The perfect gift for mother
 
Anyone who’s spent any time in America is familiar with the phenomenon of the elevation of Brian De Palma’s 1983 cokehead tour de force Scarface as a singular icon of worldly American success. Unsurprisingly, Martin Scorsese’s enervating masterpiece Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo DiCaprio seems headed down the same road, of a morality tale whose relevant audience seems to have missed the point entirely. 

I couldn’t tell you a single thing about financial operations of the real-life Jordan Belfort, but I do know that the man made a lot of money on Wall Street, did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex, and then was busted by the feds for being a scumbag or something. Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street is the blackest of black comedies mainly due to its willingness to wallow in its protagonist’s point of view at such length. There’s an extended sequence towards the end of the movie that ranks up there as one of the core reasons I cherish the cinema as an art form, and if you’ve seen the movie you can probably identify the one I mean.

In any case, Leonardo DiCaprio, in addition to being a talented actor, is also famous for hanging out on yachts, which somewhat blunts the brilliance of his portrayal of Jordan Belfort. Stupid people everywhere appear to have seized on DiCaprio’s Belfort as a hero worth emulating, much as Martin Scorsese might have a different opinion on the subject.

Case in point. Right now on Amazon several canvas prints of DiCaprio-as-Belfort for use as “wall art” are available. All of them come in two sizes but if you’re the Belfort fan I think you are, you don’t want the small size, you want the full 44”x26” Big Kahuna, which will run you $124.99. There’s one of Belfort snorting cocaine off of a woman’s ass, that one’s my favorite. There’s another one of Belfort cavorting on the floor with his scantily clad mistress-then-wife Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie) which covers similar terrain as the cocaine-ass one.

All of these can be shipped in time for Christmas, by the way.

There are a few others, including one of Belfort holding a glass of wine on a yacht that I think has extra resonance due to DiCaprio’s own hobbies, that you can see below. I wish they had thought to include a still of the early scene where Belfort is mentored by a senior trader named Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) in the art of rapidly getting hammered during the luncheon hour. Hanna is given one of the movie’s more memorable lines when he says that the secret to success on Wall Street can be boiled down to “cocaine and hookers, my friend.”

Keeping on the subject of cocaine, in addition to the Wolf of Wall Street canvas prints I’ve thrown in one of Wagner Moura playing Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos and another one of David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth.
 

Naomi Lapaglia goodness
 

Sexy money armor
 

Leo on a yacht
 
More DiCaprio wall art after the jump…....
 

 
The heyday of cocaine in our nation’s history was arguably the late 1970s through the early 1980s. In the summer of 1980 Richard Pryor set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine, an incident which Pryor mined for a memorable bit in the 1982 movie Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip. The 1981 movie Modern Problems featured a fantasy sequence in which the protagonist, played by Chevy Chase, exploits his telekinetic powers to vacuum up a roomful of coke, which also brings us, inevitably, to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which is probably the ultimate cokehead masterpiece in American history. Obviously Woody Allen featured an iconic coke gag in the 1977 classic Annie Hall when he sneezed into a friend’s coke stash.

At the time, there was considerable sentiment around the country that after marijuana, cocaine might be the next drug to “go mainstream.” It was even considered non-addictive! In retrospect, this was never in the cards, however, many people thought it was on the cusp of becoming societally acceptable.
 

 
One of the signifiers of the time were underground “manuals” to the coke life. Since the drug was and is illegal, there was a shortage of authoritative guides to the drug and its chemistry, paraphernalia, and lifestyle accoutrements, and intrepid authors willing to make a fast buck tried their hardest to fill in the gap. We’ve already covered The Gourmet Cokebook: A Complete Guide to Cocaine, which dates from 1972. The subject today, however, is the 1976 guide The Cocaine Consumer’s Handbook by David Lee and his 1981 follow-up/expansion, The Cocaine Handbook: An Essential Reference.

These books are difficult to find today, and they fetch high prices on the collector’s market. And there’s not a lot of information about who David Lee is or was. The two books are much heavier on chemistry than, say, what kind of coke spoon goes with your style of shag rug. They provided useful information about the sources of cocaine and the sequence of events that starts with someone harvesting from the coca leaf, most likely in South America, and ends with a rolled-up piece of legal tender being placed in a user’s nostril. Lee described what happens at each stage, as the product moves from cook to alchemist to dealer to user, and also offered information the laws for all 50 states as well as the location of testing labs and treatment centers.
 

