Known Gallery in Los Angeles is hosting Indispensable: Art by the Ounce, a LEGO marijuana art exhibition by art collective LAgo. All The opening reception is Saturday May 26, 2012 from 8 pm to 11 pm and the exhibition runs through June 9, 2012.

(cough.)In the wake of increasing raids on Medical Marijuana dispensaries by local, state and federal drug enforcement agencies, the LAgo brand’s brand-new, flagship storefront is set to open on May 26, 2012 at Known Gallery located at 441 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. The LAgo brand, as a perpetual “harvest” of healing power, has been especially commodified to meet the addictions of anyone who has ever wanted to experience the transaction of purchasing medical marijuana – or fine art – at a legal business organization. Synthetic starter-plants, seedlings, clones and a totally huge selection of intoxicating, fake plastic buds- all built with LEGO bricks to resemble some of the finest strains of medicinal marijuana ever grown- will be on display and available for limited purchase. (cough.)

via High Times and Geekosystem

photos by Paul Landau for Known Gallery

The Daily Beast is reporting that the creation and consumption of homemade marijuana-infused wine in Northern California is on the rise. Pot wine is being made by California vintners on the sly and, while not a new concept, is becoming more “fashionable” these days.

Crane Carter, who is president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers, an organization he founded and which two years ago was granted membership in the Napa County Farm Bureau, says pot wine is increasingly fashionable in wine country. He told me that in Napa, much of the marijuana used for wine comes from Humboldt County, which is California’s weed capital, but there’s also plenty of locally grown grass. Carter said cabernet, Napa’s main grape, is the variety of choice for marijuana-seasoned wine, and that fruit from the Stag’s Leap district is thought to pair particularly well with pot. According to Carter, pot wine delivers a quicker high than pot brownies, and the combination of alcohol and marijuana produces “an interesting little buzz.” He believes cannabis wine has a bright future in Napa. “People love wine,” he says, “and they love weed.”

If you are interested in seeing what goes into making wine laced with THC, medical marijuana growing resource site Big Buds has posted a recipe.

via The Kitchn and The Daily Beast

image via Big Buds

Say NO to Crack, Say YES! to Roller Skating is a brilliant commercial created by comedy duo Rhett & Link (Dope Zebra, Chuck Testa) for Reno, Nevada’s Roller Kingdom.

Starring Roller Kingdom Owner and Employees: Brad (Owner/Kidnapper), George (Skate Instructor/Gang Leader), and Julio (DJ/Drug Dealer).

via Neatorama and b3ta

The Orange County Register is reporting that medical marijuana can now be legally dispensed through a fully automated vending machine called the Autospense. The promotional video shows how easily this dispensary machine works with a medical marijuana card, a thumbprint scan and payment. AutoSpense’s founder, Joe DeRobbio of Dispense Labs, is quoted as saying “What goes in, what comes out, it’s documented and there’s no way to subvert that.” The Dispensary Store in Santa Ana, California is the first place to host one of these machines.

Autospense is a uniquely designed, high-tech automated dispensing system that exceeds industry standards. The software used is specifically designed to properly control transactions and manage inventory. This will significantly improve profitability, accountability, security and customer satisfaction.

After providing the proper documentation, the patient will be issued a pre-approved registration/membership card and have the opportunity to register in an optional finger print scanner system, which enables around-the-clock access to the Autospense machine. The member is granted access and walks into a well secured and camera monitored showroom.

Everything is Terrible has posted this clip titled I’m Here Find Me which is a psychedelic anti-marijuana PSA from the drug abuse prevention video for kids called Fast Forward Future. According to Yahoo! Movies, Richard Kiley is the voice of Mentor “who takes kids to the future in his “Fast Forward” machine to see the effects of drug abuse”.

“I’m inside you.”

From the Teacher’s Guide (pdf):

This series, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department to Education, is designed to discourage students from experimenting with illegal drugs by training students in personal and social skills, such as problem-solving, refusal, and coping with stress. The series follows Maggie, Zack, and Casey who have their share of big and small problems that they don’t know how to handle. The Fast Forward Future Machine and the mysterious electronic Mentor (played by Richard Kiley) help each of the three explore the nature of their problems and the past effects or possible future effects of decisions they have made or can make. The Machine can “pause” for insights about people and problems, call up a “Drug Facts File” which provides objective information to aid decision-making, or provide a “Helper File” of adults they can ask for support.

