You’d be hard pressed to find someone with local roots deeper than L.A.-born Cheech Marin, who parlayed a 1970s stoner comedy act (as half of the Cheech & Chong duo) into a six-decade (and counting) movie and TV career, becoming a high-profile collector of Chicano art along the way — all while living in the Greater L.A. area.
To find out what the third-generation Angeleno’s ideal Sunday might look like, we met him for lunch at one of his out-to-dinner picks (Casa Nostra Ristorante in Pacific Palisades) where he painted a picture (see what we did there?) that includes voracious reading, multimedia multitasking and staging salons with wife Natasha, a classically trained pianist. (And yes, punctuated with many bowls of herb — but always outside!)
In a nod to his upcoming role (as a battle-scarred World War II vet) in the 1950s period golf film “The Long Game,” (due out April 12), here’s a local Sunday lineup I’m calling “The Long Day” — Cheech-curated to be a hole-in-one. However, you won’t see one of Marin’s most-cherished must-visits, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, in the mix below because it’s in Riverside. But it comes highly recommended — obviously.
7:30 a.m. Fire up a bowl of soup
I wake up the same time every day no matter where I am — 7:30 — and on a Sunday, one of the ideal things I’d look for is have a bowl of menudo. If I think it’s going to take me a long time to get a hold of some menudo, I’ll have some Mexican soup that I’ve made the night before — usually albondigas or posole. The problem is there’s no good place around here to get menudo. I lived in the northern end of Malibu for about 40 years, and it was easy to go from there to Oxnard to get it. There’s a place called La Gloria right off the highway that has great menudo. Living [in the Palisades] is harder. You’re farther away, and then it’s like you need to go to Mexico.
Then after my morning shower, I meditate — I do Transcendental Meditation for 20 minutes twice a day every day. I’ve been doing it since I was 19.
8:30 a.m. Fire up a bowl of herb
Then I go outside and look at the ocean and fire up a bowl. I have this Gandalf[-style] pipe that our company [Cheech & Chong Glass] makes. I always tell them to send me 10 because they[‘re glass and they] break.
9:00 a.m. Surf the Sunday shows and stack up the papers
I turn on the news because Sunday’s when they can corner all these politicians on CNN, PBS, BBC and “Meet the Press” [on NBC]. The only one I don’t watch is Fox — at 77, I only have so many years to live. I’ll track one guy who will be on three [different] shows and [think,] “Is he telling the same lie or different lies? Oh, different lies. Interesting!” I also get two newspapers — the New York Times and the L.A. Times — and I’ll stack them up and go through them section by section while I watch [TV].
11:30 a.m. Grab a guitar
So I’ll be reading the papers and watching the shows at the same time and then, “Oh, there must be a game on somewhere,” so … another bowl! Then I’ll head to my office, which has this big ocean view and where my guitars and ukuleles are all lined up — I’ve got 13 guitars and about seven or eight ukuleles — and I’ll turn on whatever game is on. I’m a fan of the Lakers, the Dodgers and the Rams but sometimes I’ll watch a game I don’t even give a s— about if it looks like a good game and play while I’m doing it.
I have a giant collection of songbooks — hundreds of them — and I’ll work on what I’m trying to learn while I watch. Right now I’m working on a reggae arrangement of a Paul Simon tune called “I Do It for Your…
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