Even to this day I remain on guard. I’ve had it happen where I’ll be hanging with someone for a while, convinced they’re good people, then suddenly something spills from their mouth, and the alarm bells in my head start sounding: ABORT! ABORT! DOUCHENOZZLE ALERT!! Better to be wrong on occasion and live to fight another day than get dragged down by some vindictive psychopath, sinking his claws into your fame, deeper and deeper until you have no choice but to exorcise him entirely in a painful bath of holy hellfire. Of course, the one time my asshole radar failed me, that’s exactly what happened. What follows is an all-time classic example of getting mixed up with the wrong dude.
Sometimes, you just click with a person. It’s instant and effortless and feels completely natural, like you’ve always known each other but just never bothered to meet. This happened for me with a guy named … No, I’m not going to give him any credit by using his real name. For the purposes of this story, let’s just call him Captain Douchebag. Anyway, when I met the Captain, we hit it off from the start. I had just turned eighteen, and I liked him so much as a friend that I started to absorb his lifestyle. I was just getting into playing music with my bass guitar, and he was already in a band. I started hanging with him and his fellow musicians, picking up tips, learning some licks, and doing some backup singing. I adapted instantly. It just felt natural.
After a while, one of the guitar players couldn’t afford a good amp rack, his cabinet was going bad, and I decided I would buy a new one for the band. Why not? I was making good money and playing music was just about my only sideline outside working all the time on SBTB. So I bought a sweet Marshall amplifier stack (about $2,500), technically for myself, but for all of us to use while we jammed together. That was my first in a series of naïve missteps.
We practiced up in northern California, which was quite a hike from where I was living—over four hours. Looking back now, the music we were playing probably wasn’t worth the commute, but I was having fun, and it didn’t bother me. After practice one night, I was getting ready to leave, packing up my stack, and the Captain, who was the lead singer, said, “What’re you doing?”
“Packing up my amp to go home.”
“Dude, we’ve got a gig coming up. How’re we supposed to practice if you take the guitar stack home with you?”
Look, I’m not usually gullible. The fact is, I thought this guy was my friend. So I left my half-cab there for them to practice with. I told them I’d bring it home after the next show. Of course, after the next show, when I reminded him I had to get my stack back. He said, “Sure, sure,” then tossed it in his car with the rest of the band’s shit and bailed on me. Okay, fuckers. Another lesson learned.
So at the following show, when we were done with our set, I started wheeling my stack off stage. The Captain started giving me a whole song and dance and I was like, “Tough shit. I’m taking it with me this time.”
“Fine,” he sulked, “then I guess the band is done.”
“Guess so.”
And it was. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Captain Douchebag was the craftiest shyster I’ve ever encountered—and I’ve been in show business since I was eight years old! This guy caused more problems for me than anyone else during my time thus far on this planet. He was quick-witted, smooth, conniving … Admittedly, this is why I clicked with the guy. He was clever, funny, and keenly observant of the world around him. I thought, “Here’s a guy that moves at my speed. We can be friends.” Like I said, it’s hard to make close friends when you’re a kid working all the time in the entertainment industry. I had my best friend, Mark (Ron Howard, Jr.), whom I’d grown up with, but we knew each other so well that half the time we wanted to strangle each other. I was definitely on the hunt for a new pal. I was an easy mark.
I first met the Captain when he landed a role as an extra on SBTB. Our early friendship got off with a bang—that is, the two of us banging three chicks at the same time, to be precise. But problems developed soon after, when the Captain started to feel he deserved special treatment on the set and behind the scenes because he was pals with one of the stars. He hung out and kept his stuff in my dressing room, coming and going as he pleased. I didn’t see it at the time, but slowly he was making my dressing room over into his dressing room. In front of the camera, he even started wrangling larger roles on the show. This wasn’t unusual, a lot of us tried to get family and friends on SBTB. Mario’s sister was on the show; so was Tiffani’s brother Skyler. Even my dad appeared in some episodes. Mario had a friend named Gil he got a job for on the show as a P.A. (production assistant), who wound up becoming one of Linda Mancuso’s roommates towards the end. For some reason, it never occurred to me that the Captain’s sole purpose in being my friend was to move up the fame ladder as quickly as possible, no matter what it took. He might have even attained some measure of that ambition if he wasn’t such a staggering pothead.
