High Times
 This
picture of a groundbreaking full page ad in Sunday’s The New York
Times was taken in New York City’s Grand Central Station. The ad
is selling the services of a website that claims to know everything about
marijuana.
“The newspaper of record” was
essentially endorsing—with ad space—the United States gradual
acceptance towards wider usage of cannabis. A new era seems either just
around the corner, somewhere down the road, or in the air everywhere.
For the newspaper business, selling various
brands of pot would be a windfall for advertising.
Newspapers have never recovered the loss
of revenue gained from selling cigarettes, so perhaps offering marijuana
would reinvigorate business enough to slow the non-stop wind-down as the
print era moves inexorably to digital.
For air cargo, legalizing pot might bring
some new air speed demand to move “The American Brands” quickly
around the world: sales in all 50 states would raise demand for Duty Free
Shops, and cargo platforms might need to ship the product to countries
where pot is legal, like Holland.
No doubt, as Bob Dylan wrote, “The
Times Are A Changing” but who would have thunk it—in 2014.
The New York Times is advocating
marijuana legalization and running ads that heretofore had only appeared
in underground publications.
We just can’t wait to attend The CNS
Partnership Conference or the Air Forwarders or Air Cargo Americas after
marijuana is legalized. Let’s see if the conversation speeds up
or slows down during the coffee breaks, or even if there will be coffee
breaks at all.
And how much better would all those rubber
chicken banquets at IATA World Cargo Symposium be after a cocktail hour
with a choice of wine, beer or joint?
Maybe CNS will offer “Marijuana Breaks”
with coffee and “Alice B. Toklas brownies.”
We wonder how much sponsorships will cost
then…
High Times, indeed!
 |
As the cannabis issue in the
United States works itself out, we share a family memory of when our son
Geoffrey II took a small part in the movie Super Troopers.
It may have seemed a small part at the time,
but Geoffrey got his big break in show business when that movie became
a cult classic, especially for the opening nine-minute segment in which
he appeared.
Geoffrey is in the back seat of a car wearing
an Air Cargo News t-shirt and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now more than a decade later, after attending
RADA, performing with Meryl Streep in the New Shakespeare Summer Festival’s
production of Mother Courage in Central Park, and starring in
a couple of TV series and a half dozen films, Geoffrey’s nine-minute
bit remains a touchstone. When out on the streets of NYC, he still hears
the occasional “Hey, SHNOZZBERRIES!”--- when he is recognized.
But, that is show biz.
We can remember he was still working as
a waiter in a pizzeria when this scene was shot.
After he shot the scene he went back to
waiting tables, but refused to take oregano with his pizza as he had vowed
after this scene that oregano was out of his diet forever.
Watch the scene and you will know why.
And the t-shirt?
We may just print some more of them sometime.
Geoffrey/Flosssie |
