Blues Brothers as a pot product? No one’s going to Joliet (prison) for it

Maybe it sort of makes sense – John Belushi portrayed amongst his various characters a blues musician and singer (with his brother on harmonica).

It may well play off the idea of bluesmen as notorious reefer addicts. It may also have taken the sensation of marijuana to enable the “Jake Blues” character to endure his stint at the Joliet Correctional Center (for holding up a liquor store to get the money to pay off a motel debt his Blues Brothers Band incurred).

OR IT COULD just be that actor Jim Belushi is truly trying to play off the persona his late brother, John, left during his just over three decades of life (actually, at 37 years, he’s been dead longer than he was alive).

But somehow, there’s just something about the idea of Jim Belushi wanting to get into the marijuana-distribution business (now that it’s gaining the overtones of a legal business opportunity) that seems a little strange.

And not just because most people would have figured the comedic personas of Cheech and Chong would have tried to be the first people to become legal drug dealers.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported this week about how Belushi now operates the Belushi Farms in Oregon, where marijuana production has been legal the past few years. Now that Illinois has passed laws allowing for recreational use of the drug (as in you won’t need a medical prescription to avoid getting pinched by police), Belushi says he wants to gear up to begin sales here.

PRODUCING HIS PRODUCTS under the Blues Brothers brand name. As in it would be the only kind of marijuana product that a discerning customer would choose to use for those moments when he feels he has a “mission for God” to complete.

He talks about wanting to promote his business venture by literally driving the Bluesmobile (which according to the 1980s film was a one-time Mount Prospect police squad car) along Lake Street, with a marijuana “joint” mounted on the car roof rather than the big bullhorn that Jake and Elwood used to promote their big show at the Palace Hotel Ballroom.

I’m sure he’s going for the imagery of driving around under the ‘el’ tracks. But as anyone who remembers the Blues Brothers film, Elwood actually lived in a flophouse on the other end of the Loop – down around Van Buren Street, with the elevated trains roaring right past his window on a near-constant basis.

That is, until Jake’s former fiancé (remember Carrie Fisher) used her explosives stash to blow the building to smithereens.

OR, UNTIL IN reality, a downtown fire managed to destroy the real life building. Yes, I remember that as one of the first news stories I actually covered during my days as a reporter-type person with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

It will be intriguing to see just how all this plays out. Illinois may be the 11^th state to offer up legal versions of marijuana, but that means there are 49 states where it remains illegal.

And it likely will be that some of those states will be absolute holdouts, refusing to even contemplate any notion that marijuana could serve some medical benefits – let alone be something that people ought to be allowed to use if they so choose.

Which is why Belushi is trying to piece together a network that would be ready on that date in the future when marijuana use really can be a national product without any sort of stigma attached to it.

IT COULD BE intriguing if Jim Belushi – whose acting career pretty much peaked with the “According to Jim” television series (where he was partnered up with a pair of women – Courtney Thorne-Smith and Kimberly Williams – most definitely out of his league) ultimately wound up doing something that got him out of the shadow of being nothing more than “John’s Little Brother.”

And kind of humorous if the Blues Brothers image were to live on in ways no one would have dreamed possible back when John Belushi was a living, breathing entertainer.

Remember Bluto Blutarsky? Animal House?

And let’s not forget actress Kathleen Freeman’s “Sister Mary Stigmata” character, who to this day is probably rapping “Jake Blues” across his knuckles every time his behavior gets a touch out of line with none other than The Lord himself.

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What kind of “man” read Playboy? Young boys searching for titillation

It was a scene towards the end of the 1978 film “Animal House” that seems to be all too appropriate as we note the death this week of Hugh Hefner – the man who gave us Playboy as a magazine and lifestyle, and took the concept of girlie mags away from the ancient images of nudists playing volleyball on the beach.

A four-decade old cinematic moment ...

That scene was the one where the Homecoming parade at fictional Faber College was being thrown all awry by the vengeful Delta House fraternity that had just been closed down by the venal Dean Vernon Wormer.

ONE FLOAT IN the parade got slammed into – and a girl onboard the float dressed in a Playboy bunny costume got tossed into the air, where she went soaring through the sky and into an open window of a nearby house.

... that somehow seems relevant today

Where she came to rest in the bed of a young boy who, from the looks of it, had been sneaking peaks at a Playboy magazine.

“Thank you, God” was his response at the thought of a real-live girl to accompany the photographic images he had been checking out just moments earlier.

An image like this may well be the perfect visualization of the Playboy legacy. Not that I’m saying every kid who ever checked out a magazine suddenly got a real girl thrown into his midst.

Playboy Building and Mansion still stand in Chicago ...

