I Have Fun Everywhere I Go

by Mike Edison

  High Times itself was just this side of being a controlled substance. Buying a copy, or being caught with a copy, was a tacit confession to living outside the law, and to a lot of people, that’s a pretty fucking sexy notion.

  I saw High Times as a twenty-first-century bible for good-natured rebels, a Molotov cocktail of druggy hedonism, stoner culture, left-wing and libertarian politics, flamboyant rock journalism, historic and contemporary counterculture, arch humor, pointed satire, fuck-you attitude, righteous indignation, and hyper-smart commentary wrapped in innovation and shrewd design. Tom Forçade had always said that High Times had “no desire to be limited to being the magazine of substances that people put in their mouth,” that it should be the “best magazine imaginable.”

  If anyone was still on the fence as to whether High Times was the sine qua non of outlaw magazines, I would spell it out for them on every cover, right under the logotype, in an easy-to-parse tagline: “The Most Notorious Magazine in the World.”

  It was a strategy that worked. From that moment on, not only did sales start picking up, but now, anytime we were mentioned in the press, or anytime I was on the radio hooting it up with a morning zoo crew, our tagline was part of the introduction. Everyone in the mainstream media we came in contact with fawned over us. For a while there, we weren’t being snickered at for being a tribe of lost hippies, we were being embraced for being iconoclasts and heroes.

  I’d get asked all the time how we “get away with it.” Get away with what? We’re a magazine. No matter what kind of bee the administration had in its bonnet, there’d still be some pretty heavy First Amendment concerns about going after the media just because you don’t like the message. There is nothing illegal about putting out a pot magazine. And after all, we would never break the law . . .

  Go ahead. Ask me about the centerfold shoots. “We shoot at remote locations . . .” “Oh, you do it in Amsterdam?” “Sure. If you say so.”

  I did dozens and dozens of interviews on morning radio shows all over the country, and they always asked, Is everyone there stoned? Of course not! How could we possibly put out a magazine if everyone was stoned?

  I kept it light and kept ’em laughing—which kept them calling back. And I would never cop on air to the true secrets of High Times’s inner sanctum, the 10:00 a.m. bong crew or the 4:20 smoking break, when the entire staff would disappear and come back half an hour later bearing the resin-soaked stigmata of happy-go-lucky stoners. (One good thing I can say about Bloom is that he was usually so stoned after the 4:20 break that if I borrowed a CD from him, he was bound to forget about it.)

  For those not in the know, “420” is stoner code for smoking or getting high, or for the ordinance itself, as in “Let’s 420” or “Got any 420?” It has become such popular weed-head argot that it has become a big business itself: 420 T-shirts, skateboards, caps, badges, belt buckles, and stickers can be found at any head shop, surf shop, or hemporium, right next to the rolling papers. Four-twenty in the afternoon is the universal stoner time, and at 4:19 the High Times staff was like a bunch of railroad workers waiting for the whistle to blow. April 20 (4/20), ditto, is the Secret Stoner Holiday. Unfortunately, it is also Hitler’s birthday and the day of the Columbine shootings. In a lot of places (well, “high” schools) it is also “ditch day.” There are a lot of potheads who will look under any rock they can for new and positive things to say about their drug of choice and claim that lives were saved at Columbine because a lot of kids skipped that day. (Imagine that headline: MARIJUANA SAVES THE LIVES OF CHILDREN.)

  At any rate, 420 is the stuff of myth and legend. The most commonly held belief is that 420 was California police code for a pot bust, although there’s not much evidence to support that. Another key to cracking the code is that it is often cited in textbooks and cautionary drug histories that there are 420 separate chemicals in marijuana. And dig Bob Dylan’s stoner anthem “Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 & 35,” better known as “Everybody Must Get Stoned.” Twelve multiplied by 35 is 420, but I’m sure this is just good stoner kismet and not some sort of psychotronic Rosetta stone. Then again, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded a bummer of a song called “4+20.” Makes one think.

  The “truth” behind the legend of 420 was “discovered” by Hager when a group of Deadheads who called themselves the Waldos contacted him and claimed that they had started it. (This is how Hager discovers things: someone tells him.) The story was that in the mid-1970s they would meet every day after school at 4:20 to get stoned. The meeting place was a statue of Louis Pasteur, and they called it “4:20 Louie.” The Waldos were big Dead fans, and they used to make flyers to pass out at shows and started including “420” in with the other pothead arcana. Eventually it caught on through the unwashed masses of wandering Deadheads, sort of like a low-level dose of the clap.

  Not a bad story, but as usual, Hager took it to mind-boggling, cult-like extremes, flying himself out to California to see the guys and spending hours videotaping them. He told everyone at High Times that we would make millions: he, Hager, Grand Imperial Potentate of Pot, was the only one who knew the Truth. Pages in the magazine were dedicated to the Waldos. All other myths and legends surrounding 420 were suppressed. (High Times could be a lot like Soviet-era Pravda in the way it censored and controlled drug information and propaganda to suit its chemically altered view of reality.) Hager would pontificate endlessly to a captive audience of editors who knew that not to humor him meant getting shit assignments.

  “Marijuana smokers are an oppressed people—like Christians!” he would scream at anyone who would listen. He was rabid, taking his rants so far as to rail at a reporter, “We’re the Jews! We’re going to the concentration camps!” I agree that the fuzz should lay off potheads, who as a group are about as threatening as a playful summer breeze, but comparing scofflaw stoners to Holocaust victims was revolting and did little to gain sympathy for the cause.

  According to Hager, “420” was the secret sign marijuana smokers used to identify each other, similar to the way early Christians used the sign of the fish to avoid persecution. It wasn’t much of a secret: we peddled enough 420 merchandise to flood a small flea market. Of course, after hundreds of hours editing Waldo videos on iMovie, and casting dozens of pages of shoddily written tales of Waldos heroics (if you consider getting stoned in the afternoon “heroic”), Hager’s fantasy of a Waldos franchise and the bucketfuls of cash it would earn High Times remain as elusive as an exciting Jerry Garcia guitar solo.

  Despite my abject hatred for Ally Alpacka, I had learned a lot from her about setting goals and hitting them, especially in the advertising department. The High Times ad director had done a great job with the accounts that he had been managing for years, but at some point he had lost the fire in his belly. He was making good dough and was no longer hungry. I thought it was odd that I had never seen him go out on a sales call. He just sort of sat at his desk waiting for the phone to ring, like a retired cop working the beat as a night watchman in an old-age home.

  One day I popped my head in his office and asked him how things were going.

  “We’re done,” he told me cheerfully. “The book is sold out.”

  I was astonished. Ally Alpacka would have been apoplectic. You never stop selling. It wasn’t even the ad “closing” date yet. We still had another week. Sell another page, and we’ll find space for it. For the right people, for the right price, I would rip the book apart on press to make room. A four-page story might have to be cut to three pages to make room for a full-page ad. The Design Dude would rant and rave to anyone who would listen, but that was publishing. All magazines work this way, at least all successful ones. I shook the ad director’s cage good and hard, and he got the message. Ad sales went up immediately.

  But every month, as the page count changed and the “map” of the magazine was revised to accommodate new advertisers, the High Times editors would freak out, demanding to know why we were adding pages, and blaming it on the publisher for sc
heming to make their lives difficult.

  At High Times, without forcing a showdown, the writers couldn’t even be counted on to cut a few sentences to make a story fit on the page. They would rather pressure the Design Dude into laying out their stories in smaller type, making them nearly impossible to read, than sacrifice one diamond of a word: apparently there was nothing that a High Times editor could type that was not worth a million in prizes. Having to cut a whole page—a record review or an update on Michigan hemp activists—to make room for an ad was seen as some sort of modern-day Kristallnacht.

