Matt Stang needs to stop texting me

I was well on my way to becoming the Ken Burns of the counterculture until…

It all ended abruptly, as I was booted from my events, no more books, videos or special projects, no more WHEE!, no more World Marijuana Film Festival, no more Stonys, no more Doobies, and after years of being diminished and abused, I was fired with zero severance after requesting a raise to cover my son’s braces.

I already had tried to bow out of the 20th Cup as I had become a powerless puppet and Stang and his girlfriend openly disrespected me. But mostly I wanted out because my wife had postpartum depression with two toddlers overwhelming her.

I rented our New York apartment and moved to Woodstock. I did not feel confident leaving my wife alone for ten days and this message was conveyed to the Kennedys, who showed no sympathy and forced me to attend the Cup upon threat of firing.

The night before the awards show, I learned my wife was in the hospital and my kids were in foster care.

I assumed I could leave to rescue my kids, but instead was commanded to remain in Amsterdam for the awards show the next night.

My wife was never the same, nor my youngest child. My oldest survived because he had to stay strong for his brother.

After this and other issues too numerous to go into, I requested a divorce from High Times and asked for a respectable settlement as I owned ten percent of the company. I was ghosted, suspended without pay and no offers for shares came forth.

So I solicited offers from four outside buyers at $100k a share, half my shares.

High Times rewrote the articles of incorporation in emergency session to prevent me from moving those shares 3 of which already had signed purchase agreements.

Then High Times immediately engulfed me with litigation threats, and once I was compromised emotionally, forced me to cough up all 8 shares (worth $4 million) for $400,000 in quarterly payouts over six years. This was less than I’d already been making, only now I owned no shares, so the deal was a complete rip-off. Except I was given rights to exploit my video. Halfway through the schedule, High Times stopped paying me. When I complained to Stang, he ghosted me. When I requested access to my archive as per the divorce agreement, Stang ghosted me.

I had to sue, and eventually got everything back I was owed, including my lawyer’s fee and the tapes. The judge was angered by obfuscations perpetrated by High Times. Still, it took two years to get them back. The judge was ready to add damages if High Times stalled any longer.

I had evolved into an impoverished single dad with two kids, who’d been living on $50k a year for five years, while Stang was making ten times that. And now I had to support my wife at a separate location as she could no longer live with us per Child Services.

High Times and the Cannabis Cup lost its soul when I was curb-stomped, and so far High Times has shown zero inclinations to make things right.

I’m reminded greatly of one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Would Be King when Sean Connery and Michael Caine spy four Afghans riding three donkeys.

“The problem,” says Caine, “is how to separate four Afghans from three donkeys.”

This has been the folly of High Times. Any other media company would have respected me and made use of the stream of content. High Times had become the success story of the 1990s, and ignited the minds of a generation. My stage shows were 4-camera live-mixed, internet and pay-per-view ready for decades but never exploited beyond a Fishbone documentary I made for Mike Esterson, whose contract allowed him access to the Cup concert footage.

Stang buys High Times for a couple million, and first thing sends me a text on my cell saying he’s making a Forcade doc and wants my tapes. Now, he has been ghosting me for six or seven years, and was central to the theft of my tapes, computer and hard drives, and all video equipment. I say that because if I’d fought it out in court, I could have proved ownership of over half the tapes and all the equipment, but was so bullied by legal threats and so impoverished, I had to fold up and run for the hills. I gave away all my High Times and Cup tees, and put everything else High Times into storage. For five years.

During that time I became an early adopter of bitcoin and this is what saved me, cleared my mortgage, put my kids through college. I’d be having a wonderful retirement with my solar bikes and pedal boats if not for some unfortunate recent incidents.

 

One of which involves Stang. After he discovered I wasn’t turning over the tapes to anyone, and intended to keep them under close supervision at all times, and was negotiating the access with the producer, this was not sufficient for Stang, who wanted to pick up the tapes tomorrow.

 

The tapes are in the same condition High Times delivered them to me. A jumbled up mess. Only now, they are mixed up with all my pre- and post- High Times footage.

 

Kennedy is dead, and Cruella has no power. So why is Stang still in kill-Hager mode, instead of seeking an alliance with me that could actually unlock the entire archives?

 

I asked him to stop texting me at night. He ignored that and responded with a threat to sic his General Consul on me. Probably thought I’d fold up and run for the hills like last time. Not likely. This time I am armored up and have resources.

 

Perhaps someday someone sensible will emerge amidst all this greed and madness, to apologize for what was done to me and my family. I’m ready to negotiate an honorable deal that grants true access to my archives: art, songs, video, scripts, correspondence with famous figures like Hunter S. Thompson. The Steven Hager Archives runs from 1966 to the present and represents the greatest counterculture collection in private hands. This could be an important and profitable collaboration. The books I produced and edited by Stephen Gaskin and Paul Krassner (which won the prestigious Firecracker Award for counterculture journalism) could be put back into print, along with my Adventures in the Counterculture.

 

High Times minted two icons, me and Tom, and living icons are more exploitable than dead ones, so why was I curb-stomped? I had a $2 million green light from Lion’s Gate for a script called “High Times Cannabis Cup.” Was that killed because it would have documented the evolution of my ceremony of peace before the money-grab it morphed into?

 

High Times might someday even be considered as a potential repository for my entire archives if they ever cured this situation.

 

There’s a certain Bozo slamming me for being a whiner for sharing this info. This means he views this as: complaining in a feeble or petulant way. And he goes around for a decade trying to rally others to join his ridicule. He’s got so much hate for me, it’s pathological.