Katr and I were at our neighbourhood Second Cup again this morning, enjoying a holiday latté and 
eavesdropping on the cops at the next table.
Unfortunately, the Mild Mannered Dark Haired Girl had the Michael Bublé CD cranked so high I couldn’t hear shit (or rather, shit BESIDES the ambient shit of Michael Bublé – as Melissa would say, I shake my fist at you, Bublé!!) but the cop’s presence reminded me of that urge I get to make “bomb” jokes at the airport or “how many DVD’s do you think can I fit into my purse” comments next to the holiday security guard at the HMV. Everyone enjoys a little kafuffle now and then. With the Second Cup cop this morning, I wanted to lean over and say “Hey, fuzz – are you going to be here long? I got a business deal going down here at noon and . . . what are you doing with those handcuffs?”
Pretty much any time I see a police officer, I turn to whoever I’m with and hiss “It’s the fuzz! EAT THE WEED!”, which I believe is from a Gene Hackman Gabe Kaplan film, possibly Hoosiers Fast Break (Thanks, Dad! I can always trust you to remember the movies where the guys eat the weed.) While the phrase in itself is pretty funny, its nostalgia value is also high (ha ha! HIGH! Get it? Because we were talking about . . . okay, I can see by your face that you got it) due to an incident that occurred at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in the mid-‘90’s.
I haven’t been to the Edmonton Fringe in several years but for a while there, the Fringe ran a green room for the hundreds of local, national and international artists who perform at what I believe is still North America’s largest Fringe Festival. The green room was the coolest – the beer was cheaper, the food was delicious and also cheaper and there were couches. There were two parts to the green room – the couchy ante-chamber and then a main space that was full of tables and chairs and lit up like a Much Music Video Dance Party. Cool musicians would jam in the main space and there would be much carousing and dancing and smoking. And the smoking – mostly, but not always, cigarettes.
One magical night when Padu and I and the rest of our cast were hanging out in the couch-filled part of the green room, some of Alberta’s finest came in, wearing full cop regalia. Padu and I exchanged excited, slightly drunken glances and hissed in unison “It’s the fuzz. EAT THE WEED!” and we LAUGHED and laughed.
A couple of minutes later, the fuzz emerged from the main green room space with a fellow in handcuffs who looked like a scruffier Kiefer Sutherland and who was loudly protesting that as an American, they had no right to arrest him. We heard him should “It’s medicinal!” as they took him out the door.
Clearly, someone had tipped the fuzz off to the presence of the weed, which is weird enough as it is, but the REAL mystery was how this particular guy got caught. The main area of the green room was an enormous, dimly lit warehouse. It would be hard to pick a pot smoker out of the haze.
Later, our friend Trsc, a witness to the event, filled us in. Apparently, the officers entered the main space and their attention was immediately drawn to the perp, who, when he saw the cops, raised a loud n’ jaunty toast to them with his beer. He then proceeded, in full view of the officers, to prepare a joint. As the cops headed towards him, he licked the edge of the rolling paper with a flourish, pinched the ends of the joint carefully, grinned at the cops, drew out his lighter and sparked it. The officers reached the suspect before he inhaled.
What makes this whole thing even more ridiculous was that our witness, Trsc, said that he sensed the cops weren’t actually interested in making an arrest that night. Someone had complained, they were looking in to it in a perfunctory sort of way, end of story. If this guy hadn’t been so darn obvious in his flouting of the law, nothing would have happened. But such blatant baiting of the boys in blue – alliterative AND disrespectful. They didn’t WANT to arrest Reefer Sutherland - they HAD to.
Ten years later, that incident still makes me grin whenever I see a cop. My theory, looking back, is that Reefer was engaging in some kind of performance art. It WAS the Fringe after all. And now, whenever I see a police officer, I want to do it too! Yeah!!! Stick it to the man!!!
Maybe after my latté.
