Eating a Firecracker

Note: The following took place on Friday March 6th, 2009; roughly three weeks before this blog was first published. This is 100% factual. Enjoy.

Introduction:
A friend of mine and I had bought tickets to see the world famous Pink Floyd cover band, The Machine, at the Portsmouth City Music Hall. We are both huge fans of Floyd and since we are far too young to have seen the original Floyd we figured that The Machine would have to do. We made plans take the early evening bus to Portsmouth, pick up our tickets and have about an hour before the show started to walk around downtown. After the show we were going to crash at my older brother's apartment just outside of downtown Portsmouth, about a 10-minute walk from the Music Hall. The plan seemed pretty solid.

The Story:
My friend and I decided that there was no way that we could see a Pink Floyd cover band without being under the influence of a little plant known as marijuana, but there were two problems. 1) Since we had to take a bus to Portsmouth there was no way that we would be able to smoke before the show and still be influenced by the time the band came on. And 2) we lived in a dorm. So, being the good college students that we are (seriously, we both get very respectable grades) we did some research. Thanks to some crazy cannabis forum found via the Internet we learned about something called “firecrackers.”

A firecracker is a very simple way to cook weed much like a brownie, but it is very quick and scentless, which caught our attention because we lived in dorms. To make a firecracker simply take a saltine cracker and coat it with natural fat-containing peanut butter (found at the bagel stations in our lovely dinning halls). Then sprinkle on some weed and take a second cracker with peanut butter to make a sandwich. The final step is to microwave the peanut butter weed sandwich for about a minute on high. Since THC is fat-soluble it cooks from the weed into the fat of the peanut butter. It’s simple chemistry. The crackers are only there to make it a little easier to eat. A good firecracker will take about 1.5 hours to kick in and can potentially give you a crazy strong high for up to three hours.

DISCLAIMER: Firecrackers are not worth it. They are too inconsistent; we did this twice each and only had on good result out of the four we cooked. That good result was me in this story.

Back to the story.
So anyways we cooked up our snacks and downed them promptly (they tasted disgusting.) We caught our bus and were on our way to downtown Portsmouth, a city that I knew decently at the time and my buddy had never been to. The bus ride, because of the various stops, took about 45 minutes. About 40 minutes into the ride, I began to take a ride of my own. My firecracker was coming on very early, and very strong.

I began to try to explain to my friend that the bus wasn’t even moving, but the road and the buildings were moving around the bus. As soon as I finished trying to explain this phenomenon I realized that I could see the moves the bus driver were going to make. I knew where he was going to turn and when he would brake or accelerate. Not only this but I began to see the bus from a third person angle, like in a videogame. To put it simply, I was fucked up.

At this point in time we had reached our destination, downtown Portsmouth. The bus drops off right near the Music Hall, but I was not in the right frame of mind to realize this, and like I said before my friend had never been to Portsmouth. We began walking in the wrong direction all the way around the block that makes up the downtown area. About 35 minutes later we arrived at the Music Hall, I was able to pick up our tickets at will call without a problem and we were seated in our balcony seats with a half hour to spare. Success! My firecracker was beginning to wear off, or so I thought. When The Machine came on and busted into Shine on You Crazy Diamond the balcony turned into a rollercoaster and I was forced to lean back in my seat and grip my armrests as hard as I could. It was fucking intense.

By about the 3rd song my firecracker wore off for good and I was sad to hear that my friend was completely sober the entire night. But I would not let that last long, and neither would my brother. The Machine finished their set, which included most of Dark Side of the Moon, Animals (my favorite Floyd album), all of Wish You Were Here and hits from The Wall as well as some lesser known (but equally awesome) songs.

After the show, we walked over to my brother’s apartment to chill with him and a couple of his friends. We had a few beers, took a few hits from a bong, threw some darts and later played some videogames. I remember asking one of my brother’s friends, who is a huge Lions fan, how they would do next season. He gave me a hard time for making fun of the team because one of their players just died.

Then the fun started, or should I say complete domination. My brother’s roommate, knowing that I’m a big fan of skateboarding, busted out the most recent Tony Hawk videogame he rented for PS3. A couple people played before me, in a head to head total points format, with the winner staying in. Before me the highest point total was about 15,000. I realized they didn’t know the R2 button to “revert to manual” for huge combos. I broke 500,000 without a sweat. After beating everyone with my high score over 900,000 everyone else got pissed and quit. My brother’s roommate returned the game the next day. It remains a soar subject with him to this day.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, people passed out on couches and I on the floor. We returned to campus the next day. So that is my firecracker story, I just wanted to kick off the new school year with something interesting. It was a very fun experience, but seeing how inconsistent they are I probably won’t be cooking any up this year; but if I do, I’ll let you know.

Stay classy, not UMassy.