MMDInsuranceCo
04-20-2010, 01:38 PM
As the nation??s first medical marijuana critic, William Breathes takes his work seriously, but not too much so.
??I'll never get used to collecting a paycheck for taking bong hits,? wrote Breathes, who uses a pseudonym.
After all, he??s the opposite of a restaurant critic who tends to eat his meals anonymously and review them under his given name. Breathes must show his medical marijuana card??with his real name on it??before he can gain entrance to one of the 400 or so dispensaries in the Denver area. Then he pens his review anonymously for "Westword," Denver??s alternative weekly since 1977.
Last fall, Westword editor Patty Calhoun decided to hire a freelance marijuana-dispensary reviewer to keep pace with the booming sector. She didn??t anticipate the response.
??I'll just post a blog and we'll get someone,? she recalls. ?? Within a month, we'd had several hundred responses. We quit counting at 250. The applications keep coming in. Pot fans are not always punctual. They also tend to forget punctuation.?
"The Early Girl was done well??flushed of fertilizer, dried and cured properly??and had a light, fresh taste. By the time the joint had turned brown, I was over any lingering pain and nausea and was ready to destroy a turkey sandwich." --excerpt from marijuana critic William Breathes column.
The job posting also attracted the attention of late-night talk show hosts, who joked about it for weeks and a variety of national and even international media.
??I pulled William Breathes from the pile because he's not only a great writer??with a sincere love of pot??but he also is a strong journalist, and I realized that there would be many, many more stories in this subject,? says Calhoun.
That said, here's some samples of his writing. You be the critic.
*The Early Girl was done well??flushed of fertilizer, dried and cured properly??and had a light, fresh taste. By the time the joint had turned brown, I was over any lingering pain and nausea and was ready to destroy a turkey sandwich.
westword (http://www.cnbc.com/id/36180835)
??I'll never get used to collecting a paycheck for taking bong hits,? wrote Breathes, who uses a pseudonym.
After all, he??s the opposite of a restaurant critic who tends to eat his meals anonymously and review them under his given name. Breathes must show his medical marijuana card??with his real name on it??before he can gain entrance to one of the 400 or so dispensaries in the Denver area. Then he pens his review anonymously for "Westword," Denver??s alternative weekly since 1977.
Last fall, Westword editor Patty Calhoun decided to hire a freelance marijuana-dispensary reviewer to keep pace with the booming sector. She didn??t anticipate the response.
??I'll just post a blog and we'll get someone,? she recalls. ?? Within a month, we'd had several hundred responses. We quit counting at 250. The applications keep coming in. Pot fans are not always punctual. They also tend to forget punctuation.?
"The Early Girl was done well??flushed of fertilizer, dried and cured properly??and had a light, fresh taste. By the time the joint had turned brown, I was over any lingering pain and nausea and was ready to destroy a turkey sandwich." --excerpt from marijuana critic William Breathes column.
The job posting also attracted the attention of late-night talk show hosts, who joked about it for weeks and a variety of national and even international media.
??I pulled William Breathes from the pile because he's not only a great writer??with a sincere love of pot??but he also is a strong journalist, and I realized that there would be many, many more stories in this subject,? says Calhoun.
That said, here's some samples of his writing. You be the critic.
*The Early Girl was done well??flushed of fertilizer, dried and cured properly??and had a light, fresh taste. By the time the joint had turned brown, I was over any lingering pain and nausea and was ready to destroy a turkey sandwich.
westword (http://www.cnbc.com/id/36180835)