…from the spacious corner office of Chicken John…

OK, I didn’t write the pitch for the 9/16th wrench project. I don’t even know if I’m going to Burning Man this year. I just bought a bar for crists’ sake, I don’t know if I can afford the time. Jim Mason wrote that. It’s actually quite good. A prank within a prank within a prank. So this is mostly for him, but you can listen in if you like… enjoy!

www.dammit.org/916ths.html for a little background….

OK Jim. Ya got me. Ha ha. Very funny. 9/16th wrench project. I get it. Wrench in the machine. One end open. One end closed. 28,000 wrenches. I already spent the money. Take apart the café. Ya hacked my list and ya got everyone sending it back and forth. Ya wrote it in my voice, and spelled it like an 8th grader. In my opinion your ‘fuck you’ was showing a bit too much. Remember, I’m the Zen Chicken Master now. And my ‘fuck you’ doesn’t show as much. But I’m laughing. But I don’t really feel like playing the 7th grader outsmarts the $140,000 masters degree guy game. So instead I’ll tell you a story.

Because that, by default, is what I do…

And for anybody who is new to this, this is what the Damnlist is: it’s not an events list. It’s me rambling on for thousands of words trying to recoup, regroup and reboot my past to the end of distraction and the possible invocation of Chaos.

You can sign up for you own damnlist by visiting www.dammit.org click on damnlist.

