I came up with the idea for the “B-Sides” section of my website years ago. The idea was to have a bunch of really quick posts where I could post about anything instead of sticking to the photo heavy posts on the main part of my site. I had a whole new web design where the B-Sides would have their own section of the page, but that design never happened and I haven’t posted a B-Side since 2015. 

Well recently a bunch of my friends have released new music and when I was going through my emails today I saw I had saved the emails about the music to read later, and well it’s later. I figured I would crank out this B-Side post to promote their jams. So enjoy some new tunes from my friends.

First up is new music from Nick Catchdubs featuring Nasty Nigel. I love both these guys so now you gotta listen to their song Hot Line:

Next up, my buddy Prince Terrence started a new record label with Mattie Safer called Cell Laboratories.. Terry’s first release from his new project Rare Form is out now. It’s called All Night and you should fucking listen to it:

Lastly we got some music from my friend Krystall’s new band USE (untitled social experiment). I hung out with them on the 4th of July and watched fireworks the fireworks with them in Malibu, but then I totally missed their show a few days later so I clearly have to promote their music both because it’s worth listening to and because guilt. Go listen to Face Matter and watch the video. 

Hey, it’s Friday and I don’t want to sit in front of my computer all day doing actual work so instead I am just gonna do an video post B-Side update. Seems like a reasonable thing to do right?

To start with we have another super weird music video from  my friend Philippe Grenade for The Midnight Hollow’s song Her Morning Glow. Shot on 16mm this video is sure to give you some sort of nightmare.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m1RWGgH_H0[/youtube]

Up next we have a video promo for a BBC show Almost Royal that my brother apparently edited. I haven’t quite figured out what the show is about but the promo is a hilarious train wreck of accents and makes a pretty good case against joining the EU.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH6JvUmSDMU[/youtube]

And lastly have you watched the new Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial yet? Did you know God loves juggalos? I just booked my ticket to what will be my 5th straight Gathering. The GOTJ has moved to Ohio this year! Whoop whoop, etc.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23wgbh5KPBs[/youtube]

It’s been a while since I have done a B-Side but today seemed like the perfect occasion. The idea of the B-Side blog is so that I can post smaller updates that don’t push any of my actual content to the bottom and still blog about things I want to post about that aren’t the standard photo updates I normally do.

Today I wanted to share with you this video that my Miami Dolphins fan club, DolfansNYC, put together. Featuring and edited by our friend Alex Bente it’s a mini movie about the giant tailgate we through on December 1st when the Dolphins played the Jets in New Jersey. We organized over 750 people to go to the game together and threw a huge tailgate party. We took four busses from our bar Slattery’s and rolled into Metlife Stadium super deep. I got PBR and Sailor Jerry to provide a bunch of booze and we had the whole thing catered. The thing was pretty amazing and if you are at all interested in any of this check out the video below!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGf5z-zkJ9I[/youtube]

When Teddy Blanks released his album Therapy I loved the album but I didn’t love the track Lonely Sinner. At first listen my least favorite track on the album. I generally prefer Teddy’s higher energy tracks and Lonely Sinner is kinda slow and pretty chill. I didn’t hate it, but at first it just wasn’t for me… and then something happened. Every time I listened to the song it would get stuck in my head and I would find myself singing it hours later so I started listening to it over and over again. The part where the beat drops out at the end of the song before the last hook might be my favorite bit on the whole album.

So when I heard Teddy would be filming a video for Lonely Sinner I was pretty excited. It was directed by M Blash who directed the SXSW hit The Wait.  I met and photographed him during the festival this year while he was promoting the film so I thought it was that he and Teddy would be collaborating. The video is a weird one with Teddy dancing around his apartment in drag for most of the video. He explained to Interview Magazine that the song was based on the character of a transexual pop singer a film called the Exhibitionists that Teddy did the score for. He even bleached his eyebrows for the video which really adds an amazing touch of creepy. The whole thing is pretty amazing.

Anyway, check out the video below and give it a few chances. This song is a damn hit.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/75335636[/vimeo]

One of my favorite musicians Teddy Blanks just released his album Therapy yesterday. He has been working on it for years and it’s his musical response to several emotional blows he suffered in 2010 and 2011. One of those being the death of our mutual close friend and collaborator Ross Harman. The final track on Therapy “This That And The Other” is a song dedicated to Ross which I had to listen to a half dozen times before I could get through it without crying. The track was available on the Ross Harman tribute album but it was never available digitally until now.

Therapy takes incredibly painful moments and translates them into dancey 80s influenced synth pop gems that will have you dancing and smiling if you don’t listen to carefully to the lyrics. I think the best pop music takes feelings of loss, sadness, anger and depression and turns them into catchy feel good tunes that help you deal with your own problems. I know that there have been a lot of records that have helped me through the worst times in my life. Certainly Teddy’s music helped a lot after we lost such a good friend.

For Lena Dunham friends, Teddy composed the score for her first film Tiny Furniture and this album also features “When You Come Home” which was the song featured in the Tiny Furniture trailer. The score for the film is available on Teddy’s Bandcamp for free.

I love this record Therapy and I am so glad Teddy finally put it out in the world. So check it out now and if you love it, spread the word and cough up a few dollars for the download.

PS. YouTube superstar Casey Neistat turned the second track, Famous Friends into a pretty epic music video that was actually edited by my brother. Check it out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3HmfKsy79U[/youtube]

Yesterday over on the main blog I posted pictures from the Dolfans NYC NFL draft event. Well now we have a video! I don’t expect you guys to care, but I look pretty sexy in it so I figured I had to share it with you. Plus it has Ray Finkle references and some weirdness that you might dig even if you don’t care about football… but then again probably not, so just skip this post and go back to doing cocaine or listening to Skrillex or whatever the hip kids are doing these days.

