Straight Outta Locash. Heroin. Deep like fried chicken parts. Bitter pill. Masturbatory. Catch phrase.

Schindler's List may have won the Best Picture Oscar in 1993, but that winter the movie I and my friends were excited about was CB4, starring Chris Rock. In retrospect, I have no idea why that was, but we were all dying to see it, anticipating its release with bated breath. Kids are strange that way.

The Friday it opened, I, my brother, and 4 or 5 of our friends were to attend the 9 o' clock showing. Before taking a bus to the local Cineplex Odeon, however, we planned to have "dinner" at a Cantonese restaurant in my neighborhood. I write "dinner" because the truth is that the restaurant, named Bo Chin (Cantonese for "fried cat scrotum", I think), was known amongst a small circle of us to serve alcohol to minors. This at the time was a very big deal, as you can well imagine.

It may be hard to believe, me being a product of early 90's suburbia, but the truth is at the time I had never been drunk. And I wasn't going to bust my cherry that night, unfortunately, because at 4 bucks a bottle I didn't have the money. What I did have money for, though, was a joint that my brother had bought from our Friendly Neighborhood Weed Pusher but hadn't gotten around to smoking -- mostly because he was never really much of a head, but also because the thing was roughly the size of a Magnum 44 marker. Because his plan was to get shitfaced drinking Budweisers and Carlsbergs at Bo Chin, I convinced him to sell me the joint for a very reasonable five dollars.

"I wouldn't smoke that by yourself," he warned after closing the deal. "It'll fuck you up."

Yeah, maybe, I thought, but I'd never been stoned before, and I figured if I were going to start I might as well dive in head first, so to speak.

But when two of my friends got wind of the transaction, they insisted on chipping in for a share. I adamantly refused, but my brother's influence prevailed. I think he threatened to give me an atomic wedgie unless I relented. He was Vito Corleone like that.

The joint was to be split three ways.

Later that evening, after the first couple of rounds at Bo Chin, I and my two friends, accompanied by a fourth who was there strictly as a spectator, went out back, as giddy as school girls, to fire up the bone*. I sucked that bad boy prodigiously**, holding the smoke in my lungs and exhaling only when the joint came back around. My friends toked with considerably less gusto, and I imagine 2/3 of the thing was sucked up by yours truly.

After the joint was done (I think I remember chucking it on the ground and putting it out with my shoe heel, much to the chagrin of my mates, who chastised me for wasting the roach), we headed back inside.

The last thing I remembered before [Shogun Assassin] everything changed was my brother commenting on how bloodshot my eyes were.

You know the intro to Tales From the Darkside where the screen flips and the green, sunlit forest becomes dark and haunting? That's the best I can describe what happened. It actually felt as though a television's vertical control was being adjusted before my eyes, finally settling on a picture much darker and foreign than the one I was used to.

I actually believed then that I was in another world. "Hell" is probably the most apt name for that place. Later I would come to equate the sensation to New York Knicks fandom, which is pretty much the same thing.

I immediately got up without saying anything and walked outside. My heart was beating as fast as a jackhammer, and I was convinced that, if I wasn't already dead (which seemed quite plausible), I was going to have a heart attack.

A few of my friends followed me out, and when word got around that I was higher than Microsoft stocks (I believe "chewed out of his fucking mind" is the way it was eloquently phrased), the rest soon came.

Although I was fairly quiet and not gouging out my eyeballs or anything, it was obvious that, if I were to remain pacing back and forth in front of the restaurant like Cotton Fitzsimmons pacing the sidelines, our underage group's favorite (read: only) watering hole would be compromised, so by committee it was ruled that I be taken to the small municipal park nearby and babysat, in turns, until I calmed down***.

"You're still going to make the movie, right?" my friend E -- who you may remember from a recent anecdote aboot a road trip to Hull, Quebec -- asked.

"No, I don't to think so," I said. No fucking way in hell was more like it, but I didn't want to piss the guy off more than I had already done. Remember, this was CB4 we were in danger of missing.

