Today is a great day to hit that bong like Louis Armstrong played the trumpet

It’s one of the greatest lines ever written in hip-hop: “Like Louis Armstrong, played the trumpet/I’ll hit that bong and break you off something.”

Cypress Hill gets the credit, the loving shout-out to Satchmo coming in the middle of the ’90s classic “Insane in the Membrane”. Considering that the song is a three-minute-and-32-second testimony to the mind-expanding powers of marijuana, the working of Armstrong into the lyrics couldn’t have been more apt.

Jazz’s most famous trumpeter was, after all, a devoted head, once noting: “It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics—dope and all that crap. It’s a thousand times better than whiskey. It’s an assistant. A friend.”

By now, you’re probably wondering why the hell the Straight is attempting to play six degrees of separation between a legendary SoCal hip-hop act, a mind-warping weed, and a late jazz giant who rose to prominence in the Roaring ’20s.

To that, we can only answer that today is Louis Daniel Armstrong’s birthday. The trumpeter, who died at age 69 in 1971, would have been 115. Also, we’ve been hitting the bong like Louis Armstrong played the trumpet, and when that happens, we inevitably end up attempting to connect obscure mental dots.

Pass the Pringles and the Evol Empire Glass Waterpipe-Zombie. And remember: as sure as “What a Wonderful World” is one of the greatest songs ever, marijuana is not only an assistant, but also a friend.