Yearbook

by Seth Rogen

“And I swear…by the moon and the stars in the sky…I’ll be there. (I’ll be there!!)” It’s ironic that so many young Jewish men and women had their first feelings of intimacy sparked by what I’ve since learned is a decidedly Christian song.

The movie Tombstone came out in 1993, and while it wasn’t a massive box office or critical hit (The New York Times called it “morally ambiguous”), it made an impression on many, mostly due to an amazing performance by Val Kilmer that was publicly praised by President Bill Clinton, which is the single most nineties sentence one could write.

I also wore a pocket watch, which in a truly impressive act of delusion, I convinced myself was cool as fuck. It wasn’t.

But me, Fogell, and Evan chose each other.

The Bar Mitzvah year ended, and high school was next. I didn’t feel ready. I was still scared of taking my shirt off, scared of everything in general really. But at least I wasn’t alone.

I started taking karate because I was afraid of getting beat up, which is ironic because pretty much all that happens in karate is you get beat up.

followed very closely by Steven Seagal, who, I think, even though he passes himself off as an Italian with the last name “Seh-gall,” is actually a Jew with the last name “Segal,” which is great rebranding.

I was a soft kid, and I was generally scared. And by soft I don’t mean just, like, mentally soft. I was literally soft. I had a Pillsbury Doughboy quality to me. I seemed flaky and delicious, like you wanted to poke me and make me giggle.

My mom enrolled me, and I met the teacher, who thank god was NOT Jewish. I’m not saying a Jewish dude wouldn’t be a great karate teacher…actually, yes, I’m 100 percent definitely saying that a Jewish dude wouldn’t be a great karate teacher.

We did Kyokushinkaikan karate. Our motto was “Never give up. Always do your best.” A solid starting place in general.

I learned a good lesson in karate, which was that just by not quitting, I’d progress.

Shawn motioned to the other kid, being tended to by his sensei. He smiled. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

In Vancouver, there’s no middle school, so grades eight through twelve are all together, and that feels fucking insane if you’re on the “eight” end of that spectrum. It was like going to school with full-grown adults. There were kids with beards. Like full fucking beards. There was a pregnant girl, which was sooooooo far outside what I was expecting. It’s like if a Minotaur went to school with us. I was shocked.

We would also shoplift, a lot, which might be an inherited trait.

I don’t drink now, but from when I was around thirteen to twenty-three, I’d drink as often as I could without derailing my life in a meaningful way.

but that’s dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight, which IS a quote from Tim Burton’s Batman.

Either way, there were too many fucked-up kids in one place, and shit got real crazy quite regularly.

At one party, some kids stole the entire washer and dryer from a house. They had a dolly and everything, so it seemed weirdly premeditated. I have no idea why they did it or what they ended up doing with them, but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna stop them. They couldn’t have needed the appliances for themselves—they were high school kids. Even if their parents needed a new washer and dryer, it’s hard to imagine they’d be psyched if a set showed up late one night after their son returned from a house party.

On top of being terrible for you, it makes you not fun to hang out with for anyone who is not also on cocaine.

Goofy-looking in the first place, and when trying to defend myself, somehow even goofier-looking. My quest to not get my ass kicked out in the wild was probably never put to the test more than in the case of “Smokey” McPherson.

Smokey was not his real name. His real name was Eric, but Eric had an obsession with the movie Friday. It came out in 1995, and if you were a thirteen-year-old pothead named Seth, you and everyone you knew were pretty fucking into that shit.

Friday is about a recently fired dude named Craig (Ice Cube, let’s not get into him for now), who lives in Compton with his parents. His best friend, Smokey, in a truly amazing performance from Chris Tucker, is a pot dealer who works for a dangerous upper-level dealer, Big Worm. Smokey wants to cheer up Craig, so they smoke all of Smokey’s weed, which he’s supposed to sell. Big Worm finds out and the two have till the end of the day to pay him back. It’s fantastic, and Pineapple Express wouldn’t exist without it.

Like in The Revenant, there was a moment when Leo would have for sure been better off if he’d run. How could he not have been?

This chapter is about pornography, but at no point will I get into masturbatory details, so you don’t have to worry about that shit.

It worked like a goddamn Oceans movie, and by that I mean so flawlessly there’s no dramatic tension in any way, shape, or form.

To this day, my brain intrinsically links fragile ancient documents with sex. The Indiana Jones franchise is very stimulating to me. Don’t even mention the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It personally sent me on a long road.

Before Internet porn became a thing, I basically engaged in “trading circles” with friends, where we would all share whatever porn we had so everyone got more variety. A side effect was that you got a slightly too intimate look at your friends’ sexual proclivities and preferences. Also, sometimes you just got some weird-ass shit.

I grew up in a perfect-storm-type situation when it comes to being someone who developed a love for weed. I’m from Vancouver, which is and always has been one of the most liberal cities in the world when it comes to weed. Also, I loved hip-hop music, which, aside from a few odd lines here and there, was pretty much telling me to smoke weed all the time. And finally, I was (and still am) a white person, so statistically my odds for really getting in trouble for using it were (and still are) small.

