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Scott McKenzie singer of flower power anthem has left this mortal coil
08.19.2012
04:10 pm
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This is not an obituary for Scott McKenzie who died yesterday at the age of 73. It’s a reflection on a song he sang (written by John Phillips) and the place it held in my life and the Sixties culture that changed me forever.

Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” got a lot of shit for being perceived as cashing in on the counter culture. It was slammed as a corny hymn to hippiedom that had about as much to do with hippies as Maynard G. Krebs had to do with Jack Kerouac. The song was an enormous hit in 1967 and I remember hearing it on the radio at least a half dozen times a day. And loving it.

As much as McKenzie’s credibility as an ambassador to the Summer of Love was under fire by the hipster elite, there was no question that his song managed, in its lightly psychedelic way, to capture the moment when flowers became children and vibrations were good, good, good, good. There were other songs that caught or helped create the zeitgeist that summer (at least for me): “Purple Haze,” Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues,” and “San Franciscan Nights.” In the silly but hooky “Nights,” Eric Burdon actually made McKenzie’s song seem relatively sophisticated. But many of us chose to make the “establishment” the target of our criticism, not pop songs. And there simply was no arguing with Hendrix or Blue Cheer’s psychedelic bona fides or the good intentions of the slightly dazed and confused McKenzie and Burdon. It was a time in which all of us were having trouble getting a handle on what was happening, which is exactly as it should have been. Sometimes confusion is a good thing - it opens you up.
 

 
Ultimately, it didn’t matter to me whether “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” had the Better Heads and Gardens seal of approval. Anything that promised a groovy vibe somewhere other than where I was at became a destination point on my karmic map. I took my directions from wherever I could get them.  Hell, my introduction to the hippie scene came via an article in a copy of Life magazine that I found sitting on my father’s desk. Living in the South in the Sixties, I was so hungry for a mind-altering experience that a series of photos in Life simulating the effects of LSD took the place of Playboy centerfolds as titillation in my psychedelically deprived reality. If there was one major recruiting vehicle for the Love Army, it was Life magazine. I recall two or three issues that helped make my mind up for me. I was definitely going to San Francisco…and yes, I would wear a fucking flower in my hair.

As it turns out, I ended up in Los Angeles. Blame it on the bossa nova or the go-with-the-flow nature of hitchhiking, I did not arrive in San Francisco as planned. I got a lift in Virginia from a trucker who took me to St. Louis where I stood by the side of the freeway for hours until a guy in a Rambler who chain-smoked Lucky Strikes offered me a ride to Vegas. I was so desperate, I took it.  From Vegas, a bunch of rich kids from Pacific Palisades took me to L.A. I lasted a few weeks in the City Of Angels before I got busted for being a vagrant and was sent back home, where I lasted a mere few weeks.

While my mother was thankful to have me safely ensconced in suburbia. My father didn’t speak to me. The only time he recognized my presence was when he came into my bedroom and destroyed my record player while I was playing Country Joe And The Fish’s “Fish Cheer.” See, songs do make a difference. Dad was a Navy man and my choice in music drove him into pathological fits. He couldn’t take my hippie shit anymore and I couldn’t handle his anger. It took 20 years for us to finally come to understand each other and when we did it was a very beautiful thing. But in 1967, our relationship had hit the breaking point. The Summer of Love was not all flowers and love-ins. I left again.

When I finally arrived in the Haight Ashbury in 1968, love’s season had passed and the neighborhood was gradually becoming a cattle yard for runaways. Tourist busses clogged the streets and sightseers were everywhere. Kids with no money were spare changing and ripping off weekend hippies by selling them bogus drugs (gooey black incense passed for opium, aspirin dotted with food coloring for LSD-25). I stood on a corner and proudly sold “The San Francisco Oracle,” an underground newspaper/literary mag that distilled and focused the hippie scene, culturally and spiritually, while adorned with beautiful psychedelic cover art. Waving the “Oracle” in the air was like proclaiming my allegiance to something…I’m still not quite sure what. A new season was upon us: The Autumn Of Cosmic Blue Balls. When love comes to a screeching halt, the blowback hurts.

But I managed to keep positive. I avoided the clutter and craziness by spending most of my time in Golden Gate park reading books of poetry that I’d stolen from City Lights Bookstore in North Beach (merci, Monsieur Ferlinghetti). Technicians of the sacred like Phillip Lamantia, Jack Spicer and Michael McClure threaded their way into my consciousness like serpents whispering dark, luminous incantations into my inner mind’s ear. I learned to listen and in listening I learned.

