Jeffrey Peterson: The 420 Comic

Walking towards the back entrance of Liberty Bell Temple in Los Angles I continuously asked myself what in all that’s hot in hell was I getting into? Here I am a happily married man who has slowed his lifestyle down considerably over the past 5 years after coming to the belief that yea I’m old and I’d like to see older ( sorry folks Flash has been reduced to grass and necessary back pills, ok lots of grass) who has received the not so flattering but probably accurate reputation as a stick in the mud about to sit down with a man two years his senior who makes no apologies for believing in his rights to ingest whatever drugs turn him on, drip his seed onto anyone that wants it, has made 11 treks to Burning Man, created the character Bastard Santa, and whose favorite quotes include “Do I make You Horny?“ and “Hey Bud, Let’s Party.” My guess was we weren’t going to start out discussing this weeks Lunch with the FT interview or McLaughlin Group topics. That’s where the status of petrified stick firmly planted in ice age mud comes in. Do I ever get tired of being wrong? Once I did, but I was only mistaken. What I found was a self made publisher and comedian with profound knowledge on America’s marijuana war, an environmentalist, a man who has not forgotten where he’s been, knows exactly where he’s going and how he plans on getting there along with a new found respect for dissoluteness.

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As the Provost of Introvert University It was beyond my understanding how Jeffery became comfortable leaving his lifestyle and himself as open as a third generation Southern Illinois inbred’s zipper to public censure. It seems routine physical trouncings and an all mom household helped shaped his hardened stance towards criticism. “ I was raised in a radically dysfunctional situation, I come from the east coast, I’m a Mayflower New Englander but I was moved to the Southwest when I was a kid and raised by lesbians in the hood. I was definitely the odd man out. I got my ass kicked on the way to school at school and on the way home from school.”  Another toke and he continued to explain “ The funny thing is I was there for acting and some other kids were there for murder and rape 101. Because of my situations I’ve always looked to the bright side of life. I’ve always found that laughter and levity will get you through everything.”

Having found out what made the man it was time to move on to what the man was now making. Tell me about Cali Chronic X your adult film star and pot online publication I asked. “ Cali Chronic X is an alternative lifestyle magazine for the cannabis culture community. We are the first magazine to feature adult film stars smoking weed which differentiates us from the other sexually orientated cannabis magazines that are cropping up. It was in print for about a year but  now we publish only online. We didn’t see that much justification in putting something in print and contributing to a paper problem. We’ve reached a broader market online and we receive about 50,000 to 80,000 hit’s a month. We want to reach the more fringed stoner, the forgotten stoner that’s into the tattoo, piercing, extreme sports lifestyle, those who enjoy living on the edge because that’s where we come from the edge. We like Hip Hop we like Reggae but we also like Metal and we think there is a place for all that in the cannabis culture.”

It was at this point in the interview that Jeffery noticed I had passed on the last 5 or so go rounds at the steam roller and asked me if “I was one of those guys who just got high after work.” I assured him that pretty much I was high all the time however I am 40, Jewish, and my bald head was my body’s first sign of yielding to my undeniable metamorphosis into everyone’s favorite alter kokcer, schlepy, kvetching father who can’t see well in the dark who has a 1 hour drive back home which is going to turn into 2.5 hours because of Friday afternoon traffic and the whole time I have to deal with mashugana drivers who refuse to merge into traffic from the entrance ramp until the broken white line ends no matter how much room I give them and what’s with all this driving in the shoulder lane and cutting back in just to get 5 fucking cars ahead and oy my backs going to be killing me so I‘m going to wind up taking a pill for that and I had already smoked a sacrament bowl before entering the temple. After a slight adjustment of my pants back up to my naval Jeffery appeared to be on board with the whole megile.

While doing research for this interview I came across a clip where Jeffery mentions his arrest at Venice Beach. I was unable to resist finding out if the police department was still taking their arrest procedures directly from the manuals of Pol Pot and Idi Amin. Unfortunately for all of us it seems they still are. “I got busted down in Venice Beach in a sting operation. I’ll say this folks just be careful when you are down at Venice Beach because a lot of the people who seem like they’re on the up and up a lot of the people who seem like they’re so called cool in the weed movement are not your friends. They’re FBI agents they’re undercover and they’re really there to trick you so I learned a valuable lesson with that experience.” Things still didn’t add up to me. Why would a man with a medical marijuana card and a high profile (all pun intended) in the most liberal of medical marijuana states get busted? “ I had my card and they didn’t catch me with a speck of weed, not even a seed not even a stem and they considered me a drug dealer. I knew right then when the cop hand cuffed me and started whispering in my ear why don’t you make a joke now 420 Comic I realized what was going on then they handcuffed me to a bench for 7 hours.” I quipped I guess you’re a somebody now huh? “I’m somebody with more knowledge of the inside of Twin Towers and anybody whose been there knows it’s very real and it’s very unjust. It was a message being sent to me and some people in the movement told me that it was the stripes I guess I had to earn.”