 
Lee was explicitly “anti-drug” in that he was not an activist pushing for legalization and his guide was mostly meant to increase the awareness of how to test for safe or pure cocaine. Lee described how samples are tested for common adulterants and impurities. His preferred method for testing involved putting the cocaine into Clorox, and if you scour the Internet you can find enough derisive references to it that one can safely categorize the conclusion as “controversial” if not totally debunked (again, depends on whom you ask). One disgruntled reader went so far as to describe Lee as a “shill for Clorox,” which seems a bit unlikely.

What follows are scans of some of the pages from the two books as well as a glossary taken from the longer second book, The Cocaine Handbook, which has been turned into HTML format if you want to experience that. As stated, it’ll run you hundreds of dollars if you want to have a copy on your coffee table (to cut lines on).
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

A massive Grinch bong made by Smoking Peppers in Durango, Colorado.
 
If your life’s dream has been to get stoned using a pipe that was fashioned after everyone’s favorite Christmas bunny, Ralphie from the 1983 classic holiday film A Christmas Story, then I have great news for you. Such a pipe exists, and it can be yours just in time to meet Santa under the tree so you can smoke a sweet bowl of full of Bruce Banner (one of my preferred strains) together. Christmas is SAVED!

In addition to their sweet Ralphie pipe, California company Chameleon Glass also makes a pipe in the image of the Grinch, the abominable snowman Bumble from the Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), and of course Santa. I also dug up a Frosty the Snowman pipe for 45 bucks here, as well as a couple of cool snowmen bongs. If you’re a fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, there are a few bongs and pipes out there that pay homage to characters in the film like Jack Skellington and the Oogie Boogie.

The most covetable of the all of the bongs and pipes seen here, of course, is the bong pictured at the top of this post of our beloved grumpy Grinch which was made by a glass artist for Smoking Peppers in Durango, Colorado. The impressive bong was priced at $1200—though I’m unsure if it sold so perhaps you still might be able to give the greatest Christmas gift of all time to yourself or your favorite stoner.

I’ve provided links to purchase the various holiday-themed smoking devices under their images. Stay stoned my friends.
 

Another look at the Grinch bong.
 

The Ralphie pipe by Chameleon Glass. Get it here.
 

Frosty the Snowman glass pipe. Get it here.
 
More festive glass after the jump…

via Sunset Gunshots
 
I thought I had long ago digested every crumb of gossip about the Beach Boys-Manson family connection, but one of the Charlie obits I read this week brought a screaming headline from the December 21, 1968 issue of Record Mirror to my attention: “DENNIS WILSON: ‘I LIVE WITH 17 GIRLS.’”

In the interview, conducted the year before the Tate-LaBianca murders, Wilson muses about turning the Manson girls into a group called “the Family Gems,” and says he’s been writing songs with their guru, “a guy named Charlie who’d recently come out of jail after 12 years.” Charlie, Wilson says, also taught him a dance step called “the Inhibition,” a kind of visualization exercise. (Wouldn’t “Do the Inhibition” have made a boss A-side for the Family Gems’ first 45?) From the interview: 

I still believe in meditation and I’m not experimenting with tribal living. I live in the woods in California, near Death Valley, with 17 girls. They’re space ladies. And they’d make a great group. I’m thinking of launching them as the Family Gems.

How did you come to meet up with no less than 17 girls?

It happened strangely. I went up into the mountains with my houseboy to take an LSD trip. We met two girls hitchhiking. One of them was pregnant. We gave them a lift, and a purse was left in the car. About a month later, near Malibu, I saw the pregnant girl again, only this time she’d had her baby. I was overjoyed for her and it was through her that I met all the other girls. I told them about our involvement with the Maharishi and they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie who’d recently come out of jail after 12 years. His mother was a hooker, his father was a gangster, he’d drifted into crime but when I met him I found he had great musical ideas. We’re writing together now. He’s dumb, in some ways, but I accept his approach and have learnt from him. He taught me a dance, The Inhibition. You have to imagine you’re a frozen man and the ice is thawing out. Start with your fingertips, then all the rest of you, then you extend it to a feeling that the whole universe is thawing out. . .

Are you supporting all these people?

No, if anything, they’re supporting me. I had all the rich status symbols—Rolls Royce, Ferrari, home after home. Then I woke up, gave away 50 to 60 per cent of my money. Now I live in one small room, with one candle, and I’m happy, finding myself.

