Wednesday (a.k.a. 4/20) got a little weird on Comedy Central’s “@midnight.”
Of course stoner saint Doug Benson was one of the stand-up guests being quizzed by host Chris Hardwick — that’s normal, especially on 4/20. But then Hardwick summoned a news anchor’s face to his on-set television that might be familiar to Colorado residents — that of Fox31’s Jeremy Hubbard, who co-anchors the Denver affiliate’s 5 and 9 p.m. newscasts.
“Alright, Colorado, I love you,” Hubbard begins in the YouTube video, “but we’ve gotta start putting on pants when we go to buy marijuana.”
Hardwick doesn’t miss the opportunity to give Hubbard some comedic advice before asking his panel of stand-up comedians for their own tips for viewers who have overindulged in cannabis. (Hint, Benson’s non-answer is the funniest.)
Pretty funny, sure. But what about Hubbard’s original video?
“We’re always looking for different ways to engage people on Facebook,” Hubbard told The Cannabist on Thursday. When his colleagues were talking about opportunities to record short video hits for social media, Hubbard remembered his trip to the dry cleaners that morning and thought, “Why don’t I do a rant on that?”
We found the full take (embedded below), and Hubbard tells a genuinely strange story about picking up his dry cleaning that morning at a shop nextdoor to a marijuana dispensary. He saw a woman get out of her car and rush into the pot shop wearing a shirt, jacket and boxers — but no pants.
“Yes, they weren’t Victoria’s Secret, nothing revealing, it was boxers — but still she didn’t take the time to at least put on pants before going to the marijuana dispensary.”
And that’s where Hubbard’s plea for pants gets real.
“The eyes of the world are upon us. Everybody’s watching how we handle legal marijuana, and the last thing we want to do is add to the perception that we’re a bunch of stoners who don’t have the energy to get out of bed.
“So when you’re going to buy marijuana, at least — please — put on pants. That’s all I ask.”
As Hardwick said to Hubbard, “I appreciate your message.”
Hubbard said the clip took off after it landed on Reddit — and then it blew up to Russian television, a website based in New Zealand and beyond. The exposure made for a mountain of online reaction, “mostly positive,” Hubbard told us. Hubbard then recorded a Mean Tweets-styled follow-up video where he read out loud some of the harsher responses to his original rant, including:
“Get the fuck out of here, newsman. Go lay in your tanning bed.”
And:
“Oh, I believe you, you were just going to the ‘dry cleaner’.”