BUT WHILE HEFNER himself liked to claim some sort of high-minded image for himself as a sexual liberator who even made women themselves free to enjoy sex, I wonder if throughout the years Playboy, the magazine, became something that young kids went out of their way to sneak peeks at in order to try to figure out what the big deal was.

Which, of course, meant the generations of kids who got caught, and got punished, for “sneaking a peek” at daddy’s copies of girlie mags.

Just the other day, I saw a rerun of a “Friends” episode – the one in which Courteney Cox’ “Monica” character was obsessed with finding out why she didn’t get invited to her cousin’s wedding.

When brother “Ross” (played by David Schwimmer) tried defending the cousin, Monica got him back on her side by informing him that the cousin had been the one who, as a child, snitched to their mother that Ross had been sneaking peeks at Playboy.

... but their hedonistic days are long past

PERSONALLY, MY MEMORY of first seeing Hugh Hefner’s creation came when I was about 8 (I think). It was something I stumbled across (and inspected) when the parents weren’t around. Because I’m fairly sure my mother, in particular, would have disapproved. I also remember around that same time seeing an episode of "The Odd Couple" in which Hefner himself appeared.

I do recall one other time when a copy of Playboy stirred up some attention – it would be the summer I worked for the Cook County recorder of deeds. The magazine had a feature on Marla Collins – whom hard-core fans of the team remember as the one-time ball girl who on-field worked in short shorts and a tight Cubs pullover jersey.

But for the feature, she appeared in various pieces of lingerie – which is what got the Cubs management all riled up to where she got fired.

Which is why a group of county employees (fairly low-ranking) felt compelled to pass around the magazine copy we had obtained so we could see what the big deal was. A tad too prudish on the Cubs part, was our reaction. Although I'm sure our boss, then-county Recorder Harry "Bus" Yourell, would have had a fit if he had caught us goofing off with Playboy when we were supposed to be working.

Generation of Cubs fans see Marla as glamour girl

I HAVEN’T SEEN a copy of Playboy in years – yes, I’m too cheap to pay the $12.99 newsstand price, and don’t feel compelled to get a subscription. The articles that allegedly are of such a high quality that you want to actually READ the magazine aren’t what they used to be.

Then again, many printed word publications aren’t what they used to be. Too much trash available on the Internet, where the written word somehow loses something in translation.

Besides, I wonder if the younger generation thinks of Hefner as being something more of a “dirty old man” who appeared on television living with various incarnations of three girls at a time. Something more to be pitied than envied.

So as we note the passing Wednesday of Hefner at age 91, it should be pointed out that future generations of youngsters will figure out ways to get at websites their parents don’t want them to see. But somehow, the computer screen and downloading some explicit, trashy video doesn’t offer the same experience as that glossy-paged centerfold, while listening for the sound of parental footsteps off in the distance.

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Trump needs new target; will it be the nation's Mexican-American population?

No matter how much President Donald J. Trump wants to say that Democrats will take the blame for the failure of his version of health care reform to pass, the masses are fully prepared to blame the Trumpster himself.

Will we soon see uptick in Trump piñatas?

And since in the world of The Donald, he is all knowing, all wise and never fails at anything, I’m sure that Trump is now scouring the scene for another issue that he can score a quick victory on.

ONE THAT WILL allow him to rebound with something resembling success. Something that he hopes will be considered more important than any mere loss with regards to health insurance access.

Which is an overly complicated issue that no one should have expected the Trumpites of the world to achieve any level of success. Even the brightest of minds have trouble with the nuances of insurance and health care. And let’s be honest, we don’t have the brightest of minds in charge of our government these days.

We have the most egomaniacal of ideologues, and ones with a nativist streak that tends to outright xenophobia.

Personally, I can’t get around the fact that the Trump presidential fantasies (nightmares for the majority of us) began with the attacks he made on Mexico and those people in this country with ethnic ties to the land down south – although in some of our cases, it was the border dropping south so that our great-great grandfathers went from being Mexican to “American.”

ALBEIT A SECOND-class status of American, because the Anglo types who settled the Southwest likely would never have done so if they had thought all those people already living there would be treated equal to them.

Will this site become common?

In my mind, the failure of Donald Trump and his pathetic band of backers to erase former President Barack Obama’s version of health care reform from the books means he’s going to try to revamp his persona with a political victory of sorts against the foreigners.

And since he has now repeatedly failed in his efforts to pass travel restrictions against people from nations where Islam is a predominant religion, he may decide that he needs to get his victory at the hands of Latinos.

Whom he’ll probably proclaim to all be Mexicans. Even the ones of Puerto Rican ancestry who have U.S. citizenship by birth, or the ones from Cuba who still get preferential treatment because of the old desire to do things that humiliate the now-deceased Fidel Castro.

