StinkFight.com

Had an interesting conversation via e-mail with a chap named Ken Restivo. Ken wrote me out of the blue and asked me

Subject: Were you in a band that played in the 1990s and did this song?

By any chance, were you in a band that played at the Edinburgh Castle bar on Geary in San Francisco some time in the late 1990’s, that had a song with the lyrics:

“I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck her one more time!”??
-ken

It took me a while to place it (I do so much fucking art I can’t remember it all), but it was a song I wrote about suicide called “Golden Gate Bridge” (MP3 here.)

The band he saw was a short-lived project called “Strychnine Blotter Party ^* .” Only played seven gigs, and only once at the club he mentioned. And the line is “I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck you one more time!” But I must say I am DAMN impressed that he remembered the show/band/song/me from that one show. We only played that club once. Don’t know how he found me from that, either. (Please chime in with a comment if you’re reading this, Ken.)

So Ken and I hit it off and I told him a bit about my rock history in San Fran, and we got into a discussion of drugs. Specifically, why musicians gravitate toward heroin:

Ken Wrote:

….I am fascinated by how many musicians are so fucking high so much of the time, and how susceptible we-all are to addiction. MUCH higher than the general population– it seems to be a disease that targets musicians.
Michael W. Dean wrote:

Well, musicians have low self-esteem and huge egos, and heroin compliments that. lol…..

Ken Wrote:

It’s gotta be more than that. Politicians and CEO’s also have HUMONGOUS egos, and low self-esteem (which is really the same thing), and they don’t tend to get addicted to anything except money and power (and kinky sex).

Michael W. Dean wrote:
CEOs and politicians are wired differently and prefer cocaine. And when they like kink, it’s usually paying someone to dominate them, whereas musicians tend to like to dominate their lovers, and get it free. A lot.

Also…..what you say is totally true, but captains of industry have some real confidence, believe everything they do is right, whereas musicians are stunted adolescents, their bravado is that of a scared little boy whistling in the dark. All musicians…from Stooges-wannabe doods in leather jackets to crotch-grabbing gangsta rappers….musicians are riddled with self-doubt. CEOs are absolutely positive they’re doing the right thing with every step.

And remember, with anyone, the number of tattoos is inversely proportionate to the amount of self-esteem.

Heroin makes you feel warm and makes you dream. Musicians are dreamers. Coke makes you feel like you could kick God’s ass, which appeals to CEOs.

——–

(This is by no means me giving myself the “final word” on this….anyone who wants to chime in, please do so).

===========

* Fun little Strychnine Blotter Party side note. Sean Keefe, our fucking great drummer, went home to visit his parents back east, and we had a rehearsal scheduled the day he got back. He called me from the airport and said “Hey…can you pick me up a burrito please? I’m broke and hungry.” I said “Sure” (he was playing free as a sideman in my band where it was all my songs, so of course I fed him if he asked).

He said “I spent my last money getting a shoe shine at the airport. You know…if you don’t look good, you can’t play good.”

—-

And if you wanna see some of the most painful web design ever, here’s the Strychnine Blotter Party web page I made in 1997. I quickly realized “this is hard on the eye, but it was fun to make” and moved on to easy-to-read as my main rule for web design. Unfortunately, most people on MySpace have never realized this.

—–

And here’s the lyrics to “Golden Gate Bridge”:

(by the way, the song is not the usual ABABABC song structure. It’s ABCABC. Few songs are.)

Lyrics:
Standing on the Golden Gate bridge.
looking for the girl who did not like to live
look for the girl with the atropine eyes,
as she flies!

I’ve got cabin-fever
I’ve been in my head for far too long
my brains are blowing out from pressure-jealousy
my strings are melting and I’m sure that I can fly-
maybe I’ll try!

(pre-chorus):
It’s another fucking sunset and
I’m checking out tonight.
Slipping into sleep, your memory slaps me awake.
I don’t want to die.
I want to fuck you one more time.

