Section A·Page 20
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, August 17, 1998
City's medical pot providers shielded
The Associated Press
OAKLAND, Calif. - Workers at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative are now city agents, a title designed to shield them from federal prosecution as they distribute medical marijuana.
The workers will enjoy extra protection with the new designation, a club lawyer said. The title became official Thursday in a ceremony at which supporters proclaimed it a trailblazing move.
"This is a historic day for medical patients' rights across California," said Jeff Jones, executive director of the co-op.
Oakland is believed to be the first city to have an official medical marijuana distribution program.
"We're out on the frontier," City Councilman Nate Miley told reporters at City Hall.
"Today, Oakland has shown the way," said Gerald Uelman, a lawyer working with the club. "I think this is an example that will be widely emulated in California." Uelman served as a member
of the O.J. Simpson defense team.
Federal prosecutors are moving to shut down the Oakland club, along with several others that sprang up after California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996.
Under the law, people whose suffering from cancer treatments, AIDS, glaucoma and other medical conditions might be helped by marijuana were allowed legally to obtain marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.
But the federal government considers medical marijuana illegal and has prosecuted its use in California.
Robert Raich, an attorney for the club, said designating its staff as city agents will protect them under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which gives immunity from federal and criminal liability to agents enforcing an ordinance relating to controlled substances.
A call to the U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco was referred to a spokesman in Washington, D.C., who did not return a telephone call.
New show to start on Comedy Central
NEW YORK — Pornography is passe, according to the Upright Citizens Brigade. So this four-member comedy troupe has proposed an alternative; food torture videos.
The Associated Press
The premise: People who are bored with X-rated films will watch as a piece of bologna is repeatedly snatched away from a yellow Labrador retriever, just as the dog lunes for it.
What is the Upright Citizens Brigade? It's a self-described underground organization. Its mission is to undermine the status quo through the proliferation of chaos.
The sketch-based TV show of the same name is slated for Wednesday nights on Comedy Central, right after the ratings-rich South Park. In trying to define the group's brand of comedy, UCB member Matt Walsh, 33, said, "It's like when The Marx Brothers would go into rich society and create havoc."
"When things are too controlled, too ordered, they need to be stirred up," said Walsh, who plays agent Trotter, along with Amy Poehler (Colby), Ian Roberts (Antoine) and Matt Besser (Adair).
The shows consist of seemingly unrelated characters and incidents that manage to weave themselves
"I hope the audience will feel complimented that we didn't underestimate their intelligence."
Amy Poehler
UCB star
together.
Clad in charcoal-gray uniforms, the UCB purports to monitor the world from the Inner Sanctum, a bat cave like bunker adorned with television screens, maps of the world and color posters.
The first episode zeroes in on a married couple whose new house has a "hot chicks" room, complete with pulsating music and flashing lights. Only males can enter. The wife is locked out. And so is the viewing audience.
Later on, the UCB determines that Bong Boy (Besser), a long-haired, pot-smoking 1970s throwback, has been mysteriously present at scenes of carnage and natural disasters around the world.
Besser also plays The Unabomber, a personification of the infamous drawing that appeared in newspapers before Ted
Kaczynski's capture. Wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt, this boisterously effeminate Unabomber scoffs at the notion of ever having lived in disco-deprived Montana.
By the show's end, these and other characters meet. They get a traumatizing look into the Bucket of Truth, a centerpiece of the married couple's new living room.
"I hope they'll like how different the show is," said Poehler, 26, a blonde who wears a blue-streaked black wig to become agent Colby. "I hope the audience will feel complimented that we didn't underestimate their intelligence."
In a nod to the show's budget, the Inner Sanctum is actually a deteriorating warehouse tucked into a section of Brooklyn's waterfront. Sketches are filmed on the street, in church basements or other inexpensive locations around the city. After all, this is a start-up show without a guaranteed second season.
