TORONTO - For a mates of laidback stoners, they sure know how to hold a grudge.
It has taken more than 25 years for Cheech & Chong to put aside their longstanding differences, with the mirthful pair apparently at loggerheads until just a few months ago.
But that's all behind them now, assert reunited comedians Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, world Health Organization say they're excited to be resuming their beloved pot-loving alter-egos for a North American tour that kicks off Sept. 5 in Ottawa.
"There was always a neat love thither, as well as a bit of annoyance," Marin says by phone from Los Angeles of the duo's rocky relationship and how they managed to get beyond the bickering.
"It's like being married, you know, for that longsighted, you just kind of get ill of the other person."
Edmonton-born Chong says the squabbling started back in the mid-1980s, when Marin decided to do the comedy film, "Born In East L.A.," without his longtime cohort.
"That was kind of tough," Chong says in a separate phone interview from Sydney, N.S., where he had a comedy show last week. "It's kind of tough being a better half when your partner does a film without you."
"After that, he sort of went his way and I went my way."
Marin, who was born in Los Angeles, went on to a mainstream performing career, grading recurring roles in TV shows including "Nash Bridges," "Judging Amy," and more recently, "Lost," as well as appearance in diverse films. He also became one of the foremost collectors of Mexican-American art, and says he made a point of distancing himself from his juvenile, pothead persona.
"It was very conscious," the 62-year-old says of forging a unexampled identity.
"It's like turning an oil tanker around, you know. You don't blockage on a dime and speed up 180 degrees in the other direction, you genial of start up doing it one gig at a time."
Chong, meanwhile, appeared regularly on the TV sitcom "That '70s Show" and says they were in the midst of negotiating a new Cheech & Chong moving-picture show when he was imprisoned in 2003 for merchandising bongs over the Internet.
He chronicles the experience in the objective "a/k/a Tommy Chong," latterly released on DVD, and the volume, "The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint," published in 2006.
"I'm actually just starting to get back into making money," Chong says of the ordeal, claiming it came with massive legal fees and cost him "a yoke million" in income and revenue.
Today he can joke about nine-spot months he spent in prison, where he says he was taken in by aboriginal inmates and invited into the "sudor lodge society."
But while his beloved stage character believably helped ingratiate him with other prisoners, he says it besides made him a target for federal drug officers hoping to make an example of him.
"I would be offered (marijuana) by snitches and then I would be drug-tested an hour or two afterwards," says Chong, 70. "It was that obvious. It happened more than once."
"When they arrested me, they thought for sure that I had a lot of prior arrests and they opinion I was this pothead idiot, you know. They thought I was my character, basically."
These days, he's promoting some other book, "Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Biography." Marin had no part in the envision and Chong doubts he's even register it.
"It's a taboo subject with us," Chong says.
Up until a few months ago, tensions were tranquil high, he says, noting one encounter that devolved into a massive argument.
Marin says their troubles have always revolved around world Health Organization would be in consign, but the time had come to let those grudges go.
"We're at the age that we just now don't want to indicate anymore," he says, noting recent warm up shows for the forthcoming tour were "amazing."
"So we decided non to experience a personality conflict anymore."
Chong and Marin say their new concert will feature the "superlative hits" of their life history - spanning seven albums and around 10 films - with standup from Chong.
Chong's married woman, Shelby, will open the 90-minute read with her own comedy routine.
There are no plans to make another album, but Marin says there's talk of filming the concerts for a possible DVD release.
The "Cheech and Chong Light Up America and Canada" tour kicks off in Ottawa on Sept. 5, heads to Toronto on Sept. 6, and Vancouver on Dec. 5
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