Below, at 3:38, the Beach Boys play the Manson and Wilson-penned tune “Never Learn Not to Love” on The Mike Douglas Show.

The late David Cassidy on a 1972 cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
 

I understand the rock star deal having been one and still going out strapping my guitar on and performing. Now, I probably do 30 or 40 dates a year, and I get to relive how I felt at 19 when I played in some really bad bands.—David Cassidy

2017 has been another very sad year for anyone and everyone who likes to rock. We lost Tom Petty and Chris Cornell. Just a few days ago we all suffered through the difficult death of AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, and yesterday we mourned the passing of teen idol, David Cassidy. As I’m at a loss for words for a change, here’s the mythical Danny Fields, punk rock legend, journalist, and allegedly the first get Cassidy to snort coke moments before his photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz:

“When Annie (Leibovitz) brought that back (the nude photo of Cassidy), it was like, oh my God, if you cut it here and it’s just a little bit of pubic hair, and he’s naked, it’s like a Playboy Bunny.”

Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner recalls Leibovitz’s controversial cover-shot in his 2017 book, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine saying she had helped define Cassidy as the “darling of the bubble-gum set.” He also compared the teen idol’s nearly-nude shoot to Burt Reynold’s two-quarts of vodka cover for Cosmopolitan that same year.

In the Rolling Stone interview Cassidy talked about his drug use and how well-endowed he was, revealing that his brothers had enviously nicknamed him “Donk.” “Naked Lunch Box: The Business of David Cassidy” was published alongside an interview with the notorious William Burroughs in the same issue giving it an extra layer of WTF for past, current and future generations to figure out. The frenzy over the cover apparently sent Cassidy’s mother Evelyn Ward to Mexico to avoid the rabid press coverage concerning the shoot. Talk about teenage kicks. NSFW images follow.
 

 

A Polaroid shot of Cassidy by Leibovitz.
 

The NSFW shot of Cassidy that launched a thousand ships.

A close look at an elaborate, fully-functional glass bong made by Mothership Glass (in collaboration with a group of talented Japanese glass blowers) in Bellingham, Washington.

Since 2016, eight states in the U.S. have passed laws allowing for both recreational pot enthusiasts and people who rely on marijuana to help alleviate physical suffering to use the drug legally. The advent of marijuana legalization has ushered in a tidal wave of seemingly limitless THC products and accessories which cater to all types of weed consumers, including pet owners. Have a dog or cat that has chronic pain or perhaps acts aggressively toward other pets in your household? Thanks to legalization, you can now purchase CBD (aka Cannabidiol, one of many active ingredients in THC that can help reduce pain and anxiety) oil at your local pet store to help diffuse such issues.

As of March 2017 here in my home base of Washington state, the legal marijuana industry had pulled in over $168 million dollars in sales. Pot is big business, and it’s only going to keep expanding into other commerce-friendly ventures as weed entrepreneurs continue to come up with creative ways to market all things THC. However, Mothership Glass—a high-end functional bong and rig company here in Seattle—has cornered the market when it comes to wealthy cannabis connoisseurs who shell out thousands of dollars for Mothership’s exquisite functional glass. In 2016 a version of one of Mothership’s most famous bongs, the “Fab Egg” sold at a local auction for over $100,000—making it the second Fab Egg purchased for such an unfathomable sum. Started by master glass-blower Scott Deppe and glass artist Jake Colito, Mothership has quickly become a marijuana mecca of sorts, not only for customers but for the vast community of glass artists who reside in the state of Washington. According to an article on Mothership from Seattle publication The Stranger, the last five years have brought swift sales of their $10,000 bongs. The piece also notes that earlier Mothership models, which initially retailed for a grand, have fetched up to $80,000 in the resale arena. Mothership isn’t just producing glass bongs, they are making investment-worthy high art that can also get you stoned.

Pretty much everything Mothership produces comes out of their shop in the delightful city of Bellingham. The company has had several wildly successful collaborations with other well-known glass artists such as Junichi Kojima and his group of glass blowers. Mothership’s work with Kojima resulted in the creation of a glass device that looks like a cup filled with multi-colored marbles, which according to Colito sold for more than $100,000. Make no mistake—Mothership will make other bongs that will sell for more than that remarkable sum. In fact, it looks like they may have already.
 

