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WEDNESDAY

In high school, I had a friend, Christine, who spent her days smoking pot. Remarkably—or maybe not—she maintained an A average. Most proponents of marijuana legalization take stories like this as proof that weed is benign, but I see it as evidence that the stuff is boring: If it were any sort of distraction, how could Christine have possibly paid attention in that endless algebra-trig class? This July 4 at “high” noon (snicker, snicker), thousands of grass proponents will descend on the Mall in an effort to prove that marijuana is really gripping stuff. How? They’ll have a car that runs on hemp, DJs, bands, a picnic, hemp paper, hemp clothing, and the Great American Hemp Museum. Who knows? They might even smoke some of the stuff. The Rally to End Marijuana Prohibition starts at noon at Lafayette Square Park, H Street between 15th and 17th Streets NW. Free. (202) 887-5770. (Jandos Rothstein)