COPS HARVEST CROP OF IDIOTS AT HEMPFEST

I'm staring at the Boston police booking sheets with all the little
darlings who got arrested at the big pot smoke-in Saturday on the
Common. After a few minutes looking at these mugshots of
double-chinned 19-year-olds, you start to feel like the casting
director for the remake of "Wayne's World." Here's what stands out
among all these pathetic losers: Tattoos. They all live at home with Mom.

Overweight, most of them. Have you ever heard of 20-year-old
high-school seniors? Welcome to the Hempfest. Did I mention tattoos?

Do you know how difficult it is to get arrested for just smoking pot
these days? I don't mean selling it, but merely consuming it. If you
keep your nose clean and your head down, the legal jeopardy of doing
a bone is next to nothing. Yet every year all these live-at-home
stoners sashay in from the 'burbs, one toke over the line, and get
themselves lugged.

The poster boy for this year's Beavis & Butthead crowd is a young man
from Danvers named James Lawler. He's 20 and weighs 245 pounds. He
has a job: "food handler" at the Subway at the Liberty Tree Mall. Jim
didn't return a call, but one can assume he's the King of the Food
Court this week. "Dude, I heard you got popped at the weed fest. I
bet you were wasted, man. Totally." Peter Butler is a 17-year-old
Winthrop High dropout who now works as a painter. He was smoking a
pipe Saturday when a cop came up behind him and grabbed it. "It was
horrible," he said. "They put us in these holding cells for 10 hours.
They were cold and tiny. Jail was everything my father told me it
would be like." Butler had just pleaded out in court. He got a $150
fine and 20 hours community service. I told him I was writing a
column about what a bunch of idiots he and his friends are.

"We pretty much are," he said. "I told my boss and that's exactly
what he said, too, 'You guys are bleepin' dumb asses.' " I called
Wellesley, the address given by a Northeastern student named Timothy
Montalto. His tattoo is on his left thigh. He's a prodigy" only 26,
and no doubt this close to graduating from Northeastern University. I
got his mother Carolyn on the phone. "What's this all about?" she
said. You mean the lad didn't tell his mother? You must be very, very
proud of young, er, not so young, Timothy. By the way, ma'am, he's
26" why the heck isn't he out of college and working?

"I don't wish to speak about this." Click. Don't you have to be a
certain age" like, say, 18" to get a tattoo? Don't tell 17-year-old
Nathan Fini of Leominster High School. According to the BPD, he's got
multiple tattoos on his upper back. He's also got an arrest record.
He didn't return a call.

Another lad who got pinched was George Haggie, an 18-year-old
construction worker from Newton. He still lives at home, of course.
He was at the BMC yesterday when I called his home. His mother, Lisa,
picked up the phone. "I think he's a stupid kid," she said. "I knew
where he was going. I told him, don't do anything stupid. But he does
it, and he gets locked up for nine hours. His friend had to call to
tell me he'd been locked up." And what did you say to him when he made bail?

"I said, 'Stupid kid, I told you so.' He's like, 'I know, I know, but
I didn't even see the cop. He was undercover.' I said, 'What did you
think he was going to do, announce it to you?' " Do you think he'll
be going to the Hempfest again next year, Lisa? "I hope not," she
said, "but he is a stupid kid." His tattoo, by the way, is on his
left forearm. It's a cross.