Jesse Michaels

hey friends, about a week ago I pulled this lil' oogle off the street. She had a severely infected eye, very serious respiratory infection, worms, fleas and other issues. In short, she was dying, and just listlessly wandering around the driveway of a large apartment complex. I named the cat "Sam" (not knowing what was what yet, - plus it just fit) and she turned out to be a girl so it was changed to "Samantha"-- but I still call her Sam❤️. If any of this sounds at all pat-myself-on-the-back, the point here is really to talk about an organization. @del.gato.rescue came and did the initial medical, assessed the cat, arranged to have that nasty eye removed and generally did the heavy lifting. @frankcilantro helped EVERY step of the way. It is a learning curve to do a cat rescue and that is all they do. The good news is she got her surgery and antibiotics and dental and she is doing MUCH better! See last video, that is from today! (featuring my cringey pet voice, sorry 😂😩) unfortunately she has bad kidney problems and she has a long and somewhat costly road ahead in all likelihood. We don't know her long term prognosis but she is only 7 and does NOT have FIV which is great news : ) @del.gato.rescue has told me they are in for the long haul which is so helpful, as I have decided to adopt her ("foster fail"😂) So I just wanted to share her story. If anybody wants to support, *and I am only suggesting this to people who are not struggling themselves*, the donation link is on the @del.gato.rescue page bio as they will be handling the medical for the time being (they already paid for the surgery etc). I am donating as much as I can myself and any love is appreciated. I am no dummy and I know that SHE is the one rescuing ME, and so I am very grateful to Jen, Donald, @sleepysnakehouse , @frankcilantro and big thanks to Amy and the wonderful gang at @santedorrescue for donating kidney diet food! such a big help! also thanks to @geminilori and @velvet_burnout for getting some items from her amazon registry, you guys are the best.

1988: This was the show that inspired the song "Bad Town" by Operation Ivy. We drove all day & showed up in LA at around 5:00. It was always cool to see the Offspring guys and Reason to Believe guys. I liked all the Offspring stuff but I especially loved "Blackball" ("Blaackballed?") and their cover of "Ballroom Blitz" from their demo. That's a hard song to cover! Reason to believe were just really good and great guys. We sensed a lot of LA gang vibes at the show. I noticed about 20-30 of what I thought were Suicidals there, I now guess they were probably just East Side punks (rather than Venice / Hollywood Suicidals) but IDK. Low draped bandanas. Anyway, the show was crowded and everything was cool. Our set was good. Then Ill Repute played. At that time there was this thing happening: An early 80s hardcore band would start playing more "mature" material, you know, more influenced by stuff besides punk. Just to name a few bands that did this: SST, Necros, Black Flag, Die Kreuzen (weirdrock), Discharge, TSOL, and so on. So Ill Repute, skate punk heroes, were entering their more hard rock moment. By the way, I have no problem with bands evolving, but it could be a tough sell back then😂 The audience started reacting negatively to their set and throwing things which was predictable. This being LA, at least one or two members of ILL REPUTE took a Lee Ving approach and talked shit back to the crowd. Short story short, the kids rushed the stage, and basically beat the shit out of them. Then I think some rival factions might have popped off or maybe the gang-affiliated kids just started beating the shit out of everybody, not sure. It was more or less a riot. I believe Noodles from the Offspring got stabbed though that may have been a different show . We got the F out of there. A couple days later Tim showed up with the song. Lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. Astute listeners may have noticed that Dave Mathews had a hit with a suspiciously similar riff in the nineties ("ants marching") 🤔😂. So yeah just thought some people might be interested in the story behind that one...✌🏽--anybody can correct my memories, it's a little hazy

