Words by Nur Kausar | Photos by Mike Ibe

The English brewed the India pale ale so that it could withstand a sea voyage to South Asia, taking into consideration choppy waters and uncontrolled temperature to create a beer still drinkable.

Brewers today make the English pale ale with these standards in mind, the result being a mellower, more balanced drink than the hoppier American version of the IPA. Head brewers David Mathis and Andy Armstrong, owners of the American River Brewing Company (ARBC) went the traditional English route with their Sunrise IPA, one of their flagship beers at the fledgling brewery out of Rancho Cordova.

“[Back then] it was supposed to be just hoppy enough and alcoholic enough to get to Bombay without bacteria forming in it,” says Mathis, leaning near four taps fastened behind a bar in the ARBC tasting room on Trade Center Drive. “We also use French oak to give the impression that it’s been sitting in a barrel for nine months.”

Though it’s 6.8 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), Sunrise is a sweeter, easier drink than its American younger brother. The floral hop bitterness equally matches the creamy malt middle, and the finish is smooth and clean.

“A beer should have a front, a middle and a back in the palate,” says Mathis, a 15-year veteran brewer, same as Armstrong. “A lot of beers I’ve had recently get rid of that middle. I want our end users to get the full pleasure out of drinking our beer.”

So far, ARBC has two other staple beers—Coloma Brown and Golden Ale—and a limited strong IPA, SSB 120, with plans to add a red ale as its fourth staple this week.

Mathis and Armstrong decided to work together on the brewery venture because they have similar tastes in beer, similar ideas on what beer should be and its future. Their compatibility and balance shows through in their creations. The Coloma Brown, named after the first gold discovery site in California, is a big beer, but at 5.5 percent ABV, not overly alcoholic. It’s like a rich chocolate malt, yet has a smooth, slightly hopped finish.

The Golden Ale is 5 percent ABV, the every-beer-drinker’s ale. It’s light, crisp and can be picked at carefully to discover the yeast and malt flavors. Just don’t drink it after having American River’s other beers, especially the SSB, or it might be hard to hit at subtleties. The SSB is a competitor for the hardiest of California IPAs, but its uniqueness is in its hops. Mathis and Armstrong stayed away from the more common American hops like Cascade and went with varieties that are comparable to European styles.

“Why would we copy what someone else was doing?” Mathis starts, “We want to find our own distinct flavor.”

More than 15 years ago, Mathis brewed at home and loved it so much he worked for free at his local brewery until Pyramid Brewery, and later BJ’s Brewhouse, hired him. He admits to almost opening his own brewery back then, but then looks at his 15-year-old business plan and realizes it’s useless compared to what he can do now.

Armstrong and Mathis met at BJ’s, honing their craft and learning the business before deciding to see their ambitious dreams of owning a brewery come to fruition this January.

“BJ’s is good at what they do, especially with their restaurants, but they moved away from their onsite breweries,” Mathis says on why he left the corporate world. “Brewing beer is in our blood, it’s what we’re meant to do.”

Armstrong adds that he learned much of his craft at BJ’s, as well as the smaller brewery Beerman’s and U.S. sake brewer Gekkeikan.

“It was like going to beer school for nine years,” he says of BJ’s.

But he and Mathis wanted to branch out with their own creativity.

The two have a symbiotic relationship. Mathis’ marketing education is apparent, and he’s optimizing on a “grain to glass” approach to business where he and Armstrong create the recipes, choose the ingredients, do the cleaning and meet the “end user” to ensure the best possible experience.

“Sitting down and talking to guests—that’s what I’ve been doing by going to events, festivals, restaurants, bars, educating the sales staff, engaging guests about beer one person at a time,” he says.

Mathis knew Armstrong possessed the right skills and attention to detail when he chose him as his right-hand man to run the actual facility.

“One thing I learned is you have to change the light bulb if it’s out—if a guy working at a brewery is too lazy to change the light bulb, he’s too lazy to clean the fermenters properly,” Mathis says on one reason he knew Armstrong was the right guy.

Timing helps too. Mathis says what Sacramento area is seeing now is a resurgence after many breweries shut down four years ago, creating a void.