At night I lost myself in music. It was a great time to be in love with rock ‘n’ roll and San Francisco was the center of a sonic electronic mandala. I basked in the psychedelia wafting through the Matrix and The Fillmore where Traffic, Incredible String Band, Eric Burdon and War, It’s A Beautiful Day, Albert King, The Dead, Big Brother and The Holding Company, Country Joe and The Fish, The Airplane and Quicksilver elevated the collective kundalini of a generation of young, cosmically stunned hipsters.

I was crashing at a pad on Waller street right off Haight. The place was being rented by a high school friend of mine and draft dodger named Willy. Willy was a year older than me and had made it to the Haight a year before I did. There were at least a couple of dozen young runaways crashing at Willy’s place. One was this beautiful blonde girl with sad eyes from Reno, Nevada whose name I cannot recall (Reno will do). She had escaped a white trash background and had made it to San Francisco with a flower in her hair. The Haight had become a refuge for a lot of kids who were coming from some serious dysfunctional and abusive families. Not all of us were on a quest to find ourselves. Some of us were on the run from bad shit back home, comin’ to the Haight to get away from hate. Reno was one of those. She was sexually precocious and I can imagine the kind of attention she was getting from the predators back at the old trailer park in Reno. But, she had a sparkling quality about her that belied the sadness in her eyes. And I fell in love.

Reno was hooked up with Willy. But, back then, sexual relationships weren’t exactly binding. There was a lot of sharing going on. Because I was tight with Willy, I had my own “room”: a large walk in closet with enough space for a mattress. I covered the mattress with some groovy looking fabric from India and I decorated the walls with black light posters and called it home.

One night Willy needed his “space” and locked himself in the bathroom. I heard Reno crying outside the bathroom door and whimpering Willy’s name over and over again. Saint that I am, I went to console her. She was standing at the door completely naked, pale skin, long blonde hair, and small perfect breasts with nipples that looked like cherry flavored Jujubes. I threw my arms around her, lifted her off her feet and took her to my hippie hideaway. The black light posters were blazing day-glo, incense was burning, a candle lit. I gently lay on her on the mattress and proceeded to clumsily (and to an outside observer probably comically) lose my virginity. It was over before the hugeness of the moment even had a chance to sink in. Reno got out of bed, didn’t even look at me, and returned to the wailing wall of the bathroom door. I lay still, staring at the flicker of candle shadows dancing on the closet’s ceiling. I felt abandoned, vulnerable, but also deeply refreshed on some spiritual level. There’s really nothing like putting your dick in another human being for the first time…at least not for a 16-year-old guy who considered women the most mysterious and divine creatures in an ever-expanding Universe that was suddenly expanding really fast.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll had pried me loose from the waterboard of Catholicism and I felt free, free at last! And I had the evidence to prove it. A few weeks after fucking Reno my pubes started to itch like crazy and I was pissing fire. Reno had given me both the crabs and the clap. A bottle of A-200 and some penicillin quickly got me back to normal. Thanks to Reno I experienced the crash course in the both the upside and downside of the sexual revolution. Even in the era of free love, there was no free lunch. But compared to today when sex can kill you, those were innocent times.

On Monday nights Stephen Gaskin, an ex- Marine and former teacher at San Francisco State College turned spiritual teacher gave lectures on spirituality at the Straight Theater. His style was irreverent, plain spoken and often remarkably insightful. 100s of people gathered for ‘The Monday Night Class”. Here’s a quote from Stephen’s website describing what was going on at those gatherings: “The glue that held us [the Monday Night Class, also known as the ‘Astral Continental Congress’] together was a belief in the moral imperative toward altruism that was implied by the telepathic spiritual communion we experienced together. Every decent thing accomplished over the years by the people of Monday Night Class came from those simple Hippy values. It was the basis for our belief in Spirit, nonviolence, collectivity, and social activism.” While Gaskin was an entertaining and possessed of a guru-like lucidity, he also had a massive ego. I was later exposed to that ego one night when he had a showdown with Alan Watts at Alan’s houseboat in Sausalito. It was “The Shootout At The OM Corral.” I’ll tell you about that later.

