There’s no shortage of strain names that can lead to awkward moments with a budtender. Asking someone to show you a jar of Moby Dick or Matanuska Thunder Fuck is always a fun experience, but nothing tops calling a dispensary to ask if it has any Pootie Tang left — unless the budtender asks you to repeat the question, which actually happened to me at Herbs 4 You earlier this week. “I asked if you had any Pootie Tang left,” is something I’d rather not repeat.

Even after comedy hipsters and lovers of early-aughts blaxploitation parodies like Undercover Brother (which I sorta like) made Pootie Tang the movie into something of a cult classic, I never came around. The fame that Louis C.K. and J.B. Smoove later found in life likely has more to do with why people pretend to like Pootie Tang nowadays, but naming an award-winning weed strain after the film probably didn’t hurt brand awareness, either.

Here’s a surprise: I was planning to do a review of a certain strain right before St. Patrick’s Day 2018, but my stoner scheduling habits got in the way. Fortunately, there were plenty of other varieties of cannabis to keep me occupied until March rolled around this year, when I finally got another chance to try out Lucky Charms.

This potent hybrid is better known for its sugar-like trichome coating than being magically delicious, but it’s become a popular strain nonetheless, routinely stocked at over ten metro dispensaries at any given time. 

If you didn’t like Scooby-Doo when you were growing up, you’re probably not a dog person now. And I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs. Ergo, if you didn’t watch the show, you’re not allowed in my house. Not that I ask people before they visit or anything; that’d be weird. But if I find out? Peace.

Maybe it was my forever love for Scoob and the gang, or all the Shaggy memes flooding the Internet in January (Google it), but I just couldn’t resist a strain called Scooby Snacks — even after I found out that it was a child of Girl Scout Cookies, which I made a New Year’s resolution to avoid. The problem is, Cookies strains are damn near unavoidable these days. So much so, in fact, that all three commercial types of Scooby Snacks (or Scooby Snax, depending on the store) carry some kind of Cookies genetics

Anyone who’s spent more than two beers with me has surely heard me call someone a nickname with the word “dog” in it — or, more accurately, dawg. Kramer from Seinfeld? Krame Dawg (though I prefer Krame Dawwwwwgggg). Nikola Jokic and Mason Plumlee? Yolk Dawg and Plumdawg Millionaire, respectively. And how many times does our cannabis editor, Thomas Mitchell, have to tell you to call him T-Dawg?

Based on name alone, I’ve always been a fan of the Chemdog (yes, that’s the correct spelling) family, but there’s also a lot of weight behind its reputation. Those gassy, pungent smells and mind-bending effects keep it fixed in Colorado’s commercial rotation, birthing such strains as 303 OG, Sour Diesel and — one of my favorites — Star Dawg, a powerful, euphoric hybrid with Chemdog 4 (a Chemdog phenotype) genetics that were crossed with Tres Dawg, an indica with strong Chemdog influences. Tokers who appreciate classic earthy flavors with a skunky, chemical-like twist will love it.

I’m not sure whether it’s the cold nights or caring too much about who did what on True Detective, but I’ve been sleeping like shit lately, waking up in positions that make my neck and shoulder feel like a couple of tenderized pork loins. Dealing with the soreness has slightly affected my patience and attitude (maybe more than slightly if you ask the fuckboy who tried cutting me off at East 17th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard last week). In any case, the muscle aches had to be mitigated, and I knew just the strain to do it: Cataract Kush.