“Sacramento is one of the ripest craft brewery destinations in the nation,” he says, confident the city will join Portland, Seattle, Denver and others as a microbrewery hotspot.

ARBC Tasting Room Manager Lisa Agoitia came on board not long after the brewery opened. She is known in the local beer community, has judged past beer competitions and is studying for the Beer Judge Certification Program exam.

“I’ve known these guys for years and Andy is one of the most creative brewers I know,” she says. She and Armstrong are working together on an upcoming Incinerator Pale Ale, a blend of the brewery’s current IPA with hot peppers and jerk spices, Armstrong says.

Getting the small team started on a beer topic like this is simple when visiting the tasting room, where the three like to spend a few hours getting to know customers and talking about what’s to come.

“You don’t throw in the full pepper because you get the flavor from the skin,” says Mathis, sitting relaxed behind a barrel that’s been transformed to a tall table. “What we’re doing is figuring out how to extract only the heat… but that’s proprietary,” he laughs, refusing to give out his trade secrets.

Along with the upcoming spiced blend, Armstrong is experimenting with honey, chamomile and rosemary in future specialty beers, as well as trying barrel aging. He and Mathis filled three wine barrels with their beer to see what they can produce in limited quantity over the next year.

There is still much more room to grow. American River sits in a 6,500-square-foot industrial facility that could potentially put out 10,000 barrels per year if Mathis adds more equipment. With the current barrels, the company is capable of approximately 1,000 barrels this year, but Mathis says they’re going to take it slow.

“The market demands,” he says. “We’re getting good feedback but my focus is don’t grow so rapidly that we lose quality control or lose the connection with our end user.”

However, the long-term goal, he adds, is to make ARBC a major player like Lagunitas or Drake’s Brewing. Armstrong says he already has a few things in mind, including bottling by the end of summer and introducing new yeast strains.

They’re in it for the long haul with Rancho Cordova as headquarters. Mathis says the city council warmly welcomed the small business and is excited about ARBC’s future prospects as much as the company.

“We’re next to the highway, we have a big parking lot for trucks to turn around and the corridor connects us to the entire country,” he says.

For now, the tasting room is open Wednesday through Friday from 4 to 8 p.m., but more than a dozen bars serve American River on rotation, including de Vere’s Irish Pub, Alley Katz, River Rock Tap House, Pangaea Two Brews Cafe, Firestone Public House and the Bottle Shop in Davis.

ARBC also plans to attend the Raley Field Beer Festival May 18 and the West Coast Beer Festival at Miller Park May 19, 2012.

For more information, check out American River Brewing Company on Facebook or stop by the tasting room midweek at 11151 Trade Center Drive, Suite 104, in Rancho Cordova.

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Photo by Keith Sutter

Sacramento Ballet’s Beer & Ballet just got tastier this year with its new sponsor Ruhstaller, “Sacramento’s beer since 1881,” being added to the mix. Sip some fresh and delicious brews (or there is wine and soda too) while you watch edgy new works that were created by the dancers themselves up close and personal! It all goes down at Sacramento Ballet’s studios at 1631 K Street, it’s an intimate setting where you feel like you’re sitting in on a rehearsal. It’s very informal, so if ballet is something that has typically scared you off in the past, Beer & Ballet is for you. Submerge recently attended a program similar to this where we got to see a few routines up close and it was amazing. You can see the sweat rolling off the dancers limber bodies, and it’s really easy to tell how much fun they’re having when you’re sitting 15 feet away from them. Tickets are $35 and that includes two drink tickets. Learn more at http://www.sacballet.org/.
-J.Carabba

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Throw away everything you think you know about politics, religion, superstition, astrology, ghosts and commonly held comforting beliefs, there’s an “intelligently designed” comedy tour full of “rationalist comedians” rolling through town to make your world flip upside down. The Evolution of Comedy Tour, which hits Sacramento Comedy Spot on Friday, May 18, 2012 was founded by Ian Harris, a lifelong skeptic who has more than 19 years of stand-up comedy under his belt. According to a press release for the tour, Harris created The Evolution of Comedy “to help advance free thought and fill a much needed hole in the entertainment field for free thinkers, skeptics and non-believers.” The tour also features Sacramento native Jason Resler (pictured), who has landed on Entertainment Journal’s “Top 100 Comedians” list twice, and Maurice Northup. Join these comedians in their quest to make you think twice about, well, the way you think about things. More information can be found at http://theevolutionofcomedy.com/ and at http://saccomedyspot.com/.
-J.Carabba