For 4/20, I thought it would be fun to share images from the heavily-illustrated Marijuana: A Second Look at a Drug of Isolation, an anti-drug booklet published in 1987 by Krames Communications. All of the booklet’s unintentionally humorous images can be found at my Flickr page. In a similar vein, you may remember these two past drug-related posts I wrote: 1960s Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Kit and A Rare Look Inside a Commercial Medical Marijuana Growing Operation.

With the dramatic increase in marijuana’s potency, the jury’s now in. Marijuana is no longer seen as an “innocent” drug.

Clear away the myths and haze around marijuana and you’ll see: marijuana is a concern for everyone, in the family, in school, and on the job. Second only to alcohol as America’s drug of choice, marijuana is no longer seen as “harmless.” It’s a drug worth a second look.

images via Rusty Blazenhoff
scans by Ken Dashner

Marley is a biographical feature-length documentary film directed by Kevin MacDonald about legendary reggae musician Bob Marley. The New York Times recently ran an article about MacDonald and how he approached making the film. Artist Phil Frost spoke in this video about how Marley influenced his work and life. Marley opens appropriately on 4/20 in both theatres and on demand.

Vivid imagery, footage never seen before, audio that has been cleaned up and given new life; all elements of Marley are on full display and left me without a single complaint the two plus hours the movie lasts. Songs that have been heard countless numbers of times sound sonically enhanced; something that pushed the music to a new level and gave Bob’s music an even new light.

via Wooster Collective

San Francisco agency Pereira & O’Dell designed Rolling Words, A Smokable Songbook as a promotional item for Snoop Dogg Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers, rolling papers branded by rapper Snoop Dogg. The book is made of hemp, has Snoop’s song lyrics printed on the pages made of rolling papers and has a spine made out of a matchbox striking surface.

An online release of the limited edition book is in the works but 4/20-friendly festival attendees at Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival will get to sample the rolling papers from posters at the festival site, where they will be detachable. Snoop Dogg headlines the final night of the festival.

Snoop Dogg describes the book in his own words

via Nerdcore and the dieline

This 2011 public service ad for Ramon Rubial Institute Ideas Foundation conveys the message that drug-smuggling on airplanes is as ridiculous. The ad was created by J. Walter Thompson Barcelona.

If you’re carrying drugs, the stewardess cooks you lobster and the pilot lets you fly the plane. If you really believe that smuggling drugs is the answer to your problems, you’ll believe anything.

via Ads of the World

The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook: More Than 50 Irresistible Recipes That Will Get You High is a cookbook by stoner-friendly High Times magazine and is, of course, filled with cannabis-infused recipes such as Psychedelic Spanakopita and Tom Yum Ganja.

This first-ever cookbook from High Times magazine the world s most trusted name when it comes to getting stoned is the deliciously definitive guide to cannabis-infused cooking. Easy, accessible recipes and advice demystify the experience of cooking with grass and offer a cornucopia of irie appetizers and entrees, stoner sweets, cannabis cocktails, and high-holiday feasts for any occasion, from Time Warp Tamales and Sativa Shrimp Spring Rolls to Pico de Ganja Nachos and Pineapple Express Upside-Down Cake. Delectable color photos and recipes inspired by stoner celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Cheech and Chong, and Willie Nelson will spark the interest of experienced cannabis cooks and budding chefs, whether they re looking for the perfect midnight munchie or just to take dinner to a higher level.

via CHOW

The Magic Mushroom House in Aspen, Colorado is a beautiful multi-level home designed by Andre Ulrych in the 1970′s who was said to be under the influence of the hallucinogens: “magic” mushrooms and LSD. CNNMoney recently spoke with the current co-owner, Patty Findlay, about the nearly 6,000 square foot home and its psychedelic history. She says the curving walls of the house have no corners (inspired by nautilus shells) and that Hugh Hefner had a pajama party there.