Now, I'm no expert on marijuana, but I still believe there was a little something extra added to that joint we smoked. Why it was my other two friends barely caught a contact is something I still don't get, but the fact remains that, in addition to somewhat normal signs of marijuana intoxication such as an accelerated heart rate, acute paranoia and a mouth drier than beef jerky in the Mojave, I was hallucinating, not a little but a lot: cars' headlights looked like fire leaping from a dragon's nostrils; I could see letters and numbers inside everything; and, perhaps strangest of all (certainly to my friends it was the funniest), I saw NHL team logos on the snow-covered ground.

I was also 100% convinced that my parents and the police psionically knew I was stoned, and would any minute arrive to apprehend me. Sounds like a bad after school special or episode of Degrassi High, right? But people on drugs aren't known for being rational, especially fourteen-year-olds.

Around eleven o' clock, all plans of seeing CB4 shot to hell, I and my brother went to E's place to crash. His parents were asleep by the time we arrived, and my brother called our folks to tell them we would spend the night. Although I smoked the joint sometime before 7, I was still stoned like St. Stephen. We watched Orca - The Killer Whale and Deliverance. That didn't help bring me down, obviously.

I experienced repurcussions for the next few days, actually. No one believed me, and to tell you the truth it does sound odd that I would be the only one so royally fucked up, but them's the facts. Eventually I returned to normal (though that's debatable), and came to the conclusion that drugs aren't for me. Seriously, I won't even take a Tylenol when I have a headache.

I did on a very small number of occasions throughout high school and college again smoke marijuana (or hash), as an experiment to see if the highs produced matched my first experience. They didn't. All they did was reinforce my opinion that getting blazed isn't much fun for me. And make me want to eat my weight in Doritos. They did that, too.

And, although I promised my friends that I'd see it with them the following day, I've never watched CB4. That's probably for the best, I suppose.

***

Time for some hits from the bong:

1) How 'bout them NBA playoffs? (Where are you going? Please stay. We're serving refreshments and pork pies later.) Theme song for the Miami Heat: Self Destruction by the Stop The Violence All-Stars. I fear we're headed for a collapse of epic proportions...Theme song for the Denver Nuggets: Dosed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Take it away, I never had it anyway...Theme song for the LA Lakers: Watch Me Now by the Ultramagnetic MCs. You can take that MVP trophy and stick it up your ass, Steven..Theme song for the Detroit Pistons: Ya Slippin' by Boogie Down Productions. Watch for them to bounce up like roundball..Theme song for the Sacramento Kings: Mr. Scarface Is Back by Scarface. Amazing to think that they could be leading the series 3 games to 1 if Brent Barry's 3 didn't drop...Theme song for the Chicago Bulls: You Played Yourself by Ice-T. Amazing that the Lakers and Bulls are the scariest teams out there to me right now...Theme song for the Dallas Mavericks: It's So Easy by Buddy Holly...Theme song for the LA Clippers: A Long Rhyme Coming by Prince Johnny C (as an aside, I once owned this on cassette). Can you imagine the impending Lakers/Clippers series, where every game is a home game? And people say the playoff seedings need to be readjusted. Whatevah...Theme song for the Phoenix Suns: Let Down by radiohead. Second place is first place for losers...Theme Song for the Memphis Grizzlies: Never Had No One Ever by The Smiths. To quote Slater in Dazed and Confused, you're dead man. You're so dead...Theme song for the Indiana Pacers: Kill Or Be Killed by Twisted Sister. These playoffs will determine whether or not Jermaine O'Neal is worthy...Theme Song for the Cleveland Cavaliers: The Faster Blade by Ghostface Killah (feat. Raekwon). Gotta keep that sword sharp. Probably not a good idea to give interviews before the half in which you hint that the game is already decided, Lebron...Theme song for the New Jersey Nets: A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash. That one's for you, Wince...Theme song for the Washington Wizards: Step In The Arena by Gangstarr. Step in the Arenas...Theme song for the San Antonio Spurs: Bones by radiohead...Theme song for the Milwaukee Bucks: Respect by Aretha Franklin. Can they win another? And another? And -- oh, who the hell am I kidding?