 
A look at the top of Mothership’s Grateful Dead bong and a glass image of the “Trucking Fool” planting his ice cream cone on his head.
 
Earlier this year another collaboration with the Japanese artists resulted in a remarkable ten-inch Grateful Dead bong. Among the many creative aspects of this model is the inclusion of a colorful image of the “Trucking Fool” (pictured above) and his ill-fated ice cream cone.  Created by artists and long-time associates Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, the Trucking Fool design originally appeared on the back cover of the Dead’s live album, Europe ‘72. Industry experts predict this symbolic piece of glass will easily sell for more than $200,000. And, since I haven’t delved into the details of getting high using one of these gloriously extravagant devices, it all comes down to the power of the smoke that is allowed to cook up perfectly within these painstakingly crafted vessels by Mothership.
 

A full shot of the Grateful Dead bong.
 

A gold-plated pipe (noted to be a hookah) by Mothership Glass which sold for $100,000.
 

A close look at the unbelievable detail on the gold-plated pipe/hookah above.
 
More after the jump…

 
I must admit that reading Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream changed my life. A friend gave me a copy during our first year of college saying that it was his favorite book. I was already a big fan of Jack Kerouac—who Thompson hated and referred to as “empty-headed”—so I was a little skeptical at first. That all changed after I read the first few pages of the book, especially the memorable passage below, one of many in the book that leads one to believe that Fear and Loathing might be as far away from a work of fiction as you can get.

“The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of highspeed driving all over Los Angeles County – from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

At the time I was a journalism major but dropped that shortly after reading Fear and Loathing and subsequently learning that there weren’t really any other “journalists” who wrote like Thompson, making the idea of pursuing a career in the field uninspiring to me. I did continue to write and eventually, my years of dedication to the craft paid off. Am I in any way comparing myself to the diabolically druggy writer? Not by a long shot of whiskey and a handful of amyl nitrate, but thanks to both Thompson and my friend who hipped me to him in my youth, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Anyway, let’s get to the point of this post which is the nothing-short-of-brilliant graphic adaptation of Thompson’s book by Canadian author and artist Troy Little. Little discovered Thompson in the late 90s and could barely contain himself when he was granted permission by the HST Estate along with his publisher Top Shelf Productions to take on an illustrated version of Fear and Loathing. Staying true to Thompson’s original tale of his evil twin “Raoul Duke” and his debauchery in the desert with his attorney “Dr. Gonzo,” Little decided to include all of the original text from the book in his graphic novel.

When it came out in 2015, the book was an instant hit leading to a second print run in 2016. Better yet, Little’s version of Fear and Loathing is hardcover bound, which just makes it seem even cooler, and it’s pretty fucking cool, to begin with. Copies of the book will run you $16.95 here. I’ve posted images from the book below—check ‘em out!
 

The cover of Troy Little’s graphic novel adaptation of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.’
 

 

 
More after the jump…

An illustration done by Louis Crusius for the 1898 Antikamnia Calendar.
 
Here’s a fantastic vintage flashback for you—macabre illustrations done by Louis Crusius, a pharmacist, artist, and surgeon from the late 1800s for a series of calendars put out by the Antikamnia Pharmaceutical Company of St. Louis, Missouri.

Before Louis Crusius’ skeleton illustrations were published by Antikamnia, they were seen on the windows of a local pharmacy where Crusius worked in the early 1890s and later co-owned. Historical accounts regarding Crusius say that he gave away nearly all of his illustrations before he started selling them off to Antikamnia which would use them for their promotional calendars. What makes Antikamnia’s use of the ghoulish illustrations especially odd is the fact that Antikamnia manufactured a pill/tablet named for their company that was classified as an “analgesic” or pain reliever which was sketchy at best. Also morbidly curious is that Crusius would die before he was able to see most of his waggishly whimsical illustrations published in the Antikamnia calendar. Are you following me? Good.