here's another batch of photos that my friend joel wing shared with me. I am a bit too lazy to try and tag everybody, apologies. I know people enjoy the history, that's the main reason I share this stuff once in a while--may have posted some of these before. 1-hanging out at Winchell's after the youth of today show at Gillmann Street 1987 2-another picture from the same night, I think there are some youth of today guys in there. It got pretty lit at Winchells which was a small donut shop, I think the owners didn't love it. From that night before the show, I remember some people were suspicious of anything 'straight edge' that wasn't minor threat, but YOT were GREAT, nice guys, everybody liked them. 3-Gilman Street cuddle puddle. If I started writing all the RIPs in these photos I might get something in my eye... 4- my pseudo "gang" DWK on the steps of the first punk house I lived in, which was called "the ashtray". We never actually fought anybody. DWK stood for "Death Wish Kids" after the Poison Idea song... just acting crazy 5- @edwardcwilder being drawn and quartered by Big Wayne and unknown others 6-Me hanging out in the hallway with the guys from the band Crimpshrine 7- Murray Bowles , blessed soul who took most of these pictures 8- Billie and James Washburn. Washburn was and is known for having an unusually strong skull which literally saved his life more than once. He survived both a gunshot and a fall from a roof directly on his head (not on the same day). 9-- me stenciling some thing on Lenny's back while he was trying to play – "the more ridiculous the better" was sort of the motto for everything at that time, maybe still is IDK. PS underground Hardcore and Punk {plus the weird stuff happening that I don't really understand} still rules NOW NOW NOW

these are some paintings. Most of them are old, one of them is new. I used to post a lot of art on here, but I stopped, and I don't even remember why. I am going to post some new stuff once I land a few. Paintings tend to fail about 80% of the time. Matisse, would throw out paintings hundreds of times before a landed one, he would scrape the paint right off the canvas (because it was oil and dried very slowly) and start again the next day. his life was difficult than people imagine.

hedge diving was a fucking dumb activity me and my friends did in the 80s. It was invented by noah landis from Christ on Parade. Don't do this, it is wrong to fuck people's shit up. I actually thought the same back then as well and yet I was often the ringleader. what I secretly wanted was to be in the drama club at an arts-magnet high school, dating a girl named Gwendolyn who parted her hair in the middle. I don't know about you, but I often find that I don't choose the things I end up doing in life, they happen because of some kind of crazy momentum. But that's a topic for another day. 1- Johnny Hell was that guy you always have anxiety around because he took things too far and you never knew what he was gonna do —the dude who's always pulling out a flick knife. I know he had a good heart though, he probably runs a baptist church or something now. 2- Jeff Ott--Jeff was a savage at this game and the only known person to get arrested for it 3- Probably Ben "A-head." he got his nickname because he was a communist and one day we told him we were going to bleach a hammer and sickle on his head. but we did a circle A instead bc we hated commies😂 (but loved ben). 4- claude was the most mentally ill person we hung out with, also literally a genius, like 150 IQ or something, but in and out of psyche wards. I am not saying anything bad, he knew this and was open about it. But he was funny and a character. He was later stabilized by a good woman, and last I heard he's just a lawyer with a kid who helps people. 5- me and somebody else pulling somebody else out of a bush (assisting) 6- somebody honorable mention: I can't talk about this without mentioning "bonedog" duane. a true legend, i believe from Redding CA. he would show up at the end of every show and say, very quietly, "the hedges are moist." it was an eerie but effective call to action. I don't have a picture of Bonedog but I will post one if I can find one. he was a genetically punk guy who had spikes on his spikes and studs on his studs. last time I talked to him he was doing well and is still a nice guy. Photos via Joel Wing - not sure who shot them, probably Joel and Murray