(Chorus):
I don’t want to die!
I can hurt you more alive
if that keeps me here for one more day
it’s all I need to say
stumbling through this world with all my lies
failing comically at all I try
I feel I’d like to die
but it hurts even to try
why should I try?

nausea, sweet nausea
anticipate my bane
sanctify and vilify to keep us both alive
I’ll just go to sleep
tomorrow means another chance at being sane

(pre-chorus, chorus) out…

Pix of the new dedicated computer that the wife and I bought to serve BitTorrent stuff of our art and friends’ art, 24/7/365.

The ‘pooter was getting HOT, like the components inside burned our fingers to touch them, so we opened up the case and bought a fan (from Bed, Bath and Beyond…I’m becoming such a yuppie!) to keep the li’l torrents cool and happy. Cobbled the cover out of a storage bin (also from Bed, Bath and Beyond). Now the inside of the computer, and all the components, are always room temp or below. Will blow any dust out with canned air every few days, but shouldn’t be an issue, hard drive is only moving part, and it’s well sealed.

We’re keeping the door on this spare bedroom (now known as “the Torrentarium”) closed for now, but are gonna go get chicken wire or a screen and jerry-rig it over the front of the computer stand to keep the kitties out so we can keep the door open and all the pets can lounge in there. They like it.

This is the first tiny acorn of our baby server farm. It will one day turn into a mighty 40-acre T4 industrial complex out in the country. We’ll have curvy women in slips fanning the computer racks with palm fronds, and more gals in camo slips on the roof with sniper rifles.

—

P.S.
OH…Julie asked me:
what is a baby server farm?

I wrote:
Server farm is computer server room. Racks of dedicated servers for web and media hosting. Usually in a climate-controlled air-conditioned room.

This is our LITTLE server farm. A baby one. A starter server farm.
(It’s NOT a farm for serving babies! Though we look at our media and little torrents as “our babies.”)

Here’s pix of server farms we like:

(above) our next step up.

(above) Our next step after that. (Not pictured- cats asleep on top and around it.)

(above) Our fourth server farm.

(above) After that - a server farm in a former church.

(above) Then we buy Google’s server farm (above, a tiny tiny few of Google’s servers.)

(above) Going too far…the IRS’ chrome-plated servers.

Hate Fed Love video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAUw2znLK-E

Bomb live in Houston in 1992, at Emo’s.

Bomb at the peak of their rockatude, and me really skinny and cute. And drinking beer.

More vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/dwarfbilly
all vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=dwarfbilly&p=r

Shot on analog video by dwarfbilly (Glen Fader). Thank you Glen, so much, for shooting the many vids, for not losing the tapes like so many have done, and for putting on the ‘tube.

–

Note: unlike most Bomb shows, I remember this one well. And also remember that between sound check and the show, I got some paper and a pen from the bartender, sat outside, watched the sun set in the summer night, and decided, “I’m going to be a writer”, and began writing my first novel.

