Tommy Chong Book Tour: Live Coverage Day One

Day One
August 12, 2008.

Today, we are providing coverage (sometimes live) of the Tommy Chong Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography book tour. We'll also have photos and video.

Howard Stern Show (7AM):
Cheech's managers put the reunion tour together. Cheech agreed to have Shelby Chong open the tour. It was incredible performing with Cheech after all these years. It felt like it had only been a couple weeks since they last saw each other.

Tommy mentioned a lot of stories from his book such as maintaining two families after cheating on his first wife with Shelby, meeting celebrities, watching the film Thumbelina on acid, getting a boner on a nude beach in France, Jimi Hendrix's underage groupies, Cheech & Chong discovered the Jackson 5, beating Bob Dylan in basketball, admiration of Red Fox and Lenny Bruce. Saddest moment was years ago, when Tommy saw Cheech at an event and said hi, but Cheech ignored him.

Richard Christie came in a told Tommy he's his biggest comedy influence.

Cheech and Chong are adding more tour dates. They are coming to Radio City Music Hall.

Fox News (8:45AM):
It was a brief interview (5 mins), they mentioned the book, discussed Cheech & Chong tour, a/k/a Tommy Chong DVD.


Borders Books (12:15PM):
Tommy signed books and memorabilia until approximately 1PM. Tommy said his flight was delayed so he didn't get into NYC til 4AM. He's operating on zero sleep. There were a lot of photographers and a tv crew from the Alex Jones show.

Tommy will sign one other item besides the book so if you have a DVD or record, bring it if you're attending a signing.

He said they are definitely doing TWO dates at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, but it has not been announced yet.

We were also told that the 200 people invitation only XM satellite radio event has been moved to a new location. The new location only holds 50 people. Unfortunately, some of the original invitees were contacted because of lack of space. No reason was given for why the venue changed.

XM Satellite Radio, Unmasked (3:00PM):
This was a really cool event. XM has this weekly "Unmasked" show where an XM host interviews a celebrity. Seth Rogan was last week. Tommy Chong was today. They film and broadcast the show. We're not sure where the video portions airs. Ron of the Ron and Fez Show was the interviewer. He did a great job.

It turns out that Ron owned the comedy club where Tommy performed for the first time after breaking up with Cheech. They went down memory lane a bit.

Tommy that at one point, he and Cheech were considering a reality show produced by the same person that produced The Osbournes. I don't know if Tommy was kidding around or not, but he claims he was at Johnny Carson's mansion after Johnny retired. He saw Johnny do something indicative of a guy that just did coke. Tommy also says he has tons of great Arnold Schwarzenegger stores that he'll share at a later time (note: He mentions one of them at Bookends later that night. Video to be posted shortly.).

Bookends, Ridgewood, NJ (7:00PM):
A few hundred people turned out. It was a great crowd of hardcore Cheech and Chong fans. Various ages. People kept wandered in throughout the evening.

Tommy was originally going to read an excerpt from his book. He started opening the book and then said forget it and took questions from the audience instead. This was a good idea because it allowed for one on one interaction with fans. He spoke for nearly 30 minutes before signing autographs. He was hysterical. The crowd couldn't stop laughing.

Tommy wrapped up a little before 9PM. He was going back to his hotel to crash because he hadn't slept the night before and has a lot of appearances booked for tomorrow. Everyone near NYC, should come to Bryant Park tomorrow at 12:30PM for Tommy's book reading.

We will post complete video from Bookends tomorrow.