In honor of Groucho Marx’s birthday, we’re bringing you a story from the February, 1981 issue of High Times, in which writer Paul Krassner remembers tripping with the comedy legend.
If you take the name of a certain former vice-president, Spiro Agnew, and scramble the letters around, you can rearrange it to spell out Grow A Penis. Such appropriateness can give your boundaries of coincidence permanent stretch marks. After all, when Sen. Charles Goodell came out against the war in Vietnam, it was Agnew who called him “the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party”—thus equating military might with the mere presence of a cock.
Years ago, when Mike Wallace interviewed me for “60 Minutes,” and asked about the difference between the underground press and the mainstream media, I told him about the above anagram and said, “The difference is that I could print that in the Realist, but it’ll be edited out of this program.”
My prediction was accurate, so naturally I took an immediate vow never to appear on any TV show again unstoned. Which in turn explains why eating magic mushrooms was practically a prerequisite for my being interviewed by Tom Snyder.
Now, Andy Friendly had only been doing his job when he was reading the Sex and Dope issue of HIGH TIMES in September 1978. As a producer for the “Tomorrow” show, he was always on the lookout for potential guests, and there was a particularly bizarre interview with me in that issue, so he called up to invite me on the show.
There were a few follow-up phone conversations to explore areas that the televised interview might cover. The subject of drug use came up, and I said, “Well, maybe we could talk about my old psychedelic macho. I’ve taken LSD in all kinds …
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Author: High Times / High Times