In 2009, photographer Michael Brands captured images of this stunning home for the The New York Times article titled No Home For Squares.

photos by Michael Brands for The New York Times

My guide started this business over eleven years ago in a bedroom closet using one grow light and, gradually over those years, it has expanded to this large-scale professional facility which is filled with state-of-the-art security measures. In this particular building, several commercial growers operate business in order to sell buds and consumables to several medical cannabis dispensary clubs in the area. Some of the cannabis strains produced at this facility, (and I couldn’t make these names up), include: Blackberry Kush, Blue Dream, Chem 4, God’s Gift, Kush Berry, and LA Confidential.

I have included some of the images here on Laughing Squid but the entire online gallery of images from my tour has additional descriptive notes about some of the specifics of the operation.

Interesting note: The facility’s electricity bill is over $4,000/month and that is partially due to the many bright lights necessary to grow all the plants efficiently (I wore my sunglasses in some rooms because it was so blindingly bright).

photos by Rusty Blazenhoff

A special thank you to my tour guide!

Mobius is a gripping short film by Vincent Laforet about “a photojournalist who stumbles upon a cartel execution and supernatural events in the the ‘Zone of Silence’ in Mexico”. Here’s a 1080p HQ version and behind-the-scenes footage.

Canon commissioned Vincent to shoot the the film to promote their new C300 Cinema EOS Camera.

via PetaPixel

This awesomely surreal vintage short is comprised of snippets of a longer 1957 pharmaceutical film titled The Relaxed Wife which promoted a tranquilizer under the brand name Atarax. In 1957, Atarax (hydroxyzine hydrochloride) was manufactured by Pfizer Company (it no longer is) and it was named after the Greek word for tranquility, “ataraxia”.

The entire film is available from the Prelinger Archives at Internet Archive.

via The Art of Bleeding

Two young people create a giant LEGO structure and chat about illicit drugs in the odd 1960s anti-drug educational film, Drugs Are Like That. We learn that habits like twisting braids can be hard to break and that spinning around on a swing can make you feel ‘funny’, like drugs.

As if it wasn’t a strange mix already, singer and anti-gay spokesperson Anita Bryant narrates the film.

…this film that tries to simplify its drug abuse message with an analogy of kids putting together a contraption out of Lego blocks. Although the metaphors often don’t make sense, the visual impact of the film is stunning and could easily be quite popular with individuals consuming illicit drugs. Also, like most anti-drug films, this could be a tempting introduction to drugs for some youths yearning to escape their “boring” lives or to rebel against their parents.

via Brain Pickings

footage via A/V Geeks and Internet Archive

If it’s an odd celebrity mosaic portrait, it must be the work of artist Jason Mecier. This time he’s really outdone himself with his dope Snoop Dogg portrait made entirely of marijuana and hash. The work will be on display at La Luz de Jesus Gallery from November 4 to 27, 2011 but alas collectors, it’s already been sold.

We recently posted about Jason’s other mosaic portraits made out of interesting things in Licorice Flix: Edible Movie Mosaics by Jason Mecier and Celebrity JunkDrawers, Mosaic Celebrity Portraits Made From Their Junk.

via Boing Boing

image via Jason Mecier

This silicone pot holder, aptly named Pot Holder designed by GAMA-GO, is punningly made in the shape of a marijuana leaf and is available from our friends at Fooddiggity.

The pot jokes could easily last for 3-4 minutes, but this 100% silicone, dishwasher safe Pot Holder could last a lifetime. Perfect for whatever type of hot food you need to hold — whether it’s some late night mac and cheese, or your special brownies.

image via Fooddiggity

Pleated-Jeans presents a supercut of Marijuana in Movies.

Mewlists has created a compilation of 50 of the trippiest drug hallucinations in films.

via Viral Viral Videos

It took four talented students over five months (and “about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches”) to create the amped up animation short, Mac ‘n’ Cheese. The Dutch animation team, Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten, Guido Puijk, Roy Nieterau, created this piece as fourth year students at Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands. The team was inspired by action game Team Fortress 2 and another great animated short, Meet Buck.

When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there’s only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert. Stopping at nothing, watch these two guys wear each other out and rip through boundaries hitherto unbroken. Enjoy the ride!