Made with coal tar, Antikamnia was later found to contain a substance called acetanilide which diminishes the ability and even prevents red blood cells from releasing oxygen to tissues which in a nutshell is not good for you unless you’re okay with maybe dying prematurely. This is why acetanilide was illegal then and still is now. The deadly powder could also be mixed with Codeine by request. All that grim history aside, acetanilide would eventually become an ingredient in a little pill called Tylenol. With a bit of judicious digging, I found an old advertisement for Antikamnia (a word that the company invented which meant “Opposed to Pain”) published in 1890 and that provided an interesting description of the “benefits” of ingesting the substance. Here’s more on from an ad (which I have paraphrased below) for the early analgesic from The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health put out by the University of Michigan in 1901:

“Antikamnia has been found to be superior to any of its predecessors in this field in cases of acute pain and all forms of a headache which yield to its influence in a remarkably short time, and in no instance have any evil after-effects developed. The chief claim advanced in favor of Antikamnia over all other products is that its use is not followed by depression of the heart. In short, all headaches caused by anxiety or mental strain will be relieved by two tablets, crushed, followed by a swallow of water or wine. It is also suggested to be used by women on shopping tours and invariably to those who come home cross and out of sorts.”

So did people die after taking Antikamnia? Yeah, they sure did, and it wasn’t very pretty. Since we all now know that acetanilide stopped red blood cells from sending oxygen on its merry way, you should now know that the definately “evil” side effect would cause a person’s extremities to turn blue. Deaths associated with the pain remedy were first reported in 1891—barely a year after the Antikamnia Company started making the sometimes lethal medication. I’ve posted photos (which are even more cryptic now that you know the history of the drug) from various runs of the Antikamnia promotional calendars below.
 

1897.
 

1900.
 
More macabre illustrations by Louis Crusius, after the jump…

Album artwork by Benjamin Marra for the 2017 compilation ‘Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares.’
 
Comic artist Benjamin Marra‘s pulpy, outlaw artistic style has been used by notable publications such as The New York Times and another comic book company you might have heard of, Marvel. Several of Marra’s books have been published by Seattle comics institution Fantagraphics. In an interview Marra gave to The Comics Journal he discussed one of his most common themes of his work—his raw depiction of violence. Like so many of us, Marra was profoundly influenced by films he saw as a youth, though he steered clear of violent scenarios in his artwork because they scared the shit out of him. So, he began to include images bad stuff happening into his work in the hope that he might someday be able to conquer his fear. Well, it worked, and I’m thrilled because Marra’s art is kind of like a grindhouse film full of bikers and badass chicks battling it out in a grim neon netherworld.

Based in Brooklyn, Marra went to Syracuse University where he studied illustration, and then later for a time at SU’s art program in Florence, Italy. He received a B.F.A. from Syracuse and followed that up with an M.F.A. in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Marra still spends time at the Manhattan institution where he somehow finds the time to teach the in the Visual Narrative program. Marra publishes his far-out comics through his own company, Traditional Comics. There he puts out comics that are aligned with the kind of core values a real outlaw would be ready to die for, such as imposing your will upon the world, sex (and there’s lots of it in Marra’s illustrated world), drugs, gambling, and adhering to a personal code of justice that believes in vigilantism which provides for the right to exact revenge whenever you’ve been done wrong.

I first became aware of Marra after seeing the slick album art for a compilation series put out by the Numero Group in 2017, Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares (pictured at the top of this post). However, some of you might be familiar with Marra’s balls-out 2010 comic that featured a gun-toting New York Times Op-Ed columnist, The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd, or perhaps his contributions to the Henry & Glenn Forever series. Marra always seems to be putting out a new low-brow, day-glow piece of work and a quick look at The Comic Book Database revealed that his latest venture (with Fantagraphics) is a groovy-looking series called All The Time Comics with three different insane-looking storylines which you can see here.

I’ve posted some cool examples of Marra’s work below which are NSFW. Much like Marra himself.
 

 

Marra’s poster for the 2016 re-release of director Takeshi Kitano’s 1989 film, ‘Violent Cop.’
 
More after the jump…

The February 10, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone
 
It’s difficult to explain why Rolling Stone was able to separate itself from a crowded pack in 1967 to become the most reliable media barometer of Boomer culture in existence. It surely had a great deal to do with Jann Wenner’s personality. It would surprise nobody to learn, as David Weir, a reporter who co-wrote Rolling Stone’s coverage of Patty Hearst in the 1970s, once observed, that Wenner was (and probably is) “a brilliant master at getting what he wants out of people.”

Securing exclusive coverage of high-profile acts was surely a key to the early success of the magazine, but let’s not overlook Wenner’s bold sense of PR. Before the magazine was even a year old, Wenner zeroed in on an unbeatable promotional idea that would appeal to every person in his potential audience while alienating those who didn’t belong.

