Cheech & Chong

By Christine Haggart-Halis

Six o'clock comes, we're sitting, waiting in the Opera House for the duo Cheech and Chong. The lights dim - and here's a DJ presenting the invisible Band', sure enough music from an invisible Band' - okay, so when does the show start. Then, casually strolling, outcome Cheech and Chong - to those that have never come across these two they specialise in a type of situation comedy. They exploit the crazy, the ridiculous and claim 'We're not funny unless you are."

So now sister mary elephant (Cheech) and this delightful religious arch-type of the Catholic sister calmly trots out to the mike, hands clasped piously over her nose and in a high-pitched voice announces to her class "Class, today, we have a special guest to talk to you on those nasty things, drugs - Sargent Stadanko." The audience boos. Sister reprimands the class anxiously - out comes your friendly neighbourhood [unclear: narc] 1969 - green trousers, red shirt, black and white jacket and red-rimmed glasses.

So it goes, it's fast, funny, dirty, crazy.

Then we have a series of skits with 'Laid-Back Lenny', the classic stoned out freak, acting as a DJ for various pieces of talent, some of the more memorable being:-

'Blind Melon Chitlin', the dug-up old blues man revered because he's a dug-up old blues man. The audience claps, "Now, I want you to give a big hand to my band.' So after a slightly bewildered pause the audience claps again-'Blind Melon Chitlin' chuckles - "Jes you must be blinder than me. There's no band there". Hal Ha! Ha! He stomps his left leg, waifs and blows harp - wow man - he has a lot of problems with that leg - he'd just get enough blow up to get a noise out of the harp and that leg stops - so he gets the leg going brother does he what, the leg goes out of control folks and poor old Melon just about jerks off stage.

"I'm 156 and can still get it up" pause "but not in"; later, "I'm 18 inches wide and two inches long - that's why I can't get it in."

Next the rock star that makes Mick Jagger look like a faggot. Out prances one of the few guitar weilding, micky mouse hatted ballerinas in show biz. to the straining of "Ear ache My Eye", one of the greatest parodies of rock guitarists is seen going through all the Hendrix stocks in trade in a way Jimi would have loved.

Then we were given this brilliant piece of mime, "The Astronaut'. Out he comes, space suit, helmet, climbs into the capsule to the echoes of 2001. He goes through the motions -the blast-off and finally floating - Cheech was brilliant, you try sitting on a chair with your arms and legs floating up around your eyes, and you could have sworn they were floating. In a way it's a pity that this obviously technical competence in the art of theatre, mime, is not used more often, in this way.

Towards the end Chong comes out and talks about the sights of Wellington and in particular Pigeon Park, where they saw this old guy who sits and feeds the pigeons while mumbling amiably at them. It develops into one of the best skits of the night. Picture an old feeble man in a park, gently coaxing the pigeons close with breadcrumbs, then suddenly whack, with the walking stick, and there's pigeon for tea tonite. Then along comes grease ball 1975, tough kid having the old man on.

"Do you speak English, kid?" the old man sputters out.

"Yeah."

"Well....Piss Off!"

"I like that.....I like that...."

After some more ragging the kid really starts to get heavy, the old man totters to his feet, raising his arm menacingly then drops still to the ground. The kid suddenly turns into the blithering bully he is, scared...."O God, Holy Mary, Mother of God, I didn't mean to....." The kid's desperate, bang! The old man rolls over and laughs out "Scared the shit out of you that time, didn't I."

The end, the audience stamps, claps, cheers, they come back out. "You're really one of the best audiences we've had. O'we just want to say one thing. We know some of you came along here not knowing what to expect so if anything we did or said upset you then we say from the bottom of our hearts that we don't give a shit. So because you've been such a good audience we'll do one more thing. Actually we were going to do another bit anyway, It's just a nasty show biz trick.