Marco Island Comedy Club Seafood Restaurant

Tommy Chong kicks off national stand-up tour on Marco this week

MarcoIslandFlorida.com | Written by: Don Manley

Marco Island is first on the list for Tommy Chong.

Both a counter-culture and cultural icon, Chong will kick off his first tour in a year with his engagement this week at the Off the Hook Comedy Club, where he’ll appear Thursday through Sunday.

Chong chilled for about 12 months at his Southern California home after completing two and a half years on the road, entertaining audiences with Cheech Marin, in a reunion long hoped for by fans.

Now Chong is again putting his solo stand-up comedy skills on display, joined on stage at times by his wife and fellow comedian, Shelby Chong.

Chong uses placid terms to describe his humor.

“I have a gentle approach,” said the soft-spoken Vancouver, B.C. native. “I see the world through stoner eyes – a bloodshot-eye approach.”

Cheech and Chong were multi-media trailblazers who burst into America’s mass consciousness in the early 1970s with satirical humor rooted in the hippy drug culture.

The pairing produced such ground-breaking hit comedy albums as “Big Bamboo,” “Los Cochinos” – which received a Grammy award –and 1979’s “Up in Smoke.”

Those albums also generated a number of the hit singles, including “Basketball Jones,” “Earache My Eye” and “Sister Mary Elephant.”

From there, the duo conquered the cinematic world, starting with 1978’s “Up In Smoke,” the first of their eight movies together.

Cheech and Chong split in the mid-1980s when Marin decided to pursue a solo career in more mainstream offerings in movies and television.

“We were the first reality show, if you think about it,” said Chong. “That’s why reality shows are so popular. It’s not actors playing a role. It’s people playing themselves. When Cheech and I did ‘Up in Smoke,’ it was basically us in the recording studio talking about our life experiences. That’s why we were so popular. You could see the movie over and over and it was like having the same experience over and over. It’s not like a movie where you watch a story unfold. Ours was on-going. It never stopped.”

Chong said he was shocked by Marin’s decision, which created a rift in their formerly close relationship and that he “moped around for a few years” afterward.