America is Too Stoned

Jeremiad

Reflections on an uncool half-century of cannabis use.

A national contact-high is being created by the consumption of 0.4g of the sticky-icky per person, per day.

‘It’s late, you’ve taken too many drugs, and it’s time for you to go to bed.’

The most important harbinger of America’s hardships is, was, and may always be Dopey: Yes, the four horsemen are really seven dwarves — at least I think they’re seven dwarves, it’s kinda difficult to tell in this low, orangey light… Anyway, their wayward leader is the most risible of all — especially given there’s nothing intrinsically funny about being of restricted height. Every time he speaks in that squeaky, helium voice, saying he’s going to bomb this, or nuke that, while drilling for oil — apparently with babies? — I feel still more… stoned. No, the problem with America is that it is stoned — which may be why it found dwarves funny in the first place.How do I know? Two reasons: first, because I’ve been stoned for so long (the best part of half a century) that being stoned is simply my reality, the medium through which all other realities refract themselves — which means that from my meta-stoned perspective, national-level stonedness becomes altogether apprehensible. And second, …

Essay

Working-Class Hero

Capturing the triumphs and heartbreaks of ordinary dumb people is the holy grail of rock ‘n’ roll; very few modern songwriters ever get there.

Jim Croce worked the same jobs and drank in the same bars as his characters.

He showed up for class in the school of life and learned all the things you can’t find in books.

By Gerry Stanek

Jim Croce went to Villanova University in the early 1960s, a college man who wore tweed jackets and, if you’ll allow a guess, had already memorized Carl Sandburg before he exited high school in Upper Darby Township. You didn’t have to be well-read to know Sandburg’s “Chicago,” you just needed to show up for English class. But Croce soaked in culture wherever he could: Irish folk songs, railroad ballads, early rock ‘n’ roll, Robert Frost and Robert Burns. He showed up to class and listened to old records, and he went to work, too, driving trucks and wrestling jackhammers. He observed Americans who worked hard and played harder, and he sang to them when he plucked his guitar in workingmen’s bars with his calloused hands.Perhaps the coolest thing about Jim Croce was his instinct for telling American stories — songs populated by people we recognize, both urban and rural, and informed by his own experience. I think of Croce’s pool hustlers and stock-car drivers as being direct descendants …

America is Too Stoned

Working-Class Hero

American Glossary