* * * *
Some background on me and weed. My first time smoking dope was totally by accident. Honest. My dad had an old hippie buddy named Gary, who was deep into the ganj. Dad was against pot (and tattoos, and piercings, and all the other stuff most dads are required to be against), but Gary was all for it. One night Gary came down to the house for a visit. Like any veteran pot-head, Gary was paranoid. He would take a knitting needle to his cigarettes, push out the smooth tobacco and replace it with weed. Whenever he wanted to partake, he’s just snap off the filter, roll the end and have a toke. Another trick of the trade from Gary, a stoner from way back, was to soak a paper towel in vinegar, fold it, use it to shroud the foil wrapper that contained the cigarettes and slide it back into the box. According to Gary, dogs don’t like the smell of vinegar, specifically, police dogs. Hey, if Gary said it works, it probably works. Unfortunately for Gary, my buddy Brian and I were no part canine when we unwittingly swiped a couple of cigarettes from his wacky pack of “Marlboro Lights” and went outside to smoke them.
Brian and I sat in the back yard by the pool and lit up. I wasn’t really much of a smoker. I was more of an experimental rule breaker, testing boundaries and that kind of shit. I’d only had a few snatched cigarettes at that point and mostly disliked them. Not knowing what to expect, I took a mini-puff and, to my delight, really quite enjoyed it. I said to Brian, “Whoa man, Marlboro Lights are the shit.” He agreed. So, the two of us eased back into our deck chairs and killed a couple joints through cigarette filters. It wasn’t long before we started feeling very strange. The world took on a new, disorienting intensity as my five senses, one-by-one, were destabilized. Immediately, I assumed the only rational explanation was that we’d been poisoned. After all, a whole jay is a lot of weed for your first time. We staggered back into the house and woke Gary.
“You what?!”
He couldn’t believe it. Not only were we underage and high as satellite balloons, we had also bogarted his private stash. In those first moments of realization, Gary ran the gamut of emotions. He explained to us what we had done. My recollection of our reaction is hazy, but I believe we laughed. A lot.
I’ve heard many a person say he or she didn’t get high the first time they smoked pot. Well, I’m here to say Brian and I sure as fuck did. And I discovered that, not only had I survived it, I really enjoyed it. When I woke up the next morning I didn’t have a hangover (like when I pilfered beers from the fridge). It was a clean buzz. In fact, I felt fucking great. Why hadn’t I tried this sooner? I would probably have never tried it at all if it hadn’t been an accident. Then, that next morning, a darkness clouded my thoughts, “Uh oh,” I thought, “I’ve toked up. Does this mean now I’m a loser?” To determine the answer required more field research.
Brian and I decided to get high again, but this time we went into it with the idea that we knew what we were doing, and we were going to go with it, party, and have a good time. We had a blast. We cracked up all night, genuinely puzzled as to why this astonishingly pleasing wonderplant was illegal. Through further field study I disc
overed the marvelous, ever-deepening effects of this mellow-maker. I also discovered that those supposed pot-head losers who sat around in a grainy-eyed daze at parties were not the proper yardstick for the merits of Mary J. Those clowns were losers to begin with. Pot use had only softened the edges around their loser worlds.
So, to answer the question, was I now a loser? No. Count me as one of the converted. I decided to climb down from the “No Hope With Dope” bandwagon. I was getting off at the next stop: Spliffsville.
The first time I bought pot was arranged indirectly through my friend Paul, who began as an extra on SBTB when we were filming at Sunset-Gower Studios. Paul was a gymnast who could do that thing where he runs up a wall and back-flips flat onto his feet. There were always odd and interesting extras filtering on and off the set. One dude from England, whom I called “Beans,” actually lived in the house where they shot the movie Poltergeist. Anyway, one day Paul brought a buddy named Mike to the set. After final bows, we were all headed over to the season wrap party at the Gower Grille, a restaurant around the corner from the studio. While I was in my dressing room taking off my makeup and changing I asked Mike (who seemed to know such things) where I could score some weed to get high for the party. He said he had a guy and that he’d make arrangements.
