CHEECH & CHONG - Still Smoking !




A FEW weeks into their first tour together in almost three decades, during a performance in Las Vegas, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong took a break from their comedy skits about counterculture, rebelliousness and drugs so that Mr. Chong could perform a stand-up set about counterculture, rebelliousness and drugs.

Mr. Chong, 70, was delivering his routine when he saw Mr. Marin, 62, grimacing and waving at him from offstage.

In his meandering, hey-dude drawl, Mr. Chong recalled, “I realized I did the same joke twice.”

“I was shouting at him,” Mr. Marin said. “I was like, ‘No, no! Not that one, no!’ ”

But the audience forgave the repetition and laughed anyway. It might have been because of Mr. Chong’s age, or because, as he said, “I’m a stoner.”

It took a quarter of a century, five presidential administrations, two divorces and a nine-month prison sentence, but Cheech & Chong, those lovable lowlifes of comedy who broke up in 1985 to pursue solo opportunities and get away from each other, have at last reunited.

Sure, they may now carry BlackBerrys and look like your grandfather (if your grandfather kept roach clips in his pockets and had a perpetually squinty look in his eye), but they are still the same genial reprobates of albums like “Big BambĂș” and films like “Up in Smoke.”

See full NY Times Article


Cheech and Chong's "Up In Smoke" - the car scene