I remember going to the Straight Theater at midnight to see a screening of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. The movie was projected on the ceiling of the theater and a couple of hundred stoned freaks lay on our backs on the floor and watched the film flickering on the ceiling. Despite all of our serious spiritual and political passions, hippies did have a sense of humor.

Yes, I went to San Francisco with a flower in my hair and Scott Mackenzie may not have been the vehicle that got me there but he certainly helped grease the wheels. There was a beautiful kind of hopefulness in his song that captured the moment when we (kids in the Sixties) really believed change was imminent and we were going to herald it in. We weren’t sure what it was (Mr. Jones wasn’t the only one) but we were eager to find out.

All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There’s a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion

We were definitely in motion and the vibes were definitely strange, good strange. But as far as having any explanations…well we didn’t. We were learning and part of that learning process meant not needing explanations for awhile. We had had the world explained to us by people who hadn’t really lived in the world wholly and fully. In claustrophobic classrooms and soul-deadening churches, men of learning and of the cloth had regurgitated the same old shit for hundreds of years and we had stopped listening, the words had become dull and uninspiring. We needed fresh air. We needed to feel our bodies, to dance and fuck. We needed to get out of the dead zone and we did. And without us, the old guard staggered and withered. The new flesh had escaped their dominion, to celebrate itself in the golden streets of San Francisco. And in significant ways that strange vibration still endures and some of us still wear a metaphoric flower in our hair, you may not see it, but it’s there.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.19.2012
04:10 pm
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Cinematic Titanic: ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ alums riff on ‘The Doll Quad’ (1973)
08.19.2012
10:07 am
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Just a reminder to our Los Angeles readers that tonight marks the start of the third annual Everything Is Festival, co-sponsored by Everything is Terrible!, Cinefamily and Cinespia

Tonight the festivities kick off with the former cast members of the much-loved Comedy Central cult hit Mystery Science Theater 3000 who now go by the collective name of Cinematic Titanic:

Join us at the gorgeous Saban Theatre, where we’ll watch our favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 stars and writers — Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, J. Elvis Weinstein and Mary Jo Pehl — in their new incarnation Cinematic Titanic, riffing their way through Ted V. Mikels’ The Doll Squad (the 1973 film that has been rumored to have been the inspiration for “Charlie’s Angels”) on a gigantic screen, in a newly-restored 1930s movie palace. It’s fair to say an entire generation of comedy fans are deeply indebted to these gurus of riffery for their reference-heavy jokes, their goofy spirit, and the thousands of hours’ worth of good times they gave us all. As well, the fact that many of us Earth citizens were exposed for the first time to otherworldly mutant film classics like Pod People, Manos: The Hands Of Fate and the Joe D’Amato sword-and-sorcery anti-epic Cave Dwellers (aka Ator, The Flying Eagle) makes MST3Knot just a landmark of experimental television comedy, but a tireless missionary of B-movie culture. They truly brought all these cinematic oddities to the masses! Plus, our partners at Cinespia are bringing DJs, Cinefamily’s gonna bring the crazy pre-show action and plenty of special surprises, and there’s gonna be a huge afterparty!

Back at Cinefamily home-base, the festival picks up again on Monday night with more MST3000 shenanigans when Joel Hodgson takes part in Cinefamily’s Show & Tell series.

The Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA, 7pm
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.19.2012
10:07 am
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The Bonzo Dog Band: Rare and Complete version of ‘The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage’
08.18.2012
05:32 pm
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For Bonzo Dog fans, this is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. The original edit and soundtrack of The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage - the rarely seen Bonzo Dog Band film from 1969. It’s the Bonzo’s own Magical Mystery Tour (yes, I know they were in that), a film with no real story, just a day-in-the-countryside, with some children and a farm. You’d probably get arrested for trying something like that now… Here’s how the BFI database describes it:

The Bonzo Dog Band drive into the country in a truck, unload their equipment in some woods only to find some of it taken away by some children. They eat and play at a party, and the Bonzos play a number of instrumentals in a stable yard, including `Rockaliser Baby’, `We are Normal’ and `Quiet Walks and Summer Talks’. At the end they are driven away in a white car. Note: No words are sung. Featured alongside the Bonzo Dog Band are the children Amanda, Jennifer and Ashley Lees, Edward Roebuck, and Olivia Smith.

Clips from this film have been on YouTube over the years, usually with “words sung”, but this original instrumental soundtrack is fantastic, which as one comment on YouTube says:

‘Not just a funky old time jazz band. They give early Pink Floyd a run for their money here.’

