugary goodness & the innards, made of slices of pear & ginger, were sweet but not overpoweringly so. my only complaint...yeah, i'm cheap, but $4.50 for a slice of pie is a bit steep, especially when after the first slice, you kinda want another. next thing you know, you've blown all your weed money on pie.

since i was already eating my special four twenty snack on sunday, i went ahead & had my special four twenty drink as well--a bottle of nectar ales humboldt brown hemp ale. btw, have you heard that hemp is going to save civilization? it's true. this guy named woody once told me so. anyway, nectar ale's hemp ale has won a number of craft brewing awards, so i was expecting something good going in. back in the day, i first whetted my appetite for good beer on brown ale (newcastle), so i'm always open to try a new brown ale, especially if it's made with hemp. like woody says, hemp will save the world. the least i can do is drink beer that has it in it.

i'm happy to report that it's a solid brown ale. it's all natural & i guess what i'm tasting in the flavor is the hemp. wait...doesn't hemp taste like rope? i forget. anyway, when i have a brown ale like this one, it makes me realize how lame newcastle is. while newcastle's slightly watery & slightly bitter, the humboldt brown hemp ale has a smooth, full flavor. it's kind of herbal & kind of nutty & i swear i tasted some chocolate in there. then again, maybe that's just the hemp that i'm tasting, or maybe that was just the hemp talking. either way, you should try it out, mi amigo. mi amigo: "maybe i will, bud-dy. maybe i will." bud-dy: "you'd better try it or i'll cry, dog." dog: "don't cry."