Later, while we were all hanging at the wrap party, in walks this hardcore-looking dude named Jason. It was my first time buying weed from a dealer, and I didn’t want to look like a chump, so I summoned up my best game face and told Jason we should retire to the men’s room for a minute. He agreed. In the men’s room, I suggested we step into a stall. We did. He produced the herb for my inspection. I hefted its weight and smelled it, not really certain what the proper procedure might be. I looked like some backwoods hillbilly struggling to approve of a bottle of fine French Bordeaux. “How much does it weigh?” I inquired.
“Enough,” said Jason.
I concurred, and we quickly closed the transaction.
My new pal Jason and I returned to the party. I got us some drinks and started introducing him to the cast members and some of the behind-the-scenes people, as well as some NBC office girls. Jason and I started hitting it off, so I took him, Paul, and Mike back over to the studio, gave Jason a tour of the set, and we climbed to the roof of the sound stage. From our perch we could look down on the wrap party still going on just a half-block away. We decided to toke up. After mellowing out for a while we were laughing, telling stories, and feeling pretty good.
I realized that I had these guys all wrong. They weren’t hardcore anything; they were just regular dudes. I said to Jason, “I gotta come clean, man. I was shitting my pants back there at the restaurant. That’s the first time I ever bought weed.”
“Yeah?” said Jason. “Well, that’s the first time I sold it.”
We all had a good laugh. I ended up being friends with those guys for years. They were roommates together, and I remember partying with them one night, drinking screwdrivers, when we ran out of orange juice. Wasted, Jason and I piled into his car and drove approximately one block around the corner to the grocery store. We thought that was hilarious until we arrived to find a patrol car parked in the lot. We must’ve looked pretty sketchy because when we left swinging our bag of OJ, the cop followed us out, climbed into his car and tailgated us all the way back to the house. As soon as we reached the driveway, the prowler’s lights flashed, and the siren blurped. Fuck.
The officer approached our vehicle, “Where you headed?”
“Here,” said Jason, motioning towards the house.
“You realize you were swerving?”
“Really?” said Jason. “I don’t recall swerving. Not unintentionally, anyway.”
“You been drinking tonight?”
“Just tons of orange juice.”
The officer instructed Jason to get out of the vehicle and administered him a compete field sobriety test. He passed with flying colors. In fact, if there were a medal awarded for Most Outstanding Sobriety Test Performed by an Extremely Intoxicated Person, Jason would have had it pinned to his lapel that night.
The cop said, “So, you live right here, huh?”
“Yep.”
Dramatic pause.
“All right. Have a good night.”
“Thank you, officer,” said Jason.
“Yes. Thank you very much, officer,” I echoed as we walked up the sidewalk towards the house.
“Merry Christmas,” said Jason.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Have a very, Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas boys!” said the officers returning our holiday sentiments before climbing back into their vehicle.
“Merry Christmas,” I repeated with desperate enthusiasm.
Inside, we leaned against the door and exhaled. Our nuts still lodged in our throats. It was then that we suddenly realized it was only October!.
Merry Fucking Christmas?! And they said it back!
Good times …
In celebration of my new cannabis lifestyle, I started to frequent the head shops in L.A. I enjoyed browsing the different pipes, bongs, screens, cleaners, and other assorted accessories. I liked the ritual of smoking weed. One afternoon I purchased a seven-foot bong that my buddy Mark drove all the way home to Orange County from L.A. with a couple of feet of it sticking straight out the sunroof of his Jetta like a submarine periscope. I also tried to purchase an ounce of weed from this dude who owned a head shop and clothing emporium in L.A. He promised he could score me some excellent shit for a decent price. At the time we were filming the SBTB episodes out of Flint Ridge Country Club.