Ah, tis true. So, if you like Vivian, Neil and co. (and why not?), do make yourself some tea and scones, and settle down and enjoy this lovely trip to the delightful world of The Bonzo Dog Band.
 

 
Bonus clips of The Bonzos, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.18.2012
05:32 pm
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Anne Pigalle: Premieres her new show ‘L’Ame Erotique’
08.17.2012
07:07 pm
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Fighting against our intellectual and spiritual enslavement, the incomparable Anne Pigalle premieres her new show L’âme érotique, at the Hotel Bijou, Broadstairs in Kent, on August, 23.

The exquisite Anne is one of the world’s great chanteuses, and this new show brings together an intimate salon of her photography, her poetry, her discourse and of course, her brilliant singing.

The show’s title comes from Anne’s last spoken word disc L’âme érotique, which showcased a selection of twenty-one erotically charged poems, each with their own musical accompaniment. The poems dealt with love, sex, and soul, and was a fantastic oeuvre that ranged from the personal (“You Give Me Asthma”, “Lunch”) through the comic and the Surreal to the sexually explicit (“Saint Orgasm”, “X Amount” and “Erotica de toi”). Throughout is Anne’s richly seductive voice sounds as intimate as a kiss. It’s a fabulous mix, and for fans of the legendary Miss Pigalle, and for first timers, it’s a breathless, arousing and unforgettable introduction.

If you are in the UK, then this is your chance to see the legendary Anne Pigalle at her very best. Check here for details, a dn below a selection of Ms. Pigalle’s erotic photographs.
 

 
A selection of Anne Pigalle’s erotic photographs, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘L’Amerotica’: The return of the brilliant Anne Pigalle


 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.17.2012
07:07 pm
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Dental Floss Tycoon: Frank Zappa’s PSAs for the American Dental Association
08.17.2012
01:50 pm
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Strange, but true, in the early 80s, Frank Zappa joined showbiz celebs like Nipsey Russell, Scatman Crothers, Erik Estrada, Henny Youngman, and One Day at a Time mom, Bonnie Franklin, to record radio PSAs for the American Dental Association. The spots admonished kids to brush, floss and go for regular dental check-ups. Here are three of them: “Dental Floss Tycoon,” “Trick Or Treat” and “Keep Your Teeth.”

If you haven’t heard yet, Universal Music Group is re-releasing the entire Frank Zappa oeuvre and the first dozen of his 60s and early 70s albums—everything from 1966’s Freak Out! to the 1972 live set, Just Another Band From L.A.—are already out.
 

 
You can get more information and updates on the Frank Zappa remasters by following Jeff Newelt’s Twitter feed.

Thank you Wilson Smith!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.17.2012
01:50 pm
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Squeaky door in Chicago does Miles Davis impression
08.17.2012
01:00 pm
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The YouTube description says, “An ingenious door in a Chicago parking garage will not “die with his music inside of him.”
 

 
Via BuzzFeed

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.17.2012
01:00 pm
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The Cramps’ Bryan Gregory on Memphis TV
08.16.2012
02:29 pm
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The first time I saw The Cramps they were opening for The Ramones at CBGB IN 1977. It was the original lineup which in addition to Lux and Ivy included hot rebel girl Miriam Linna laying down a deep voodoo groove on drums and the diabolically dashing Bryan Gregory strafing the audience with his deadly guitar. They were a fucking dynamite combination. But as much as I loved the band as a whole, I found myself particularly drawn to Bryan Gregory. While Lux was funny scary, Bryan was really fucking scary. And sartorially speaking, I always thought Bryan was the best-dressed Cramp (a tough call).

Bryan left The Cramps in 1980. He worked as a tattoo artist, did bit parts in horror films, managed an adult book store and re-entered the music scene with several bands, none of which really caught fire. There was a bit of buzz and excitement surrounding his collaboration with Andrella Canne in Beast (sounding a lot like Siousxie and The Banshees) and a decade later The Dials, but that phase of Bryan’s musical career got snake bit when Canne became too ill to continue performing and The Dials broke up. And bad luck followed Bryan when he suffered a heart attack at the age of 49 just as he was putting together a new band called Shiver. While most heart attacks are unexpected, Bryan’s shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone close to him. His health had been lousy for awhile and he wasn’t doing anything to make it better. His body was breaking down and whatever death spiral he was in had begun to spin out of control. The heart attack didn’t kill him, it just weakened him beyond what he could handle. Bryan died of “multiple system failures” in a hospital in Anaheim, California.