Even a bit of the Grateful Dead’s classic rock song, Casey Jones is thrown in for good measure.

via Short of the Week

images via Mac ‘n’ Cheese

Well before Nancy Reagan was pushing the “Just Say No” anti-drugs campaign in the 1980s to the nation’s youth, a company named Winston Products for Education was creating Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Identification Kits for schools, scouting organizations and law enforcement agencies to get the word out back in the late 1960s.

There is little information to be found on this identification kit but the Wiley Online Library points to the following description of New Instructional Materials from the June 1969 Journal of School Health:

The Dangerous Drugs—Identification Kit contains harmless facsimiles of the more commonly abused dangerous drugs. The Kit was designed to be used primarily as an instructional aid in educational and training programs directed toward combating the existing narcotics and dangerous drugs problem. It consists of a plastic container which is transparent and durable. Plainly visible within the container are facsimiles of amphetamines and barbituates, reproduced with exacting fidelity in terms of color, size, shape, and other distinguising characteristics.

This particular kit is part of my personal collection and I have been told, though I cannot prove conclusively, that Winston Products for Education was backed by R.J. Reynolds’ Winston cigarettes brand.

photos by Rusty Blazenhoff and Ken Dashner

William Breathes of Denver’s Westword alt weekly is America’s first marijuana critic. Maintaining his anonymity in the manner of many restaurant critics, Breathes has been reviewing Denver medical marijuana dispensaries and their products since 2009 (see today’s article and video about Breathes by Justin Rocket Silverman of The Daily).

In 2002, artist Scott Blake of Barcode Art created his digital self-portrait using images of hundreds of ecstasy pills. He gathered these images from DanceSafe, a nonprofit organization that promotes safety in the rave community. Ecstasy is MDMA, a mood-elevating drug that is often taken recreationally. Blake, a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, is probably best known for his Op art using barcodes.

via if it’s hip, it’s here

photos via Barcode Art

Garfunkel and Oates provide some handy tips on how to obtain medical marijuana in California in their new music video “Weed Card”, directed by Raul B Fernandez with a special guest appearance by David Koechner.

Dangerous Minds recently blogged the above film, one of the more balanced investigations of the history of LSD that I’ve seen. So starting there, I thought I’d compile a review of acid histories, anti-LSD psych-outs, and other psychedelic docs you can easily find online. A debate that comes up repeatedly in these films is hallucinogens’ potential positive therapeutic applications versus the very real risks especially from irresponsible abuse of the drugs. Setting aside the more general benefits of “mind expansion”, openness to both sides of that debate tends to indicate a more fairly presented documentary. The most negative drug films are produced by agencies of the US Government; ironically, prior to trying to frighten people about hallucinogens, they were aggressively investigating how drugs could be used for military purposes like interrogation and conducting some of the most irresponsible drug experiments that have ever been done. Details of those experiments, which inadvertently accelerated the mass use of LSD in the 1960′s, also feature prominently in these documentaries.

The film above is called The Beyond Within (there’s a 1972 book of the same name, now out of print). A review from a few years ago states that it was released in 1986 as part of the BBC Documentary series “Everyman”, but I haven’t been able to verify that. It’s an 80-minute well-produced, comprehensive history which includes extensive interviews with Albert Hofmann who discovered LSD in 1938, footage of Aldous Huxley (author of The Doors of Perception), excerpts of a suppressed film of a British MP taking mescaline, details of The CIA’s Project MK-ULTRA surreptitiously dosing people in the 1950′s, going Furthur with Ken Kesey (who participated in the MK-ULTRA tests), turning on with Tim Leary, and a controlled experiment for a Harvard theological masters thesis testing the legitimacy of religious feelings that divinity students experienced while on acid. Both an honest assessment of the potential benefits and a clear-eyed take on the dangers mark this film as the best of the bunch. Very informative. I’m just not sure why there’s a string quartet playing throughout, not a great match for the psychedelic subject matter, but oh well.

Now it’s time to get scared, if you can stop giggling long enough. Trying to portray the subjective effects of a drug experience to a broad audience is a difficult task. And especially when the goal of the film is to scare people away from drugs the results are often melodramatic and unintentionally hilarious (especially at the distance of a decade or four). In LSD-25, the drug itself talks to us, in the first person, about it’s “cool chemical name” and a whole lot more. The little chemical devil whispers conspiratorially throughout, with just a tinge of reverb cuz if acid has a voice, it’s definitely spacey.

