Newsflash: Cheech Marin still Mexican-American; likely also still high

In my post on 25 cool 2007 questions that didn't make it on the blog because they weren't in Secret Theme rounds, I made an outright error. Two blog readers commented on the gaffe, and here's the correction. Cheech Marin really is Mexican-American. A couple of years ago I read some stories suggesting that he was actually Iranian-American and made a career out of the Mexican accent and look. This was entirely plausible to me as I know Los Angeles has a huge Iranian population. The confusion stems from an interview Marin gave to a Canadian newspaper in which he jokingly claimed to be Iranian-American with a "Mexican thing going on." In point of fact Marin even owns one of the world's most highly regarded Chicano art collections. "The Times regrets the error." For the record, this mistake changed nothing in the game in which it was asked in that I gave the hint that I wasn't looking for "Mexican" as an answer.