The Phish / High Times Marijuana Festival Announces âBest in Showâ Awards
First, I must state the obvious. I didnât take too kindly to my assignment to cover The Annual The Phish/High Times Marijuana Festival just outside of Aspen, Colorado. Itâs a hipster hotbed in a state allowing the consumption of evil marijuana. And when I say âconsumption,â I donât mean medicinal dope. In Colorado, addicts are permitted to use dope recreationally for the sole purpose of blowing their already spent minds. The thought of having to trudge around and share a smelly fairgrounds with an un-bathed mass of this sort filled me with scorn and resentment toward the man that sent me. But there was no choice. Allen Montgomery, the editor of TNReport, is so hard-headed at times that I canât deal with him. His other possible choice for this painful assignment, my colleague, Miss Rayne Covelli, apparently was having some kind of confusing trouble with her female plumbing or other. She also experienced a serious ellis dee incident during a previous concert festival assignment and suffers still from what can be termed PTSD for civilians. Allen has a soft heart for complaining women voicing their displeasure about going through adversity. However, my experience reporting on The Phish concerts, having my car virtually destroyed while almost losing my life being forced to inhale nitrous oxide at knife point, zooms right over his head because I donât have a curvy body and wear perfume. While I have tremendous respect for Allen, his Martini lunches and shameful womanizing grows weary on a sack of old bones like myself. The best thing to do, I figured, was to bite the bullet and head out to the Hillside Recreation Center and Fairgrounds just outside of Aspen to cover the ten-day festival. I packed up a weekâs change of clothes and replenished the ammunition for my Glock G42 and I was on my way. On a personal note, I had just completed civic duty, my days spent as a juror where a 17 year-old piece of garbage tried to weasel out of an armed robbery conviction. Thankfully, I was made âforemanâ and I saw to it that the punk was sent up to the federal lockup where he belongs despite his threats against me and a well-publicized attempted assault during deliberations. Itâs a good thing for him the police made me leave my side arm in the car or they would have been burying a bullet-ridden lump of smoldering Swiss cheese, not sending it to prison. Many of the readers of my columns realize that I am sometimes stuck constructing syllables and phrases to describe my ordeals and observations. I most certainly object to the term âfestivalâ being used for the den of sin that I experienced last week. Loud, banging music and screams from the terrifying tilt-a-whirls and spinning swings flooded the entire grounds and made it impossible to think, let alone hold any type of meaningful dialog with anyone. A glance at the stoned crowd convinced me that any attempt at âmeaningful dialogâ would be mostly a one-way endeavor. Smoke from all the pots clouded the thin Aspen air. Already brisk and biting in late October, the added drug fumes sent my allergies into high gear. I believe that every orifice of my being was expelling something noxious during the week-plus ordeal. Whether it was the contact inhalation of dope smoke or the effects of organic food consumption, the nose was granted no favors during the time I was at the grounds. Will Allen even bat an eye when I bring this up in the weekly staff meeting with a plea for a medicinal per diem? The truth is known to those that matter and there is no more to really say. Interviews throughout the week were grueling. The subjects were very difficult to hear because of the chanting and pounding beats from the massive drum circles. Top that with high levels of inebriation and you can kind of get the picture of what itâs like trying to converse with a bearded scarecrow hopped up on marijuana and whatever gateway dope. The fairgrounds were in shambles by mid-fest. Thoughtlessly flung beverage cups and veggie burrito wrappers rolled windswept along the dusty paths. Soiled baby diapers and wipes cluttered the area between the main walkway and the chain-linked fence surrounding the festival. The various shakedown street booths of organic foods and crafty wares with jamband and other âhate Jesusâ themes were littered with trash. Can the notion of the Eco-friendly hippie finally be purged from the social lexicon? The shape in which these dregs leave a venue is abysmal. Nevertheless, as muddled and disorganized as modern hipsters operate in my country, the awards and show tents were mostly on schedule, except for a grease fire caused by two of the vagrant stray dogs that knocked over a makeshift burrito frying vat while they procreated behind the booth. The hippies seemed to enjoy themselves, at least as far as I could discern from red-eyed zombie heads all around me. Does anyone realize how frustrating it is to ask a well-phrased intelligent question and receive a grunted answer, âWhaaa?â Their awards were announced on the eve of the festival closing.  