OBONGA !

~Jerry Garcia’s ghost endorses Obama [Karl]@Protein Wisdom~

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From glendean at Tennesseefree.com, an unusual, unexpected side note...

Ann Coulter is a Deadhead! (NTTAWWT)

From the interview by Taylor Hill at jambands.com...

Taylor Hill: When and how was your first Dead show?

Ann Coulter: I have no recollection of it whatsoever, other than that it was awesome.

TH: When and how was your last Dead show?

AC: I have no recollection of it whatsoever, other than that it was awesome. Actually, my last Dead show wasn't quite a Dead show since Jerry wasn't there, but I flew out to the Jerry Garcia memorial in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco with a fellow Deadhead from D.C. the weekend after Jerry went to the great psychedelic rock concert in the sky. The rest of the band played and it was great to be with my fellow Deadheads. It was very sad after Jerry died, not because I felt like I had a psychic connection to him or anything, but only because something really fun I liked to do, I couldn't do anymore. It would be as if all ski resorts just shut down one day. So the Golden Gate Park memorial was a good way to end it.

TH: How many Dead shows did you see?

AC: I used to keep all my ticket stubs from Dead shows – it was just something Deadheads did, like keeping lists of songs – but I didn't know why. So, in a lunatic cleaning frenzy around 1990, I threw them all out – as if a small section of a drawer devoted to Dead ticket stubs was messing up the whole place. After Jerry died, I said, “Eureka! That's why we keep ticket stubs!” These are usually the sort of factual minutiae Deadheads excel at, but I failed because of my OCD cleaning obsession. So I'm not exactly, precisely 100 percent sure. I frantically tried to figure it out by checking with some of my fellow Deadheads after Jerry died and adding up the number of shows we had been to together, and I estimated it was about 67 shows. And they were awesome.

So, did Ann inhale?

TH: What exactly do you love about the Grateful Dead?

AC: The tie-dye of course. Truth be told I hated tie-dye, though I finally broke down and would wear tie-dyed Dead shirts to concerts solely as a tribute to my fellow Deadheads.

Oddly enough, I like the music. No one believes that I never took drugs at Dead shows (except for the massive clouds of passive marijuana smoke) but I went because I really liked the music. There are various groups I get enthusiastic about for awhile, but of all the music I've listened to over the years, the Grateful Dead is the one band I never grow tired of. Apparently, the same is true of me for ski-lift operators.

Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie – it was like NASCAR for potheads. You always felt like you were with family at a Dead show – a rather odd, psychedelic family that sometimes lived in a VW bus and sold frightening looking “veggie burritos.” But whatever their myriad interests, clothing choices, and interest in illicit drugs, true Deadheads are what liberals claim to be but aren't: unique, free-thinking, open, kind, and interested in different ideas.

I'm not a Deadhead. I am a Pink Floyd 'head', if there's such a thing. Pink Floyd is more cerebral; psychedelica for grown ups...

;D

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