The Dan Levely Show

The Dan Levely Show with Actor- Producer- Writer- Cannabis Legend Tommy Chong

September 13, 2023 Dan Levely
The Dan Levely Show
The Dan Levely Show with Actor- Producer- Writer- Cannabis Legend Tommy Chong
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What's up everyone!!! I can't even believe the words that are about to come out of my mouth.  Stopping by to chop it up with your boy, is non other then the Legend himself Mr. Tommy Chong!!  
Don't ask, I don't know how I did it either.  
Join us as we journey down the path of the life of Tommy Chong, at least the stuff he's willing to share. From how he got started in Comedy along side Cheech Marion, to being a voiceover on my son's favorite Disney movie "Zootopia".  I've followed this man from the wonderful age of 13 when I stole the "Cheech and Chong's Greatest Hit" cassette tape from my Grandpa's cassette collection and have been a fan ever since.  Yes, we will be talking cannabis and probably smoking a little too.  What an episode this is going to be, fasten your seat belts, get your weed ready and kick the kids out the house.  It's Go Time!!!  

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Speaker 1:

Really on the move on the map.

Speaker 1:

Never slip. Keep your hands to your lips, don't talk about it. Real eyes, real eyes, real eyes. All the time. Stand on it. If we set it we won't walk around it. Lose lips ain't ships. Red cup, blue strips, new phone who dis know? We don't allow it. Really on, go. I don't know what's the off day now. We on road keep on smoking in the hallway. Now we got shows. Boys falling like Broadway. Always look both ways, even on a crossway coming down cross-bay. Our town park lays Really on. Big teams came up a small way. Championship rings baby, that's a ball game. Oh, she want a lil bag. Baby, that small chain. Yeah, that money talked. If we ain't cool, then cut me off. No, breaking news. Don't run your mouth. Thought it was a plug, now he running off. Thought it was a plug, now he ain't running off. What you gon do when you at who you with? You ain't really bout this. Don't talk about it. Really on the move on the map. Never slip. Keep your hands to your lips, don't talk about it.

Speaker 2:

Real eyes, real eyes, real eyes, all the time Cheech and Chong still smoking Cheech and Chong's next movie. You might also recognize him from the lovable hippie from that 70s show, leo, or, if not, if that doesn't work, maybe squirrel master from Half Baked. And all your kids out there probably recognize his voice from the Disney movie Zootopia as Yax. My son loves him and he also has his own cannabis brand out there called Chong's Choice. We're gonna talk about that later and without further ado. Everyone. He is an actor, writer, producer, comedian and legend in the cannabis industry. Mr Tabi Chong, everybody.

Speaker 3:

Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. Please, everybody sit down.

Speaker 1:

Yes there will be an around applause you will hear a round of applause.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for coming on and spending so much some time out of your day. It's on my schedule.

Speaker 3:

So I'm a good guy. I will, yeah, do what I said I was gonna do.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, well, we, I appreciate it, we appreciate it, and all the people out there listening. Thank you so much. Now, uh, I have been listening to you, for I think I stole my grandfather's cassette tape out of his, out of his little cassette collection when I was 12 years old. Yeah, Cheech. And.

Speaker 3:

Chong's greatest hit. I just got that joke. Instead of hits, it's Cheech and Chong's greatest hit.

Speaker 2:

Yep, greatest hit, yep. Yeah, I didn't realize that either until I actually was older and I was like greatest hit, like that makes sense, like they does. The vinyl does come with a big giant paper in it, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, it was.

Speaker 2:

It was uh, but it was um, sister mary elephant. No, yeah, was the skit that, like the very first skit that I listened to, made you laugh. Now, how did you it? Oh yeah, like hysterically, I would like I said I was 12 years old at the time and I didn't know any of this. I said any of this even existed. Um, and it's, how did you and cheech get get started with each other? How'd you guys come up past cross? Oh wow.

Speaker 3:

We, we met in Vancouver, canada. Cheech was up, okay, recovering from a skiing accident and he was in Vancouver, uh, delivering carpets for a living and working in a in a uh Like a hippie magazine. You know, he was, uh, he was the uh entertainment Critic. Yeah, okay, music critic for for this hippie magazine. And yeah, um, I had a improv group going In a strip club it was the very first, and only that I know, of strip club.

Speaker 3:

It was like a burlesque show, you know, we had the naked girls. We also had, you know, the funny, funny guys. And uh, we had another we had I had a partner named Dave and he was a long-haired hippie. And then we had a straight man named rick and he was glasses. He was the one that would play the narc in the cop and All those characters. And well, he, his wife, found out what he was doing because we got good publicity, and she made him quit because it was disgusting what he was doing. And so then, uh, this, the editor of the hippie magazine told me about this funny guy that worked for him, that would be perfect for the show, and so he invited me out to his office and I went out there and I brought my gorgeous girlfriend Shelby and my little daughter, precious, and we met cheats for the first time.

Speaker 2:

Oh wow. And then right from and was it like just from, like jump straight, you guys just started doing, like doing stuff together, or no, no, actually joined.

Speaker 3:

He joined as the straight guy.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:

And he became like a writer and, uh, really like the third guy on the show, and so he watched us do the show and because cheats is a singer as well, you know a musician guitar player and singer uh cheats learned every all the daves moves.

Speaker 3:

And then when the we got fired, you know my, my brother, who was running the strip club, fired us because he wanted to get the girly show back. And we put the girly show back and the group broke up and cheats night everybody went back working for the girly show and I um, cheats now were the only ones that wanted to keep doing the entertainment part so then we hooked up and that's when he became cheats because up and then we never knew.