My whole life I have had depression. When I was younger it was really bad but it really hit it’s peak when I was about 20. I remember thinking how great things were going in my life. I had a girlfriend, a lot of friends and I was working a bullshit summer job but I enjoyed it. Despite this I felt overwhelming depression and when things in my life got worse my depression got worse. A break up and two break downs later I had dropped out of college and found myself on some anti-depressant meds that ended up working pretty well. I went back to college, got my degree and by the time I was 27 I was living in NYC and I had stopped taking the meds completely and had never been “happier”.

So what changed? The meds helped for a while… they at least stabilized me when I was at my worse and the move to NYC was fantastic for me. I had always wanted to live in NYC and pretty much the moment I moved here I knew it was at home. But I’ve been off meds for more than 5 years and New York’s charm has worn off a bit, but I am still “happier” than I have ever been. How did I do it? I made a conscious decision to not prioritize happiness. I decided living an interesting life was far more important than being happy. If I have depression, I am always going to be depressed so why try to fight that? I decided just to live an interesting life and if bad things happen I can just write it off as a new experience. The horrible break up I went through when I was 21 made me realize that even the worst pain fades eventually and that when bad shit happens you can to some degree move past it. Humans are very adaptive and can deal with anything. You just keep moving and everything will be fine.

I just decided that I didn’t care about happiness and that somehow made me happier. I was able to deal with depression with a realization that in the future whatever was bothering me wouldn’t make that much difference. If I get mugged tonight I might have a black eye and $100 less dollars but a year from now all that I will have is a cool story about getting mugged. I don’t let myself get upset about parking tickets and broken cell phones and the little bullshit in life because I know that in 6 months none of that shit will have any effect on my life. I go to events I hate because I know that the great photos I get will be all that remains and the lack of sleep and bullshit I had to deal with won’t make any difference in the long run.

The whole thing sounds pretty stupid and fairly reminiscent of a t-shirt worn by one of the kids on my high school wrestling team had “Pain is temporary but glory lasts forever”. The idea of just ignoring happiness and wishing away sadness is easier said than done, but it has some real scientific basis. I recently read The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. Ariely was burned severely as a teen and has spent his entire life dealing with crippling pain but he was able to deal with it and lead a reasonably happy life. Much of his book is about the adaptability of man and how no matter how good or bad things are in life they eventually average out. He talks about how people who move from a cold weather climate to a warm weather climate are much happier for a few months but eventually they get used to it. The same thing works in reverse. If you move from LA to North Dakota you might hate it for a while but you eventually get used to it.

I had this idea in my head that if you are a innately happy person you are going to be happy no matter what your situation and if you are an unhappy person, nothing material is going to make you happy. Ariely’s research seemed to back this up but it wasn’t until I saw a TED talk by Dan Gilbert about happiness did I want to blog about it.

Gilbert talks about the science of happiness and how you can trick yourself into being happy and that false happiness is just as valid as natural happiness. Humans overestimate how happy or unhappy things will make them. He talks about how a year after someone wins the lottery or becomes a paraplegic their happiness returns to where they were before their change in fortune. His argument is that you can trick yourself into being happy. My argument is that happiness is bullshit and you just shouldn’t prioritize it.

If you aren’t happy, don’t look for happiness. Look for something else that give you meaning. Ignore happiness. Lead an interesting or meaningful life and in the long run you might end up happier than you think you can be.

Ps. Sorry for this rant but this is exactly what these new DBB B-Sides are all about. It’s a place that I can blog about anything without fucking up the main page of my site.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpw-dJinzK0[/youtube]

It’s been a minute since I added a new B-Side because there have been some delays in my site redesign but since we are getting closer to the redesign I wanted to start posting more of these. B Sides are going to be a big part of this blog in the future as a way for me to post non photography related content without dragging the main photography content down to the bottom.

I wanted to post today because 95% of my friends and fans do not care about hockey and for this I hate you. Hockey is amazing and you guys are missing out. I am so glad hockey is back because football is the only other sport I actually care about and the Miami Dolphins are not in the playoffs again. The only good part about a non Dolphins playoffs is watching the New England Patriots lose. I sort of had a feeling the Pats were going to choke. I should have gone to one of those sports betting sites and put down some cash. I need the money.

Since football is dead to me I am so glad hockey is back. I thought the lockout was going to deprive me of another season of hockey and I was going to have a miserable few months before the NFL Draft, but fortunately they figured it out and we have hockey again. I was out of town for a week and I missed my Washington Capitals first three games, but I finally got to watch them play last night. Despite them losing in overtime to the hated NJ Devils it was still so great to watch hockey again and you guys should get on board because the game is god damned amazing.

Anyway, I just wrote this post as an excuse to post this video of Alexander Ovechkin who is one of my favorite hockey players and pretty much the funniest guy in sports. Enjoy.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/46119428[/vimeo]

Ahoy! My punk rock cover band Fucking Bullshit doesn’t play very often, but we are playing tonight at Hank’s Saloon in Park Slope! Not only that but we are playing for free AND it’s a Sandy relief benefit so we are accepting donations of both cash and supplies. If you have warm weather gear, food, batteries, baby supplies or anything else bring it out and come see some fun punk rock covers. PLUS there is a sideshow act (Donny Vomit) and Legs Malone is going to do some burlesque thing and that will be awesome. There is more info on Facebook but you should just come even if you have a personal vendetta with the opening act (unlikely). The show starts at 8 and we probably play at 9 but honestly I have no idea. Whatever the case it will be fun and I will be drunk and violent.. but in a good way!  Above is some video of us doing what we do.