| Let me show you how my brain works when it comes to my dedication to this website: Originally my plan was to do a side-by-side review of Comedy Central’s Home Grown collection: once while completely sober, and a second time around while ripped out of my skull, as Home Grown is a compilation of Comedy Central’s more stoner-friendly fare. The problem is that I’m not what you would call a fan of "stoner humor" because it’s so obvious, tacky even – to me stoner humor isn’t a bunch of fat guys eating their entire weight in nachos, it’s me sitting in front of the television, watching that scene in Gone With The Wind where Bonnie Blue Butler bites it on her horse. Actually that scene is hilarious no matter what state of mind you’re in.
It also doesn’t help that in that state of mind, I witness everything in topographical map form – everything becomes architecture and everything loses meaning outside of that. Have you ever stared into a bowl of ice cream and saw a glorious mountain range? You take your spoon and suddenly you’re the creator of your little miniature ice cream ski slope, carving out peaks and valleys, literally shaping an entire world, you are the king, the almighty. I couldn’t bring the original concept to fruition because, needless to say, I get a little distracted under such conditions. A small price to pay to become Ruler of Ice Cream Mountain, sure, but it doesn’t make for interesting reading, as I’ve now illustrated.
 Tillamook brand Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream is my preferred landscaping tool, by the way.
Despite my disinterest in the genre of comedy, Home Grown packs in full-length episodes of shows I enjoy outside the context of head-trip comedy – along with some bits and pieces that boost the quality of the package exponentially. The disc is separated into three sections: Buds (full-length episodes), Stems (small bon-bon-sized chunklets) and Seeds (unrelated to Comedy Central’s main programming, but still falls within the genre).
By the way, how mean-spirited is Paramount has pressed a disc dedicated to potheads that doesn’t have a "play all" option?
Buds makes up the main haul of the disc, and contains five full-length episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program, the constantly removed from DVD release TV Funhouse, Lewis Black’s debate program The Root of All Evil, Reno 911!, and Strangers With Candy. You might notice that outside of The Root of All Evil, all of these episodes have either been released, or are eventually going to be released.
 The Sarah Silverman Program’s Face Wars episode again finds Sarah Silverman playing with race ironically, however it also tries to condemn ironic hipster usage of racist iconography (Hi, Stella – though that bit was pretty funny) with less than successful results. In plot-B, gay lovers Brian and Steve get the medical marijuana hook-up, allowing this season-2 episode to appear on this compilation.
There’s a huge cult following behind TV Funhouse that seems to grow more and more with each postponement of its DVD release but the show never really did much for me and came off as trying way too hard to go for the cute-puppets-saying-naughty-things angle – though the production values are a sight to behold. Does the idea of animal puppets snorting coke make you giggle? This is the show for you.
The Root of All Evil is Lewis Black’s program featuring two comedians debating which of two topics to be, you guessed it, the root of all evil – this episode, Weed Vs. Beer. Unfortunately, Comedy Central created this show four years earlier, it was called Crossballs. Crossballs was much more delightful as it pitted incognito comedians with unsuspecting real-life political pundits. Crossballs also benefited as it didn’t have an overly appreciated audience that insists on applauding after every scripted line. Professional alcoholic Paul F. Tompkins squares off against pothead Andrew Daly.
Reno 911!’s Burning Man episode is good, but wasn’t that off the first season? Not only that, Comedy Central actually stuffs Strangers With Candy’s pilot onto Home Grown making it the third time the episode has been released on DVD.
 Under the Stems heading, we have ten sketches from Chappelle’s Show ("Dave Meets Showbiz"), three animated bits of lunacy from The Sarah Silverman Program, two rather unfunny karaoke/singalongs from Drawn Together (which total about 40 seconds combined, by the way), three Crank Yankers clips that made me laugh way harder than they should have, and a small victory for comedy nerds: two all-too-brief clips from Viva Variety!.
Seeds is a mishmash of oddities ranging from archival footage of arachnids, marijuana documentaries and tripped out clips from Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s Animation Show, but the real winner in this section – not just this section but this entire release, is one full episode of The Joy of Painting, hosted none other than softvoiced, harshafroed Bob Ross. Being a child of the ‘80s, I had only seen bits and pieces of Bob Ross, most specifically knowing him from his happy little trees mantra repeated in old MTV promo spots.
 Throughout the course of a 26-minute episode, the laidback Ross will make you warm and fuzzy as he teaches you that anyone can paint, while layering color after color on his canvas, starting off abstract, slowly building it into a rather breathtaking ocean view. While the rest of the disc might be comparable to the second or third bong hit, The Joy of Painting is the comedown, the glorious dreamlike state where you’re lying in bed and hugging your pillows and just feeling so comfortable, like your eyes are wrapped in tiny blankets. Bob Ross is the embodiment of that feeling, and for that alone this disc gets a five.
Christ, I hope one day Comedy Central puts out a republican-themed compilation disc full of episodes of Wally George’s Hot Seat. You don’t know how much I would pay for such a disc: litreally dozens of dollars.
Presentation
Paramount has stacked this DVD to the brim with junk, and at times the transfer suffers for it – pixelation is especially present at times and is probably a visual downgrade from the individual series’ own DVD releases. The audio is standard broadcast quality, no more, no less. Home Grown is like a mix tape copied off a 3rd generation cassette tape – it might not be a perfect representation of the original material, but you’re probably not missing much.
 Extras
Due to the nature of the disc, Home Grown doesn’t really have any extra features, but as usual with Comedy Central discs, we have a collection of Comedy Central Quickies (a selection of four miniclips from South Park, Lil’ Bush, yet again The Sarah Silverman Program and Reno 911!) and a few DVD Previews that are unskippable at the front of the disc anyway, so why bother.
The Bottom Line
I take offense to the artistic rendition of an apple pipe on not only the disc art itself, but the DVD menu (which was actually the preliminary box art rejected for being too suggestive, I’m sure). Not only is it irresponsible, it’s totally incorrect. Who puts the hole in the side of the apple? Jesus Christ, have some decorum.
(Fun Fact: The review for this disc was postponed almost a week due to the fact that I couldn’t remember where I put the DVD).
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