Speaker 3:

We. We always knew him as Richard Richard. Richard, that was his name, richard. Okay and then when cheats and I performed Uh, and we've decided that we were going to become a team. That's when I found out as nicknamed was cheats.

Speaker 2:

Oh wow, oh wow. So now, now, when we guys started doing improv together, was it? What was what? When did you? What was that moment that made you know that you guys had like good chemistry together, like this was gonna be something.

Speaker 3:

Well, we started, we we put a band together. You know, the gap to petition I talked to, the comedy thing was a spur of the moment thing and uh, because I was uh, a musician really looking for a gig but not looking that hard, you know, because I had the clubs and uh, and so I thought, you know, I thought cheats and I could.

Speaker 3:

You know he's a singer and we could do a little comedy and a lot of music, and that's what we've done all our lives. But what we did, we got together, we found out we were comedians. We found out, we put, we had an act and and we went around the country, you know, doing our open mic nights and everything. And then, and then we heard no, we did one showcase for, uh, the movie producer, a record producer, and this other record owner came to see us and he kind of swooped in and Said he'd like to meet with us, and so we met with him and Decided we'll do a comedy record and okay.

Speaker 3:

That's it. The rest is history. The very, very first thing the very first thing we recorded became our biggest hit. Oh, wow very first, very first what was?

Speaker 2:

what was the very first thing that you recorded?

Speaker 3:

Dave's not here.

Speaker 2:

Dave, that's hilarious too. That's like the one of the funniest skits on that album do yeah. Dave's not here, yeah it was.

Speaker 3:

And it was given to us by an angel of comedy, of comedy, the comedy, god, he, uh, he said here, try this one.

Speaker 2:

And it worked now Did you and you and cheats wrote your own material. Is that, am I correct, or it was everything Okay?

Speaker 3:

we, yeah, yeah, everything was but, but we did it like, uh, like a rock band, in fact we were more like a See, I was in a really been blues band. Okay and a rock band. I guess you'd call them we never call it rocked in, just rock and roll, right, and that's really what I was, and and so when I got into comedy, I just we just did comedy like we do music, you know, we get some funny bits and put them in it together and and they end with music.

Speaker 3:

That that was our, you know, go up with, uh, with the song. I can't go wrong, uh-huh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the, I remember the song. I don't remember the title exactly, but I remember the song. It goes Um teacher talking to me, trying to tell me how to live down in it down in it and I'll.

Speaker 3:

You're right, that was irate my eye.

Speaker 2:

Okay, there you go, all right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, that was the music was written by a guitar player named gay d'alarm.

Speaker 3:

Oh, okay, he was staying with cheech one day and he, he came out of the bedroom and he goes hey, listen to this Mama talking to me, trying to tell me how to live. Did it that, that, that, that, that that's all he had. And so then I that's it the lyric. I wrote the rest of lyrics Uh and uh. And then cheech sang and Done, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then I produced the album, the, the the record itself. I produced it and it was quite a quite a decent hit. You know, quite a decent hit, legend in the rock, in the rock and roll world. You know, a lot of bands covered it, loved it. You know, wow, because it was a killer song?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, is it. Was that the idea that in the in the up and smoke movies when he were guys, when you're doing the uh Mexican-American song like the Mexican American bit and he's just like at the like midway through he goes and that's all I got. Was that like an inspiration from the past song? Yeah, this is not knowing.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, that's the way we wrote everything you know you get a few words here, and there you know, get an idea and then next thing, you know, you got a song or a parody of another song. You know, like Cheech did, Born in East LA, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And it became more famous and born in the USA.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, yep, yep. You do hear that song more than you hear the Born in USA song.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you do hear.

Speaker 2:

Cheech more yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's just amazing.

Speaker 2:

Now yeah, Born in East LA.

Speaker 3:

What Cheech and I did was introduce weed and low riders Yep Into the straight world of comedy, where it really belonged. You know, Right Up until then, everything was always. You know, cops and robbers and drug dealers and cartels, and you know killing and robbing and killing, and Cheech and I come along and we just did a pot movie where only when Nolan got hurt and everybody got high, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Now, when you're shooting like the pot in the movies because it was back in like the days where the pot was frowned upon and demonized and legal as all hell. And was it real pot on the sets or did we get a shot? Was it real pot on the sets or did we guys smoking fake pot?

Speaker 3:

We had our supply, you know we always had a joint not to ready, but everything was. We didn't do anything to jeopardize the movie and so all the pot you know was fake. Okay, but you know, it read real. That was the main thing. I didn't want to give away any. Hollywood secrets, but yeah, I mean fake pot, but real actors, yeah it worked out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was. Yeah, both, all, yeah, all five. I think all five of the movies I've watched like repeatedly, and they're just amazing. Like I'm a hysteria. I'm laughing every time. I can't do it now, so much that I'm a father and my six year old runs around a lot, so I can't watch him so much anymore, but I can throw on the headphones every once in a while. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

That was nice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's nice to like, have like. I don't think cannabis would be where it's at today if it wasn't for Cheech and Chunk, if it wasn't Nope.

Speaker 3:

Nope, I mean, it probably would be, but there'd be another Cheech and Chunk somewhere in there.

Speaker 2:

Like somebody. You think somebody else would have snatched it up first.

Speaker 3:

Maybe Seth Rogen or somebody you know. Possibly James Brown, I've watched Pineapple Express for the first time, oh, wow, to see it all the way through. Yeah, it was hard watching or remembering pot movies, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

But when you see him you know like academically, you know straight, then it's a whole different number. So yeah, pineapple Express, that was quite a exciting movie, good movie.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's very intense for a Stoner movie.

