Tommy Chong

COMEDY More than 20 top comics step up to the mike at the Showtime Laugh Out Loud Comedy Festival. Rita Rudner, Jay Mohr, Tommy Chong and others perform 11 shows filmed for Showtime's "LOL Comedy Series. " California Theatre of the Performing Arts, 562 W. 4th St., San Bernardino. 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thu., 6, 8 and 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. californiatheatre.net.

EVENTS 2011 Exxxotica The L.A. Convention Center will host two events this weekend that should be able to play together nicely: The 2011 Exxxotica adult fair, which bills itself as the largest event in the country devoted to love and sex, and Hemp Con, dedicated to celebrating medical marijuana. L.A. Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St. Exxxotica: 4-11 p.m. Friday; noon-11 p.m. Saturday; noon-7 p.m. Sunday. $35 a day. exxxoticaexpo.com. Hemp Con: 3-9 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday.

There was something suspiciously rehearsed about the Tommy Chong art show at Ghettogloss, a new Silver Lake gallery, and it wasn't simply the fact that nearly every piece could double as a bong. Even the tattooed locals appeared well-cast. Actor Michael Perrick stood in the center of the low-ceilinged gallery amid a modest crowd of neon-haired guests, studying what appeared to be a glob of melted glass water pipes.

COMEDY More than 20 top comics step up to the mike at the Showtime Laugh Out Loud Comedy Festival. Rita Rudner, Jay Mohr, Tommy Chong and others perform 11 shows filmed for Showtime's "LOL Comedy Series. " California Theatre of the Performing Arts, 562 W. 4th St., San Bernardino. 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thu., 6, 8 and 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. californiatheatre.net.

THE prison memoir is an interesting genre. While in custody, freed from the distractions of the outside world, blessed with time, that scarcest of commodities, such prisoners as Gandhi, Malcolm X, Oscar Wilde and Solzhenitsyn wrote highly personal, transformative pieces exploring fundamental issues: man's relationship to society, the nature of liberty and the responsibility of the artist to remain creatively and spiritually free, regardless of his corporeal status.

Tommy CHONG is fit, free and about as mellow as you could expect anyone to be after serving nine months in prison for selling a bong. Most afternoons he can be found at the World Gym in Marina del Rey working on his deltoids and kibitzing with Zabo, the 80-year-old bodybuilder who performed as a stunt double in Cheech and Chong movies. Zabo returned the favor in July when Chong finished his sentence by giving the movie star a job at the gym.

Last season, the producers of Fox's "That '70s Show" needed someone to play the small part of Leo, the quintessential, laid-back hippie doper dude. They didn't have to look far. Who better than Tommy Chong, who virtually holds the patent on laid-back pothead characters as the bearded half of the iconic, '70s doper comedy team known as Cheech and Chong? Indeed, the studio audience went wild when Chong made his first entrance.

The national tour of "The Marijuana-Logues," starring Tommy Chong, is up in smoke. It was canceled because Chong's permit to appear in it has been revoked by his parole officer, Chong said Thursday. According to the terms of his parole, which followed a recent nine-month stint in prison for selling drug paraphernalia, "I can't be in places where substances are being sold or used," Chong said.

"Several hundred" luminaries were photographed (155 got in), including such paleface mini-stars as Judge Reinhold and Julie Hagerty. Well-tanned George Hamilton gets an opulent two-page spread. But where were Sidney Poitier, Billy Dee Williams, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ross, Richard Pryor, Gregory Hines or Louis Gossett Jr.? You'll find a nice photo of Whoopi Goldberg. A couple candids of Eddie Murphy hobnobbing.

Actor Tommy Chong of the spaced-out, dope-smoking comedy duo Cheech & Chong pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal conspiracy charge of selling drug paraphernalia over the Internet. Chong, 64, of Pacific Palisades, and his family-run business, Nice Dreams Enterprises, admitted to conspiring to sell marijuana pipes via Web site promotions that featured the comedian's celebrity endorsement.

