Review: Cheech Is Not My Real Name: ...But Don't Call Me Chong

Cheech Is Not My Real Name: ...But Don't Call Me Chong by Cheech Marin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this candid autobiography audiobook read by Cheech himself. I especially liked hearing of his draft resistance and meeting Chong in Canada while working in a naked hippy improv troupe. This led to such performance career vignettes as:

We would play anything that we could get, from the lunch yard at USC to the just opened Scientology center, which was one of our stranger gigs. I knew it would be different when I went into the men's room and the graffiti on the walls read, “I was thrown into the maelstrom of the universe blind and unaware.”

Obviously, Cheech doesn't remember much about the high point of the duo's success and popularity, but does dive deep into the creative demise around the time of The Corsican Brothers before his solo successes including Born in East L.A., celebrity Jeopardy appearances, MTV and more including a string of Robert Rodriguez movies.

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