Speaker 3:

That was the whole point. Yes, it was the whole point and I loved the way it enhanced everything. You know, he got more intense, he got more paranoid, he got more crazy. It was funny, man. Yeah, All that energy.

Speaker 2:

It's like, yeah, the part where he's on the, where he's on like I think it was the talk radio, and he's like, if anything, pot makes anything better, it makes shitty movies better. It makes shitty music better. It just makes everything better. And he's bright. He was very bright, absolutely Right.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely my art. When I do my art and I'll come along well, I treat it that way. You know, I treat it like what it is. You know it's like yeah, if you put it in a frame you could call it art, but for the most part it's almost like a ghetto family.

Speaker 2:

You know there's no room for everything.

Speaker 3:

So everything is where you're supposed to be. There's no special place for anything, and so it just crowd everything. It just crowd everything, yeah, yeah. And then it's a party as long as they all get along and they do All my belongings and stuff. No, I'm, what do you call it? No, I'm, what do you call it?

Speaker 2:

A hoarder Pack rat. I like to say pack rat because I'm the same. Exactly no pack rat.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's a rat, it's still a rat, you know. No, no, a hoarder. A hoarder, it's a guy that hoard shit, you know. But you know the trick is don't be a garbage hoarder.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly yes.

Speaker 3:

You know, be art hoarder, you know, or certain things you know, but make sure it's sanitary, you know it doesn't attract varmints.

Speaker 2:

Yes, like mice. Yes, don't keep food. I always found that weird that people keep food Like every hoarder move. You know, I've ever watched all the hoarders keep food and I don't understand that and it's like just throw out the food. You're not gonna eat it later, throw it out.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the sickness. You see, Mm-hmm, that's when you see the. There's a sickness with with tilts. Look at that, Cause I guess in some ways it's a way to attract company.

Speaker 2:

Maybe, yeah, attention, maybe.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I don't think it's the kind of attention you want, but I don't know. But yeah, to an extent I am also a hoarder, like electronics, like I still have all my electronics I've ever owned. Then like half of them don't work but I still have yeah, throw them away.

Speaker 3:

What's the birth size?

Speaker 2:

Aries.

Speaker 3:

Oh, aries, okay, yeah, yeah, that's March.

Speaker 2:

It's late March, early April. My birthday is April, late April Eight.

Speaker 3:

Yep Three eight.

Speaker 2:

Four eight.

Speaker 3:

I mean four, eight, four, eight. Yeah, yeah, my, my brother was April 3rd and then my grand son is April 3rd is birthday.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, now do you go by the news odiac, that news odiac thing Like I guess there's that there was a new sign that that would make me a Pisces and I wasn't having it. Oh, like way back when. I don't know if they're correct, I'm still with the old Chinese one. Yeah, that's why I go off.

Speaker 3:

I'm still there. I'm still there, no Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there was a zodiac. They found a different zodiac sign in the sky, apparently, and it's like two weeks long and it just throws a wrench in everything, like if you were in areas you're Pisces, if you were Gemini, or like a Leo or Scorpio or something like that.

Speaker 3:

Oh, yeah, and I was just like.

Speaker 2:

I was like why?

Speaker 3:

why mess with us? Now? It's all mathematics, so right. Somewhere down the line there's some numbers attached. So have you ever done the E-ching?

Speaker 2:

No, I have not.

Speaker 3:

Okay, this is your homework for this E is like I capital, I G-H-I-N-G. Okay, and the one you want is by Hannah Mogue. Okay, let's see.

Speaker 2:

Hannah Mogue. Now is that the author?

Speaker 3:

Well the. E-ching is an ancient book that was written King Wen, I think was his name, it's a. Chinese fortune-telling thing. This is the book, and see the writers at the bottom. This edition is the best. I've done. A few of them, and this one tells you.

Speaker 3:

And what it is they started out by dropping wheat stocks or yarrow stocks, but now you do it with coins. You get three coins and you flip them, okay, and you add them up and it gives you a hexagram and then, when you find the hexagram, it tells you, tells you your fortune, basically.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, and.

Speaker 3:

I hadn't done it until I went to jail. I hadn't. I did it in 60, I guess it was 68, 69. Okay, when I met, you know, the guy that wrote Erie Mama talking to me, well, he was very mystic and he turned me on to the E-ching back when.

Speaker 2:

I met him.

Speaker 3:

And we threw the coins and with me it came out perfection. Whatever I was doing, it was going to be the most perfect perfection. That's what it was. Then, years passed, I ended up in jail. My brother-in-law, my son, yeah, brother-in-law sends me the E-ching. I throw the coins, it comes up you are in jail for a reason. That's what it said. You are in jail for a reason. Corrections are where you go to change your behavior. How cool is that? What you're in jail for is you're there to change your behavior. Wow.

Speaker 2:

It'll do it to you. Yeah, it will do it to you too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and so I read that. And then my last one was pretty nice. I got to do it again. But and then when I was in prison, after I threw the E-ching and found mine, this inmate was looking at watching me and he said what is that? He thought it was a game, he wanted to try it. I was like, oh well, let me get your fortune. And so he threw the coins and then I don't know I'd have been stink or something, I didn't read it, I just found it and then I handed it to him and he read it himself. Then he handed me the book back and he went, got on his bunk, crawled up on his bunkers like it stared out the window. And so then I read what he, what his fortune was, and it said you have suffered a great misfortune and a tragedy, a terrible tragedy. You've just experienced a terrible tragedy, and I think it was a week before his wife and child was killed in a car accident, coming out to see him at prison.

