Just recently, I went to my high school reunion and met up with a few of my old friends to find out that they are all very much in the same groups as they were back then. I had not seen any of them since high school because I had to move back east to go to NYU but they had all stayed in Los Angeles and kept in touch.
While they all had different jobs – pharmacist, radiologist, three pre-school teachers and a web hosting technician – they all met at least once a week, generally on Mondays to watch films.
So they invited me to one of these gatherings and thinking of it as an extension of the high school reunion, I went. As expected, I walked in to find the familiar faces sitting around a nice table with appetizers and drinks aplenty.
After settling down and saying the usual “hi”s and how are you”s” they asked me to choose which film we would watch that night, by directing me toward the movie library in the corner.
I snapped my fingers to show off my expert taste in cinema, ranging from Gone with the Wind to Machiavelli Hangman (http://www.hangmanmovie.com and I approached the collection that looked so impressive and promising from a distance. As I stood a foot away, glaring over the different titles, I noticed an interesting and strange taste. There were films like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the whole Harry Potter movies, Peter Jackson”s Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars movies including a copy of the latest – Revenge of the Sith.
The crowd didn”t strike me as a dorky crowd even though all these films were definitely in the dorky category. I was just surprised not to find the complete 100 seasons of Star Trek. Right when I simply closed my eyes and just picked a film, I noticed that they had all pulled out their pipes and had started smoking marijuana.
It was all starting to make sense. I threw another glance at the movie collection and realized that this was not a dork collection but a pothead collection.
We sat there and smoked out and I watched Lord of the Rings as if it was a completely different movie. It wasn”t about the plot or the dialogue anymore but entering a zone that was out of the world.
The next day, I had such a big headache that I couldn”t go back to work. I called my friend and asked him about it and he told me how there was a whole sub-world of these pothead-film collectors and these gatherings happened more often than I knew.
I was completely stunned by this revelation. I didn”t go back to those gatherings again, but ever since, I look at every movie and wonder if it would belong on that pot-head movie shelf.