"It's what keeps me up every night sweating at 4 a.m.," said Eileen Katz, Comedy Central's senior vice president of programming, referring to the uncertainty surrounding any new show. She insisted that the cable network has not set a ratings or time limit for the UCB to find its audience. However, she added, "I
hope everything in it is as controversial as *Souk Park.*"
Before signing with Comedy Central, the troupe fomented a certain amount of chaos through its improvisational act, which began in Chicago in 1990. Posing as a political action committee called the Upright Citizens Brigade, the troupe's members would take advantage of open-mike nights at comedy clubs to rant about various causes. One Chicago show got so unurly that performers and audience members spilled onto the street. Police were called, arrests made.
In 1996, the UCB moved to New York, where its Sunday night improv-shows are free to the first 75 cognoscienti who wait in line for hours. Many more are turned away from the Solo Arts Group, a claustrophobic performance space without air conditioning in Manhattan's Chelsea section. There, the UCB has sown the seeds for some of the material that will turn up on Comedy Central.
For instance, in an episode, Roberts, 33, leads an ugly person's support group that includes a couple whose relationship is marred by a name-calling incident. Besser, 30, and Poehler play the eugenic-challenged pair. That show's sketches tie together in a larger theme: disrupting happy couples.
Red habanero pepper could put Study: Employees enjoy dirty work the burn on all kinds of pests The Associated Press researcher Blake Ashford who
The Associated Press
SOCORRO, N.M. — Instead of poison or traps, researchers are trying another weapon to stop pesty pests — the world's hottest chili pepper.
A repellent developed by the New Mexico Tech Research Foundation in Socorro has tapped the power of the ripe, red habanero pepper, which is 60 times hotter than its fiery cousin, the jalapeno, and 10 times hotter than cayenne.
The spicy ingredient is being mixed into caulks, paints, glues and rubber-coating materials, and any creature — mammal or mol-
lusk — unfortunate enough to take a nibble will get a sizzling surprise.
While the idea sounds like something that Wile E. Coyote might have tried on the Road Runner, tests show real roadrunners have already avoided pecking fence posts treated with the peppery material. Rats have also shunned cables coated in the substance.
"That would be really great if it works," said Lt. Chris Boes at the Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.
A corral post treated with the repellent kept pests at bay for five years, said Dwarven Van De Graaff, president of MEDD4, a Santa Fe company that plans to market the repellent.
Zebra mussels, the meddlesome mollusks that have invaded water intake pipes and displaced native species in the Great Lakes and Mississippi and Ohio rivers, may be next on the hit list. The Aquatic Research Institute at East Chicago, Ind., is testing the repellent in a mussel-infested Lake Michigan harbor.
Mussel repellents currently use chlorine, ultraviolet light, sound vibrations and electric currents. If the chili repellent passes EPA and other testing,"it's going to be a real hot item," Boes said.
SAN DIEGO — It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it, and Fred Dean figures it might as well be him. Dean's job is scraping dead animals off San Diego's streets.
"It gives me peace of mind. I'm making an honest dollar and putting food on the table and a roof over my head. And I know my job's not going anywhere," he says. "There's always going to be a need for somebody like me."
In fact, people like Dean — garbage collectors, hospital orderlies, bail bondsmen, strippers and others who work in jobs most folks find either physically, socially or morally tainted — aren't particularly bothered by the stigma, said
researcher Blake Ashford, who presented a study titled "How Can You Do It? Dirty Work and the Dilemma of Identity" at the Academy of Management's annual meeting last week in San Diego.
At the conference of scholars who primarily study Fortune 500 corporations and their managers, Ashford and a few colleagues devoted a session to stigmatized jobs and the attitudes of those who perform them.
"They find merit in their work and take pride in doing a good job or providing a service, and to heck with everyone else," said Ashford, who conducted his study with Glen Kreiner, a fellow business professor at Arizona State University.
Dean, for example, can tell you there is a right way and a wrong
"You have to be careful when handling a black and white. That's what we call skunks," Dean says. "As long as you don't break that pouch, you're OK. If you do, you can smell the truck coming miles away."
The dead-animal removal officer said his job may not be pretty, but it beat being on a street corner begging for money or doing something illegal.
Kreiner said those who worked in stigmatized professions often formed an "us vs. them" mentality.
Workers with dirty jobs also tend to marry people in the same line of work or pass the profession to their children, Ashford said.
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