Speaker 2:

So that's a crazy and dead on that book so this E-ching thing, so this thing is like spot on, like whatever it says is gonna have spot on.

Speaker 3:

And what he did? He see, back in the day, the Chinese were so advanced spirits they were the ones that are Confucius, you know and they embraced Buddhism. You know, they're very, very, very advanced and that's what came with it, because at the time they had emperors and kings.

Speaker 1:

And so you had they would.

Speaker 3:

They would subsidize, just like the aristocrats and the wealthy in Europe subsidized all the arts. You know Mozart and Beethoven, you know all the. All the musical grants were always the rich people and it was usually done either with the wealthy or the church. The churches were all very wealthy and the churches would support all the arts and and everything. It was quite a good system back in the day.

Speaker 2:

Wow, yeah, wow, that's amazing. We're gonna have to get that book and try it out. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for bringing that to me. Yeah, definitely Well you're ready?

Speaker 3:

You're obviously ready. It's a turn on.

Speaker 3:

And the only thing, you do is you're turning it on to someone that you know that'll need it, That'll appreciate it. Right, it's like a, like a Ouija board. Now, if you start fucking with it, it will it knows, you know you talk about. Ai. The each thing is okay. And so the each thing if you start you know, seeing you know who won the game or any bullshit like that there. The each thing spots it right away and next thing you know it tells you fuck off. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow Wow.

Speaker 3:

It's powerful. Yeah, yeah, quit quit, quit, quit doing what you're doing. You know just, it ain't working, it's not working.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it's not gonna, but yeah, it was. You were also sorry about started to switch the topic on you, but we are also. You're also on one of my, also one of my other favorite movies and it's with Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg and it's called the Wash. Oh, the Wash, the Wash. Yep, you are, you play. D's connection in that, like in that movie, is just I don't know, a lot of people don't like it because it's just I don't want to say a little bunch of film, but it's like a B rated movie, but it's still.

Speaker 3:

It's still funny, a funny movie Like now, I haven't, really I've never seen it all the way through.

Speaker 2:

Oh really, yeah, I've watched that movie like 20 times it was like a favor.

Speaker 3:

you know, hey, you gotta be in my movie. I've been on all the I've been on Dr Dre's albums and Snoop Dogg, and Snoop Dogg, you know, being homage to us with the up and smoke tour and then. And so when, dr Dre, when they asked me to be in the movie, it was like yeah, of course. But I yeah, I haven't. I haven't had occasion to see the movie yet. I love to see it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really good. I watch it all the time. Oh good it's. I believe it's on 2B right now, so you can watch it on 2B.

Speaker 3:

You know the the amazing thing. There's a couple of things that was amazing. When I was on Chapelle's movie you know the half-baked nasty Nate I ended up with a ground squirrel pet in the movie. Well, guess what? I ended up feeding having a pet in tap ground squirrels. That's what the inmates would do with their food. The food was so bad we'd take it and feed the ground squirrels, and the ground squirrels got so fat they couldn't get back in the hole, and so the hawks had a field day. You know the big fat ground squirrels out for their life.

Speaker 2:

It is the pure entertainment, pure entertainment. Value right there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And what other one did I do Come back to? No, the wash and the wash. I was given the weed away free, but I was selling the bar. And I ended up going to jail for selling bombs.

Speaker 2:

I am gonna ask you about that too. Yeah, what happened with all I seen you on? This is not happening. Comedy Central and you were telling your story about that. Like what happened, like someone with the end of CIA infiltrated your company and then did something illegal and you got in trouble for it.

Speaker 3:

Well, no, what they did? They infiltrated the company and one of them actually helped the company, because they were accusing us of funding the Taliban with billions of dollars made from illegal bomb sales.

Speaker 2:

The Taliban.

Speaker 3:

And so they sent a finance guy to see where all the money was going. Well, the finance guy found out that the company was losing money because they weren't running it like a company should have been run. And so he literally straightened our company out. But they also sent some undercover people to Vancouver to buy a shitload of weed and then to have them ship the bombs.

Speaker 3:

No, they came to LA from Pennsylvania and bought a ton of bombs and then talked the guy into shipping them back to us, and then that's how they got me breaking the law. Up until then the company never broke the law, and so it was. I could have beat it, but I realized the publicity from the bust in the experience. So I really wanted that experience going to jail. I was looking forward to it.

Speaker 1:

And I was right.

Speaker 3:

It was a memorable experience.

Speaker 2:

Not any of the times have I gone to jail that I wanna go, tommy. It's like you know what, just to see what jail's like. I never wanted to go to jail. I've been there a handful of times, nothing for anything major, but a handful of times, but it just never was.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so you know that side of it. No, I knew that side of it too. That's why I was the only one that got sentenced. You know a bomb, because I know what they did. They went and checked my record, even though it was juvenile. They'd check it all and find out what really went down, and found out that I'd been arrested a few times, and so I automatically got enhanced.

Speaker 3:

I was gonna go to jail. That's the way it works, you know, I can't deny that. I can't bitch about it. I guess I could. Nah, I wouldn't be worth going through the trouble, the lawsuits and shit, you know. But I think I think we, you know, I got a lot out of going to jail, you know.

Speaker 2:

You think it was?

Speaker 3:

easier. They took from me.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Do you think it was easier just to serve the time than it would be just to like drag the silent court for like years?

Speaker 3:

No, they won, they didn't they? The government knew that they never had a case against me. The only way they could get me in jail would be to threaten my wife and my son, which they did. But that's the government threatening your wife and your son, you know. That's the United States government, you know, and then you're not gonna win, and so I fold it, you know, but that was good, that was good.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah well, geez, that's it's just insane how it went down right.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I said, it was just insane how it went down.