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Last year’s Launch music/art/design festival, which went down on July 23, 2011 at Greens Hotel, was hands-down one of the high points of summer. The fashion show, the pop-up shops, the killer tunes from great bands and the overall sense of community were just amazing. This year, Launch is reaching new heights. Over the last couple weeks, they have been dropping hints via their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/LaunchEvents) as to just how crazy this year’s events will be. At least nine events are scheduled over six days (July 23–28, 2012) at multiple venues. Expect to see everything from from digital design battles, to furniture exhibitions to a full-on music festival on the final night at Ceaser Chavez Park. The lineup for said music festival? Absolutely bananas. Peep it: Chromeo, DJ Shadow, Grouplove, !!!, Future Islands, Gardens & Villas, St. Lucia, White Arrows, Sea of Bees, Low Flying Owls (reunion show), Appetite, Resa and more. Hot damn! Between last weekend’s massive Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, the Friday Night Concerts in the Park lineup, Launch and other rad touring bands coming through this summer, Sacramento is looking real nice.

-J.Carabba

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Words by Blake Gillespie • Photos by Nicholas Wray

Little Foxes

Day two was both a settling in and a tug-of-war between sub-genres. At any given moment, in the presence of any DJ booth, the vibrations tugged toward the posh club life, the trendsetting hipster cool of synthology, the dingy underground scene of warble bass drops or the distant past of trip-hop that conjured oriental delicacy. Night two was about playing the bar, hugging the stage, bro-ing down in the neon, hands up for MCA tributes and patio lounging with your shoes off to enjoy the Astroturf.

Billy Lane

On the Harlow’s stage Billy Lane treated 11 p.m. as official “kick this shit in gear” hour, demanding energy with heavy drops and buzz saw riff manipulations. Upstairs, DJ Whores and Crook One traded off selector duties, spinning a refined set fit for a Grimey night, and proved why they are two of our city’s most elite on the decks. Meanwhile, sets from Tha Fruitbat, Night Night and Seventh Swami took the vibe back to the Command Collective days from the early-Aughts.

Mux Mool

Headliner Mux Mool was a living conglomerate of the night’s mixed bag of performers. With a dash of each sound heard in the three spaces, the attendees swarmed to the main stage after midnight for head-nodding synth beats, peaking laser bursts, flourishes of 8-bit stylings and a few well-placed remixes of Method Man, Beastie Boys and The B-52s. He would slip deep into his album catalog, consisting of Skulltaste and Planet High School, but never alienated an onlooker who might have lacked familiarity. A deep cut was followed by a sample of Method Man’s gravely drawl, rapping, “We keep it movin’, yeah, we keep it movin’” and Mux mirrored his sample. As the headliner, Mux Mool had the last dedication to Adam Yauch, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys, who passed away from cancer that morning. He incorporated his drum work to a “Brass Monkey” sample and replaced the remorse with an invitation to a castle in Brooklyn where a mixture of malt liquor and orange juice is the drink of choice.

L Raq

Click to read: Sacramento Electronic Music Festival 2012 // Day 1 overview

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Words by Amy Serna • Photos by Victoria Smith

After taking a jog around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Mike Deni spotted something on the sidewalk that caught his eye. It was a unique looking synthesizer that was “basically a child’s toy” that sat in the middle of the sidewalk with no owner in sight. Most city folks would see this sidewalk instrument as a piece of trash; but after running by it, Deni performed a double take.

The trio has watched its success grow by touring nationally with hit bands Stars, Ladytron, Miniature Tigers and has also performed at Treasure Island Music Festival, Noise Pop and SxSW. SubMerge caught up with the Deni, while he was back in his home town of San Francisco to talk about his local music scene, the band’s most recent album Myth and the rush of music festivals.

