Culture
Culture
Pan-Roasted Brussels Cannabis Flavored Sprouts with Bacon
Pan-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon Recipe Type: Main Cuisine: American Author: Tony Aiello Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 25 mins Total time: 40 mins Serves: Feeds 4 If you know anything about cooking with cannabis, you know you can’t cook at too high a temperature if you want to keep your THC from being ruined by the heat. And if you know anything about pan-roasting Brussels sprouts, you know the best way to do it is in a cast-iron skillet over a serious flame. What gives? As with comedy, cooking is about timing. But while they say tragedy plus time equals comedy, with cooking, too much heat for too long always equals tragedy. So the trick here is to know just when to add your THC—for this recipe in the form of cannabutter. Ingredients 1 pound Brussels sprouts 3 or 4 strips bacon, preferably thick-cut 4 garlic cloves 1 small onion 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil 2 tablespoons cannabutter or oil Instructions Heat cast-iron skillet on high for 5 to 7 minutes, then reduce heat to medium. Chop or slice and add bacon. Cook bacon for 2 minutes, then add butter or oil. Cut sprouts into halves and chop garlic and onion. When butter is melted, add garlic and onion and brown for 1 to 2 minutes before adding sprouts. Place sprouts cut side down and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Turn over sprouts and continue cooking for another 3 to 5 minutes until browned and soft. Turn off heat, mix in cannabutter or oil and let sit for 2 minutes to heat and absorb into food. 3.3.3077 One of the great things about Brussels sprouts is their versatility, allowing them to be used as both a side dish and an entrée, as well as the ease with which they combine with other ingredients and both absorb and complement other flavors. This recipe can serve as an entrée paired with a grain or pasta and a light side salad or another cold vegetable. As a side dish it goes well with just about any meat or fish recipe, but because of its heartiness, any other side dishes you make should be on the lighter side. This dish uses bacon both as a fat to assist the cooking and as a main ingredient, but vegetarians and anyone preferring not to use bacon can just as easily use a little extra olive or grapeseed oil and a flavorful vegetable substitute like sundried tomatoes, garlic scapes, red or green peppers, or even chipotle peppers to replace the bacon. If you know anything about cooking with cannabis, you know you can’t cook at too high a temperature if you want to keep your THC from being ruined by the heat. And if you know anything about pan-roasting Brussels sprouts, you know the best way to do it is in a cast-iron skillet over a serious flame. What gives? Comedy and cooking are both about timing. But while they say tragedy plus time equals comedy, with cooking, too much heat for too long always equals tragedy. The trick here is to know just when to add your THC—for this recipe in the form of cannabutter.
Nixon, Vietnam and the Black Drug Dealer
Two thirds of American forces in Vietnam smoked marijuana. If those troops were worried about copping a joint once they returned to America, they need not worry. The marijuana plant, which grew in abundance in Southeast Asia, was now available at home, sold by the archetypical black drug dealer. If America “lost its innocence” after the Kennedy and King assassinations, that innocence was replaced by fear. Richard M. Nixon knew that whites were reacting to economic and societal changes that threatened to destabilize the mythical image of post-World War II prosperity. This “Silent Majority” instead embraced fear mongering, often at the expense of the freedom of young black men. This new sentiment in public discourse was a shocking reversal to the course set by Lyndon Johnson to lead the entire nation into a greater society, one that defended minority rights to vote, eliminated racial segregation and created a greater safety net for those who were in greatest economic need. The hard-won Civil Rights Acts of ’64 and ’65 soon gave way to raging protests against the war in Vietnam, making civil rights seem more like an early victory in a much longer cultural war. This culture war often set noisy young men and women wrapped in clouds of marijuana smoke against the older demographic of what Tom Brokaw called the “Greatest Generation.” Those who had won WWII, and in the celebrant Baby Boom following the war, had given rise to a massive young constituency that insisted on shaking up the status quo. To battle this counter-culture wave, Nixon capitalized on fear, focusing on the issue of criminal violence. Law and order would be the theme of his 1968 presidential campaign. Drug were a particularly fruitful topic, as it combined violent crime with undercurrents of anti-hippy sentiment and, most potently, residual racism and resentment from the civil rights movement. In a letter to former President Eisenhower, Nixon stated; “Ike, it’s just amazing how much you can get done through fear. All I talk about in New Hampshire is crime and drugs, and everyone wants to vote for me-and they don’t even have any black people up here.” Large American cities became, in Nixon’s narrative, evil citadels of under-served African Americans. Many had once been part of a working-class existence. But the phenomenon of deindustrialization saw inner city steel mills and factories leave the U.S. for overseas. The now giant abandoned factory mills served as tall moss covered trees in a swamp that was a breeding ground of menial-paying jobs, low-skilled labor and eventually, the high-paying but dangerous short lived career of a drug pusher. This setting would serve Nixon perfectly. The bait of hate would win him the 1968 presidential election, and set in motion three decades of fierce drug prohibition and incarceration, one that affected young black men far more than any other group. Even with legalization dawning since the new Millennium, the residual scars from Nixon’s assault on freedom are still seen in the inner-city strife and anti-authority protest of today. Generations of missing black persons swallowed whole by the drug war will take more than a few legal joints to repair.