My only visual experience with weed up till then had been in movies. Cheech and Chong. Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The Breakfast Club has a weed scene, but I didn’t know that until I was around nineteen or twenty. The copy I had as a kid was taped from TV and the weed scene had been cut. Not until years later when I saw the unedited version did I understand that they’d smoked weed, which made the ending with them all being friends make MUCH more fucking sense.

Slow enough to have meaningful and in-depth conversations with yourself about all the terrible choices that led to this moment and all the terrible choices you could still make while in it.

Also, if weed was legal, none of that shit would have happened in the first place. Well, maybe it would have, because we were actually too young to buy legal weed. But still. You’d think legality brings with it less danger. I don’t know anyone who’s been robbed at knifepoint trying to buy some Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

Either way, it’s legal in Canada now and, at the time of this writing, inching slowly toward legalization in America, but there’s still a long way to go, probably because it’s just too effective a way to persecute minorities and keep prisons full, which are things that they love to do in America.

That’s why I smoke weed. It’s additive to my journey. It makes getting from here to there manageable and comfortable.

People criticize weed for changing your view of reality. But sunglasses literally change your view of reality, and nobody gives them a hard time for it.

Weed is my sunglasses. Weed is my shoes. I’m not quite cut out for this world, but weed makes it okay.

I had started doing stand-up when I was thirteen, and by the time I was fourteen, I was getting better at it. I wasn’t fantastic, but I was probably on the better end of the spectrum of the comics in Vancouver at the time. Coupled with the fact that I was a teenager, I was a bit of a novelty. Like when you see one of those YouTube videos of an elephant that can paint: They’re usually not that great at painting, but the fact that it’s an elephant really buys it some points.

But, bless them, these comics would let me sit at the big kids’ table while they said some truly horrific shit that was so thrilling to hear adults say.

I’d probably want the guy slicing the tip of my baby’s dick off to be quite serious about it. No horseplay. No nonsense. “I cut babies’ dicks and I don’t fuck around about it.” That would probably be the attitude I would want. Also, what if the jokes didn’t play? Then you’re having your newborn’s tiny baby dick circumcised by a guy who’s up there swinging and missing comedically. Nothing makes you doubt someone more than seeing them bomb. That would be potentially horrifying for a parent.

Here’s the thing: I needed money. I had none. I never got, like, a formal allowance. My parents would give me money to get specific things when I needed them; I wasn’t going to school in a burlap sack or anything, but I didn’t have, like, savings. Which was fine, until I started smoking weed.

Now, weed was cheap back then. When I first smoked it at the beginning of eighth grade, it was fifteen bucks a gram. Then, I think due to competition, it dropped to ten bucks. This was game-changing. Because all you needed was three people to come up with around three bucks each. Three people put in for a gram, you roll two fat-ass joints, and you’re all getting nice and baked for the price of a Big Mac.

I walked over and got in the car like I was in the opening scene of Mystic River. As we drove away, I looked back at my friends through the tiny, impractical rear window of the Ferrari. They waved meekly, as if to say, “Nice knowing you. Or at least this version of you.”

“Guess what?” Mom said. “He still tells your jokes.”

Also, I was NOT psyched about my body. I remember watching The Sopranos and noting that Tony kept his undershirt on while having sex. Awesome, I thought. If he can do that, so can I.

There’s this episode of The Simpsons where Lisa Simpson dumps Ralph Wiggum on television and Bart is able to pinpoint the moment where Ralph’s heart breaks. I always related to this moment on a deep, deep level.

I didn’t know what the fuck a money belt was, and I was not at all psyched when I found out. It’s kind of like a flat fanny pack that, I think in theory, is supposed to fit seamlessly between your pants and underpants, resting in the area that for me is under my tummy and above the base of my penis, which I believe is called the mons pubis, but I’m not sure.

Now, I guess it’s important to note that neither of us had a cellphone that worked in Europe, because I’m not even sure that shit existed back then. We just made a plan and were supposed to do it, which seems reckless and terrifying in retrospect.

This was my first time buying weed in a legal setting, and when you’re me, that’s something you never forget. It’s a fucking dream come true. The normalization of something you’ve been told your whole life is highly illicit was oddly validating. Also, I was a HUGE Pulp Fiction fan, which was probably most Americans’ first introduction to how those weed cafés worked. And it blew my fucking mind.

After being on two failed TV shows, in 2001 I found myself in the same boat as a million other motherfuckers in L.A.—an unemployed actor/writer with a real chip on his shoulder that other people’s shit was getting made and other people were getting parts he wasn’t, which is a great look.

The second I saw her I thought, Oh no…I could spend the rest of my life with this person. She was funny, smart, beautiful, and she had programmed her cellphone ring to be the theme from Jurassic Park, and if that doesn’t make you fall for someone, I don’t know what does.