DEFINING MOMENTS IN MY LIFE:
–Read an entire book myself - age 5
–Heard the Partridge Family, fell in love with music - age 7
–Interest in science - age 8
–Molested by teenage boy - age 8
–Parents’ divorce - age 8
–Got into studying electronics - age 9
–Got into ham radio, realized there was a world out there - age 10
–Loved the local library - entire childhood
–Discovered sister’s Rolling Stones records - age 9
–Discovered sister’s boyfriend’s Frank Zappa records, realized the world wasn’t the way adults told me it was - age 10
–Stole a look at teacher’s grade book when she was out and learned that my IQ is 143 - age 10
–Smoked pot - age 11
–Read “Steal This Book” - age 12
–Got caught shoplifting, first and last time I did (stealing shotgun shells to make bombs, never made any) - age 12
–Had sex, started to play guitar, and took LSD - age 14
–Read “The Book of the Subgenius” (while tripping). Decided I wanted to start my own fake cult one day - age 16
–Had GREAT sex - age 17
–Kicked out of boarding school - age 17
–Discovered Dr. Gene Scott (while tripping) Reinforced my desire to start my own fake cult one day - age 18
–Became a father - age 19
–Discovered punk rock (from Skip Lunch), while on LSD, formulated “The Hum of the Universe” theory on the spot - age 19
–Left home, moved to DC , saw Dischord punk bands live, met them, hung out with them - age 20
–Put out first record - age 21
–Moved to San Francisco - age 22
–Started Bomb - age 22
–Discovered heroin - age 23
–Toured the US with Bomb - age 23-age 29
–Toured Europe with Bomb - age 27
–Bomb signed to major label- age 28
–Bomb broke up because of my drug use - age 29
–Got first computer (8086, couldn’t get online with it, but could write and edit) - age 29
–Learned to type (in one night, while shooting coke) age 29
–Got sober - age 30
–Went back to college - age 32-33
-Got on the Internet (on hand-me-down 386 from my other sister) - age 32
–got DSL internet connection - age 33
–Put on a suit, joined the corporate work force (but wrote my novel on their time) - age 33-37
–Self-published first book - age 35
–Relapsed on drugs, nearly died - age 35
–Got sober again - two weeks later
–Started making films - age 36
–Made my first feature film: age 37
–Moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco (it’s not uncool to be ambitious in LA Like it is in San Fran) - age 37
–Started to make a living as a writer and filmmaker - age 38
–Discovered D/s - age 41
–Met the woman of my dreams - age 41
–Daughter died from leukemia - age 42
–Got married, moved out to the country/burbs - age 42
–Discovered podcasting - age 42
–Started using BitTorrent to share massive amounts of MY media with the world - age 43
–got 10 Mbps fiber optic internet connection - age 43

===

Pretty fun stuff.

So, my friends, post your list as a reply.

Get laid, or triple your money back!

I ran across this really funny three-minute fake radio spot for Eau de Daddy cologne….

(MUST BE OF LEGAL AGE to listen).

(Peer Guardian 2 running, with I.P. addresses blocked out to mask my own I.P.)

Amazing program. I’m running it and it’s blocking about 10 attempts a minute to get into my network, from everyone from the office of the president of Lithuania, to cops in China to the Sony corporation in Los Angeles. It blocks unwanted traffic, both incoming and outgoing.

Download PeerGuardian 2 free, here.

By the way, China is posing massive attacks on US servers this week…no one’s sure if it’s the gov or hackers there. Pentagon has shut off some of their own computers, though. So it must be a serious deal.

Though judging from the number of Chinese Government sites showing up in my logs (images above), I really must assume some of it is Chinese Government computers turned into zombies by hackers to attack many other computers anonymously. I really can’t imagine that so many people in the Chinese gov would really be that concerned with what I’m doing on StinkFight, etc….

My router has a built-in firewall, and I’m running Norton firewall too.  The traffic being stopped by Peer Guardian is getting past BOTH of those firewalls.

EVERYONE should have this program.

(Note, occasionally it will block a site you want to see. You can simply right click on the name/i.p. in the protection log window, and allow it for fifteen minutes, or for an hour, or permanently.)

MWD

107 MICHAEL W. DEAN SONGS

TORRENT HERE. MUST BE OF LEGAL AGE.

“Whoever dies with their art on the most hard drives, wins.”
–Michael W. Dean
Complete BitTorrent zip of all Michael W. Dean music, 1984-2008

110 MP3s (107 songs and three interviews), plus many images and text files of all bands. 856 megs.

Michael W. Dean is the director of “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist” and the author of “$30 Film School”, among other things.

Archive contains all BOMB records, both Baby Opaque records (with Ian MacKaye on backup vocals on one song - a cover of “Long Black Veil”), all Rolling Scabs, all Deal Machine, all Mother and the Fuckers, plus several Michael Dean solo songs, and loop WAVs for song production, looped from Bomb songs by Michael Dean.