CLASSICS OF LOVE: 1- first band photo taken by @mikeparkmusic in 2009 2- first EP released in 2010 3- ST LP released in 2011 4- new EP (different line up) released in 2023 5- live in NYC 2013 ish, vid @jon_yi 6- Pandemic line up 2020 Classics of Love was a band I started in 2012 with @mikehuguenor , @harpo_max and @morganherrell . The original idea of the band was to do a thing that was influenced by post punk and some of the 2nd wave (?) DC bands like Rites of Spring. That sound was reflected in our first EP, Walking in Shadows (2009). Once we started playing live, it quickly became clear that the more up-tempo songs worked better. So the band transitioned into a sound that was more influenced by eighties melodic punk and Hardcore. In 2011 (roughly) after many live shows and a few mini-tours, we released a full length that reflected our more "mature" sound (image 3). The record felt like an accurate and well-recorded representation of our best material to me. I ended up moving to LA to go to school in 2012 so the band did kind of a soft break up. We had played quite a few shows and recorded almost all our material so it felt like a good stopping point. The @hardgirlsband guys were great friends, musicians, and bandmates and it was all fun. A whole life cycle later, in 2020, I wanted to do an EP of even more straight up (80s style) hardcore type stuff. I ended up teaming up with the incredible @theeexplodingflower and @surfontesdrumpeter and we got it done in sharif's small mad scientist lab / practice pad (image 4 and 6). The guys from the original lineup gave me permission to use the old name because re-branding over and over again becomes cumbersome. Thank you! As far as I know, the ST/LP is the only thing still available (@asianmanrecords ). Future plans: the last EP sold out way quicker than expected so the next record is going to contain five new songs plus all the songs and art from the last EP for the people that wanted to get it but missed out —and it will be a bigger release number. Much gratitude to anybody who has checked out or enjoyed this music and I hope this is a good recap for people interested in the timeline.

thanks for 20 K followers! I struggle with SM at times because i think it is idiocracy in action, but will try to honor this generous interest with weekly drops. I know people enjoy the grandpa tales and new music/ art updates. here is a picture of the usual suspects stage bombing at a gilman show, probably 87, followed by zoom - ins. I am upside down on the left. Any old-heads who want to caption who is there, i will tag later. I recognize most of them but I'm lazy. from joel wing's picture drawer, photo by cammie tolouie. this appears to be mostly people from the bands that played that night as I see isocracy, crimpshrine, soup, and corrupted morals members in the mix. As I have said many times, I had mixed feelings about gilman {*noted bay area club in opivy / green day era not to mention many other equally important bands}. Don't get me wrong, I loved things about it and it was a solid, relatively safe venue, but there was a punk scene before Gilman and the punk scene AFTER Gilman and I'm not sure I liked the second one better. There was less gatekeeping, which is good, but that also meant more dull political types, sex cult hippies and random dipshits. but we did have a lot of fun and it brought out a lot of true outsiders who found a home away from home there. Underground movements saturate outwards, that's the way of the world and some of the best shit ever is happening RIGHT NOW. Almost everybody in this photo that I know was cool as hell and "got it" and many i still consider friends. A revealing gilman story about where I was at with it all: A really nice and well meaning person, one of the regs, took me aside to have a heart to heart with me about being a better role model because the kids looked up to me now (i was 18😂). I escorted them to my car mid convo and blasted a line of meth, offering them a chop of course (manners). The funny thing is I wasn't trying to be disrespectful, it just honestly did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with the picture 😂 PS youth please avoid drugs, it is demonic and WILL kill you, I am 100% sober now and wish I had done so earlier, just have to add that for context

When I was a kid, Minor Threat was one of my favorite hardcore bands. This show in 1983 was one of the first shows I ever went too. I was 14 and the only reason my father let me take the bus all the way out to SF was because he thought the band name "Minor Threat" was so funny for some reason. Not on the flyer, but this was also the first bay area show of DRI. Dave MDC came out and introduced them. "These are our friends from Texas." We knew that they were the band with 22 songs on a 7". The other thing that was notable about them was their "mange" haircuts where they would shave their heads but leave tufts. MDC, Deadly Reign (Berkeley band) and Bad Influence were great. A lot of Berkeley kids were there. It's funny to call them "kids" bc at the time they seemed SO much older than me and they were in formidable gangs. I feel like there may have been some SF Skins (Mark Dagger's nazi gang) there but they were relatively chill. I think some of that had to do with how much people respected and loved Minor Threat. If there were any fights at this gig, they were short and forgettable. At that time, when you went to a show, you had to kind of clock the whole room early for who the dangerous people were, and then play a tandem game where you always stayed on the other side of the room from them. Unless, of course, you were one of the dangerous people. This was because about 3 out of 5 shows somebody would get the shit beaten out of them. Usually happened to people that didn't understand what was going on but it could be pretty random. Girls were not exempt because of the female cliques like DMR or the women associated with The Fuckettes in SF. Of course LA and SD were way more violent even. It's just how it was then. When Minor Threat played they were about as good as it gets. They were amazing musicians and performers, especially Ian who was up there with HR and Chi Pig as one of the greatest in terms of stage presence. If I remember correctly, they played close to whole discography. I definitely missed WAY more great shows than I saw but at least I somehow caught this one... photo of Ian is the only picture I've ever seen of this gig