Gregory never achieved the kind of fame that his undeniable star quality warranted. He had a vibe, a style and presence, that was as magnetic and intensely mesmerizing as any guitar player I’ve ever seen. Only artists as charismatic as Lux and Ivy could share a stage with Bryan and not be overshadowed. When he left The Cramps, the band felt less dangerous without him.

There’s not a lot of video footage of Bryan out there. Here’s something that was shot for Memphis TV when The Cramps were recording their debut album, Songs the Lord Taught Us, at Sam Phillips studio with Alex Chilton producing. The quality is lousy and the bits with Bryan are brief but you take what you can get.
 

 
Bryan Gregory and The Dials after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.16.2012
02:29 pm
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60-piece male voice choir covers ‘Blue Monday’
08.16.2012
02:09 pm
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I know it’s Thursday, but every day could do with a rendition of New Order’s “Blue Monday” at some point.

As if the electro-pop classic wasn’t epic and brooding enough, here it is performed by the 60-piece Brythoniad Male Voice Choir, commissioned for the UK’s Festival Number 6.

To celebrate New Order headlining the first year of the UK’s newest festival, the Brythoniad Male Voice Choir were commissioned by Festival No.6 to record their own unique version of Blue Monday.

The 60 members of the Brythoniad Male Voice Choir, formed in 1964 in Blaenau Ffestiniog, recorded their interpretation of the seminal track in the studio, then filmed the video on location at the stunning Portmeirion, location for Festival No.6 .

Surely the most unique setting for a festival the UK has ever seen?

There is more information on Festival Number 6, headlined by New Order, Primal Scream and Spiritualized and taking place in Portmerion, Wales on the 14th, 15th and 16th of September, on the festival’s website.

Brythoniad Male Voice Choir “Blue Monday”
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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08.16.2012
02:09 pm
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Happy Birthday to Lady Miss Kier
08.15.2012
09:01 pm
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From one queen to another, and yet more birthday greetings! And what better way to follow up that last post? Happy birthday to Lady Miss Kier.

Also a fierce ruler of wigs and wedges, Kier and Lady Bunny are linked by both working with DJ Dimtry, Bunny with Shazork (as seen in the last clip I posted), and Kier, of course, with the incomparable Deee-Lite.

While they may be the band she is most closely associated with (and that’s no shame, as they are one of the greatest dance bands of all time) keep in mind that Kier is still going very strong, rocking a combination DJing-with-live-vocals set that I was lucky enough to catch a couple of months ago at Pussy Faggot. She tore the roof off the sucker, and boy can she still wail.

Here’s a clip of the Lady in action. Remember, there ain’t no party like Miss Kier Party!
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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08.15.2012
09:01 pm
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New Devo song ‘Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!’ mocks Mitt Romney dog incident
08.15.2012
08:44 pm
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DEVO’s new song ‘Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!  (Seamus Unleashed)’ hilariously mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his dog Seamus onto the roof of his car in 1983.

DEVO’s Gerald Casale, who has also spearheaded the “Remember Seamus” Facebook group and supports the popular Dogs Against Romney website, told Rolling Stone:

“This isn’t a red-state thing or Devo stumping for Obama,” he says. “But I think any animal lover that hears the story will learn so much about the character flaw of Romney. It’s just a deal-breaker about the man. My God, the world is a scary place with seven billion people. What you want in a leader is a guy with some humanity at his core. I just don’t feel that Mitt does.”

In 2008, Devo did a fundraising show for President Obama in their hometown of Akron. Does Casale approve of his job performance over the past three-and-a-half years? “No!” he says. “Absolutely not. Devo are not naive people. If anyone still thinks that the President of the United States of America runs things, they really live in the Wizard of Oz-land. My God, we’re a plutocracy. We’re owned and leveraged by global corporations.”

Dogs Against Romney have this one yard sign that I really like.

Listen to DEVO’s “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!” below:

 

 
PS The GOP have a “Contact Us” form on their website. “Seamlus Taxdodger” (that would be uh… me, a “disgusted former GOP voter”) just left them a comment. Maybe you’d want to leave them a message, too?

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.15.2012
08:44 pm
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