I became friendly with a giant human, our boom operator on set, named Dennis Darby. Dennis was cool; we had music in common, and I hung out at his house a few times. He was very straight-laced and didn’t want anything to do with drugs—it just wasn’t his scene. During this time I was hanging with Big Dennis (seriously, he was like 6’8”), I was starting to get the runaround from this head shop owner I had forked over $400 to for an ounce of primo greenbud. Days went by as this dude gave me story after story about how he had trouble making his connection, then the stuff was at his house instead of the shop—whatever. I decided to pay him a visit at his place of business with Dennis’s massive frame filling the door behind me. Yes, Dustin Diamond from SBTB had to roll down Melrose Avenue and shake down his dealer for his bag of weed. To his credit, Big Dennis was extremely reluctant to accompany me. He told me I was just getting what I deserved for dealing with scumbags and smoking dope. He definitely surprised me by offering to come along. Inside the shop, the dude looked up and said, “Oh, hey man. Yeah, the shit still ain’t here. Sorry, man.”
I said, “That’s not gonna work today, dude. I paid you a week ago. I’m leaving here with the weed or the money. Otherwise, things are gonna get ugly.”
“No reason to get bent outta shape man. I told you …”
And to my amazement, that’s about all Big Dennis needed to hear. He stepped right around the counter, picked this dude up by the collar and yelled, “Cough up the fucking shit or you’ll be coughing up a lung!”
Wouldn’t you know, it was the darnedest thing. The dude had my ounce right there under the counter the whole time. It must’ve completely slipped his mind until Dennis reminded him. He was even considerate enough to pull out his scale and weigh it right in front of us. Now that’s service!
I never thought I was going to be a pot smoker. Hell, I didn’t even think I was going to be a beer drinker. My first forays into beer were miserable experiences. I started off with Bud Ice because someone had told me it was smoother and more watered down than other beers. Dad was a Löwenbräu drinker. My first taste of beer was that hoppy German assault on my virgin taste buds. I barely suffered through more than a swallow before I abandoned all hope. As far as I was concerned, beer was disgusting. Of course now, beer is delicious. All sizes and styles. So very, very delicious.
* * * *
The reason I got off on this pot-smoking tang
ent is because I was leading up to the fact that the Captain and his buddies smoked a ton of dope. Fine. The problem was he was also obsessed with taping everything he and his friends did with his VHS camera. I think you can see where this is headed. He would set up a tripod and tape himself, all his band mates, and their bitches taking huge bong rips. I’d be sitting there sometimes, off camera of course, wondering how I kept getting myself into these situations. Captain Douchebag would pass me the pipe, expecting me to take a hit, and I’d be like, “No fucking way I’m smoking dope on camera, dude” (Michael Phelps? Are you reading this? Too late.) I pushed it even further and said, “Are you trying to set me up or something?”
“Relax, dude,” he assured me. “We’re all just buds hanging out, smoking buds.”
Everybody groaned, acting like I was the big buzz killer. Too cool for school. I was the celebrity dildo too important to hang out with his so-called druggie pals. What I decided to do instead, to have fun with the situation rather than become the group’s resident downer, was to create with the Captain a pair of characters called “Weed” and “Shroom.” It was a brilliant ensemble with a simple concept at its core: Weed only said “Weed,” and Shroom only said “Shroom.” It sounds as stupid as it was, but everybody in our glassy-eyed circle agreed it was hilarious. We even decided to make them our band mascots. We took a photo of Weed and Shroom—looking all wacked out and in character—with Shroom staring absently at the fat of his palm with the idea we’d Photoshop miniature versions of the rest of the band standing on his hand. At one point, Weed and Shroom even got their picture taken together with Jay Leno. A typical mock interview with the monosyllabic duo would run something like this:
INTERVIEWER: So, Weed and Shroom, your music is infused with influences from free-verse jazz to glam rock. What’s your take on the state of the industry today?
WEED: (barely audible) Weeeeeeed.
INTERVIEWER: Mm hm. And Shroom?
SHROOM : Shroom.
Dustin Diamond Page 16