here is an old painting. The fumes from oil paint are a lot so you have to have a studio to do it, which I don't right now, but I hope to get back into the stuff again before too long. I still do acrylic stuff at home. people sometimes ask about prints--I will do that very soon like in the next couple days.

another memory lane photo dump, i know folks enjoy it. it just so happens I have reconnected with an old friend who is sending me this stuff (Joel Wing - Corrupted Morals / Dance Hall Crashers). There was this guy at all the shows named Murray, who would shoot everything and then sell the pictures for a dollar at the next show. [correction: 25 c. I am getted molded over and over again by OGs on this post, IYKYK] RIP blessed soul Murray Bowles. anyway. 1- one of the first 5 opivy shows bc i still had the flat purple mohawk. I never charged that thing. I am pretty sure this was in Pinole. i love the bored guy with the sick christ on parade shirt, he probably owns UBER now or something. 2) Holly, Lucky and Ewen and maybe Pat Heinz?. Lucky was Green Day's first roadie and a sweet guy. Total hesher in the good way. RIP like so many. yes his behavior was often terrible but i fricking loved that dude. Ewen is just the king of El Cerrito aside from maybe Dave EC. ewen was also like a guy who somehow fell out of an old Irish sea shanty and landed in the 20th century for better or worse. Pat Hines ended up co-head of lookout if that is even him but i think it is. 3- @pallymalice , Pat Mello and Tim 4- Paul Lee (Monsula) chris Appelgren 5- very typical gilaman opivy show 6- my absolute sexiest moment as a bald man 7- ceimpshrine 8- SOUP was a berkeley band we loved. some people listen to it and they don't really get it or whatever but they were OUR band. We played that demo over and over and over and over again and loved it. "GQ - U, GQ-U! " badafa dun dund da dun dun🎶🎶🎼 anyway , this looks like somebody's tattoo, and it is soups symbol and slogan and its about how smart and funny they were. all love to everybody involved, and to you and yours, too! music is about fun and friendship and it really doesn't matter if it's punk or polka jmo

some new, purty editions of this old thing dropped - go to @epitaphrecords or @hellcatrecords if you want dis

More great art from the National Gallery. DC will still always be associated with music for me. Growing up, DC Hardcore like Minor Threat, void, SOA, the bad brains, and generally the entire "flex your head" compilation was simply CANON. Later in life, Opivy played with Fugazi a few times and it was always fun and an honor because I had (and still have) so much admiration for them. All those guys are incredibly kind and down-to-earth people. however, one time I did go to a party in DC in my late 20s. I don't remember how I ended up there but several of my heroes were there, people who were on that flex your head compilation, like people who played in the Untouchables and the teen idles and shit. Unfortunately, it was a very boring party. Everybody had grown up, everybody was wearing olive drab, vegan tai chi pants, if Terry Gross had walked through nobody would've batted an eye. Of course the real problem is I just didn't know these folks that well so I was sort of a fish out of water. What is the point of this story? How did I get here? I don't know. I mean, what did I expect? A chaotic dog pile with everybody kicking the shit out of each other and giving each other handjobs and Red C playing? Is that I was like when I wasn't in DC at that time? No. Anyway, for the youths, I reccomend buying the "Flex Your Head" Compilation and listening to it ten thousand times until your mind rots. Those people really created their own universe, certainly helped me pilot my way through my own...