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television then we’d have peace.” John Lennon said that and Jeffery’s answer to my question how the marijuana movement was progressing politically seemed to echo Lennon’s sentiment perhaps just a tad more aggressively. “It’s definitely progressing and California has been the catalyst although I think we’ve become complacent in general. I don’t necessarily consider myself a political activist as much as I do a cultural activist. I don’t care if it’s legal or not I just want it to be free. I have a solution though, in California we kind of hold the cards if we told the red states, mostly the states in the middle of the country until marijuana is legal across the United States they’ll be no more entertainment. We won’t be making anymore movies, anymore albums, you won’t be getting any more commercials, you won’t be getting anymore cool stuff to blow your mind. I think if the entertainment industry A.K.A Hollywood would hold the rest of the country ransom over pot we’d probably win this thing. We’d see how long they hold out. I guarantee you when they can’t watch Monday Night Football or Lost people are going to loose their cool.” As someone who would voluntarily initiate the tearing of  testicle from tissue in order to avoid missing any Monday Night Football game, I absolutely agree with him.

Having claimed that one of his favorite strains of marijuana (707 from Humbolt country)  gave a woman an orgasm I wondered whether he had contributed any effort towards climax. Jeffery turned to me with a grin that suggested mass contribution. “Hey, I did my part. This was a very amorous Persian woman. The thing about it was before we even made love she took a whiff of 707 and said it smelled like good sex. So while we were engaged in the act she was just about to reach climax and I just thought it would be fun to let her take a whiff of the jar and that sent her over the top. I think she is in a fulfilling relationship now which is good for her.” Now you tried marriage and it didn’t work out right? “ Yea, I tried marriage for 12 years and I did make it out alive though with my penis.”

As I mentioned earlier about 5 years ago I decided to radically change my lifestyle. It wasn’t that I had suddenly become pious and wasn’t going to be weak and poison myself with unnecessary toxins. I’m simply afraid of death and it made sense to me that I was better suited dealing with this fear by spending time at a gym and changing my habits rather than spending hours at a religious institution listening to someone else interpret scripture and then being expected to adopt said interpretation. I don’t understand the concept of not wanting to live forever and it’s that lack of ability to throw caution to the wind that led me to ask Jeffery how he expected to die. “Oh gosh, very happily. I see myself dying inside a very hot girl when I’m a very old man.  Dying as I was living, living life to the fullest. My death will be as rich as my life was and I’ve lived a pretty rich life. I don’t take a day for granted. I’ve lost friends, I’ve had people die in my arms.  I live with life and death every day. As for the Journey the Journey is my business and what I use to enhance that journey is my business as well.” Jeffery went on to explain that at age 42 he uses his expeditions to Burning Man to compartmentalize that aspect of his life.

If I have learned anything from countless hours of re watching Mel Brooks films it’s always leave on a high note. I didn’t want Jeffery’s last impression of me to be the guy who asked him to explain jail and death. Finish this for me I asked, pot porn and…. “  Pot plus porn equals peace. It’s an equation that we believe really could work. If we dropped a bunch of weed and porn on the troops over in Iraq and Afghanistan I think there would be a lot of guys jerking off and a bunch of other guys reaching for some Twinkies and some frozen burritos.” His answer brought to discussion marijuana’s roll in ending the Vietnam war something that most history books do not mention.

“Marijuana and Rock N Roll” he added. “When they couldn’t get the troops in Vietnam to fight any harder they brought in the Playboy Playmates. When they knew that the ranks were turning on themselves they allowed drug use and the messages they were getting back home from The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Buffalo Springfield were we hear ya man this isn’t a cool thing that you’re stuck over there and I think unfortunately we are in a very complacent time in the world there’s wars going on and for the most part it’s business as usual.” Same as the old boss we agreed.

Since even that question ended in epic bummery and the clock was ticking on the amount of daylight remaining I left Jeffery with a fresh bud and ended the interview to start my half farkakt journey back home.

Jeffery will be running The 420 Flea Market at Palooka Pipes in Atwater Village (323) 664-9850 located at  3407 Glendale Blvd. LA, CA 90039 10 am to 5pm December 18th and 19th  where you can buy sell and or trade goods not found at Wal-Mart or Target andhang with weedleberties, and adult film stars.

You can find where Jeffery will be performing  and view clips of him at his Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/jeffreymichaelpeterson as well as find him on Facebook as Jeffery Peterson and The 420 Comic. If

you would like to find out more about the webzine Cali Chronic X it can be found at: http://issuu.com/calichronicx and on Facebook as Cali Chronic X