What was it like starting off as an unknown band in San Francisco? Was there a lot of support at first or was it tough to get into the music scene?
It was pretty hard, actually. I’m not really good at selling myself. I really don’t like that at all. I would get nervous just to write an email to a booker. What you really got to do is you have to go to Pop Scene and talk to Aaron Axelsen at the DJ booth and [say], “Here’s my CD!” And I just cannot do that. It could be really discouraging, because you put out so much energy and then there were certain times where we would realize that we were spending twice as much time trying to promote ourselves and trying to get people to hear about our music than we were actually making music; that’s really frustrating. Sometimes you are lucky and people just latch on to you but it wasn’t like that with us, we really had to just keep trucking and try to find time to write music and try to convince people to get behind our music. There were some times that were really discouraging and I was like, “Why isn’t there any big band out there in San Francisco willing to help us out?” But eventually all of that stuff just happened, and we just had to be patient… And I feel like it really fell into place in really wonderful ways. The people who ended up helping us and getting behind us, they were real and true about it. But it was tough there for a little while.

But you guys are doing very well now. You played SxSW, Noise Pop and the Treasure Island Music Festival. How were playing those festivals?
Treasure Island was one of the greatest weekends of our lives. We’ve never been treated like that as artists. We had this heated tent, all of this food we could eat and awesome bands surrounding us. When we were playing, it was just so beautiful out and you could see San Francisco. I think that was the most people we’ve ever played to at that point. We played first for the festival, and we were thinking, “Shit, there are going to be 100 people tops,” but there were tons of people, and it was amazing. We just felt like we really had achieved something and that we had really been working hard for.

SxSW this year was pretty grueling, actually. It’s a lot of lifting, very little sleep and it’s just so frantic. Every show was jam-packed with people—and that’s awesome for the show—but mostly what you have to do at SxSW is move your gear around. But when you are on stage, it’s the best, because those crowds are amped. They waited in line around the block to see you, and the place is just packed and super sweaty. But then as soon as the show is over you have to work like a maniac to tear your stuff down and move it five blocks down the road and do it all again.

I didn’t see a single show and that’s honestly my favorite part about SxSW. The first year we went we barely played any shows, but we saw tons and tons of music. It was so inspiring. I came back and wrote my ass off because I was so inspired by it.

Do you have any rituals before you go on stage? Is there something you always have to do or carry with you?
When I’m on tour, I always hide in the van for 15 minutes before we go on stage, because there is really no alone time. When we are on bigger tours we get our own green room, so a lot of the times you have to share it with three other bands. I usually go into the van, drink a little tea and have a vocal warm up that I do. I just think about why I’m there and the purpose of all this driving around, lifting things and lack of sleep. It’s all for this moment that’s right about to come up. I get myself into a place where I forget about everything except the show I’m about to play.

How does your newest album Myth differ from your previous album Animal Shapes?
With Animal Shapes, we were really thinking about shows when we were writing and finishing the songs. Like “Original Sin,” we could picture the audience reaction to every moment of the song, and it was really important for us to create a big energy with that album. We’ve been starting to play a lot of shows, and we’ve seen what worked at shows. And I think we wanted to make songs that would put a lot of excitement out of the crowd. With Myth, we really concentrated on the recorded product. We didn’t think that much about how the shows would go, we thought more about how we wanted the songs to sound. That was the first album that had a real concentrated name that ran through all of the songs. So it’s a more complete idea as an album.

Geographer will play Old Ironsides in Sacramento on May 12, 2012. This show will be the Lipstick 12th anniversary party. For more info, go to http://www.theoldironsides.com/.