Speaker 3:

It's just but yeah, yeah, no, it was so meant to be, because it was like I actually I laid a trap for the government and they fell right into it. Think about it you know, because we've done more to legalize weed than anything, than anybody. There's us in.

Speaker 2:

Sandra.

Speaker 3:

Gupta. When Sandra Gupta showed up baby hugging its mum for the first time after using THC as medicine, charlotte's Web. Then, within months, well before the election, marijuana was legal all over Colorado, all the states, you know, california, and the ball and it's rolling, it's getting bigger and bigger and the legalization is gonna it really is going to mellow out the planet Right.

Speaker 2:

Are you worried about the federal becoming legalized at the federal level, like how it would do to like the quality of the product, or do you think it wouldn't change at all?

Speaker 3:

You can't fuck with weed. No, you can't. If you could, if you people try, Right, I mean the biggest and the greenest, whatever, it don't mean shit, right.

Speaker 1:

It's what it does to you.

Speaker 3:

That's why you can't sensitize it. You know you can't repeat it. It's a magical one of a kind. Just think about this Every plant starts off with a tiny little seed and it grows into this enormous plant with all the beautiful THC all over the place. You can't fuck with it, you know.

Speaker 2:

You can fuck with people's minds but why? And yeah, and off of that one seed, you can create hundreds of others, just like, yeah, just by cloning it, just by cloning it, just stepping it off and cloning it. Yeah, it is, it's meant to be on the plant.

Speaker 3:

It's not meant to be for people to say, just put a toll on it. You know Right, but you do with civilization. You encourage everybody to have wealth. That's what you want Everybody to have wealth and then you use your talent to get people to share, to give you, for you to improve on your entertainment or whatever it is. You know Right, that's the idea of getting more money so you can do more art. Mm-hmm, because that's what we are. We're in the world of art. Yep, be it doing a podcast, the art of the podcast or doing a movie, or doing a painting, or doing a writing a song, you know singing and what you do think about what entertainment does? It brings people together and makes them smile, yep.

Speaker 2:

Makes them smile or cry. If you want to cry, if you're in the mood to cry or cry, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Or just to be very happy or sad or whatever. But it's what we're supposed to do on the planet, you know. We're supposed to get along with our neighbors, mm-hmm. And no one's person should have any more power over the next Right and just play by the rules that have been written many, many, many years ago. That work, and that's what we're doing, and that's why we're here. We're here to learn, we're here to learn and I'm here to burn.

Speaker 2:

Yep and Canvas does that. It brings people together, it makes you feel happy, it brings on amazing feelings and it's a relaxation. If you have it in pain, you'll take that away. If you can't sleep, it'll make you sleep. If you can't eat, it'll definitely make you eat. Fed my favorite fair share of munchies.

Speaker 3:

No, why. Why does it work that way?

Speaker 2:

I think because it's supposed to. That's why it's here. You know why it's why it's here.

Speaker 3:

It affects when you do THC. It affects the brain.

Speaker 2:

Our cannabinoid sensors that's right, sensors in our brain and your senses.

Speaker 3:

Send out messages. How's everybody doing?

Speaker 1:

He's back. Sorry, guys.

Speaker 3:

The thirst. The one in charge of hydration will tell you hey, get me something to drink now. Yeah, the hunger is said. Oh, I'm ready, I want to taste something. I want to taste something crunchy and sweet maybe, but I'm ready, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But what's your go-to munchie, when you're all stoned out? What's your go-to?

Speaker 3:

Oh, I guess they're called hard-tack crackers. They're not saltines, they're big, big size, big, nice size cracker white cracker. I worked in a cookie factory for a while and making all the cookies and all the cracker and they used to make this hard-tack and it was for the Inuit and the people up north.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And I got a taste for them, and so this cracker that I get it's a white cracker. I'm trying to think of the name. I can't think of the name right now, but and I'll share it with my dog, my poodle, and it's just nothing on it Just because I realized. The human body responds to, you know, physical movement, like the crunch, like Cheetos or potato chips, crunch activates taste buds, salaba buds, in your, in your jaw, in your mouth.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

See. So when you crunch something, all of a sudden the taste buds in your whole mouth come alive, and so that's why they crunch in the salt. The salt reminds you to drink water, drink something, stay hydrated. That's why the salt is so important, and so my go-to yes, it's a cracker, because it can't hurt me. Sugar is not. Sugar is not. It's not good to get addicted to sugar. No, it's not. No, or alcohol, or anything that'll hurt you.

Speaker 2:

I do. I have a problem with sugar, and throughout the day I'm fine, I won't eat any sugar. It's at night. Yeah, get up in the middle of the night and I raid the covers and I eat all my son's snacks in the middle of the day, at night, because I went to bed high and now I have a sweet tooth and the brownies are now gone.

Speaker 3:

That's why. That's why Halloween used to be such a happy occasion for little kids. But no, no no, they have to. They have to hide their goodies from their parents Because the parents there's so many of them addicted to it, because once you start, you can't stop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can't have one reason Bad, yeah, yeah, you can't just have one reason, you got to have both.

Speaker 3:

Well, that's why these gummies are so important, because when you, when you urge, when you get a little, you know a bunchy thing going or hydration. You know your mouth gets dry when I do these podcasts. I'll do one of these and they're just. They'll just make the taste buds come alive.

Speaker 2:

So you make your mouth water a lot. Get the saliva going yeah.