In a puff of smoke, they were gone for 25 years. But on Tuesday (4/20 to fans of pot culture), Cheech and Chong, those aging icons of stoner comedy, will be everywhere — in theaters, video on demand, DVD, even on iTunes, PlayStations and Xboxes. Did that just blow your mind? "They're always looking for new methods of how to look for an audience," says Cheech Marin, 65, of the Weinstein Co.'s multiplatform release of the duo's new concert film, "Cheech and Chong's Hey Watch This."

IN SEPTEMBER, Cheech and Chong will reunite for a tour, 26 years after their last live performance. That is, if Cheech doesn't read Tommy Chong's newest book, "Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography." Here, Chong aims to detail the duo's years of success, and to explain why they split. But the big smoke cloud he left in the 1970s and 1980s might have fogged his ability to focus, which he freely admits.

If the NCAA basketball tournament ever adopts a theme song, a 34-year-old hit by the comedy duo Cheech & Chong would be a worthy contender. "Basketball Jones" is a bracket-buster, to be sure -- not to mention a gut-buster -- and worthy of a No. 1 seeding. Like March Madness itself, "Basketball Jones" is madcap fun, over the top and in your face. It's loud and boisterous, freewheeling and frivolous. It speaks to obsession.

THE prison memoir is an interesting genre. While in custody, freed from the distractions of the outside world, blessed with time, that scarcest of commodities, such prisoners as Gandhi, Malcolm X, Oscar Wilde and Solzhenitsyn wrote highly personal, transformative pieces exploring fundamental issues: man's relationship to society, the nature of liberty and the responsibility of the artist to remain creatively and spiritually free, regardless of his corporeal status.

The national tour of "The Marijuana-Logues," starring Tommy Chong, is up in smoke. It was canceled because Chong's permit to appear in it has been revoked by his parole officer, Chong said Thursday. According to the terms of his parole, which followed a recent nine-month stint in prison for selling drug paraphernalia, "I can't be in places where substances are being sold or used," Chong said.

Tommy CHONG is fit, free and about as mellow as you could expect anyone to be after serving nine months in prison for selling a bong. Most afternoons he can be found at the World Gym in Marina del Rey working on his deltoids and kibitzing with Zabo, the 80-year-old bodybuilder who performed as a stunt double in Cheech and Chong movies. Zabo returned the favor in July when Chong finished his sentence by giving the movie star a job at the gym.

While Rae Dawn Chong is co-starring in the current hit "Soul Man," Tommy Chong called us to boast about his other actress-daughter, Robbi Lynn Chong. A fashion model working out of Paris (she's got three pages in the current Vogue), where she shares digs with Dale Robertson's daughter Rochelle, Robbi's just landed her first star role--a terrorist--in a French thriller called "Public Security."

Tommy Chong, who played half of the dope-smoking duo in the Cheech and Chong movies, was sentenced to nine months in federal prison and fined $20,000 Thursday in Pittsburgh for selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia over the Internet. The 65-year-old performer was allowed to remain free until federal prison officials tell him in a few weeks where he must report to prison. Chong also forfeited about $100,000 for his arrest on federal drug paraphernalia charges.

This is another pot story, starring Tommy Chong. So it should be funny. Only this time, it's not. Not to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who announced dozens of indictments under "Operation Pipe Dreams" in February. Not to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Mary Beth Buchanan, who heads Ashcroft's advisory committee and turned up in court in Pittsburgh to personally accept Chong's guilty plea. Not to Asst. U.S. Dist. Atty. Mary Houghton, who prosecuted the case.

The gumshoes of the Justice Department must love Tommy Chong, the aging comedian/actor who until recently had a business making expensive blown-glass bongs. That's bongs, not bombs. Chong was sentenced Thursday to nine months in federal prison for sending one of those art-glass smoking devices across state lines. Unlike terror suspects or bomb makers, Chong was easy to find (a home in Pacific Palisades and a business in Gardena) and posed no threat of violence.