Early Life
Marin was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Elsa (née Meza), a secretary, and Oscar Marin, a policeman in the LAPD. Marin was born with a cleft lip, which has long since been repaired. Although he speaks Spanish and uses it in some of his movies, he is not particularly fluent.
Marin's nickname "Cheech" is short for "chicharron", a fried pork skin that is a popular snack in Mexican cuisine and a favorite of marijuana smokers afflicted with "the munchies", and the nickname's alliteration with Chong's surname made "Cheech and Chong" an obvious choice for the name of the duo. The name of this character gave rise to the popular term "cheeched", meaning "under the influence of marijuana, usually at a relatively high dose".
Marin graduated from Bishop Alemany High School, located in California's San Fernando Valley, as well as from San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge), where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa. Marin auditioned to sing for Frank Zappa in 1967, but moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in September of that year to avoid the U.S. draft during the height of the Vietnam War. In Vancouver, Marin met his future comedic partner Tommy Chong.
Read more about this topic: Cheech Marin
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)