From Wikipedia: “Bomb was a San Francisco-based rock band started in 1986 by singer/bassist Michael W. Dean, guitarist Jay Crawford, and drummer Tony Fag (Anthony Paul Short, A.K.A. Blind Tony Fag). Their first show was July 4, 1986, opening for Flipper. Bomb’s sound was deep, hard rock with melodic guitars, relentless tribal drumming (reviews referred to Fag as “The Human Drum Machine”), strong pop singing, and sometimes-cryptic lyrics. Common subjects of the songs were death, sex, drugs, girls, boys, love, loss, Satan, God, cross-dressing, girls, suicide, hope and girls.”

Bomb put out one EP and four LPs from 1986-1999, on Boner Records and on Warner/Reprise. The Warner Bros. record was produced by Bill Laswell. The band was a fans’ favorite, but crashed and burned from narcotic abuse and infighting.

“D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”

Free high-quality iPhone/iPod rips, from the director. Torrent and media served from a 24/7 fat pipe.

Torrent here.

(Or here on Pirate Bay).

DVD, and all extras of “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”. Director Michael W. Dean is giving away the entire film, encoded in high quality (30 fps, 800 kbps mp4 file, 640×480 size, with 128-bit audio, and no DRM). It looks great on an iPod, iPhone, Zune, etc., and damn good full screen on a computer.

Seven extras from the DVD (including interviews with Ian MacKaye, Steve Albini, and Lydia Lunch) are included.

FILM DESCRIPTION:

This film is a celebration of the artistic underdog! FEATURING interviews and performances from: Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), J Mascis (Dinosaur jr.), Jim Rose (Jim Rose Sideshow), J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Richard Kern (Filmmaker), Ron Asheton (Stooges), Madigan Shive (Bonfire Madigan), Dave Brockie (Gwar) and more.

Dean says, “People keep asking me, ‘Why are you posting the whole film when it’s still selling well on DVD? Are you CRAZY?’” Dean’s reply (in part): “It’s my gift to the world. People write me every day and tell me the film got them off their ass. I made the film to spread a message, not make money. And somehow, it still made money. That’s how I do things - it’s how I pay my rent on planet earth.”

The film on IMDB

Film site: http://www.diyordie.org

(You should be of legal age to view this):

Animated GIF of a ferret attacking a rubber schlong in a bathtub.  (If you’re a guy, this may make you a little queasy. Personally, it just makes me giggle.)
Was created years ago by my friend Li’l Mike. The pet has long since passed on to the great ferret field in the sky, but the GIF lives on.

Went to look for a FireWire cable today, had to fight through a huge box of tangled junk. Had too many of everything, all my cable crap from the past 15 years…stuff not being used, but taking up space (and taking up sanity when I go to find something.) I had cables representing technology from 1920 to now.

I ended up throwing out:

11 USB cables

3 FireWire cables

1 S-video cable

2 Coax cable TV cables

3 CAT-5 networking cables

2 telephone cables

7 assorted audio micro- and mini-cables

3 guitar cables

6 RCA audio cables

2 DSL modems

1 Wireless router

1 two-prong ungrounded extension cord

3 new printer cartridges from a printer that died and got replaced by a better printer

2 computer monitor power cables

5 “wall wart” power adapters for gear that died a long time ago

…….and a partridge in a pear tree.

I thought about putting them on Freecycle.org, but I really hate having people come to my house. Also thought about putting it all up on a MySpace bulletin and mailing the box out to someone, but MySpace recently blocked one of my sites and called it “head lice”, so I don’t like going there any more.

The “obsolete/excess technology” idea of having all these cables and boxes I don’t use made me think about one of the only performance art things I’ve ever seen that I loved. It was Attaboy and a friend standing on a couple tons of last year’s computers in 1999 at the San Francisco dump, doing an impassioned spoken word thing about the tentative nature of evolving technology, in front of a crowd of about 60 really happy people. I loved it.

UPDATE: I sold the monitor. For a quarter. Here’s pix of my satisfied customer:

(Original post): My friend gave me a flat screen monitor, so I’m getting rid of my clunky old CTR. But you can’t throw those out, they need to be taken to special centers.

To save me the trip, I just posted this on CraigsList:

====================

Working computer monitor - 25 cents.

(not 25 dollars, 25 CENTS!)