Wenner put an ad in the magazine stating that he would send every person who bought a subscription a free roach clip. The ad took up a full page and looked like this:
 

 
The text of the ad was a masterpiece of humorous insinuation, never mentioning drugs while winkingly touting 1,001 uses, which happen to include “music appreciation” and “preventing singed lips.” Riiiiiiight…..
 

This handy little device can be yours free!

An essential accessory for the successful musician and the completely equipped rock and roll fan. It has one thousand and one uses around the home, in rehearsal or for better music appreciation. Applications of this delightfully simple piece of machinery range from the frivolous (hanging earrings) to the practical (preventing singed lips.) Each handle comes individually lathed in either mahogany, ebony, oak or rosewood. No two alike! Get ‘em while they last.

Without delay, subscribe to Rolling Stone! We’ll give you one “Handy Little Device” free with your subscription. If you would like to give a gift subscription to a loved one, we’ll send you two “Handy Little Devices” or one to you and one to your loved one. Act now before this offer is made illegal.

 
As related in Robert Draper’s diverting 1990 book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, Wenner came up with the idea while getting high at a friend’s house in (where else?) San Francisco:
 

One afternoon Jann sat with friends in a house on Potrero Hill, smoking dope. Jann was admiring the handsome wooden apparatus which held the joint.

“Where’d you get the roach clip?” he asked its owner, Robert Kingsbury, a man he had met only once before.

“Made it myself,” said Kingsbury. “I make ‘em out of hardwood knobs.”

Jann took a toke and fingered the woodwork of the roach clip. Then he asked, “What do you think you could make these for?”

Kingsbury shrugged. “Maybe eighty cents apiece,” he said.

“Could you make me some?” Jann asked. “I need a lot.”

Sure, why not, said Kingsbury. “What do you need ‘em for?”

“I want to give ‘em away,” said Jann, grinning devilishly. “As a subscription incentive.”

And so page 23 of issue No. 5 featured a photograph of a 41/4-inch roach clip with the headline “This handy little device can be yours free!” With a subscription to Rolling Stone, the ad read, readers would receive this “essential accessory. ... Act now before this offer is made illegal.”

Gleason hit the ceiling. “Marijuana is against the law,” he said, lecturing Jann in his acid Eastern voice. “You can cover it, you can joke about it—but you cannot sell dope paraphernalia through Rolling Stone. You just can’t do that!”

Even by now, however, it was becoming clear [that] Jann Wenner could, and would, do with Rolling Stone whatever he wished.

 
When the New York Times reviewed Draper’s book, it chose to tout the roach clip gimmick in the headline: “A Roach Clip with Every Paid Subscription.”

On the suggestion of Jane Schindelheim, Wenner’s wife, Kingsbury (who was dating Jane’s sister at the time, whom he would later marry) was later asked to become Rolling Stone’s second art director, a position he held for several years. But in some respects he was an odd fit. A sculptor by trade, Kingsbury at 44 was a full generation older than Wenner and virtually everyone else at the magazine. Draper asserts that he “despised rock ‘n’ roll” but was “brilliant and resourceful, a disciplined man.” Draper credits Kingsbury with establishing the relatively clean and uncluttered look (for a counterculture rag, anyway), and he was ushered out of the organization around the time the magazine adopted four-color printing techniques in 1973.

I’m curious how many roach clips ever went out to subscribers. I’m tempted to say “zero.” There is currently a lavish exhibition dedicated to Rolling Stone at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, which I visited recently. There you can find the page with the advertisement as well as one of the clips, but that’s the only one I’ve ever seen reproduced. Below you can see a picture of the Rock Hall display taken by yours truly.

As you can see, Draper has the ad first appearing in the February 24, 1968, issue (“No. 5”), but the promotion actually debuted one issue earlier. The page shown at the Rock Hall does say “February 10, 1968” on it.

In any case, I’m a teensy bit skeptical that there exists any such thing as a human being who received a Rolling Stone roach clip in the mail. The auction site eBay has precisely zero auctions dedicated to the item in its archive, which doesn’t exactly prove anything, and if you can find a picture of one on the Internet, you’re a better Google-stalker than I. Draper mentions that Wenner was having difficulty paying his staff in those first couple of years, so I suspect he pulled the somewhat (in retrospect) Trumpian maneuver of reneging on a promise.

But I don’t know—if you received one of these mahogany beauties in the mail, please reach out and let us know! Pics or it didn’t happen…...