Timing is everything in publishing, and novelist Mark Haskell Smith's fourth book "Baked" seems to be in perfect alignment with not only the stars and a harvest moon, but also the ascendancy of the pot-smoking constituency of California.
Named after a slang term for marijuana, Smith's comedic novel about Cannabis culture was released this week by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Press, t-minus 90 days before Proposition 19 will be put before California voters. The bill proposes to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana-related activities in California. Smith says that he actually started working on his book years before the proposition, but he wouldn't mind if his book somehow contributed to the passage of the bill.
"Baked" focuses on Miro Basinas, an underground botanist who cultivates a unique variety of marijuana with signature mango overtones. His "Elephant Crush" strain is good enough to win the grand prize at the Cannabis Cup, a World Series competition for pot growers in Amsterdam. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Basinas is shot and his prize crop stolen. The book chronicles Basinas' odyssey to recover his seeds and includes encounters with oversexed Mormons, a cop obsessed with string theory and other cynically loopy characters.
The idea for "Baked" actually came out of Smith's love of food and wine. During one of his culinary adventures, the novelist and sometime screenwriter ("Playing God") was surprised to discover that there are thousands of backyard varietals of marijuana, as well as a culture of connoisseurs that can tell the between an earthy Chocolope versus a Sour Diesel – a strain that has the unctuous bouquet of a Conoco truck stop. "Most are far more subtle than that," says Smith, who adds that some have distinctive floral and citrus notes, just like wine. He admits that his own pot palate is still green, but he's learned to appreciate the hard work that goes into the process – so much so that he's now working on a non-fiction book about marijuana entitled "Heart of Darkness: An Underground Botanist, Outlaw Farmers and the Race to the Cannabis Cup."
For research, Smith immersed himself in the pot-smoking subculture and found it to be far more pervasive than he realized. "Surprisingly, I found that everyone does it," he says, pointing to two of the 12 medicinal marijuana dispensaries that operate within two miles of his Los Angeles home. (Five of them were actually closed after a recent crackdown by the City Council.) Smith says he was actually chased out of one of them by the owner, which puzzled him given marijuana's tendency to mellow people out. The vendors in Amsterdam, however, reacted quite differently to his overtures. "Over there, it's the Americans who make the biggest scene and end up running around naked," he says. "I guess because the good stuff tends to be really strong. The Dutch know how to hold their weed."
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Author: Dennis Nishi
Contact: The Wall Street Journal
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Website: Novelist Mark Haskell Smith Wants Voters to Get 'Baked'
Named after a slang term for marijuana, Smith's comedic novel about Cannabis culture was released this week by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Press, t-minus 90 days before Proposition 19 will be put before California voters. The bill proposes to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana-related activities in California. Smith says that he actually started working on his book years before the proposition, but he wouldn't mind if his book somehow contributed to the passage of the bill.
"Baked" focuses on Miro Basinas, an underground botanist who cultivates a unique variety of marijuana with signature mango overtones. His "Elephant Crush" strain is good enough to win the grand prize at the Cannabis Cup, a World Series competition for pot growers in Amsterdam. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Basinas is shot and his prize crop stolen. The book chronicles Basinas' odyssey to recover his seeds and includes encounters with oversexed Mormons, a cop obsessed with string theory and other cynically loopy characters.
The idea for "Baked" actually came out of Smith's love of food and wine. During one of his culinary adventures, the novelist and sometime screenwriter ("Playing God") was surprised to discover that there are thousands of backyard varietals of marijuana, as well as a culture of connoisseurs that can tell the between an earthy Chocolope versus a Sour Diesel – a strain that has the unctuous bouquet of a Conoco truck stop. "Most are far more subtle than that," says Smith, who adds that some have distinctive floral and citrus notes, just like wine. He admits that his own pot palate is still green, but he's learned to appreciate the hard work that goes into the process – so much so that he's now working on a non-fiction book about marijuana entitled "Heart of Darkness: An Underground Botanist, Outlaw Farmers and the Race to the Cannabis Cup."
For research, Smith immersed himself in the pot-smoking subculture and found it to be far more pervasive than he realized. "Surprisingly, I found that everyone does it," he says, pointing to two of the 12 medicinal marijuana dispensaries that operate within two miles of his Los Angeles home. (Five of them were actually closed after a recent crackdown by the City Council.) Smith says he was actually chased out of one of them by the owner, which puzzled him given marijuana's tendency to mellow people out. The vendors in Amsterdam, however, reacted quite differently to his overtures. "Over there, it's the Americans who make the biggest scene and end up running around naked," he says. "I guess because the good stuff tends to be really strong. The Dutch know how to hold their weed."
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Author: Dennis Nishi
Contact: The Wall Street Journal
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Website: Novelist Mark Haskell Smith Wants Voters to Get 'Baked'
