Back in their 1970s heyday, anyone suggesting the stoned-out comedy duo of Cheech & Chong [ tickets ] (Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong) would be selling out huge sports arenas in 2009 would have been accused of smoking some pretty good stuff. But lo and behold, these counterculture characters are still going strong, with no signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future.

With live comedy shows scheduled into March--including a Jan. 31 stop at New York City's concert Mecca, Radio City Music Hall--Cheech & Chong have re-established themselves without having to go so far as to reinvent themselves here in the 21st Century.

And if you can bank on what they are saying in the press, the two comedians reportedly have a new concert DVD, a new motion picture, and even a cartoon series in the works. Pretty smart work for a couple of fellows who have elevated the ultimate slacker lifestyle to an art form.

But to really appreciate their sustaining comic genius, one has to travel back in time to their younger years. If it weren't for a chance meeting that blossomed into a successful career in comedy and movies, Cheech and Chong may have both gone on to individual success in their own right--as musicians, instead of parlaying musical interludes into the greater body of spoken comedy sketches.

According to their official bio, Cheech, born Richard Marin in the barrios of East Los Angeles, earned his nickname from "cheecharone," a Chicano delicacy made of deep-fried pork skins, also known as cracklings.

A little known fact: As one of eight children of a Los Angeles police officer, Marin frequently skipped school to cruise with his lowrider buddies and sing in their garage bands while still managing to graduate with straight A's.

A few years earlier, Chong, who is eight years older than his comedic foil, had quit high school to pursue music after spending much of his youth dodging street fights by hiding out in movie houses in his home town of Dog Patch, just outside of Alberta, Canada.

After touring with Canadian R&B band The Shades--as well as co-writing "Does Your Mama Know About Me," a charting single that was eventually recorded by The Jackson 5""--Chong turned his attention to improvisational comedy, establishing a troupe at his brother's strip club in Vancouver.

That's where Cheech & Chong's first few comedic seeds took root, growing into an intoxicating career that to date has spawned 10 recording projects and a half-dozen films all told grossing hundreds of millions of dollars.

On Jan. 2, a near sold-out Mohegan Sun Arena crowd witnessed the duo staying loyal to material that brought them their collective success. With just a few passing contemporary, and not so flattering references to outgoing President George W. Bush, and a generous amount of narrative recounting Tommy Chong's nine months in federal prison for distributing bongs and related drug-paraphernalia, the balance of Cheech & Chong's hour-long routine stuck to sex, drugs and rock & roll ... not necessarily in that order.

The show opened with a riff on the Pedro & Man skit from "Big Bambu" where Cheech, as Pedro De Pacas, picks up what he believes to be a buxom lady hitchhiker, which turns out to be Chong in drag. As the pair get acquainted, the skit ramps up from trading tokes on successively larger mimed joints, to Man mistakenly giving Pedro a handful of LSD instead of downers to chill out his hemp-fueled paranoia.

Other sketch routines followed, with high points being the game-show parody "Let's Make a Dope Deal," and the uproarious Ralph and Herbie, which saw Cheech & Chong going down on all fours to imitate a couple of horny neighborhood mongrels.

The duo's live show was balanced with musical numbers. Cheech donned massive sunglasses and a pink tutu as Alice Bowie performing "Earache My Eye" from the "Wedding Album," and Chong did equal justice to a selection of well-played blues songs by Blind Melon Chitlin, including a very nasty ditty about Michael Jackson and his pet monkey.

While Cheech shuffled on and off the stage pretty much in character depending on the skit, Chong was able to poke fun at himself as well as taking on any of the scruffy, half-baked characters he created. It was no surprise that Chong promoted marijuana as the ultimate social drug: "As soon as you take a hit, you wanna give it to someone else."

He also may have angered a few in the crowd touting God as the ultimate stoner: "It says right in the Bible that God is the most high ...."

The show wrapped with the pair on stage along with the equally hilarious show opener, Tommy Chong's wife of 33 years, Shelby, leading the audience in a sing-along of their most popular film's title song, "Up In Smoke."

Cheech & Chong continue their "Light Up America (and Canada) Tour" through March 7.

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