Cheech & Chong:

Straight, But Still Smokin’ In The 21st Century

By John Voket

If it wasn’t true it could be... well, a Cheech & Chong routine!

Enter two veterans of ‘70s-era improv and stand-up, reunited nearly two decades after riding a multi-million-dollar wave of sketch comedy, movies and albums focusing almost exclusively on consuming mass quantities of illegal substances. And they are selling out huge arenas, reviving some of their most popular routines, performing them perfectly straight, to audiences gathering in non-smoking halls.

Funny? Maybe, but Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are pulling it off. And they are reportedly doing it perfectly straight and sober.

As a matter of fact, 69-year-old Tommy Chong is fond of telling interviewers he actually hired someone to smoke for him, at least until Cheech & Chong’s Light Up America (and Canada) Tour wraps up March 7.

On January 2, a near sold-out Mohegan Sun Arena crowd witnessed the duo staying loyal to material that brought them their collective success.

With just a few passing contemporary, and not so flattering references to outgoing President George W. Bush, and a generous amount of narrative recounting Tommy Chong’s nine months in federal prison for distributing drug paraphernalia, the balance of Cheech & Chong’s hour-long routine stuck to sex, drugs and rock & roll.

The show opened with a riff on the Pedro & Man skit from Big Bambu where Cheech, as Pedro De Pacas, picks up what he believes to be a buxom lady hitchhiker, which turns out to be Chong in drag. As the pair get acquainted, the skit ramps up from trading tokes to Man mistakenly giving Pedro a handful of hallucinogenic instead of sedatives to chill out his hemp-fueled paranoia.

Other sketch routines followed, with high points being the duo’s infamous game-show parody on Let’s Make a Deal, and the uproarious Ralph and Herbie, which saw Cheech & Chong going down on all fours to imitate a couple of naughty neighborhood mongrels.

The duo’s live show was balanced with musical numbers. Cheech donned massive sunglasses and a pink tutu as Alice Bowie performing “Earache My Eye” from The Wedding Album, and Chong did equal justice to a selection of well-played blues songs by Blind Melon Chitlin, including a very nasty ditty about Michael Jackson and his pet monkey.

While Cheech shuffled on and off the stage pretty much in character depending on the skit, Chong was able to poke fun at himself as well as taking on any of the scruffy, half-baked characters he created.

The duo’s history stretches back to the early 1970s. And interestingly, if it weren’t for a chance meeting that blossomed into a successful career in comedy and movies, Cheech and Chong may have both gone on to individual success in their own right - as musicians, instead of parlaying musical interludes into the greater body of spoken comedy sketches.

According to their official bio, Cheech, born Richard Marin in the barrios of East Los Angeles, earned his nickname from “cheecharone,” a Chicano delicacy made of deep-fried pork skins, also known as cracklings.

A little known fact: As one of eight children of a Los Angeles police officer, Marin frequently skipped school to cruise with his lowrider buddies and sing in their garage bands while still managing to graduate with straight A’s.

A few years earlier, Chong, who is eight years older than his comedic foil, had quit high school to pursue music after spending much of his youth dodging street fights by hiding out in movie houses in his home town of Dog Patch, just outside of Alberta, Canada.

After touring with Canadian R&B band The Shades — as well as co-writing “Does Your Mama Know About Me,” a charting single that was eventually recorded by The Jackson 5 — Chong turned his attention to improvisational comedy, establishing a troupe at his brother’s night club in Vancouver.

That’s where Cheech & Chong’s first few comedic seeds took root, growing into an intoxicating career that to date has spawned ten recording projects and a half-dozen films all told grossing hundreds of millions of dollars.

And if you can bank on what they are saying in the press today, the two comedians reportedly have a new concert DVD, a new motion picture, and even a cartoon series in the works. Pretty smart work for a couple of fellows who have elevated the ultimate slacker lifestyle to an art form.

Although there were plenty of knowing smiles, and even a few belly laughs to be had during Cheech & Chong’s fast-paced 50-minute set, it was Tommy Chong’s wife of 33 years, Shelby who kept the audience in nearly constant stitches during her 15-minute opening monologue.

She has honed the perfect comedic balance of the ditzy, bubble-head who laces her Valley Girl delivery with bits of observational genius. But based on the exodus of audience members with children in tow streaming out of the room, her subject matter may have been a little too rough for the parents who somehow determined bringing their kids to a Cheech & Chong reunion was the right move.

What were THEY smoking?