Sometimes the Damnlist is even funny and compelling. But most of the time it reads like a giant splat of neurotic showman dripping down the wall. But this 9/16th wrench project is well done, and I’d like to add a few of the other projects we have talked about doing whilst drunk… the one that comes to mind as the funniest is the year I tried to get Larry to hire Quiet Riot to play Black Rock City. He just wouldn’t go for it. I tried. Foolish of him, really. Although he couldn’t know all the parameters, it would have been a feather in his cap, but he doesn’t embrace comedy. Or at least he didn’t. He has changed a lot. But at the time he was in a very serious mood. It was funny. I called the management company that handles Quiet Riot, it was easy to get their number. I called the bowling alley in Austin Texas that they played at while I was in Austin and asked the agent there for the number. He still had it. He even told me what they paid them; $800. I called the management company, and talked to a stereotype like I have never dealt with before. He called me baby. He insisted on all the money up front, BEFORE he would confirm the show. He wanted $10,000. It was unreal. But I got him to disclose that they were in fact available for the date and that for $10,000 they would do whatever we wanted. I envisioned the event as a showman does: the people are there. The crowd a-buzz with wonder. The lights on the stage are low. The spotlight goes on and follows me to the center of the stage. I announce to the crowd; “Ladies and Gentleman, Arsonists and filthy hippies, it’s my distinct honor to present to Black Rock City… QUIET RIOT!!!!!!!!!” as the band kicks into Metal Health. The opening line to Metal Health is “BANG YOUR HEAD! METAL HEALTH WILL DRIVE YOU MAD!!!!” In my minds eye I see a sea of cigarette lighters and fists pointed skyward as we rock out with our cock out and participate in this ridiculous display of idiocy known as Rock and Roll. The band would play a short set, maybe 7 songs. Always leave them wanting more. But the last song, that would have to be “Cum on feel the noise”, there big radio hit. And I had the best thing planned. Now Larry would have paid $10,000 for them plus the rental of the PA and the generator and the stage and all that crap. So it would be downright disrespectful to not show our appreciation for the man. And I happen to know that Larry can’t actually play the guitar, but Burning Man is a place where all your dreams can come true; for a few days anyway and you can be the person you have always wanted to be. And then go back to your shitty job and tolerate you boss for another 51 weeks without killing him knowing that you can go back to Burning Man and be the person you have always wanted to be… I digress… Larry, right. So for the lead solo of Cum on feel the noise, someone would come out on stage dressed like Larry, with the hat and the cigarette and the shirt. All that shit. They would come out for the guitar solo. And rock. Kevin DuBoise (the singer) would announce in his ridiculous voice, “Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Larry HARVEY!!!!!’. And Larry would shred. Of course the real guitar player would actually play the part, but the Larry imposter would do all the moves. Behind the head. Under the leg. The classic guitar solo face… I imagined happily this Larry doing hammer-ons with his left hand and spray painting ROCK AND ROLL on the back drop with the other hand. Then of course smashing the guitar into bits, grabbing a (staged) groupie by the hair and dragging her back stage. Tell me that wouldn’t have been fucking funny. Then the moment that was bound to happen at some point; as the bombastic end of the heavy metal set standard issue everyone flailing on their instruments saying thank you goodnight thing, Kevin DuBoise would scream in his falsetto voice “LEAVE NO TRACE!!!!!!!!!!” . But Larry wouldn’t go for it. Coward. So I built a giant ASS and pointed directly at his trailer. So when he woke up in the morning, he would open his door and the first thing he would see was 30’ high ASS. Made out of cardboard and ducktape. It looked especially terrible during the day. Actually, during the day, it didn’t even look like an ASS. It just looked like a eyesore. Fire would shoot out of the butt and there was a whole show built loosely around the Wizard of Oz thing, but Larry hated that too. So I just did it any way with out the magic Larry money and built the Wizard of Ass and coined the term “large scale interactive sculpture”. The burning man organization always reminded me of the whole Oz thing anyway. Dammit as Toto, Danger Ranger as the tin man with no heart, Will Roger as the cowardly lion, the Rangers as those monkeys, Larry as the Wizard, the rest of the staff as the Scarecrow with no brain and of course if you’ve ever seen Crimson on a bicycle you would appreciate this analogy. Marian as the good which of the north. Marian as the good which of the South. John law as the wicked which of the east. A ruby hat. Everybody melting from the heat. Magic poppies and everything. Bad weather. Chanting “there’s no place like home” as the 120 mile an hour winds blow your tent away and you end up huddled in your car. But instead of munchkins, its naked office workers. Yuck. And the lesson learned is elusive, to say the least. 447 is the yellow brick road, and the whole thing is a bad fucking dream. A bad dream where really nice people become their own worst possibilities and it is really done to a Pink Floyd soundtrack. After the fact Larry loved the Wizard of Ass, and blamed me for not explaining it right. He really knows how to hurt a salesman. One year, we almost built a man half again as big as the Burning Man, just to fuck with people. We had a plan to install a pressurized pump system that would shoot water 600 feet out of our mans’ dick. The idea being to piss on the ‘real’ man. Our bigger man could put out the ‘real’ man. We had a few yucks about that one. And I swear we almost did it. No matter what they tell you it takes 2 guys about 2 days to build that man. It’s really no big deal. If you have the lumber sitting there and a real shop. We also almost built an Earthquake deflator. Well, we talked a lot about it. We designed it. Build an 80’ tower with a giant swimming pool at the top. A track that allows it to fall safely and smoothly. In the pool of course is 10 tons of water. Our state of the art electronic computer equipment tracks the seismic activity in the area. If an earthquake is detected, we monitor the progress and if it gets too close, we enable the deflector and at the right moment we drop the pool, which crashes against the earth and deflects the earthquake to a nearby rainbow gathering. Of course, 10 tons of water would destroy our city and shake the earths’ crust. It would leave BRC in a giant mud pit of collapsed tents and destroyed bad art projects. If you have enough tequila you can build on that and laugh for an entire evening. Burning Man projects that never got made. I can’t believe I’m writing this. Lost Vegas, Pedal Camp, the Ice Sculpture, giant dominos ’99 and countless others could have gone the way of the do-do or the stock puppets had it not been for some small thing to kick start the project. But Jim Mason got me fair and square with the 9/16th project, and so I’m NOT going to talk about how I saved his ASS on every one of the monstrously stupid projects he designs. No, I’m gonna let it go. Because I already won. I met Jim at Burning Man ’96 and after the event, there were very few of us left out there. Me and Jim took a truck ride back to SF together to get some stuff back home, and I would drive back to Black Rock alone. The truck was a giant piece of shit that got like 2 miles per gallon and broke down every 8 feet. I drove that truck back and forth to Black Rock 9 times that year. 40 miles per hour. Empty. On the drive, I learned that Jim had a Stanford education. We discussed philosophy and life. And of course mechanics. We are both gear heads. While discussing the radius of a cam and how is interacts with a distributor stem, I insisted on calling the teeth on the stem bing-edy-bing-bings. Or something. He was trying to understand what I was asking him. I wanted to know if when the cam went around what touched the stem, the lobes or the bing-edy-bing-bings. He said “The bing-edy-bing-bings.” The remainder of the 14 hours drive was me teasing him like a 4 year old; “I made you say bingedybingbing!” I got someone with a $140,000 Stanford education to say bingetybingbing. Jim, you will never get me to say bing-edy-bing-bing. And I don’t ever think that a project that I would want to do would ever be embraced by the BM staff. But it’s OK. In my old age I find it may be actually funner to just talk about things than actually build them in 120 degree heat. I’m getting smart. But I’ll give you one more. The one I gave Larry this year. I knew he wouldn’t do it, but I actually thought he would want it. It’s cheap and fun. I could do it for like $2500. It’s called “You can’t stop rock and roll”. Take a truck, disconnect the throttle so it only will idle. Rip the bed off and build a giant stage. Put a dry erase board as a back drop. Build onto the stage a drum set, a keyboard, a guitar on a stand that just stays there and a bass the same. Chain horns and tamberines and all that shit with microphones and a cheesy little light show. Park the truck in the middle of the playa somewhere. Put a clipboard with a recording contract on it in the glovebox. And a cigar. Hang a white suit all dry cleaned from a hook on the passengers side of the cab of the truck. A boombox with a blank tape in it on the floor next to a poloroid camera. A set of instructions on the steering wheel. A sign on the drivers side door that reads “Hey you, yea you… get in the truck…”. The truck is to be left running. Your instructions are simple: put on suit. Light cigar. Drive truck around and assemble band. Write name of band on dry erase board. Write hit song. Record hit song. Bring recording to radio station. Photograph band. Make it to gig at _________ on time. Get free booze, drugs and groupies. Break band up because of ‘personal problems’. Put photo and tape under visor before dawn. Leave truck running in relatively the same location so we may do it again the next night. It’s basicly the entire life of a rock band in like 4 hours. If people did it 7 nights it would have like almost 200 participants. 200 divided by $2,500 is twelve dollars a person. That’s how I looked at it anyway. $250 ticket price. Whaddo I know. I guess those people already paid their twelve bucks for the Dan Das Mann smoldering metal sculpture in a chain link fence thing. Or is it the nebulous concept this year? Or did they sink $50K into the elusive medium project by Michael Christian? I think that as long as the art budget is more than the port-a-shitter budget someone’s got their priorities askew. Maybe they should commission some of these artists to make art out of the shit? It’s an abundant naturally occurring resource and by product of the local landscape. We could tell everyone to eat more bran so that the shit is more congealing and maybe Pepe could make a giant yoni out of shit and flies could be buzzing all around it and it would be like a giant Hustler comic. Or better yet, the drug addict DPW douchebags could make yerts out of shit to live in while they pretend to work and volunteer and rob everyone blind and sell the stolen video cameras on eBay. No matter what happens I think that Burning Man will get along just fine without the 9/16th wrench project this year. And by the way Jim, if you were half a mechanics mother you would have chosen the ½ inch wrench. Every mechanic knows that there are only 3 9/16th bolts on a slant 6 engine. All the rest are ½. Head bolts are 11/16th. You would know that if you parked your Toyota and drove a real car manufactured in this great country you were blessed to be born in. Actually that is not true either. When one of your vehicles break, you just let them sit. You have 4 vehicles in various states of disrepair in front of your ex-girlfriends house collecting tickets, rust, dust and a woman’s scorn. It seems to me your not satisfied with being unable to complete your own projects. You need to engineer and develop impossible projects for other people to endure as well. You want others to fail in the dirt like dogs like you have been for years so you feel better. Because you can’t rise to meet my level you seek to sink me. If you had your way Jim Mason, NOONE would ever finish their project; just to make you look better. The last 5 things you did for Burning Man either didn’t bother to work at all or barley worked to 10% of their over exaggerated hype. Which is what you did here. You see, the 9/16th wrench project is just hype. It just ‘sounds’ good. Because you are one of them. Your one of the overeducated Art-fart art degree hippies that took a class on how to write a grant proposal. So that’s what you do, because that is what you were trained to do. Not many people know or remember this, but Jim Mason and Kal from the Seemen (also an art degree guy) where the first ones to receive ‘grant’ money from the Man. But to me that’s not the point. It’s not what can you do, but rather what can you do with nothing. Jim, you can’t make a project work with $40,000. How are you going to embrace the sprit of the rugged individualist and make something… ANYTHING…. Out of nothing? If I got grant money from Larry, I’d still do my project for nothing and pocket the cash, it’s the American way. Burning Man now even has an ART TEAM, to help the ARTISTS…. Why don’t they just do their own thing, all the big dollar high concept shit sucks anyway… 300,000 phone calls, 57 forms, 9,000 faxes, 2 million e-mails 20 friendships and the Nebulous Entity only burned for like 3 minutes… jeezee. But I’m complaining now, so I’ll get on with it…

