One year ago on Thanksgiving I announced the series of food books I wanted to do. The first of them, Dinner With Igor, is about to come out! I got the book proof in the mail yesterday and after a few tiny changes it should finally go to print tomorrow! That means I will get the book by mid-December and I will be shipping books out in time for Christmas!

The only problem is that I don’t have time to plan a proper book release party. I could rush it and just throw something together (okay, I still might) but in all likelihood the release party won’t be until January. All the Kickstarter backers will get Dinner With Igor by Christmas, but no one else will and that will clearly make everyone very sad.

But in the spirit of the bullshit non-holiday that is Black Friday, I am going to offer 10 signed books for sale as a pre-order and they are also $5 off the normal price because I am a god damned saint.

So, get a pre-order copy of Dinner With Igor before they are sold out! And check out the incredibly sexy cover!

I just launched the Kickstarter for my second book, Dinner With Igor! All the info I could give you is on the Kickstarter so I am going to try to make this short. If you are a long time DBB fan you might remember the Dinner With Igor posts I was doing a while back. Part of the reason I stopped posting the galleries is because I started working on a Dinner With Igor book! It’s over 100 pages with an insane amount of photos of my friends eating.

Believe it or not but this book has no nudity in it! But it does have a ton of hot babes eating food. I tend to take models out for food after shoots since I don’t pay people unless it’s for another client. Buying them a cheeseburger is the least I can do. So yeah the book has porn stars and celebrities and stuff, but it is really about this massive collection of my friends eating. The book gets really interesting when I started plotting out spreads with four photos per page. I actually think it turned out better than I thought it would.

The book is 95% done and I hope to finish it this weekend. Teddy Blanks of CHIPS is designing it and they did my last book too so if nothing else it’s gonna be flawlessly designed. It should be in your hands within a month from when the Kickstarter ends!

I am trying to raise at least $2000 to pay for the full print run, but the Kickstarter is set to $1000 because I know I can hit that number. So please donate and tell your friends and get cool stuff like prints of Dana DeArmond and Bobbi Starr and signed 8″x10″s from Stoya & Charlotte Stokely!

Okay, enough bullshit, go to the Dinner With Igor Kickstarter now!

I have a mild problem with art books. I don’t spend a ton of money on the shit most people do. I wear the same pair of pants until they fall apart and most of my clothes I get for free anyway. I have fun and travel and get paid to do it. I don’t really drink or do drugs, I prefer fried chicken to fine dining and I haven’t moved in 8 years so my rent is surprisingly affordable. But, I have a real problem with art books.

I know whenever the Printed Matter New York Art Book Fair comes around I’m in trouble. I knew going in I was gonna spend too much money on too many books and zines so I tried to keep my budget under $250. It worked pretty well on my first day there on Friday but by the time I left Saturday I had gone over by at least $100. Fortunately, the Village Voice to asked me to photograph zine covers for them so while I didn’t exactly break even I still did okay and got a ton of amazing books and zines.

The two days at the fair were a lot of fun and I feel like I got a lot done. Aside from spending money and taking photos I met and reconnected with a bunch of publishers and hopefully I found some people I can work with in the future. Plus when my new book comes out I found a few people who seem like they will help me sell it.

As far as my book haul goes, Dead Beat Club took a bunch of my money for the second year in a row and I got a couple of insane zines from Pogo Books and traded a copy of my Route 66 book for a third zine. I got Sean Maung’s two newest zines and my friend Chelsea’s first zine. She put it out with Paper Work NYC and I hope I can do something with those guys one day. They are doing awesome stuff. Speaking of people doing awesome stuff I picked up an issue of Hamburger Eyes with a bunch of my photos in it. I didn’t even know they had been published. My favorite book at the fair was probably Harrison Freeman’s book “Food Boobs” which was a hit on my Instagram.

I got so much shit I can’t list it all, but thanks to everyone I met and all the artists I was glad I could support. Print is not dead. Keep making amazing shit and I will keep buying it!

And I hope you guys buy my amazing shit too… the Kickstarter for my new book should launch Monday or Tuesday! Be on the look out!

Now click here to see some of the zine and book covers I photographed at the New York Art Book Fair at MOMA’s PS1!

I am back from vacation! A short fishing trip with old friends bumped up against a week in LA and suddenly I was gone for two weeks and everything in my life has pilled up. But I am in NYC for the next three weeks (theoretically) and I am about to start fucking up my to do list. The #1 thing on that list? Publish some photos from my LA trip that are already a week old!

Remember when I shot Mint & Serf’s release party for their book Support, Therapy & Instability? Well they happened to have the LA release party last Tuesday when I just happened to be in LA. Hanging out with New Yorkers for the few days we were both in town was pretty much the highlight of my LA trip. What does that say?

Anyway, Good Peoples helped them throw a book release party on top of the new Ace Hotel in DTLA. Bunch of graffiti kids were there including my old buddy Shark Toof and they had one of the paintings on display. The owner of the painting showed up to the party as well which was pretty cool. The homie Blu Jemz DJ’d and I flirted with some babes and then I headed off to Nightswim. Meanwhile they got kicked out of their own party because that’s what happens when you throw a party for vandals in a fancy hotel. That’s the pppunk rock shit right there.

So click here to look at all the photos from the LA release party of Support, Therapy & Instability at the Ace Hotel and I am gonna go deal with my life real quick.

Before I get to posting the completely insane party photos from the DBB anniversary party last night let’s take a step in the opposite direction to a far more conservative event that I shot last week. On Wednesday I headed over to Salon Millesime at the Carlton Hotel to the NYC book release party for Charles A. Archer’s new book “Everybody Paddles: A CEO Strategic Guide to Building Company Consensus“.

