BOOMERS, TOKING HAS GONE DIGITAL

Old people, smoking dope is looking a little different these days --
digital. Just ask your child to bring up some videos on YouTube to see
what I mean.

That's on the Internet, by the way.

Our little newsroom was mildly abuzz the other day -- not because we'd
just smoked up -- while searching for interesting local YouTube
postings, the cutting-edge portal for news-gathering.

Lo and behold, under Orillia, a charming coterie of home movies shot
by bong-smoking young men, or boys. It's hard to tell.

Not of vintage Super 8 quality, these masterpieces exhibit a sense of
editing know-how, with a dreamy wavy-screen effect and stylized
transitions. In fact, the production value suggests these tokers were
pretty conscientious about their project.

So cute. I give them a B for effort. But for creativity, these stoner
videographers get a D. Every shot is the same: a youngster takes a
deep toke from a bong, then blows a big dramatic poof of smoke into
the camera.

Some show off the perfect forms of their practised smoke rings, feats
that would take hours of rehearsing while tripping out on the image of
a scantily-clad woman on the wall.

But these mellow-yellows aren't the kind you were. No hunky-dory hurdy
gurdy, psychedelic sitar or green tamborine. The look is decidedly
gangster with a soundtrack to match.

At one point, they're seen jiving (I know that's the wrong word) to a
clip from Sesame Street on an iPad. Must be some sort of reference to
pop culture I don't understand because I thought Bert and Ernie were
for much younger children.

But who's to say that members of this high-minded clique aren't
discussing metaphor in Coleridge's Kubla Khan. They'd have one up on
me, that's for sure.

If there was any doubt that what they're smoking is ganja, the
cameraman makes sure to zoom in on their product.

We're all having a little trouble understanding the objective of these
fun bong-smoking videos. These moviemakers appear to have no qualms
about being recognized by their peers or parents.

Is it a protest of some sort? The kind you might have attended against
the Vietnam War? Or is it a public-service announcement? Are these
young men suffering from a debilitating illness and raising awareness
of marijuana's medicinal qualities?

They say anything you put on the Internet is permanent. But during
this Shangri-La stage of life, they're probably not worried too much
about future employment opportunities.

Then again, the rate at which videos are uploaded to YouTube, these
"bong smoking legends" will quickly find themselves pushed down the
queue -- unless they keep toking and filming.

Moppy, Pinky, A-Ron and Chewy, to name a few, are competing against a
steady stream of aspiring mixed-martial artists duking it out in the
park and Big Chief Island revellers doing the boat boogie.

It's hard to blaze trails to glory in the discretionless age of
unabashed navel-gazing and everything-out-there exhibitionism, but
these video-tokers have caught our attention.

Maybe, their apparent reverence for soft drugs isn't that different
than yours once was. In your day, you might have come up with a
similar sort of homage.

But you were discreet about it. You captured your best toke rings on
Polaroid.