Stoner Detectives In Cinema
The gumshoe—hard-boiled, two-fisted, fedora-wearing, skirt-chasing sleuths—is as all American as the slice of processed cheese on his pie or the Lucky Strike jib dangling from his lip. Those smokes, however, were strictly tobacco, and the old school tough guys like Bogie’s Sam Spade were more likely to drown their troubles in bourbon then they ever were to partake of the hippie lettuce. But, times change, and from somewhere out of the purple haze of the late ‘60s there arose a new archetype for a groovier world: stoner detectives. These cats may seem like slackers, but really they just prefer to let their minds unwind in order to solve the crime. Phillip Marlowe – The Long Goodbye (1973) Director Robert Altman made his long and legendary career by basically taking any genre he touched and shredding it into cinematic confetti; case in point: casting laconic wise ass Elliot Gould as Raymond Chandler’s iconic L.A sleuth Phillip Marlowe Gould’s Marlowe is snarky cool and in control, even while seemingly forever hung-over.. He gets pushed around by the cops, the crooks (including a young, beefy Arnold Schwarzenegger as a mob goon), his friends, and even the naked hippie chicks that live next door. But Gould’s Marlowe manages to keep it all together by floating over the noise until it’s the time to turn the tables, close the case and wrap up the nasty loose ends. Larry “Doc” Sportello – Inherent Vice (2014) Sporting muttonchops as thick as T-Bone steaks, and slipping so deep into character his bloodshot eyes would probably get him pulled over, Joaquin Phoenix plays “Doc”, a shambling, burnt out mess of a P.I. in Paul Thomas Anderson’s smoke-filled take on Thomas Pynchon’s hyper literate, factoid laden and almost impenetrable 2009 novel. Operating out of his shabby 1970 Venice bachelor pad, Sportello gets tangled up in a trio of missing persons cases, though he barely seems capable of finding the number for the pizzeria down the street. Our hero rides the metaphorical wave and follows the clues to a larger conspiracy involving a multi-million dollar real estate swindle, a cult like drug rehab center, corrupt cops, Neo Nazi biker gangs, gun running Black militants and a cabal of heroin dealing dentist’s called “The Golden Fang.” It doesn’t matter if all the subplots never quite line up, because the mystery is just a backdrop for satire of a hazy California dream tainted by weirdo charlatans and mercenary capitalists alike. Rustin Cohle - True Detective Having escaped the purgatory of co-starring in endless Kate Hudson rom coms, Matthew McCounaghey willed himself back into critical relevance with a comeback starting as a cocky, male flesh peddling Stripper daddy in Magic Mike, then culminating in Oscar winning turn as a macho redneck turned maverick A.I.D.S activist in Dallas Buyer’s Club. What really secured his rejuvenation though was his genius turn as the deeply haunted, existential investigator Rust Cohle, alongside his real life ganja loving, naked-bongo-playing partner in high, Woody Harrelson on HBO’s groundbreaking , instant classic, gritty TV novella True Detective. As a former narc and future addict, Cohle didn’t discriminate in his drug intake, but his mind-altering view of reality, and observations like “Time is a flat circle” certainly don’t come without at least a few trips down the THC rabbit hole. Jeffrey “ The Dude” Lebowski – The Big Lebowski The Cohen brothers notorious flop turned cult icon is maybe the single most quotable script in movie history; chock full of dozens of killer lines that have wormed their way so deep into our brains that we can hardly remember our sad little lives before it. A madcap romp through the seedy underbelly of Hollywood glitz, Lebowski has become a staple of college dorm movie nights, and the new template for intelligent stoner comedy (and anti-plot detective narrative), though few imitators have really tie a room together. Jeff Bridges brilliant performance as accidental detective Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, was so immersive that the Oscar-winning actors now seems content to traipse through life like the goofball, Zen master we all want him to be. And who doesn’t want to get so stoned that they turn into a human bowling ball? Norville “Shaggy” Rogers –Scooby Doo You could say that technically Scooby is more of a paranormal researcher than a detective, but if it wasn’t for him and his pesky friend’s meddling around haunted houses, abandoned factories and TV studios, then dozens of blackmailers, saboteurs and disgruntled librarians would have gotten away with scarring the shit out of generations of townies. You could also say that he was just an innocent Saturday Morning cartoon character, but my man road around the country in a conversion van, had the munchies like it was his job, constantly thought he was seeing phantoms and ghost pirates, partied with Mama Cass and had lengthy, philosophical conversations with his Great Dane. You do the math homey.
