Pubdate: Wed, 18 May 2011
Source: Westender (Vancouver, CN BC)
Copyright: 2011 WestEnder
Contact:  http://www.westender.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1243
Author: Justin Beddall
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada)

URBAN LEGEND: BAKING WITH WATERMLEON

Watermelon wants to become the Martha Stewart of weed.

Perhaps best known for selling watermelon and pot cookies at Wreck
Beach, the blond-haired potrepreneur and activist has just launched an
online marijuana cooking show and she's got a pot cook book in the
works.

"I want to teach everyone how to get the proverbial weed into the
proverbial brownie," she says, grinning.

"I'm not confessing to selling cookies now anymore. What I'm selling
now is my marijuana cooking show. You know it's not illegal to sell
information. Nobody busted Cheech and Chong for producing Up in Smoke."

Her new show (BakingAFoolOfMyself.com), which also stars her
68-year-old mom, Mary -- "she doesn't smoke pot at all," she explains --
features Watermelon, dressed like a 40s housewife, inside her kitchen
cooking up pot-infused recipes like Marijuana Bacon, Nice Cream Cones
and her summertime cocktail fave, Marijuana Mojitos.

"Yesterday, we made chocolate pecan tarts with Baileys Irish Cream in
them," she says, her eyes narrowing as she recalls the tasty treats.
"They're really good, do you want one? We make all sorts of fun
things. I once made black Zambuca marijuana ice cream with organic
cashew milk."

This isn't the first time Watermelon (real name Mary Jean Dunsdon) has
cooked in front of the camera.

Ten years ago, she starred in a show called Baked and Baking, she
explains, getting up from her living room table and returning with a
pair of DVD cases that are decorated with police "evidence" stickers
that read Regina vs. Dunsdon.

"I never did take the [evidence] labels off because I thought it was
so funny. But this is my first cooking show. It's still a good seller.
They used this as evidence against me in a court of law, " she says
incredulously.

Watermelon has always loved to bake -- she and her mom, both health
nuts, were always in the kitchen "making everything from scratch" --
but it has also gotten her in trouble with the law.

When she was 20 and struggling to earn a living as a stand-up comic,
she cooked up an idea to earn some extra cash after she spied a big
bag of marijuana shake at her friend's place. Without a recipe, she
used the shake to bake some marijuana cookies and went down to Wreck
Beach. The nude beach denizens gobbled them up.

Having learned about supply and demand when she began hawking
watermelon at Wreck a few years earlier (that's how she got her
nickname), she knew she had a money-maker. She raced home and put more
cookies in the oven. "Sold everything," she recalls.

For years she sold her pot cookies on the famous nude beach. But in
2001, the longtime Wreck Beach denizen was arrested for "allegedly
trafficking gingersnap cookies."

"It was hilarious. They arrest me on Wreck Beach and make me get
dressed, take me to the cop shop and then strip search me."

More arrests and three headline-making trials followed. She was
acquitted all three times. "They spent a million dollars trying to get
the cookie girl," says Watermelon, an outspoken pot activist who
believes strongly that weed should be legalized.

Ironically, Watermelon's arrests actually boosted business; after the
headlines, she sold even more cookies.

Of course, Watermelon was already pretty recognizable.

In 2001, she appeared on the cover of High Times magazine in a
"Marijuana Monroe," pin-up girl-style spread (she was taken
blindfolded to the grow-op for the shoot). That cover is still the
magazine's best-selling issue, she notes, beating out even Snoop Dog
and Jimi Hendrix. Since then, she's continued with magazine pin-up
shoots with new characters like CleoPotra, Jungle Mary Jane, Little
Miss Puff It and Mary Jane Mansfield. (Currently, she's on the cover
of the U.K. cannabis magazine ISMOKE.)

"Either I've got on sweatpants or I got my fake eyelashes on and I'm
ready to rock -- or I'm just naked on Wreck Beach. So, I have these
three looks," says Watermelon, who today is wearing a blue blouse,
white skirt, red pumps and marijuana leaf earrings, her blond hair
done up in her trademark hot-roller curls.

Watermelon, who is also a Cap U philosophy student and burlesque
performer, hopes her new cooking show will go viral; she also hopes to
normalize marijuana and provide a portrait of a contemporary stoner.
Today's pot smokers aren't anything like the characters portrayed by
Cheech and Chong, she asserts. "The modern stoner is educated,
sophisticated, they're probably a family person; they have money.

"Potheads aren't stealing your VCR, we're like out raking the yard,
you know? Potheads are making the world a nice place," she says. "So I
like to put myself out there. I'm like 'Oh, you want to know what a
marijuana smoker looks like' I'm one -- look at me. I smoke marijuana
every day. I love marijuana."

And she's unapologetic about her weed-worshiping, beach-loving
lifestyle. "You can't really fault a girl who's enjoying her life
without really hurting anybody. There's no major moral crime happening
here. I like to get naked, I like to smoke pot. Sounds perfectly
reasonable doesn't it?"  
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake