Humphrey Bogart had a way with life's little vices. When he bought you a drink, the critic Kenneth Tynan recalled, he wouldn't just pass it across - "he'd take me by the wrist and screw the glass into my hand as if it was a lamp socket." Bogart's manner with a cigarette was so vivid that his surname became an admonishing hippie-era verb: "Don't bogart that joint." I've tried repeatedly, over the course of my life, to become a druggie. It's never taken. But even I know what it means to bogart something: to hoard it, to refuse to share. It wasn't until I read Lizzie Post's helpful and inquisitive new book, "Higher Etiquette: A Guide to the World of Cannabis, From Dispensaries to Dinner Parties," however, that I fully understood the term's provenance. [continues 953 words]
One of the best things about Willie Nelson's books -- his very agreeable new one, "The Tao of Willie" (Gotham) enters the extended hardcover advice list this week at No. 10 -- are the jokes. ("What do a record exec and a sperm have in common?" Nelson asks. "They both have a one-in-a-million chance of becoming a human being.") "The Tao of Willie" has its lazy Zen moments -- "I believe we are all here for a reason" is a typical hiccup -- but mostly the book is a wily tour through Nelson's obsessions, pot-smoking among them. "I figure God must have made those stems and seeds for a reason," he writes, noting that marijuana use lowers stress and "agrees with me when alcohol and a lot of prescription drugs do not." ("If you're not interested in hearing what I have to say" about pot, he continues, "no problem; there's a nice chapter on golf right after this one.") Elsewhere, Nelson takes on topics from the war in Iraq ("This all started when 19 men from Saudi Arabia attacked us. Our response was to invade Iraq. Sorry, but I still don't get it") to songwriting ("I'd sooner have 3 great verses than 30 mediocre ones") to sex ("It's not premarital sex until you actually get married"). And of course the amusements keep coming. He tells us that when the singer Roger Miller was pulled over for erratic driving, the cop said, "Can I see your license?" Miller's response: "Can I shoot your gun?" [end]
