The I Chong: Meditations From The Joint

There is a first time for everything. In 2003 Tommy Chong, one half of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, was sent to jail because his son’s company Chong Glass shipped glass water-pipes, also known as bongs, across state lines. To publicly tout the success of their Operation Pipe Dreams sting, government prosecutors sought to make a public example of the so-called “pope of pot.” And so, Chong, who wasn’t even involved in the day-to-day operations of Chong Glass, was sentenced to nine months in jail because of the stereotypical stoner role that he played in movies. Now that has to be a first.

There have to be very few people in the world that can’t distinguish between actors and the roles they play. Throughout the 70s and 80s the comedy of Cheech & Chong often poked fun at drug enforcement officers, like the satirical Sargent Stadanko. But comedy is not reality; it is something made up to entertain us. In the book Chong recalls a phone call from his former comedy partner Cheech, who says of Chong’s persecutors “They just don’t get it, man!” And so, Chong becomes probably the first person in history to be sentenced for a role he played.

And this leads us to The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint, a book that is part memoirs, part spiritual explorations of his time in prison, and part political indictment of the eroding civil liberties in American society. It is quite an important book too. With 10% of America’s 300 million population in prison, it’s worth taking the time to examine the reality of life behind bars. With his celebrity status Chong was able to cross racial and social boundaries in the joint. He interacts with various groups in prison and shares some of their fascinating and often humorous stories here.

Aside from his celebrity stoner status, Chong seems to be a genuinely interesting person. He dropped out of high school to be a full time musician. Before becoming a comedian he had a successful early career in R&B. He owned his own nightclub in Vancouver where he regularly played with the house band Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, a band that once included a young Jimi Hendrix who was in town staying with his grandmother. That band signed with Motown Records in 1967 and a song Chong wrote and performed with the band, “Does Your Mama Know About Me” became a minor hit.

Sure, Chong has smoked a lot of pot in his time. He even has a prescription for it. Although according to Chong, he never smoked as much pot as people thought he did. This book reveals how he was prosecuted and incarcerated for the stoner character he is famous for playing in movies and on comedy albums. Chong says the government prosecutors offered him a deal. He could plead guilty to the charges against him or they would go after his wife and son instead. Reading the book you get a sense that Chong is a real family man. It isn’t hard to believe that he would plead guilty to something he felt was unjust, if it would spare his family the ordeal he would have to go through, the ordeal he writes about in detail in these pages.

When sentenced to his 9 months jail time Chong was allowed to take certain items with him. He took for his spiritual book The Mystic I by Joel Goldsmith, a computer so he could write this book, and for recreation he took Gibson Jazz guitar with a Pignose amp so he could work on jazz guitar theory. As Chong mentions many times in the book, in a spiritual sort of way, the universe will correct itself. And this book is hopefully the first step in a reversal of the injustice done to the irreplaceable Tommy Chong.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is hopefully only the beginning of Chong’s career as an author. It is a book that feels a little too short when you reach the last page. The reader hopes Chong will find the time to share more of his thoughts and observations in a new and with any luck longer book. The book’s concise format does remind one of the ancient Chinese text, The I Ching (or Book of Changes), from which Chong’s book draws a lot of it’s influence. Like the oriental counterpart, The I Chong is a small book with a great deal of depth and insight. Something that can be reread often as it continues to entertain and enlighten.

But whatever you take from this book, it is an interesting and entertaining read throughout. One of the first thing that strikes you is that Chong is a pretty smart guy. But when you think about it, comics generally are pretty clever. They need to be sharp to survive on stage, and having a crisp and unique perspective on the world is the source of a comic’s genius.