Super high—with a soft spot

He’s got jokes—and probably tons of Visine.

Doug Benson the comedian is more commonly known as the man who answered the Super Size Me fast-food documentary with Super High Me. Or for his stint on the TV show Last Comic Standing.

He performed twice at Punch Line down at the Howe Bout Arden shopping center last week on April 20, better known in cannabis culture as 4/20, recording his annual comedy CD on the “holiday.”

A cannabis-friendly audience packed into the intimate spot. Walking onstage wearing a navy “420” hooded sweatshirt and a jolly grin, Benson read from a couple sheets of white parchment, slightly laughing. “Hey, everybody, it’s 4/20, 2011,” he joked. He then admitted that he prints out his material, in case of forgetfulness, and the audience burst out into laughter, a perfect opener.

Benson stopped throughout the night to read on Twitter what audience members in attendance were saying, calling out certain user names only to track them down and inquire about their tweets.

When referring to his stoner documentary Super High Me, he pointed out that marijuana is less dangerous than McDonald’s.

“Life is more fun when you’re high,” he admitted. “But, if you smoke a shit-ton of weed and you live across from a McDonald’s, you’re gonna die.”

The night continued with Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions, poking fun at the name Howe Bout Arden, and stories of instances when audience members tried to get him super high.

Benson has one requirement if you do get him high, one lone food item for any fan-based smoke session: “You better fucking have cereal. … You might as well rape me if you don’t have any cereal.”

Benson announced a new movie he’ll soon begin filming, The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled. He said it will be a road-tour-inspired flick where live performances are filmed, and, at the same time, earnings from each set will be used toward the funding of the film.

After the first show, Benson slipped outside of the venue for the post-show smoke-out with audience members. Downstairs, swarms of fans surrounded Benson, handing him steamrollers packed with green bowls of cannabis. Bags of sugar cookies were dangled in his face. Pipes were handed over and passed around as the Howe Bout Arden complex started to smell like a Cypress Hill concert. A man in a wheelchair, who owned a black jalopy where the smoke session settled in front of, snapped a couple photographs with the comedian, and Benson also signed his vehicle.

When asked why he chose to record his latest comedy CD in Sacramento, Benson, between hits and bites of cookies, admitted a soft spot for Sacramento.

“It’s a place I’ve enjoyed playing for a while now,” he shared, “because it’s a particularly green city, the whole town, or at least everybody I meet every time I’m here seems very open to medicinal marijuana and what’s going on with the movement. So, I thought it would be fun to record an album here.

“And it turns out I was right.”