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Last week marked the opening of the 2012 Concerts in the Park series, and the newly renovated Cesar Chavez Park hosted over 6,300 people, a record breaking crowd for the Friday night series says Play Big Sacramento’s Andy Hawk. “Three years ago Mumbo Gumbo did around 6,100 and that was the biggest up till that point,” Hawk told Submerge. “If you give people a reason in this town to go out, they will.” It only gets better from here on out. On Friday, May 11 catch Middle Class Rut live for the first time in Sacramento in over a year! The hard rocking (and hard working) duo, consisting of guitarist/vocalist Zack Lopez and drummer/vocalist Sean Stockham, have been serious road dogs touring constantly for the last two-plus years. “We’ve been finding out the cities we do best in and building fans there,” Lopez recently told Submerge. “Things were easy back when ‘New Low’ was getting spun all day everyday and I could just hang out at Flame Club and drink. This touring shit is hard work!” They were touring so much, in fact, that at some point things started to feel stale, according to Lopez. There were songs on their record they couldn’t pull off live as just a two-piece, and playing along to a laptop was out of the question. So, naturally, they brought in a couple new members into their live setup, Eddie Underwood and Bob Lander of Sacramento band Lite Brite. “Since we’ve toured with them a few times before, it was easy to gel,” Lopez said. “There’s no other guys in Sacramento we’d rather have steal our booze than them.”

See Middle Class Rut live alongside Lite Brite, Horseneck and DJ Whores on Friday, May 11 at Cesar Chavez Park. Every show of MC Rut’s latest tour has been recorded for a live album release, this one included, so let’s all show up and be loud. Visit http://mcrut.com/ for more information about the band and visit http://downtownsac.org/events/concerts-in-the-park/ to see the series schedule.

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The Cabin in the Woods

Rated R
Words by James Barone

Before vampires sparkled, they were crawling out of a Hell Mouth and getting their asses slain by a buxom high school cheerleader with mystical powers. Those were simpler times. While Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not have been highbrow, it hinted at the promise of a young writer still cutting his teeth (pun intended) in the realms of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. Today, Joss Whedon is one of the most interesting creators those genres have to offer, and with his latest film (directed and co-written by Buffy/Lost alum Drew Goddard) Whedon’s place in the horror pantheon seems pretty well assured.

In the months leading up to The Cabin in the Woods, I was advised to go into the movie knowing as little about it as possible. Interesting, considering another film Goddard co-wrote—the mind-altering monster-eat-city flick Cloverfield—was as much about the wide-reaching alternate reality game strewn across the Internet as it was about the actual film. As it turned out, going into The Cabin in the Woods without any clear expectations—other that there would be some blood and gore and college-aged kids getting stalked in the woods—certainly enhanced my enjoyment.

The film starts not with the stereotypical group of kids, but with a group of apparent scientists scuttling around what appears to be a mysterious research facility. Our group of cookie cutter slasher flick protagonists do show up shortly thereafter, bearing all the established guises: There’s the squeaky clean heroine (Kristen Connolly), her promiscuous blonde best friend (Anna Hutchison), the brawny man’s man (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth), the somewhat nerdy nice guy (Jesse Williams) and the Shaggy-like stoner dude (Fran Kranz). They all pile in an MV and head to a cabin in the woods for what would seem to be a weekend of lakeside fun in the sun, but turns out to be a frightful bloodbath.

It’s basically every story of its ilk that you’ve seen since the first Friday the 13th movie, yet completely fresh and original. I’d tell you more, but it would kind of ruin the fun.

It’s actually difficult to write this review without giving too much away. Luckily, what makes The Cabin in the Woods so much fun is that it’s so keenly self-aware. The multitude of twists and turns in the plot certainly enhance the experience, but knowing them wouldn’t necessarily destroy your enjoyment of the film (a la anything M. Knight Shyamalan has ever done). The writing is clever, serving up just about every horror cliché you can think of and turning them into a good-humored slurry of blood and guts.

Unfortunately, its own cleverness is also its undoing. As the story of the five youths becomes a sort of play within the play, some of the horror of their situation is dampened as the plot’s slier elements begin to take precedent. The stakes of our heroes’ plight seem diminished. Also, The Cabin in the Woods seems to be making a valiant effort to make a point. Is it shining a light on the blood lust of moviegoers who have made the woeful schlock like the torture porn series Saw into a six-film franchise? Does it indict the audience for delighting in seeing young people shredded into lumps of goo by supernatural killers? I suppose it could, and perhaps it should, but if that’s what the film was striving for, it seems to back off and instead opts for a heavy-handed (literally) conclusion.

