Snoop Dogg is to cannabis as the CAA is to car batteries

One of the tricky parts in covering pop culture is the lack of “news.”

Nobody turns to People magazine to read about a possible war in Ukraine. When I click through Us Weekly or TMZ, it’s not for the latest data on Omicron or a planned mission to Mars. “Entertainment Tonight” will not be airing any glossy segments on inflation — not until the cost of hairspray and eyeliner spikes and wreaks havoc on its operational budget.

It’s why I always chuckle and then curse my overlords, the Gods of Fluff, when someone gets snippy about a column I’ve written and asks, “How is this news?”

It’s not news! Who said it was news? Do you think a column about a “Platinum Jubbly” typo on royal souvenirs came out of a news meeting? Do you go to McDonald’s to order a copy of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”? Entertainment sections are, by design, counterprogramming the “news.” My job is mostly to provide a two-minute break from all the rotten things that are happening. You stressed? Me too. Let’s talk about Britney.

That said, the danger of always trying to make something out of nothing is you run the risk of occasionally making nothing out of nothing. Case in point: headlines this week such as “Snoop Dogg Smokes Weed Right Before Star-Studded Super Bowl 2024 Halftime Show.”

Again, let me be clear. I will always defend my brothers and sisters who toil in the entertainment trenches. You people don’t know the great personal sacrifice that comes from trying to spin 900 words out of Rihanna’s baby bump. But in this case, I can’t defend stories about Snoop smoking weed just before Sunday’s performance because that is what he does every day.

The Rock works out. Ye says crazy stuff. Snoop is always high.

These are merely immutable laws of the celebrity universe.

I bet Mr. Dogg smokes weed while he’s sorting his recycling, which itself is nothing but edibles packaging. You know how people sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom? Snoop wakes up to toke or recite a funny story to his bong. The human body is 60 per cent water — Snoop’s other 40 per cent is Cali Kush.

I’m surprised he hasn’t spontaneously combusted.

Are people really shocked Snoop smoked up just before his Super Bowl performance? I once saw him deliver an intimate rap set at a club and he was puffing while performing. I’m pretty sure this was a violation of local bylaws. But who would be mad enough to get between Snoop and his reefer madness? I don’t do recreational drugs so have no idea if marijuana can produce hallucinogenic effects. All I’m saying is there was a lot of smoke in the club and, at one point, I saw a leprechaun ride a tricycle past the ghost of Gaddafi who was lip-synching “California Gurls.”

Snoop was just fine at Sunday’s Super Bowl because smoking pot before he even makes a pot of coffee is what the man does. He’s a cannabis connoisseur. He’s basically a human joint.

If aliens visited Earth to learn about marijuana, the mother ship would fly straight to Snoop’s rooftop deck. And he’d be so high, he wouldn’t even know he was answering questions from aliens. If someone told me to close my eyes and visualize dope or hash or ganja or hemp or bhang, my mind’s eye would instantly see Snoop in sunglasses, exhaling a contrail while holding up a spliff and looking at it with pure love, like a parent gazing at a newborn.

The man is to cannabis as Pythagoras was to the Theory of Proportion.

Snoop knows more about CBD than the CAA knows about car batteries.

And that’s why we in the entertainment press need to create a global moratorium on reporting about his light ’em up proclivities, be it at the Super Bowl, in a club or while shopping on Melrose. If Snoop had not strolled onstage Sunday without first polluting his lungs, that would be real news. This guy couldn’t read the back of a cereal box without the company of Mary Jane.

I wonder if 50 Cent also altered his consciousness before Sunday’s halftime show. Or why would he start by hanging upside down, looking like a bloated Houdini in an escape trick gone wrong? Eminem might have also been on to something. When he took a defiant knee, in support of Colin Kaepernick, it was almost like he couldn’t get back up.

But Snoop? Snoop is a high-functioning user. Based on his wild success as a rapper and entrepreneur, it’s almost as if his body metabolizes cannabis as a performance-enhancing drug. He could be a storm chaser racing toward a hurricane and he’d still be inhaling like the Marlboro Man. So reporting that he smoked weed at the Super Bowl is making nothing out of nothing.

He probably started smoking weed on Sunday before he put on his shoes.

He’s probably smoking weed right now as I write this.

Nobody needs to know Snoop Dogg smokes weed because we already know it.