The Most Seventies Song Of The Seventies

Just sit back, switch on your lava lamp, spark one up, and let the good vibes flow from this easy-listening tale of hitchhiking, anonymous sex, and a van that no doubt had an elaborate design on its side of winged unicorns and oversized mushrooms....an airbrushed interpretation of a trip the driver had one time when he took mescaline and went to Laser Zeppelin.

This Early Seventies PSA Just Makes Me Want To Do Drugs Even More

I mean, isn't the point of this clip that drugs will cause you to star in your own super-groovy episode of Scooby Doo, along with Mama Cass and The Harlem Globetrotters?

Or Don Knotts? Or Jerry Reed?



Christ, I need a Scooby Snack. Where's the peppermint bark (get it? bark? Scooby Doo was a dog? No?) I bought the other day?

Vintage Sick Rooms: Ah, To Have Been Ill In The Olden Days

It's actually a bit of gallows humor, here...I am very sick. I have a pretty serious lung infection. The thing is, I didn't even realize it. I went to the doctor this morning about my sinuses and an expedient x-ray exposed the real problem. A cough had been bugging me for a while now, but I didn't think it was anything so...drastic.

I'm on bedrest until Saturday and swallowing antibiotics like mad. If the infection isn't cleared up by next week, I have to go in the hospital until it clears. Yes, it's that bad. I cannot stress this enough, folks: I had no idea that I was this sick.

Anyway, back to the vintage.

Oh, to have been sick back in the more elegant days of 23 Skiddoo and pole sitting! Doctors really knew how to hook their patients up back then. Now, I have a prescription bottle of codeine cough medicine sitting on my vanity table that is the only good thing out of this whole business of the Streptococcus Pneumoniae Construction Company building little paramecia condos in my lungs. But did you catch the bit about Cosadein syrup having a Healthy Helping of the sweet, sweet leaf? Can you imagine how delightful a spoonful of that viscous delicacy must have been? Forget the scientific name of Cosedein. They should have just called it what it actually was: Heaven's Nectar.

Also, in modern medicine, I was given just an itty-bitty bottle of the codeine syrup. Addictions must be prevented, after all, although you still see a new episode of Intervention every week. I digress. Did I read that right...Cosadein was served up in GALLON jugs for cough-suppressing enjoyment? Pardon me while I ponder how wonderful life would be if I could carry around my own gallon jug of codeine goodness with me at all times. I would even deck it out like Granny did for her hooch on The Beverly Hillbillies, with the "XXX" on the front, instead of the label. People in the olden days got it right. Cough bothering you? Take a healthy swig from your gallon flask of codeine mixed with ganja. You might still cough, but you no longer mind, and suddenly you feel more charitable toward your mother-in-law.

A Touch Of Tuesday Weld Presents: A Lesson In Jive Talk

Interesting facts about Marihuana, aka Reefers, aka Pot, aka Satan's Harvest:

Only white people smoke reefers.

4 out of 5 male dope peddlers prefer Botany 500 knits and casuals.

Reefers make otherwise well-groomed girls favor sack dresses.

Having a missing daughter is not an excuse to forgo a necktie as you scour the newspapers for any word as to her fate.

Communism can, nay, SHOULD be blamed for the marihuana menace.

Invertebrate malcontents must also be blamed for Satan's Harvest, but then again, those nogoodniks are probably Reds, anyway.

Dope fiends in the Fifties unfortunately did not have access to the dazzling array of snack choices we Americans enjoy today.