Fuck you Jim. You’re a piece of shit. I am unimpressed by everything about you except the fact that you can mimic my spelling errors. I take your prank as a challenge. A trite, pathetic challenge that is hardly worthy of my time. But…

I propose a wager.

I bet you that you simply cannot come up with an idea that has no proposal that will touch each and every participant and spectator at
Burning Man 2001. No hype, no art speak dissertation selling the damn thing. Just fucking do it. Like a man. Video tape it. Then Tuesday night, Sept 11th bring your video tape to the bar and play it, I’ll play mine and we’ll let the audience decide. If you win, you get my roll-away. And all the tools in it. All the Snap-on tools. The Craftsman. The wrenches, the sockets, the drivers, the vice grips… everything. You get the toolbox I have been building for 20 years. It’s got everything. The envy of everyone I know. It’s yours if you win the bet. I’ll even deliver it. But if I win the bet, you have to make me a piece of apology art. You see, I’m sick of being right and having people apologize to me. It’s always the same; “You were right, Chicken. That was stupid of me to think that. I’m sorry.” Bla fucking Bla. Bor-ing. I am no longer accepting verbal apologies. What you did is wrong, Jim. You hacked my list and sent something that I didn’t write. If I win the bet I want an apology art piece. And this is what I want: I want an apology in 100 different languages. And I want them all done up nice, with a bit of background on each one. I want it to read like a gallery show. And I want you to install it at my bar. Mr. Art Fart language guy with your Rosetta rock. What a waste of fucking time. More bullshit that means nothing to no one. I’d like to take your Rosetta Stone and toss it through the plate glass window of your lame-ass Stanford art gallery and steal the fire extinguishers. They’re the only things worth any money.

Visit the Rosetta Project site to see Jim Masons’ art-fart hoity toity day job. Then puke forever.

So I ask you, James Matthew Mason… do we have a bet?

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