There’s plenty here to like, though. It’s smart, silly, sometimes scary (though not as much as I’d hoped), sexy and bloody. Film nerds will clamor to out-geek one another in picking out The Cabin in the Woods’ many well-placed horror pop culture references. Veteran actors Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford turn in memorable performances as key figures in the mysterious conspiracy that is at the heart of the film, combining sinister disregard with wonderfully dry humor. It may not be Whedon at his best, but it proves that he’s one of the most progressive voices in what is usually a very conservative genre.

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Once upon a time, a person would communicate with other people by stepping into their physical presence and speaking with them or by writing them a letter. This process was greatly simplified with the invention of the telephone, but the device didn’t cure the occasional need for physical contact. With all the effort involved in communicating, people tended to be a little more selective in the company they kept. That all changed with the dawn of the information age. Friendster, MySpace and ultimately Facebook help us choose our friends now.

Today, “friends” can be anyone we vaguely recognize. Oh, we went to the same summer camp when we were 6? Friend! You know my sister, but have maybe spoke to me one time for five minutes? Friend! We went to the same high school at approximately the same time but never actually had a conversation with one another? Friend! We have a friend in common but we don’t know each other? Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend!

When you look at all your friends, you will see behavioral patterns emerge. For example, we all have a Farmer Ted in our lives. He’s the guy who plays way too many Zynga games for anyone’s own good. You made the mistake of downloading whatever lame ass Facebook app Teddy sent and now your news feed looks like his 4H trophy room.

Farmer Ted is a joy compared to our next buddy, Grumpy Gus. Gus has some complaints and he plans to air them out on Facebook day after day. On a great day, his status might read, “Meh.” He hates his job, his house, his car, his girlfriend, his dog, his life, etc., etc., etc., and apparently, you need to know about it.

Of course, you also have Grumpy Gus’ polar opposite, Cheery McHappy. Everything is always roses, puppy dogs and chocolate cake for her. She likes to remind you that God does everything for a reason right after you suffer a particularly painful loss. This eternal optimist is quite possibly the most annoying person you know.

Cheery is a lunatic, and one day she will crack, unless she finds something to focus her energy on. To save herself, she may want to take a lesson from our next cherished pal, Workout Jane. Janey’s running a marathon every other week. Her status updates include daily caloric intake and a BMI count. Every day she seems to reach a new personal best while you sit on the couch in your sweat pants checking out Facebook.

When you are feeling lazy, your boy, Reggie Reddit, has everything you need. He reads the news and breaks you off with the highlight reel. This cat knows things…news, religion, music, popular uprisings, macroeconomics, long division, you name it. His Spotify playlist is unrecognizable, but somehow you know it’s all dope.

Reggie is full of great info, but sometimes you just need a distraction. When life is dull, our next compadre, Jamie Jet, can help. Jamie never stops traveling. One day she is in Anchorage, Alaska, eating salmon steaks and shooting grizzly bears, and the next day she is riding on the back of an elephant in the Congo. Who knows how she pays for all of this, but who cares? Jamie brings you the things that you don’t have the time/money/energy to see yourself.

If the pictures in your feed aren’t Jamie’s vacation highlights, they probably belong to our next homey, Sherry Baby. Sherry can’t stops taking pictures of her kids. Sherry is very determined to show you what perfect little angels her babies are. You, of course, are obligated to occasionally comment favorably on her precious, precious cherubs. She never seems to run out of pictures and/or kids.

Somebody has got to be paying for all of these kids. We all have that friend that is always on his grind trying to make ends meet. I call him Hustle Man. Hustle Man featuring DJ Wacky-Dee and the J Cat All-Stars have been sending you event invites every week for the past two years. Maybe your Hustle Man has a house to sell you. Hustle Man definitely has a business investment opportunity for you, friend.

Hustle Man wants you to read Submerge and become our friends/fans on Facebook. I’ve even decided to make the leap from 1992 to the present and get into this social inter-webbing that you crazy kids do these days. Become a fan and make bets on how long it takes Zuckerberg and Co. to kick me off. Who knows, maybe one day we will even be hearted, super BFFs!

Word by Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com
Lets be friends! Actually just “like” me: http://www.facebook.com/BocephusChigger

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