2) Two interesting things I witnessed yesterday:

- The wife, daughter and I walked around Seohyeon after I played basketball (I'm a gambling man: it looked like rain, and the Clippers/Nuggets game was just starting, but I correctly predicted that precipitation wouldn't fall, yet the Nuggets would). As we were heading toward the bus stop, I saw a pair of scissors hit the ground. At first I thought the two Samsung Electronics employees who were crouching down and smoking had thrown them, but their look of surprise matched my own. I looked up, and that's when I saw a kid stick his head out of an open 1oth floor window and shout "those are my scissors! Nobody touch them!"

I was more than a little pissed off, because my daughter was chasing pigeons at the time fewer than 15 feet away from where the scissors landed. My wife's ire was similarly raised, and she stormed into the building to find out why the object was thrown. Turns out the the kid just chucked the scissors out of an open window because, y'know, he felt like it. Maybe he was bored. The place was a 공부방, or study room, and when my wife confronted the "teacher" that worthy said snarkily**** "they didn't hit anyone, did they? If not, what's the big deal?"

Come to think of it, that pair of scissors metaphorically represents life (or a cruise missile). Sometimes you get hit, but usually -- while you're playfully chasing birds around or smoking a square -- it's a miss. Lucky us.

- Just as that was Mehmet occurring, a couple happened to stroll by, and they were far from happy. The woman (who I won't make any further character judgement on save to say that she looked like quite a handful), ignorant of the fact it was raining scissors! wound up and punched her boyfriend/husband square in the jaw. Then she did it again. First hard, then harder. I would never condone violence against a woman, but, during my short time upon this strange planet, that was an occassion where it almost seemed justifiable.

Come to think of it, that fueding couple metaphorically represents Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash.

3) Recently, between periods of basketball (both live and televised) and sleep, I've managed to catch an episode or two of the reality series Girls of the Playboy Mansion, airing on the deceptively-titled Xtm channel. And my only question is how can you fuck up something which is so fundamentally easy? Seriously, you'd think a show about a group of Playboy models would appeal to any straight male, right? Wrong. So far I've watched as they tour the Statue of Liberty, visit some place where they have a competition stomping on vinyard grapes and gush over pigs, and drive around in a limo. I think it airs on Channel Boring in the States. And all the girls are blond (most unnaturally so). Why no brunettes or redheads? There are also scenes involving a brainwashed Hugh Hefner -- or the pod person who assumed his form -- which even I don't have the heart to mention. Remember when Playboy had class and dignity? Between this show, the Jessica Alba cover thing (which leads me to believe they hired the recently unemployed Ray Benzino) and selecting the quite unsexy Lee Pani as a Korean Playmate, I think it's safe to say Hef's empire has seen better days. How the mighty have fallen.

4) This month marks the one-year anniversary of Psychedelic Kimchi (has it really been that long?). As such, I'm making it a personal goal to post something new every day, so bookmark the page if you haven't already. Besides the usual dopeness of Memory Lane, Catcher in the Lye (recently put on blast here), these fucked-up musings, Spring Cleaning and other reviews, pics of The Golden Child, and more basketball ramblings than you can handle/care for, I've got something that will really knock your collective socks off. Really. Stay tuned.

5) Maybe it's just me, but I firmly believe the phrase "but Samantha wanted hors d'oeuvres!" deserves (Professor Isaac gets on my nerves/my favorite Griffin is Merv) to be a part of this generation's zeitgeist the same way "where's the beef?" was to a generation 22 years before. I'm just extremely honored to be a part of both.

* To be followed by an awkward pause. Death by commas pt. III, by the way, bitches.

** Another awkward pause. Just so you know, "I sucked that bad boy prodigiously" is to be my epitaph. I have it written in my will and everything.

***Pt. IV

** **I'm not sure if that's an actual word, but it's been a lifelong dream of mine to one day put it to use.