Speaker 3:

Very nice, Keerah cut mouth. Keerah, yeah, we were selling those going through the roof. Oh, nice yeah we're in talks now with some big distributors Budweiser, I believe.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:

Now, how are we going to be? Yeah, we're. We're merging with some pretty serious companies.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool Now. Is that Chong's Choice? Is that the Chong's Choice brand?

Speaker 3:

No, Chong's Choice is dead. Oh okay, that's done. No, it's just Tommy Chong or Cheechin Chongcom.

Speaker 2:

Cheechin Chongcom Okay.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Cheechin Chongcom, really that sort of thing.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

They're still doing Chongbongs.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

That's a separate company. And then I got the CBD, the sleep aids and and uh, awake, you know the energy.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

I got those, but the gummies, the Cheechin Chong gummies, they're just, they're my favorite. Oh, and we got a drink, a THC beer. Oh, wow, so instead of beer you drink this. It's flavored soda water mostly, but it's got enough uh hemp in there to give you a buzz.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And it's a nice and and I guess you can for some booze heads. You know, mild booze heads, it'll be enough. Right, you know it'll never take the place of real booze, but, uh, but it'll take the place of the need or the want of real booze.

Speaker 2:

But for, like, recovering booze heads like myself, recovered, yeah, recovered I can consider myself recovered. It's been like 12 years now. So are you recovered? I think so. Yeah, it's been 12 years since I've had a drink. I've spoken a lot of weed, but I don't I don't drink alcohol.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Well, it just takes one trip off the cliff to kill you.

Speaker 2:

but it was jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like done.

Speaker 3:

Well, you, you want to get yourself to the point where being straight is another high.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, we can just get up and enjoy your life and that's your high right there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, just just, for whatever reason. When you don't smoke, you don't drink, do nothing, and just feel the reality. I did that for three years, yeah, but I went to pre-trial jail jail nine months.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And then a year probation after. So for three years I was clean as a whistle. Oh wow, that's when I got cancer, by the way.

Speaker 2:

Oh wow, and when you stopped smoking, that's when. That's when it happened.

Speaker 3:

I got prostate when I was in the joint.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And then it morphed into rectal and so I had to have the operation and now I'm cancer free and it was all. I didn't just use weed, I used the CBD more for healing and not to be able, you know, not have pain Right. I never had any problems issues with pain or discomfort, where you end up on the OxyContin or or the morphine. I never went that route at all.

Speaker 2:

That's good. Glad to hear that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's just I don't want to get too into it, but it's just insane. To the stuff they peddle and they can just hear smoke a joint and it's. It's good, you're fine.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but that's what you know. Back in the day, the Mexicans would smuggle the weed across the border, not just for for the sale, Okay, Although they didn't do that, that would pay for their their way over but for their own medicine and use. You know, right, Like you say, it helps with sleep, helps with everything.

Speaker 2:

It helps everything. It helps you do anything you want and it makes it better. Like Seth Rogen says, it makes shitty things better. Yeah, but yeah, but real quick. I want, I do want to touch base on this before I have to let you go. Um, we do have. Uh, I was a big fan of that 70s show and it just seems like that show took another leap forward once Leo was introduced into it. Now, what did you enjoy like working on that 70s show and what was it like working with?

Speaker 3:

all those people. I loved every minute of it. What I loved about it was that I was like a visiting relative, almost.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

On vacation.

Speaker 2:

Uh huh.

Speaker 3:

And so I would come to the set and I'd watch them work and you know, like going to school, going to film school, you know I'd sit in the audience and learn what everybody did like actors, watch how the director talk to the actors and the writers and, you know, watch that whole thing. So I was, I loved every moment of that that 70s show and I made a lot of great, really nice close uh friends with, uh, with the crew. Yeah, we were a family for many years four or five years, five years yeah.

Speaker 2:

And we actually had that 70s show's parties, like I think I believe it was every Tuesday at like eight o'clock. We were to get together and we will watch the new episode of that 70s show and just get lit, just get blitzed off our asses. Just we're smoking, some people were drinking, but most of you were just chiefin' out and watching that 70 show. It was like a ritual.

Speaker 3:

So that explains why my character got so popular. Yeah, because, because, no matter what I said, I everybody understood what I was doing.

Speaker 2:

Where I was going, right, yeah, uh, what was it like? Uh, with working with I don't know his real name and God forbid me and God forgive me for this, but uh, but working with Al Borland. I'm going to call him Al Borland because his real name is escaping my mind at the moment. So when you guys, when he was playing your uncle and he was an artist, and you guys were rearranging or redoing, remodeling- Um the tool man the tool? Yeah, and he moved everything two inches to the left, and that was it.

Speaker 3:

And you know that was, that was my uh, I think that was my only ad-lib in the whole show.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Everything too much is to their left. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just like oh my gosh it was great Because the whole show, everything was so well written.

Speaker 3:

Uh huh, you know that there was nothing to ad-lib. Yeah, there was no room. They never left any room for it. No, I guess I know they wrote that. They wrote that. No, I can't take credit for that. I thought if anywhere where I would be able to improv, would be with him in a scene.

Speaker 1:

But it never happened. No, everything was written.

Speaker 3:

That's really one of the reasons, you know, I found so much respect for writers that I never had you know. Because you don't, because you know it's like magic. You don't want to know how the shit works.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And that's like writers too. All of a sudden, you meet someone that wrote it. You look at them and you're like, oh, you don't look like like a writer, right.