Stoner Movies You Don't Know, But Should.
If there’s one thing the internet really, really loves, it’s manufactured outrage; right behind cat videos, dodgy fetish sites and lists of great stoner movies that all mention of the same classics: Cheech and Kumar, Chong and Harold, the usual suspects. You know those movies. And you love those movies. But you’ve seen all those movies on a million lists before. So we’ve decided to offer an alternative collection of movies by, for and about stoners that wanders just a little off the path. Our Idiot Brother (2011) A comedy so low key that it often seems in danger of dozing off, Our Idiot Brother coasts by on the sweetly mellow charms of Paul Rudd. Seriously, is there a more ingratiating figure in modern screen comedy? Rudd plays Ned, a sublimely stony man-child who has zero ambitions beyond chilling on his upstate New York commune with his golden retriever Willie Nelson. Dude is so kind that he accidentally sells a bag to a cop, leading to more hassles and plot complications than a gentle soul should have to deal with. Now homeless, our dippy hippie is forced to couch surf between his trio of concerned, and marginally more responsible sisters, played by the improbably cute trio of Elizabeth Banks, Zoey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer. They’re supposed to straighten him out, but eventually Ned’s herby, blessed out-ways expose the pent up neurosis and hidden crises of his siblings. https://www.youtube.com/embed/1yvn8a16B9Q PCU (1994) Once a staple of pay cable movie channels at the dawn of the millennium, this celebration of hard partying, politically incorrect slackers is now neglected in favor some of its flashier peers—but still provides its own tasty strain of ‘90s realness. Set on the campus of the fictional, hyper-progressive Port Chester University, a landscape dominated by feuding factions like the radical “Wymonists,” who love protests and chants like “ Hey ho! This penis party has go!” and the Young Republicans, lead by a sniveling David Spade. Meanwhile the social climbing dean (Jessica Walters) is trying to garnish her legacy, and suck up to donors by pushing projects like a building for Bisexual Asian Studies, while cracking down on rouge frats like our heroic anarchists of “the Pit.” Lead by wisecracking career senior “Droz” (Jeremy Piven and his real hairline) and his dope-damaged sidekicks like Gutter (a doughy and dreadlocked John Favreau), they respond to this warrantless aggression the only way they know how; Partying till they puke. It all culminates in an epic cross campus rager anchored by the ever amazing George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. Maybe it’s a bit of a lovable underachiever, but PCU did give us the immortal line, “Can you blow me where the pampers is?”. https://www.youtube.com/embed/T2Fp61jJcIs I Love You Alice B Tolklas (1968) Peter Seller’s entire career was ahead of his time. Case in point, this weird little romp in which an buttoned down lawyer gets his life completely turned around by one little pot brownie. The culture clash between Seller’s neurotic square and all the groovy flower children is dated as hell, but offers an oddly enjoyable trip down the rabbit hole where Free Love freak-outs collided with mid-century comedic angst. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m58giTA-OE Head (1968) Did you know the Monkees made a movie? Yeah smart guy, but did you know it was written by Jack Nicholson? Yes, that Jack Nicholson! And it was directed by movie entrepreneur turned ‘60s radical Bob Rafelson, who went on to make serious films like The King of Marvin Gardens and Five Easy Pieces. There’s a moment of seriousness found here, or even sanity, as the “Pre-fab” four shamble their way through a near plotless string of gags, sketches and meta commentary on the absurdity of their own success. Lead Monkee Mike Nesmith has described the flick as “A suicide mission,” designed to blow apart the primetime-safe image of the band, which it did a little too well. Head was an epic disaster at the time, but the soundtrack sports some of the Monkee’s most complex and groovy tunes, and the surrealism, general weirdness and nervy counter culture attitude have earned it respect and even a Criterion Collection release. Also, everybody involved had to be high as the space station. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdtqzm-v-w