16-inch CRT ViewSonic A70 monitor.

I bought it last year on CraigsList for ten bucks. I just upgraded, so I’m willing to pass the savings on to you at ONE-FORTIETH THE ORIGINAL PRICE!!!

Must give me a one-hour window of what time you’ll be here.

Photos of me at age 3 and age 18:

Me at age 12 (stoned on pot):

Me at 16, in drag:

Me at 21 (on left. Brian Childers is on the right):

Me at 27 (in slip, with Bomb):

Me at 33:

Me at 39: (left of me is Ryan Brown, who edited Selby movie, on right is Robert Downey, Jr, who narrated):

Photo of me taken yesterday (age 43):

Great pix of our gay switchy littermate boy cats, Fuzzbucket McFluffernutter and Peanut McFluffernutter.

I wrote an obituary for Brian that came out in this month’s Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll magazine (March 2008 issue).

(Thank you Barbara Vaughan for the wonderful photo, and thank you Pat Libby for helping make this happen!) DOWNLOAD PDF SCAN OF OBIT (less than one meg in size.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAsI7mmM4eQ

By my friend Alan “Fallofautumndistro” Lastufka (Alan and I have a big very cool project together coming up soon. Will spill beans on it next week.) Debra Jean Dean did the voiceover, I engineered DJ’s voiceover.

It’s a takeoff on those stupid “Go to university online” commercials they play on TV every afternoon to attract unemployed losers and take their money.

I just got a new book deal with O’Reilly (will blog details next week.)

To celebrate, I just ordered an AT&T U-verse fat pipe….a a 10 Mbps fiber optic line.
Yay! With cable TV. From the phone company. 100 bucks a month, no setup fee, no contract commitment, (and it also comes with 100 TV channels). Ten times faster than a DSL line, at three times the price. And it doesn’t slow down when your neighbors go on like with cable modems.

Also ordered a third computer, which I’m gonna use dedicated to nothing but BitTorrenting huge archive zips of our podcast episodes:
LENOVO ThinkCentre A61E 641712U computer,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108133

also got two 1-gig sticks of server RAM and got heat-sinks for them.

AT&T U-verse is not available in most of the country yet. Should be in a year or three. It’s available here:

* California: Corona, Los Angeles/Orange County, Riverside, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto, San Diego, San Francisco/Oakland, and San Jose/Santa Clara
* Connecticut: Hartford, New Haven, New London, Stamford
* Illinois: Chicago
* Indiana: Anderson, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Muncie
* Kansas:Kansas City
* Michigan: Detroit
* Mississippi: Jackson
* Missouri: Kansas City, St. Louis
* Ohio: Akron, Cleveland, Columbus
* Oklahoma: Oklahoma City
* Texas: Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Round Rock, San Antonio
* Wisconsin: Milwaukee, Racine, West Bend

I had DSL in early 1997. I lived in downtown San Fran, and within 1200 feet of the phone company building. Mine was one of the first city blocks in the country that had it.

When I crawled off of dial-up onto DSL I felt like, as my friend Stephen Elliot put it, “It extended my lifespan.” I think Fiber Optic is going to feel like “Beam me up, Scotty” compared to DSL.

I’ll probably get rug burns from it.

I’m literally having trouble sleeping anticipating my 10 MBPS fiber optic line.
I get it Wednesday. Should have my new pooter (the dedicated BitTorrent one) by then too. Until then I have to suffer with this damn DSL. How very last century.

MWD

p/s

I remember a forwarded e-mail in San Fran in 1998 called “You might be a geek if…..”.
One of the things was “You might be a geek if…..Your apartment has more bandwidth than some universities.” With the fiber line, I’m finally there. They use the same size pipe for 200 computers on some university libraries.

…..Another one on that list was “You might be a geek if…..while hanging out at an industrial/heavy metal fetish club, you get in a fist fight with another guy about which flavor of Linux is best.”

Funny, but that was never me. I have always been a Windows guy, and always will be. I don’t like all that wrenching. XP just fucking WORKS. I’m running XP on both laptops and the new server computer has XP. (I actually had to pay a little more to not have Vista. How fucked is that????)