Speaker 2:

Like a lot of like the standup comedians that are like popular nowadays. We're like writers for SNL and stuff like that too. So it's just crazy how you are. You loved their material before he even knew who they were, and it's just amazing how that just renovates when it comes in yeah. But awesome, but awesome. But yeah, I don't want to take up too much more every time and I do appreciate you coming in and chaffing it up with me. We had a great time today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah well, I mean Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

I'm kind of stolen all the time. I got to do one more bit before today. I think Okay, I don't know, I don't know I'm supposed to be doing. They're doing a documentary on Renaldo Rey.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

The black. Do you know who Renaldo Rey is?

Speaker 2:

I.

Speaker 3:

Comedian. Okay yep, been in a lot of. I had him in a movie called.

Speaker 2:

Far Hope.

Speaker 3:

Man, okay, and anyway he died and they went to do. You know my memories of him. Uh huh, but so that's what's next on my plate.

Speaker 2:

That's your agenda Now. Are you going to be coming out with, like any more, any more skits or anything, or anything? I think I believe when I looked up your filmography, it was like an animation version of Cheech and Chong.

Speaker 3:

Well, no, there was a book, a book Like a superhero book. Okay, cheech and Chong superhero. We've got a documentary in the can. Basically, okay, it's like a more. It's a movie more than a documentary, but it's a. It's about Cheech and Chong. You know about some of the high points and a lot of the low points.

Speaker 2:

You know Right.

Speaker 3:

The disagreements that's coming out. And then we've got all our drinks. You know the sodas and that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

They're coming out. I'm really working on becoming one of the richest men in the world Me, do you both, bro? No, but I mean I have a path to do it.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:

You know, not just a no, it actually is a pipe dream.

Speaker 2:

There you go it is a pipe dream. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Because what I want to do, the reason I want to become so wealthy, is because I want to start a movie company.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

Where I hire everybody, and I'm talking about everybody.

Speaker 2:

That'd be awesome.

Speaker 3:

And because a movie company will find out who you are, where you are, what you, what you are, what you need, everything about you. But it's done not for the government, it's done for for the movie company itself, because everybody on the planet, as Trump showed during the insurrection that everybody has a camera and everybody is a movie actor. That's true, and therefore the world, our civilization, needs to be treated like a movie company, because we are a movie company.

Speaker 3:

Okay, now the thing back in the day of Metro Gold Mayor. You know all those movie moguls, you know they were. They were like maniacs. You know they were God, like figures, Okay, but they got everything done.

Speaker 2:

It's okay.

Speaker 3:

All right, All right. What's going on? Okay, I got it. No, the old movie guys, they ruled everything.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And that's that's what I want to do. But and I want to deal with our problems like immigration I want to everybody that wants to come in the country can come in the country Right and be registered, be an employee of the movie company Peace Fight Ventures and be assigned according to who you are.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

So if you're a child, you're a child. You got to go to school. You got to, you got to be treated like a child, right? According to American law, if you are a mother, and that's all you are as a mother, then you go down as extra. You're an extra, okay, and you're going to get paid a base pay for it, for being an extra.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

An extra is someone that a body that you need to fill in a space for a scene, for whatever. Doesn't take talent, just takes to be alive.

Speaker 2:

You know, no, now is this like a Truman show type thing. What like a Truman show type thing where you just live in your life but you're getting paid for it?

Speaker 3:

Not, really Not to make that extent, I mean no, no, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna shoot it first as a presentation. Okay and then the presentation is gonna become real as I shoot. Okay and then, for instance, oh, hiring all the migrants that came to the border. You know that I think they get the first Shot, those ones that were waiting there the longest okay bring him into the country, hire them, sort them out, put them where they're supposed to be.

Speaker 3:

A lot of them will be, you know. In fact, all of them will be worth something, because you don't migrate from one place to another Unless you have to, exactly and if you have to, usually it's for To stay alive, one to feed your family to and to Be safe from harm. That that's, that's really why you're. You're escaping Mm-hmm. Now, the fact that you got major way to the border shows that you are qualified right.

Speaker 3:

Qualified at least, do a lot of hardships, a lot more hardships that you'll never find doing movies right, because movies regulated, you see, and so you. But you want those kind of people in in your movie company, mm-hmm. And so you bring him in because the need to be here is really great. And so the Saturday, the gratification you're going to get, and I learned this when I did my first Movie by myself. I hired a first-time cameraman, okay, and he gave me a hundred thousand percent. We shot the whole movie in such record time.

Speaker 3:

We did, we had the first day we did 42 setups, 42, wow and one day the first day if you got through one or two or three, maybe five ball that's me 42, because we were on a roll. But so when you get that kind of energy coming, that's the energy you want to use. And a movie company, they need people. They need people to To support the people they got in. They need teachers. Movie companies need Child protection agencies. We need Mental health People. We need ordinary health people, you know this, general health people.

Speaker 3:

A movie company so it gives you all that, okay, all of that, mm-hmm, and plus they give you a paycheck and plus they give you a legal reason to be in the country and and and they give you Accommodations, because that's another thing, that that you know that we're starting to have problems in America and and so what I want to do it with peace, fight pictures again. Solve the Homeless problem by making a documentary drama of the homeless Starring, right, the homeless, right, okay, now there's a few actors in there too, to make a legitimate movie, right. But you have to know, here's the beauty you take a homeless camp, for instance, and you hire everybody in the camp. Now there's your employees. You use the homeless camp as a set For whatever drama, comedy, whatever you want to shoot on that set.

Speaker 3:

If we're, however long you would takes to shoot it. But once the the movie is over, the set gets taken on. Okay, because it belongs to the movie company, and the person that used to live in the movie come in. The set has time now because he's an actor, writer, whatever he is. Extra, whatever he is, he, with the help of the movie company itself, has found a new suitable Living quarters for the once homeless guy on this on the street right.