  Professional editors and writers get it: magazine publishing is a dynamic system, and the book can and does change right up until the last minute. The upside was that if we sold enough ads, we would have to add more pages, and then they would have more space for editorial. That would create a whole new set of problems, since we never seemed to have a “bank”—an inventory of content that could be used to fill holes.

  There is a lot of midwifery in magazine publishing that no one wants to take part in—as they say, you never want to see how the sausage gets made. Writers and editors don’t want to know about production. Artists and production people don’t want to know about the vagaries of the stories we write; they just want them in, and on time. Advertising people don’t care about editorial; it’s just product. When I came on board, Bloom asked me, “How did you get to be a publisher? You’re a writer. How do you know about ads and production?” There was no secret. I just paid attention.

  Our one-man ad department needed a shake-up. I hired a new salesman to join the team, and now the ad director really started paying attention. Suddenly he had competition on the floor. Sales continued to climb.

  We were going to offer special discounts and packages, incentives for advertisers to take extra space in our big issue and encourage them to stay in for the rest of the year. I wanted “tombstones”—ads that said “Congratulations High Times on Twenty-Five Years.” Every buzzer and bell, pullouts, inserts, whatever an advertiser could dream up, we could do it, and we would make the numbers work for everyone.

  Our printer, Quad/Graphics, was the best in the business, and its staff was incredible. Its customer service reps knew everything about the printing business, and they worked hard to get us whatever we wanted. How much would it be to have a die-cut centerfold printed on 180-pound laminated paper with silver mylar mirrors? The quote would be on my desk the next day. Potheads love pizza. Could we wrap the magazine in some sort of thermal plastic and enclose a free slice? They would find out for me.

  We had been given a fifty-thousand-dollar budget for the High Times twenty-fifth anniversary party. Fifty thousand dollars!

  I was sick to death of off-the-rack magazine parties with lame DJs and one-hour open bars sponsored by some trendy vodka that no one in his right mind would drink if it weren’t being poured for free. The High Times Twenty-fifth Anniversary Party had to be legendary. It had to be the Mother of All Parties, The Most Notorious Party in the World.

  The damage would be done at Irving Plaza, the best venue in town. They had a great stage and a balcony with a VIP section. The band would be the hugely popular hip-hoppers Cypress Hill, who, in the pages of High Times, had taught the world how to roll a blunt. We decided on an open bar all night, and not just beer and wine and low-budget swill. Everything was going to be top-shelf. I wanted our guests to feel as though we actually liked them. It was expensive, and it probably fit into someone’s category of “Babylon,” but it was sure to keep the party going. And of course there would be enough “goodies” to relaunch the Age of Aquarius. Hundreds of joints would find their way to happy kissers. Pot cookies would be catered by stealth pastry chefs. The happy farting sounds of balloons being filled with nitrous oxide would be a call to arms.

  It was a massive undertaking. Every detail—the band’s contract, their accommodations, plane flights and airport transfers, equipment rental, balloon purchase, the club’s fee, the open bar for eight hundred people for six hours, and a million other particulars—took months to negotiate. The calculus needed to divine exactly how much pot we would need to roll seven hundred joints alone would have taxed NASA’s best logistical team. Then there was to be food at the party, and sponsorships from rolling paper companies, and tables for activists and hemp clothing manufacturers that needed to be organized. There was High Times promotional merchandise that needed to be designed, manufactured, and distributed. Everyone was going to leave with a souvenir. Invites were printed and mailed, with real stamps, hand-picked, depicting either civil rights leaders or eye-popping art. No postage machine bullshit—it was an old-school detail, but the goal was to present High Times as a first-rate organization. Everything communicated. No taking the easy way. Despite what anyone had ever heard to the contrary, or the received wisdom and running gags about stoners being fuckups, when we did things, we did them right. At least that’s what I was selling.

  I called a meeting to round up the troops and begin forming a party team to get some idea of what everyone wanted to do, what everyone’s job was going to be. We had a lot of money to spend, it was going to be one for the ages.

  “So, who wants to help start looking for a venue?”

  Silence.

  “Who wants to be on the entertainment committee?”

  Silence.