My friend Julie Peasley just got back from Japan. Check out her photos:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9ff40a6o.7sqsqmkg&x=0&y=-bf0vh9

(click the yellow “view slideshow” button)

We especially love the snow monkeys. Also love the little fold out card she made of her cats to look at on the Bullet Train!

p.s. Doesn’t “Julie and the Snow Monkeys” sound like the title of a children’s adventure book?

I Love You Already Part I :

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=7320724

I Love You Already Part II:

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=7320941

Kinda blew my mind. Check ‘em out.

OH MY GOD! I went to check my mail today and there was a package from my buddy Jem Cohen.

It was Jem’s shooting script from the movie Last Exit To Brooklyn. Jem was a prop guy on the shoot, and this is his slightly tattered script. (It’s in amazing shape for something that was handled daily for months in 1988 and then stored.)

Jem is interviewed in our film Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow. On the set of Last Exit, Jem hung out with Hubert Selby, who wrote the book the movie was based on, and was impressed with how humble and sweet Selby was, in contrast with what one might expect from a writer on a large Hollywood set.

When I opened the package from Jem, I was literally trembling a little as soon as I saw what it was. I am not one to fetishize objects, and I am not easily star struck, but I kinda felt like, well, maybe not a Christian handling the Holy Grail, but at least like an archaeologist being handed an amazing specimen that ties together all the work of three years.

The script, written by Desmond Nakano (who is also interviewed in our film) has wonderfully poetic descriptions in the setting and action. They were faithfully rendered by director Uli Edel (also in our film), but it’s amazing to read the actual words on the page.

Jem also sent his crew T-shirt from the set, along with a postcard that said “Dig it Dean, official ancient crew T-shirt too. Don’t be freaked out by the stains. It’s just movie blood!”

Thank you Jem! This is all like Christmas in March for me. Even better.

=======

(funny self-indulgent side note: The wife and I recently had an essay contest on our podcast to give away our script for the Plump Buffet podiobook with our hand-written notes on it. The woman wrote us and told us she was trembling when she got our e-mail saying she’d won.

(Not to compare our little podiobook story in any way to Last Exit…..I thought it was quaint that the lady was so excited, because I looked at our script as something that had been useful and was no longer useful once we were done, and was a little amazed that she was so happy about it. I was listening to that exact part of our podcast on headphones as I stood in line at the post office. When I opened Jem’s parcel, I knew exactly how she felt.)

My dad sent me an encyclopedia from 1900. It’s in great shape. I was just reading it, and really dig it. The book even has color illustrations, and a lot of science - atomic weight tables, physics of light, and astronomy (though it defines “Black hole” as “a prison cell or dungeon”.)

It made me wonder if any computer media I own now will be readable in 108 years. I kind of doubt it.

(Photo of my friend Sheri’s iPhone, loaded with many many many of my podcasts and songs.)

Amazing stuff. By my friend from back in the day,  Jeremy Kirsch. I’m in awe of his work. Here’s his links:

http://freekmagnet.com
http://gogallery.org
http://gogallery.org/blog

Jeremy played bass in my friend Beau’s band, “Capture the Flag”,…..met him when I first moved to California (Berkeley) from Virginia in 1986.

GET THE MP3.

Hilsinger wrote: On 9/4/94, Roger Water’s 50th birthday , we played a 9-song madley of Pink Floyd songs. The show was at Komotion Int’l, SF (r.i.p.), and included a custom lightshow of Mr Dean blowing cigarette smoke and waving a flashlight around in it. cool. We opened for GIFTHORSE and SUBLIME.

featuring members of BOMB, GIFTHORSE, HELIOS CREED, and M-FAKTER,
the band was:
Doug Hilsinger (lead gtr, bg vox)
Michael Dean (lead vox, rythm gtr)
Bean (bass, bg vox)
Chris McKay (keys)
Paul Delle Pelle (drums)
Jeff Mann engineered the recording live to DAT.