IF YOU listen to Unbalanced Load, Doug Benson’s second comedy album, recorded live on in 2009, you can hear the comedian introduce himself like a stoner Harvey Milk:
“My name is Doug Benson, and I’m here to recruit you … to smoke weed or not give a shit if other people smoke weed.”
That pretty much sums up the album’s political point of view, if you were to say it had one. So it probably didn’t come as a surprise to Benson’s fans when he announced his California-only “Pot the Vote” tour (stopping at the San Jose Improv on July 26), in an effort to draw attention to Prop. 19, which aims to legalize and tax cannabis.
“Pot is definitely not for everyone,” Benson told me over the phone, “but I just think that everyone who wants to smoke it shouldn’t have to face criminal charges. Everybody has to find their own thing that gets them through. But in the case of marijuana, it’s a plant that grows out of the ground. It’s not like somebody cooked it up in a trailer that might explode.”
When I asked if he thought California would change much if Prop. 19 passed, he told me he didn’t expect anything too dramatic. “I think Disneyland will be more fun to visit than Disney World.”
I asked Benson if he saw any negative effects of marijuana use. “While making Super High Me, where I smoked continuously for 30 days, I discovered during that period of time that, for me, the side effects of smoking pot were weight gain and, uh … having fun—those are the basic things that can occur.”
Super High Me, a documentary feature inspired by Super Size Me, was the first in what Benson is hoping to be a series of film projects. Last year, the cable network G4 released the second, The High Road, which documented Benson traveling around the country for his Medical Marijuana Tour, along with his supporting act, comedian Graham Elwood, who, unlike Benson, neither smokes pot nor drinks.
Elwood is back to be a part of Pot the Vote, and Benson is working on getting together the financing to make a movie out of this tour as well, though it’s coming down to the wire.
“When people come to the show in San Jose, there’ll either be bunch of cameras running around or there won’t, but either way I think it will be really fun show. … I like to put on a show that’s not just for stoners and not just for people that are politically motivated to come down. The bottom line is, I try to make it as fun and funny as possible. And I don’t just talk about marijuana, I also talk about other things that are important to me. Like sex and alcohol.”
Doug Benson
Monday, 8pm
The Improv, San Jose
$20