I KNOW THAT in a lot of Spanish-tinged enclaves and neighborhoods in this country, including in Chicago, there is the increased sense of paranoia that immigration agents are on the verge of being unleashed for mass rounds of deportation.

Can this wall really be made to look pretty?

Which may even pick up a few U.S. citizen-types of Latino backgrounds, because the bulk of Trump backers really are clueless when it comes to distinguishing people – except to be able to say who isn’t exactly like themselves!

Could Trump’s wrath take the form of some dramatic action to try to force a confrontation about “the wall” that the president has said he wants erected along the 1,900-mile U.S./Mexico border?

The one that supposedly will be 30 feet high and beautiful to look at, from the U.S. side. Although I can already envision the graffiti marring it, along with the tunnels that will wind up underneath. Why do I suspect that any border wall will be as secure as Stalag 13 from that staple of 1960’s television “Hogan’s Heroes?”

If Trump is Klink, who's playing the part of Col. Hogan?

DOES THAT MAKE White House strategist Steve Bannon the equivalent of actor John Banner’s “Sgt. Hans ‘I know nothing’ Schultz?” With Trump himself as the immortal Col. Wilhelm Klink – making ridiculous boasts about how “No one escapes from Stalag 13” – which was about as accurate as all the “fake news” that Trump now spews on ever so many issues.

Or are we really in line for some immigration raids so we can get a few busloads of people being driven back across the border into Mexico – and in the process, probably a kid or two who gets mistaken for Mexican (and probably will wind up having parents who voted for the Trumpster)!

Winnah, and still Champeen?!?

President Trump has just shown too much incompetence, but has too big an ego to let it go and try to think the issue through rationally. Like in the 1978 film “Animal House,” when the Delta fraternity responds to their being expelled from college with “a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

The best we, the true majority of our society, can hope for is that their streak of political incompetence continues. Although the one sad truth is that real people will wind up getting hurt – all to salvage the ego of the man who couldn’t beat Obamacare!

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Is Hoffman the new century’s Belushi?

All the reports these days about the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman have been bringing about three-decade old memories of that moment when we learned that actor John Belushi had died.

Because the ultimate story of both of their lives will turn out to be the same – someone who let their drug use get the best of them, while taking out a talent that will make us all speculate for years to come just how much more would we have been entertained from future productions that will never be made!

NOW I KNOW that the two don’t have identical life and career cycles.

Belushi – born in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and raised in suburban Wheaton – only got into five film productions before his 1982 death at age 33. Hoffman, by comparison, appeared in about 60 film roles prior to passing on at age 46.

There are many aspiring actors who would love to have a career anywhere as extensive as Hoffman’s. And they’d certainly fall sort of the Academy Award Hoffman took for his starring role in “Capote.”

Heck, Belushi never came close – although I suspect the image of him as “Bluto” in Animal House sticks out in some peoples’ minds as much as any Oscar-winning role.

ULTIMATELY, IT’S GOING to be the end of their stories that will draw comparisons.

A woman wound up doing prison time for being the one who allegedly gave Belushi an injection into his arm (a “speedball” cocaine and heroin mixture, if memory is correct) that caused him to die at a borderline raunchy hotel in Hollywood.

While in the case of Hoffman, we’re going to forever live with the image of his body being found with a hypodermic needle still sticking in it. Police also found something anywhere between 40 and 70 bags of heroin in his apartment (depending on which newspaper account you read).

They’re still investigating to see if the heroin was mixed with the pain reliever fentanyl. This will be the trivial detail people will remember for years to come when Hoffman’s name comes up.

AND HIS NAME will come up, because the man had so many roles in a variety of films. It wasn’t just “Capote,” or the other films (“Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Doubt” and “The Master”) for which he was nominated for Oscars.

In fact, films I most associate with him were ones where he had supporting roles, such as “The Big Lebowski,” “Moneyball” and “Almost Famous.” His take on the 1970s rock journalist Lester Bangs is a bit part more memorable than many starring roles these days.

Just as I consider Belushi in “Continental Divide” to be an underrated role – even if the only thing believable about his portrayal as a newspaper columnist was a certain aversion to the outdoors.

But to a certain degree, none of this is going to matter. Both of their lives were cut short by the substance abuse. Both of them struggled with the drugs during their lives, and ultimately became a little too wrapped up in them.

TO THE DEGREE that when Washington-based journalist Bob Woodward tried to take on the Hollywood culture, his biography of Belushi turned into a final third of the book that was a blow-by-blow account of all the drugs he consumed in the final couple of weeks of his life.

Is this what we’re destined to get in coming weeks and months, as more details come out about the sordidness of Hoffman’s drug use (which he tried to resist, but ultimately gave in to)?
 

Let’s only hope the collective bodies of work for the two will not get buried in the minutia!

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