CHONG & CHONG

Pot Humor Pioneer Has New Comedy Partner -- His Wife

When the marijuana-fueled comedy team of Cheech & Chong went up in smoke in
the mid-'80s, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong didn't just go their separate
ways. They went to separate corners.

Cheech Marin jettisoned the pioneering pot humor that made Cheech & Chong
famous (and infamous) in the early '70s to pursue more traditional film and
television work. He eventually landed a lucrative gig as Don Johnson's
sidekick on the CBS-TV detective series "Nash Bridges."

Meanwhile, Chong remained Chong -- the prototypical stoner for whom getting
high on primo weed wasn't merely a show-biz affectation, but a way of life.
When Chong started his own spaced-out stand-up comedy career in 1991,
Cheech & Chong fans weren't disappointed.

"I am the real goods," Chong, 63, said from Los Angeles, where he lives
with his longtime wife and current comedy partner, Shelby Chong. "I don't
turn it on and turn it off."

Chong's stance has earned him favor among counterculture fans of all ages,
but also limited his professional opportunities, Shelby says.

"I love the way he's such a rebel, even in his old age," she said. "Even if
he's not making money, he doesn't care. He's still a pot smoker and
believes in it. He never went in with the system.

"You lose a lot of chances. You lose a lot of things. But he lives the
lifestyle. It's not a phony thing with him."

Despite doing a guest shot on a 1997 episode of "Nash Bridges," Cheech and
Chong no longer keep in touch.

"We don't talk," Tommy Chong said. "Because when he quit the pot humor, he
quit Chong, too. He made a conscious effort to distance himself totally. I
don't care. It's up to him. If he thinks he can lose the Cheech & Chong
image, go for it. But there's a Cheech and Chong movie playing somewhere in
the world 24 hours a day, so it'll never happen."

Two years ago Tommy and Shelby Chong officially became a touring comedy
duo. Shelby had appeared in several Cheech & Chong movies, most notably as
the blond bodybuilder in "Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams." But her
involvement in her husband's career goes well beyond that of a co-star.

"I was the woman behind the scene, helping Tommy a lot," Shelby said. "Even
watching him and Cheech in the beginning, I was the one in the audience
telling him, `Drop this, do that.' Everybody needs somebody to bounce off
of and tell them what's working and what isn't working, which he does for
me in my live show now."

Shelby opens the Chongs' comedy shows with her stand-up act. Together they
perform skits, dance the salsa and sing. It's like "an old vaudeville act,"
she said, albeit one with an abundance of pot jokes.

"It's almost like a sitcom," Tommy Chong said. "In fact, it will be a
sitcom someday: `Chong and the Family Stoned.' What we're shooting for is
our own TV network. We have fun with pot. We poke fun at the pot users,
because that's my crowd."

Although Chong refers to his own 40-year-old habit as "medication," he
acknowledges that marijuana smoking can get out of hand.

"Oh, yeah, you can abuse pot," he said. "I have to go on sabbaticals all
the time. No, I can't smoke it all the time. And I don't -- never have. But
I've seen the effects of what happens to people that do. And, usually,
those people come to a point where they quit smoking pot altogether. There
again, that's the beauty of the pot. It is a gateway drug. But the gate
swings both ways."

Of course, marijuana remains a controlled substance and people go to jail
for illegally buying and selling it. Yet references to the drug's
recreational use permeate the mass media and popular culture. Why?

"It's the great hoax," Tommy Chong said. "It's the great American
don't-ask-don't-tell to the extreme."

"You see it all the time, because everybody's doing it," Shelby Chong said.
"It's like the people in the straight world, they're playing pretendsies.
That's not the way life is now. I mean, so many people get high."

The presumably less-than-straight Fox sitcom, "That '70s Show,"
occasionally features Tommy Chong as an appropriately loopy photo lab owner.

"It's a good show," he said. "When they need a pothead, then I'm the one
whose on the list."