Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Legend of the Galactic Peace Tour's Greatest Crime - by Request

Maybe you have seen movies with Johnny Depp or Al Pacino and the incredible crimes they committed as dope dealers.  We weren't great dope dealers up there with criminals like that but at least we were funny dope dealers.  Plus we had a little problem with killing people, particularly if we are the ones getting killed.

It was 1972 and it all started with a pound of reefer.

We had come up with a plan, Lotho, Laughing Gecko, and I, as we reasoned lots of people go to rock concerts, many of them are stoners, so if we can provide a public service for these stoners then there potentially will be fast women, big bucks, and speedboats in our future.  I'm not sure where Cadillac Man was but he had to be in this somewhere.

So we set to the task of dividing the pound of reefer into suitable measures for selling at a rock concert.  With more business acumen than any of us have demonstrated since, we determined the best sizes would be nickel or dime bags.  That set the target and we began dividing this pound of reefer into nickel and dime bags.

You probably have no idea how many nickel and dime bags can be split out of a single pound of reefer.  It wasn't that they were so small as an ounce of reefer only went for about thirty dollars or so back then.  Even so, there were nickel and dime bags all over the place and the time taken for this immense labor of stoner love is lost to history, plus we were blowin' reefer the whole time so there's no way of knowing.


With all the preparations complete and the day of the show at hand, there was nothing else for it but to load up all these bags of reefer, as in stuff them into every possible pocket of our jackets, inside, outside, anywhere we could put them.  If we were busted for trafficking that night, it wouldn't have been so much the problem of the bust but rather that there were at least fifty counts of trafficking for each of us.


The plan was outstanding as we got up to the plaza in front of the Coliseum and positioned ourselves for effective reefer trafficking and we couldn't sell the stuff fast enough.  There were nickel and dime bags of reefer flying about all over the place so the first miracle was we didn't get busted for it because we were absolutely brazen.  This was like selling tutti fruiti ice cream at Coney Island.

But that was the problem in that we could not sell the stuff fast enough.  We sold one hell of a lot of it but we did not sell all of it and our pockets were still stuffed with more reefer.

That required an executive decision as it had not been the plan to brave the cop gauntlet on the way into the concert hall.  Since there was no way any of us were going to throw out perfectly good reefer, that only left one answer:  run the gauntlet.


So, we're cool, we're cool.  Yeah, we bad.  And we sauntered on through the cop gauntlet, just as easy as pie we walked on through there into the hallway around the stairs to the floor.

That is to say it was easy as pie for two of us but Lotho ran into a little difficulty, which is to say a cop thought he needed to check this one.  He wanted to know what Lotho had in his pockets and of course Lotho replies he has nothing in his pockets.  Equally obviously, the cop didn't believe him because cops never do.

So ...

Lotho started emptying the pocket and nickel bags of reefer started accumulating in front of the cop.  Not at all satisfied, the cop continued and wanted to know what is in his other pocket.  What do you know, more bags of reefer start making an impressive pile in front of the cop.  This is holding up the line for people getting into the show but people are diggin' it now as every single one of them is thinkin', man, there has got to be some move I can make on that reefer.

The cop was highly determined as he could see Lotho must be a career criminal bent on the destruction of Western society and he's probably a Communist.

So Lotho kept emptying his pockets and the pile in front of the cop grew.

You need to understand the gruesomeosity of the situation as Laughing Gecko and I want to do something but our pockets are still full of reefer also.  We needed a pink helicopter with external speakers blasting Pink Floyd music ... but that wasn't how we got to the show that night.

Probably you have already figured how this went as Lotho was busted and the concert was completely screwed ... except that's not at all what happened.


Once there was this huge pile of nickel and dime bags of reefer, all blazingly obvious in having only the purpose of sale, the cop told Lotho to put them all in a barrel to one side.  Inside that barrel was so much dope that it could have stoned all of New York City for the next twenty years.

After Lotho put all of that lovely reefer into the barrel, of course the cop did the only thing he could:  he waved Lotho on through and said move along, move along.

And there was Miracle No. 2 for the evening.  There is no explanation as stuff like that sometimes happens on the Galactic Peace Tour.  So long as anything ends with a good buzz and no violence, there's no need for further analysis and on to the next show.


To this day, I have no idea who was playing but that opening scene was priceless and I wouldn't let that go for anything.


As to how the future went for dope dealing, that was the future in dope dealing.  It started and ended on the same night as we had come to a mutual conclusion:  we really suck as dope dealers.  It was fun, tho.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your usually sharp memory is flawed. The dope dealing went on your years. Cadillac Man was not there but the 4th cohort was
And loudly urging me to run for it.
And I thought I was the only one holding

Unknown said...

It seems Cohort No. 4 must have been Cohort No. 3 on the Grand I-71 Test of the Coefficient of Friction then as I can't visualize but he's the only one I can imagine would have been No. 4.

I'm really not sure who was holding but the part with the pockets emptying was an all-time classic.

My mind isn't so far gone I've forgotten writing these previously but there was a request from not such a remote quarter for let's hear some of that hippie shit.

Anonymous said...

#4 testified at the City Council meeting the day after the Who

Anonymous said...

Classic was,when I asked for it back when they said they werent carting me off