Was there really any doubt that crazed marijuana addicts would choose the house band of the pots indulged? The Phish is a funk-rocked, acid metal drug band that employs their own brand of confusing lyrics and out-of-leftfield musical progressions. One would expect The Phish to appeal to a mob of aimless dopers with low attention spans who are drug tripped to realms beyond normal understanding. Other bands in contention were spin-off units, The Trey Pistachio Band, Mike Gordonâs Headseed, and new-comers, Umphreyâs McGee, formed last year by drummer Jon Phishman. Minor awards were issued to the various The Phish clone bands, mostly gangs of male dropouts of seemingly rudimentary musical talent and pitch discernment mimicking The Phishâs tiring âjams.â For the purpose of this article, the âBest in Show Cover Bandâ Award went to the Divided Skies, whose lead guitarist played Pistachioâs noodling meanderings almost note-for-note. Touting itself through advertising in marijuana connoisseur periodicals like High Times and The Doperâs Almanac, the makers of the m420 present their product not so much as a bowl, but as a high-tech âMarijuana Delivery System.â Thatâs quite a mouthful coming from a heathen named Zeus, one of the bearded spokesmen for the product. Citing moral objections, I politely refused the lit pot embers offered to me packed into this particular pipe. I was, however, able to observe the wonders of the unitâs over thirty chambers which deliver cool and fresh smoke to intoxicate with minimal burn or hack/cough reflex. The piece stands alone among the pot practitioners and dope devotees who remembered to cast their ballots. With an adjustable coconut shell bowl to hold a single âhighâ or up to a quarter ounce of filling, the Harry Hood Hookah can dish out a steady steam of misty, bong-cooled smoke to the toker or tokers whether one, two, or the maximum eight are partaking. The poly banded tubing hoses that the participant sucks smoke through is kink-free and resistant to flame and fire. Astonishing stories of this hookah found intact and usable after careless apartment fires started by The Phish hippies dot fire department reports throughout the country. The Blue Ribbon for âBest in Show Marijuana Strain for this year went to Phunky Skunky. The unskilled botanist who created this strain (Scottie L.) compares his work to the masters of their time, from Monet to Michaelangelo. While I wouldnât go so far as to rank Scottie with artistic geniuses since heâs a dropout, I will give him credit for convincing over 60% of the fair voters that his marijuana strain is âmore outrageously awesomeâ than the others. With stiff competition from other strains, Scottie L. holds himself head and shoulders above the crowd. His head shop in Denver should have brisk business for the next year or so while the Phish hippies get word out and rush to his shop to have their minds blown. Other strains in the running were, Fluffhead Band, Golgi Gold Bud, Yemmy Yum Yum, Guyutindica, Hashy Stashy, Suzy Dreamberg, Weekapaug Wowie, Oh Kee Power Gold, Prince Kushpian, Meat Thai stick, and Maze Glazeâ¦all of which can stake a rightful claim as honorable also ran strains at the Annual The Phish / High TImes Marijuana Festival. Each pack a powerful kick as attested to by the festival goers. The aimless laughter and smiling in the face of the devil is proof of the drugâs potency, a fact that escapes the troubled souls ingesting this product. My dear friends in Christ. There shall be no argumentative feedback for my closing statements. The Phish, High Times Magazine, and Lucifer are in accord. The heathen displays that I witnessed at the Marijuana Festival are right out of the devilâs playbook. The mind numbing highs that many of the attendees experienced fed the sexual excitements of the party. As the nights unfolded, various couples of both normal and homosexual persuasions paired up, or joined in three and foursomes throughout the grounds. This proves that the pots drug is of the devil. The young women participating in the sexual heaps were too glaze-eyed and incoherent to properly converse with. The drug effects do not hinder the operation of opening legs, however. I only counted a handful of minors infiltrating the proceedings at the festival. Two of them, I was able to apprehend and turn in to security. Another was quicker afoot than myself, leaving me panting and gasping for breath while he ran away laughing. I was able to give a proper description of the tie and died rascal to the locals. Festival security received an artist rendered picture of the kid. Iâm not sure if he was apprehended. Know one thing for sure from the debacle of pots festivals, the devil is happy as he has easy picking among the masses in attendance. My plea is for parents to place their feet down and demand an end to immorality of this sort. Hopefully, with the elections just around the corner, the moral majority can have a say in what debaucheries we choose to allow at our civic centers and fairgrounds throughout our great nation.