Artwork by Gunsmithcat
CNN: Fiona Apple recently spent a night in a jail in Texas. She apparently was a little ticked off at the behavior of some of the folks who watched over her stay. The Grammy-winning singer told the audience at her next show about it, and videos of her harsh speech were posted on the web. The Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office must have gotten wind of it because its public information officer issued a sharp rebuttal Monday. Rusty Fleming even had some advice for Apple: “Just shut up and sing.” Border Patrol agents arrested Apple after finding marijuana and hashish on her tour bus on Wednesday. Investigators found 0.010 pounds of marijuana and 0.010 pounds of hashish, a statement said. After she was released from jail, Apple did a concert in Houston where 
she launched into her critical remarks before her first song. “Most of the people were very nice to me,” she said. “There are four of you out there, and I want you to know that I heard everything you did. I wrote it all down with your names and everything you did and said stupidly thinking I couldn’t hear or see you.” Then it got interesting. Apple said she ripped the paper up, not before “encoding” the information and putting it in a “lock box” or a “holding cell.” Another holding cell holds the decoder and Apple is the only one with the key, she said. She said the behavior of the four was inappropriate and likely illegal. Fleming said it was the official position of the sheriff’s office that if she has a legal complaint she should call the state attorney general. “We’ll give her the number if she needs that,” the release said. Apple told the Houston concertgoers that she was going to keep the information private unless “you’re interested in being a celebrity, I’ll make you … famous any time you ask,” she said, referring to members of the sheriff’s department. Fleming was not amused, it seems. “First, Honey, I’m already more famous than you, I don’t need your help. However, it would appear that you need mine. Two weeks ago nobody in the country cared about what you had to say. Now that you’ve been arrested it appears your entire career has been jump started. Don’t worry, Sweetie, I won’t bill you,” he wrote. MORE
PHAWKER: OK, first of all she is a little nuts, maybe a lot. And a drama queen. However, we are shocked that these are public statements — sent out to the media in a press release — by a sitting sheriff [pictured, above right]. What is he gunning to be the next Joe Arpaio? These are the same courageous lawmen that took down Willie Nelson. Thanks sheriff, we’re sleeping better already knowing that a national treasure is in chains for incinerating the wrong kind of leaf. This is why marijuana needs to be decriminalized yesterday. Bullies like this just use the drug laws to abuse otherwise law-abiding citizens because they are too pussy to go after real criminals. Way to go tough guy, keeping the world safe from the existential threat of 90 pound Fiona Apple and her doobie. Fuck you.
OPPOSING VIEWS: Apple is facing a steeper sentence because she not only had marijuana; she had hashish, which is commonly misconstrued by willfully ignorant police and media as “stronger marijuana.” Hashish (or hash, kief, etc.) is NOT a stronger marijuana, it IS marijuana. Hashish refers to the trichomes, which are gelatinous caps growing off of the marijuana plants, which contain the majority of the plants supply of THC. They are what make good buds so sparkly. They are removed in a variety of ways, commonly cold-water extraction. Chemically, they are no different than the trichomes on the outside of the marijuana bud, just no green (or in Texas’s case, brown) plant material. But how would you expect a cop to know something like that? These are the same cops who claim that drug dogs, over the scent of gas fumes, smelled the marijuana buried in a backpack in the bus, when the most likely scenario was they saw a big fancy tour bus coming from the west and relied on an educated guess that a juicy celebrity drug bust lay inside it. These cops also work for the State of Texas, which biochemically redefined hash to categorize it with K2, aka fake marijuana, a newly banned drug in the State with harsher violation penalties than actual marijuana. Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West has no reservations about playing the old-West stereotype of the outlaw-law enforcement terrorizing his own people for fame and profit. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: There was a crack in the dark middle of Fiona Apple’s set Wednesday night where the light got in.