Monday, December 24, 2007

Cheech & Chong - Comic Geniuses

I was first introduced to the comedy of Cheech and Chong when I was a 13-year-old eighth-grader in early 1973. I found their first two albums (Cheech and Chong and Big Bamb
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) to be supremely irreverent, deliciously obscene, and absolutely hilarious, and I listened to my vinyl copies of them until the grooves wore out. (My cousin Randy Baca and I even attended a church Halloween party one time dressed as C&C, Randy wearing a bandolier -- a la Cheech -- filled with fake doobies in lieu of bullets.) I had great portions of their routines memorized and can still quote extensively from them today; I have a couple of friends at church who are roughly my age, and we all still get a kick out of some of the old lines. I couldn't get into a lot of the later material (e.g., Los Cochinos and Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album), as it seemed to cross the line into "gross" for me; however, I now have CDs of both of the first two albums (along with C&C's Greatest Hit compilation), and they seem even funnier now than when they first came out -- probably because they were and are utterly politically incorrect. (No one could get away with their brand of humor nowadays!)

In closing, I will quote the Pope (live at the Vatican): "In nomine patri, et fili et spiritus sanctus...sanctus...sanctus...sanctus.... All-a you wops-a get off-a da lawn!"

Oh, man, I can't go on.