mr. nice

i just finished reading an autobiography by howard marks called mr. nice. it's the first biography - let alone "auto" - that i highly enjoyed reading. it's so good that i'm going to read it all over again. howard marks was one of the biggest marijuana dealers in the world from the late 70s to the 80s. what's interesting about him is that as much as he loved money, he never got so greedy as to push other drugs that were trendy at the time. plus, he was highly educated and made connections with a list of high-profile characters all over the world. the message i received after finishing the book is that studying law and the basics of banking are essential to being a successful hustler. that is if you're dealing with money in the millions+ or your business happens to be illegal, like pushing weed.

in relation to having read the book, last week i met a 23-year-old pilipino named david at the shop. first of all, i have to brush up my tagalog very soon before i totally lose the rhythm. let's just say, i'm finding it very difficult to maintain speaking three languages. and right now, tagalog is my weakest. anyway, we struck up a conversation about what each other's doing in nice. he was in town for the week to do some work. after, he was to go to firenze and pick up "the professora's car" as he called it. who's the professora, i asked? she is some doctor who knows his fam in italy and hooked him up with this job. driving? he said that's what he does - gets paid 4k a month to do it. so he drives the car from firenze to roma to napoli. at the time, i was thinking to myself, damn that is one hooked-up gig. all he has to do is drive. but when i told mackenzie about david later that night, he said that david's probably driving hash around. no way, i thought. but then i remembered some of the details of mr. nice, and how marks talked about transporting the tons of stuff around tucked in all kinds of panels in a car. it all made sense. in any case, if david is really pushing stuff around italy, good luck out there, homie.

did you know that over 20 million people smoke weed per day in america? or was it 20 million pounds of weed that's smoked per day?