From Dangerous Minds:

LSD-25 is a goofier than average drug scare flick produced in 1967 for the San Mateo Union High School District in San Mateo, California. The entire film is narrated by a tab of LSD – a device that Bunuel would have admired.

It’s full of tripping dramatizations, mutton-chopped groovy drop-out parties that turn into bad trip central. Pale nerds who wander into sparkling lights, oops, no, that’s traffic. Bummer. And this freaked out kid, trying to avoid a syringe of sobriety.

“It dissolves in your mind as well as your mouth”, like some kind of M&M’s from hell. But while it wants to be scary, LSD-25 comes off instead as an entertaining journey through a vintage acid un-fun-house that’s pretty hard to take seriously.

Next up is the Canadian documentary Hofmann’s Potion which focuses on serious and especially scientific efforts to use LSD for the general good. It features Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer who were pioneering psychiatrists working in Canada using LSD to treat alcoholics and schizophrenics. Osmond is notable for turning on Huxley to mescaline and inspiring his advocacy for psychedelics. Also featured is Al Hubbard, “The Johnny Appleseed of LSD”, a fascinating character, but it’s notable that there’s no mention here of the controversies regarding his government intelligence connections and the possibility he was involved with MK-ULTRA. Leary appear in a somewhat negative light for advocating acid as a Utopian concept while glossing over the downsides. His former Harvard colleague Ram Dass comes off much better, focused on the benefits of personal use rather than ambitions for mass societal change. Overall a good documentary, featuring a more extended look at the positive potential of LSD.

The Internet Archive has a whole section of videos called FedFlix, old US government films. And as you might expect, there are several about drugs. They include not only government-produced films, but also archived news programs about the government and even raw press conference footage. The 1970 film The Mind-Benders: LSD and the Hallucinogens by the US Food & Drug Administration is a bit surprising, in that it’s not quite the scare flick that it at first appears. While mostly presenting drugs in a negative light, there’s also coverage of government clinical tests which highlight the positive uses for hallucinogens. It also gets high (heh) marks for trippy montages, an echoey drumming soundtrack, and great black & white interviews of ‘users’. Plus extra points for the primitive sculpture holding a bong.

The best moment though is at 22 minutes, a pretty remarkable monologue by a government scientist who thinks “rebellion is a healthy thing” but thinks that taking LSD is “not like swallowing goldfish”–it’s part of an honest, genuine statement in which he admits that “adults have screwed a lot of things up”. Ultimately, despite some melodramatic tendencies, the message that comes out from this film is “we don’t know everything” and “let’s be careful out there”.

Also from FedFlix is this 1970′s ABC news show called Mission: Mind Control, an expose on the US government (including The CIA & Army Chemical Corps) various experiments with drugs and even hypnosis in their search for a mental weapon for interrogation, brainwashing, and to even artificially induce schizophrenia to immobilize large groups of people.

The TV program includes interviews with agents involved with these activities which included safe-houses in New York and San Francisco where prostitutes and others were dosed and observed without their knowledge. This video comes with the extra bonus of Michelob Light, GrapeNuts, and Bufferin commercials from the era built-in. It’s a bit sensational at times, but the reporting seems to be accurate. Unfortunately it highlights some very unsavory activities that the American government has engaged in over the years. Some of the Army research, even appears in a 1960 article in Popular Science called Can “Loony Gas” Win Wars Without Bloodshed (it focuses on animal research, and doesn’t mention the tests on people).

The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.

Less nefarious, and much more boring, is this 1955 film which is a proto-infomercial for MER 17, a drug purported to disrupt the effects of an LSD trip. While it seems to work well in the film, apparently MER 17 was ultimately not very effective in clinical tests. The film features an incredibly insightful experiment in which a young man is given LSD and asked repeatedly how he’s feeling by a dude who looks like the love child of Alfred Hitchcock and Allen Funt. This proves without a doubt that someone who is tripping gets really bummed out by being constantly interrogated by old dudes in suits in front of a fake paper clock.

Finally if hanging out in a 1970′s emergency room getting a 35-minute tour of people overdosing on various drugs sounds like your cup of tea, then What Did You Take? by The Department of Justice will be your new favorite film.

via Dangerous Minds