Speaker 3:

Now we go from street to street doing this and eventually guess what you got a City, because I remember LA, I remember all these cities without homeless.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, remember.

Speaker 3:

I remember when it was illegal to be homeless, it was called loitering, right, and you went and you went to jail For loitering if you didn't move along. So right, it's not a new problem, it's a very old problem. And the problem they have now is they got no room to put them. See, back in the day, nobody wanted to go to jail Because jails were pretty funky and you just moved along. Now there were hobos and they lived in the bush, but they couldn't let anybody know where they were living. They couldn't be out there, because if they did, they got attacked. They got all sorts of bad shit happen, right, you know, because they had no protection mm-hmm but the, but the homeless.

Speaker 3:

Now they're protected, you know, because they're out there, help us out there in there and and all. Yeah, a lot of it is about drugs, a lot of it, most of it is about mental health, but there were a lot of it's a, it's a mixture of everybody in there right here, bad luck, or abusive, fucked up family or or Illegal being illegals. You can't, you know Now she could do about it. So so what I, what I Invision doing? See what a movie company does, more than anything it files, put, puts a number and a file on every person, everything they have in that movie company.

Speaker 3:

Right, there's a place for it, you know, it doesn't get lost. You see, it has to be. There's a filing system because all you need so and so, from what movie? All that movie? Okay, oh, there, they are here, she is there, they are, you know, right, and so so everybody becomes important, mm-hmm. The problem right now, and that's a spiritual problem that that people are learning, because this is how you learn that that there is a God right is when shit happens to you.

Speaker 3:

There's no other explanation.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, they I was. I always tell people I like, no matter what your belief system is, whatever you believe, now there's gonna come a time in your life where you're gonna look up and you're gonna you're gonna say, help me, and it's gonna happen. It's an evidence inevitable, it's going to happen.

Speaker 3:

Well, they said there is no atheists in the foxholes. That's right. It's true when they're fighting overseas. You know and imagine and I see the, I definitely see what's going on Today. I really see it. I don't see it as a Tragedy, I don't see it as an anomaly.

Speaker 2:

I.

Speaker 3:

Just see it as a another Adventure, because that's what. That's what we're doing. We're on an adventure, and it's called life. And as long as you stay in the adventure, enjoy it If you can, and if you can, you will eventually.

Speaker 1:

Eventually yep that's the way it works.

Speaker 2:

Yep, you only get one, so you might as well make the most of it. Shoot for the hip, shoot for the stars. Even if you don't get there, shoot, do your thing.

Speaker 3:

Well, no, you get more than one Right, but you get one okay. You get one at a time.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we we could go down a deep rabbit hole on the afterlife thing, because I'm obsessed with it, but Could you what? I am obsessed with like what happens to us after death, like I have a million possibilities of what could possibly happen to us, but I don't know. I don't know if we have that much time.

Speaker 3:

Well, first of all, we don't know that's the one. We can only guess yeah, and the way the human mind is wow, the possibilities are endless.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. That's why I always tell people and it's like you don't know what happens when he died, but you can just look up and imagine, like you don't know what happens, but there's so much that could, like you can't just narrow it down to one thing. There's so much you got to expand it, there's so much more that that can actually happen, but we just don't know what.

Speaker 3:

You know that phone. It's, it's the people you love, not money and stuff. That's rich. Yes, that's what makes you rich, yep, and if you got people you love, you're wealthy, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

So, as you have family, family and friends that are very close to you think is in love everywhere, yeah, there's nothing else you can, anything else you could want, really, you don't need anything that makes your feeling there's not a lesser feeling than love, love.

Speaker 3:

Love is a greatest feeling in the world. I know, that that's why that's, that's, that's the Carrot on the stick. You know, for us, that's what we, whether we know it or not, that's what we're looking for. Right, you know we're seeking it. That's why the spotlight for a lot of people it's so wow, mm-hmm, rip. You know, because, wow, you mean the spotlight, you get that attention on you and it's all, and it's a love attention, it's all positive.

Speaker 2:

Yeah I'll positive energy coming towards you, coming your way.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I do want, I do want to think huh.

Speaker 2:

Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, let me get you out.

Speaker 3:

I gotta go now. I think, okay, I gotta get ready for my next adventure.

Speaker 2:

Alright, it sounds good. Buddy, I do appreciate you coming on and taking time out of your day to talk to me, and If you ever want to come back on this, reach just this holler at me, I'll bring it back.

Speaker 3:

Okay, thank you, it sounds good. Thank you very much, buddy. Do the each thing okay.

Speaker 2:

I will for sure. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

check check it out, Okay thank you, sir, mr Tommy Chong giving me homework after after today's episode, and I can't thank him enough to be in on here. Like I said, I've been a fan of Tommy Chong's inch each and Chong for Since I was 12 years old and it's just amazing that I got that opportunity to talk to him. So it just proves the matter. Everyone out there, if you'd never give up, I just gonna sound corny cliche. I'm doing it right now. But don't give up on what you love, but do what you love and don't ever give up, because you never know. You never know when you're gonna hit that treasure. So just keep digging, guys. Just keep digging and with that, I will see you guys next week. We will be live again next week on Saturday, so Keep on the lookout. Thank you, guys for tuning in. Make sure to smash that like and subscribe button and I will see you Next week. Stay up, friends later.

Tabi Chong and Cheech's Journey
Comedy Duo's Musical Success
The Influence of Cheech and Chong
Movies, Jail, and Legalization Discussion
That 70s Show and Future Projects
Movies Solving Social Issues
Don't Give Up on Your Dreams