Now I realize that covering a party for a book marketed to CEO’s isn’t exactly something that you would expect to find on Driven By Boredom, but Charles’ books are all about working together with all sorts of different people and the party was an interesting mix of characters. The party featured many of the contributors to the book ranging from doctors to CEOs to fine artists. I ended up talking to people about everything from graphic design to sports to mobile dating apps. It was a good change of pace from the madness I normally photograph. Plus as someone who works pretty much by himself all the time it was a good excuse to think more about collaboration something I am always hesitant to do.

So take a look at the photos and if they aren’t as wild as you’d like, come back tomorrow, I assure you the photos from last night will more than make up for it. Until then…

Click here to see all the shot’s from Charles A. Archer’s Everybody Paddles book release at Salon Millesime.

Infamous vandals, New York natives and corporate shills Mint & Serf released a book last night called Support, Therapy & Instability which documents the creation of several huge paintings they did with Pablo Power, Jacuzzi Chris and the Peter Pan Posse. One of the paintings was shown at the PPP art show but the rest have yet to be seen until the release of the limited edition book.

The book features essays by Carlo McCormick, Cat Marnell (who is one of the only drug addicted socialites with any actual talent) and an essay by “Peter Pan” that addresses the weird world where rich girls from the Hamptons and huge global brands want to give you money for being a fucked up graffiti artist. Interesting thoughts on how to take money from Nike the same week you are getting the shit beat out of you by some cops.

The paintings in the book straddle a similar line between being fine art and just being “a bunch of scribbles” like my mom would say.  As corporate as Mint & Serf have gone, they have always kept to their throw up graffiti style and could never be confused with the “street art” that mom appreciates. The paintings are very raw and could blend in with a lot of walls in the city. They just invited their friends over, got fucked up and covered up each other’s tags over and over again until the paintings were done. The irony is that in a few months the paintings might be hanging in the million dollar loft apartment of a guy who would probably call the cops if he saw someone getting up on his building.

It’s a weird world where graffiti is used in massive marketing campaigns and being sold in art galleries for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This book is a great place to continue the conversation about vandalism, art and commerce. You can get the book from the Mint&Serf store, and while you are there pick up the SGU #WTC issue because I have a photo in it.

Now click here to check out the pictures from the Mint & Serf Support, Therapy & Instability book release party at Neuehouse.

Bonus: For further reading check out Mickael Broth’s “Gated Community” books where he documents his 10 months in prison for graffiti and his switch to fine art career after he got out.

A few months ago I got a chance to shoot author Chuck Palahniuk for an interview in Hustler Magazine. Palahniuk is most famously the author of Fight Club but has written tons of incredible and fucked up books like Choke, Survivor and Haunted. As someone who doesn’t read much fiction I always enjoyed Palahniuk mixing of disturbing stories with massive amounts of interesting facts so you are learning things as the tales unfold.

I was pretty excited about the shoot and I don’t often get a chance to shoot celebrities that aren’t drunk or naked. The shoot was at a sex shop (Thanks Pleasure Chest!!) but I was still not sure how comfortable Mr. Palahniuk was going to be with all the sex toys behind him. The shoot started out pretty tame but at some point I got him to pick up one of the sex toys and he just started tossing it up in the air and I got some kinda amazing shots. It’s not every day that you get to take photos of a best selling author juggling dildos. I was pretty psyched.

I haven’t had a chance to read the Hustler interview yet but it’s in the February 2014 issue which is somehow in stores now! Magazine publishing is a mystery to me but go buy that shit, read the interview and look at my photos. In the mean time you can check out the outtakes below!

Click here to see a full gallery of outtakes from the Hustler interview with author Chuck Palahniuk at The Pleasure Chest!

The Village Voice usually lets me just shoot whatever the hell I want for them and usually that ends up being photos of my drunk friends at random dance parties. I like that arrangement quite a bit and the Voice seems pretty happy with the results. But once in a while they assign me something and last night they sent me to Cipriani’s for the National Book Awards after party.  Let’s just say I was a little under dressed. When I checked in on Foursquare I got a Real Housewives badge. Weird.

Anyway, the party was actually a lot of fun.  All these literary nerd types were getting down on the dance floor and everyone was getting seriously wasted on the open bar.  I actually overheard someone say “Is this really your first National Book Awards party?” That person happened to be Foster Kamer who was there reporting for the Village Voice.  He has made a career out of lambasting people as a media reporter for Gawker and the Voice and was quite the celebrity and gossip at the party. He was in his element; it was fun to watch.

I got to meet Patti Smith who won the award for the best non-fiction book for her book “Just Kids” which was pretty cool.  Tom Wolfe was at the awards but I didn’t see him at the after party which was pretty disappointing. I kept telling people I saw him on the dance floor getting loose, but I was lying. Sorry.

I would write more about the actual awards but I was just there for the after party and I am not really literate enough to have any sort of reasonable conversation about book awards. So instead you should read Foster’s epic tale of book awards and after parties by clicking here.

Then what you should do is click here to check out all the photos from the National Book Award’s after party at the Cipriani Club.

Inked Magazine editor Jason Buhrmester just published his first book, Black Dogs.  In 1973 someone stole $203,000 from the hotel Led Zeppelin was staying at during a 3 show stand in NYC.  The crime was never solved.  Buhrmester wrote a fictional account of how the money was stolen.  The party was at Angles and Kings and I covered it for Inked.  Unfortunately because of this, they stole all they good photos for print including shots of some of the New York hardcore scene celebs in attendance.  Still, there is some fun stuff here including Jason getting punched, people getting wasted on free Jack and PBR and a couple ladies getting naked with the book.  NSFW.

Click here to see all the out takes.