  “Who wants to help with the guest list?”

  Silence, punctuated by a muffled burp or a fart, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Who wants to roll the joints?”

  I do! I do!

  And that was the High Times party staff, who had been conditioned to ask Not What They Could Do for High Times, but What High Times Could Do for Them. What they didn’t get was that the party was not being thrown for us, it was thrown by us, for advertisers and the mainstream press. It was to make a big splash and get our name in the papers and on TV. Just like every other big media party, this was first and foremost a publicity event. We weren’t dropping fifty grand to entertain a few monkeyshine editors and their stoner pals as a reward for a job well done.

  I just kept on truckin’. Despite passive resistance from the staff, many of whom, like Sufi mystics in reverse, had achieved soaring levels of ennui, things were moving in the right direction. The High Times twenty-fifth anniversary issue was going to be Bigger than Big—I had been cranking on it for two years and was projecting 150 pages and record numbers in advertising. High Times ownership thought I was nuts, but they wished me luck.

  The Design Dude was especially dismissive. When I came on board and shared my plans to reinvigorate the magazine, he just walked away, moaning, “Dude, we’ve been doing this for a long time without you. We know what we’re doing.” I pointed out that circulation had been slipping and suggested that we needed to take a hard look at High Times from all angles and figure out why people weren’t picking it up as much as they had been. He shrugged me off. “Whatever, dude.”

  The Design Dude was a grouchy slug of a man who often looked like he had slept under the boardwalk at Coney Island. It seemed as if his wool ski cap was fused to his head—even in summer, when he dragged through the office in a hoodie and shorts—and his beard always begged for a trim. He looked like Charles Manson, but without the good vibes.

  Of all the people in the office, he was the one who bristled most at any suggestion that the magazine could possibly be even a little better, and besides Hager, he was the one staffer most convinced of his own genius.

  One thing that always struck me a little bit odd is that he never wanted to go on the press check. But naturally, if the magazine came back from the printer and the colors didn’t match the proofs exactly, he was the first one to scream bloody murder.

  A press check is exactly what it sounds like: you go out to the printer, roll up your sleeves, and make sure that what comes off the press looks like what you sent them. The pressmen did a good job, but if someone from the magazine was there to help fine-tune it, we could count on excellent results, even on the tric
ky pages.

  Usually art directors or production directors will go on press. Mostly, there aren’t any problems, but sometimes it can be difficult getting the colors exactly right, especially since there is so much green in High Times. The color proofs we get of, say, the cover, are made with a photographic process, whereas the magazine is printed on a four-color press. Ink on paper will never look exactly like the proof, which is really just a guide. Matching the proofs isn’t always easy; there are sometimes “conflicts” on the press. For instance, you’d ideally like to see Ozzy on the cover glowing with the skin tone of a living human. But he is holding a big pile of green buds, which you’d like to see shimmering like a traffic light. If you run the green too hot on press, Ozzy will take on a green cast, too, and look even more like a gargoyle than he does in real life. It’s a balancing act, sort of like mixing audio. You can turn up the bass or the snare drum or the vocals, but if you turn everything up, you get mush.

  The crucial pages, of course, are the advertisements, because if they don’t look like the proof provided by the advertiser, they will raise Holy Fucking Hell and their caterwauling will make the Design Dude’s whining seem like that of a petulant little girl. Beyond any affront to their delicate sense of color, they won’t want to pay for the ad, and the publisher will have to give them a “make good,” which are the two dirtiest words in the whole business.

  The ads that were most sensitive at High Times were those for the “fake buds” that were always on the inside cover and usually the back cover, often on massive gatefolds.

  These were expensive ads, and if their product didn’t look bright green and healthy (which could mean having to pull a bit of magenta out of the mix, generally disastrous for skin tones), I would get an earful. And since they ran on the same form—the sixteen-page sheets that were cut and bound to make the magazine—as the cover, where there was often a sallow-skinned pothead who needed the benefit of a lot of ink to look healthy, you had what was known as an “in-line” conflict.