{"id":115,"date":"2006-12-29T02:58:29","date_gmt":"2006-12-29T07:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2014-09-06T15:01:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T21:01:19","slug":"chef-ra-1950-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Chef Ra, 1950-2006"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">Local reggae promoter, pro-marijuana activist, radio deejay, taxi driver, and colorful man-about-town <strong>James Wilson, Jr.<\/strong>, better known as <strong>Chef Ra<\/strong>, passed away on Tuesday, December 26, at age 56. Among the numerous non-mainstream pursuits of his lifetime, Ra starred in a pair of home videos produced by <strong><u>High Times<\/u><\/strong> magazine called <strong>GANJA GOURMET<\/strong> and <strong>CHEF RA ESCAPES BABYLON<\/strong>. While the former is readily available on VHS and DVD, the latter &#8211; featuring Ra&#8217;s visit to Jamaica\u00a0&#8211; is apparently long out-of-print, although the <strong>Freaky Film Festival<\/strong> did provide Champaign-Urbana a rare public screening of <strong>BABYLON<\/strong>\u00a0in 1998. This\u00a0counter-culture icon will be missed!<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&#8211; Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"Chef Ra article :: The News-Gazette\" href=\"http:\/\/www.news-gazette.com\/news\/local\/2006\/12\/28\/chef_ra_enjoyed_the_high_life\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Click to Read:<\/strong> Article on Chef Ra&#8217;s passing\u00a0in <strong><u>The News-Gazette<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"Chef Ra salute @ HighTimes.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hightimes.com\/ht\/news\/content.php?bid=1141&#038;aid=24\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Click to Read:<\/strong> Salute to Chef Ra by <u>High Times<\/u>\u00a0writer <strong>Steve Hagen<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"Chef Ra moves to higher plane :: The Land of JaPan\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.myspace.com\/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&#038;friendID=90182323&#038;blogID=210891256&#038;MyToken=691971a3-6a16-4900-858c-d9b58a29a7d4\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Click to Read:<\/strong> My own reflections on Chef Ra at <strong>The Land of JaPan<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"WEFT-FM 90.1 :: Home Page\" href=\"http:\/\/weft.org\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Click to Read:<\/strong> All about <strong>WEFT-FM<\/strong>, home\u00a0to Chef Ra&#8217;s reggae show<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several articles report on the passing of this Champaign-Urbana champion of reggae, Rastafarianism, and ganja rights, who also hosted a pair of home-video releases for High Times magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-coverage","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}