I am pretty behind with posting but I think I will be pretty much caught up by Monday. I have this update today, pictures from the Village Voice Web Awards tomorrow and then absolutely crazy pictures from last night going up Monday. You need to make sure to tune in for those. Last night was nuts.

Anyway, I got hired to shoot the 2010 Tisch Gala again this year. The Gala is a big fundraiser for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. They honor famous actors, dancers, musicians and other artists who are involved in the Tisch community and there is big show involving the honorees and Tisch students. They raise money by selling tickets to the show and a dinner held after the show.

I was hired to shoot before the show as the guests arrive, backstage at the show and then one of the dinner rooms.  So my night was broken up into three separate parts.  The first part was pretty much straight party photography. I was shooting the doners and guests standing around drinking wine and getting ready to go into the show.  That’s my standard type of event.  The third part of the night was more like shooting a wedding or something. I had to go to each table and arrange everyone for a group photo. In between that stuff I got to hang out back stage…

Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg were the the biggest names in attendance and they were all just hanging out backstage with me. Unfortunately it was so dark back there that I wasn’t able to shoot any photos (I didn’t get to us my flash until the very last number), but I did get to hear some pretty funny Robin Williams conversations. I heard him do his Miss Doubtfire impression and just generally crack everyone up. He made it a point to clap for all the students as they came off stage and introduced himself to everyone. At some point we realized that I was better off in the greenroom since I couldn’t shoot backstage.  I shot Billy Crystal’s daughter Lindsay with Paul Shaffer and I shot Marcia Gay Harden with Broadway actor Isaiah Johnson. It was all pretty cool. But clearly my best shots came when I got to shoot the big three together as they were walking on stage for the final number. I also got to shoot Robin and Billy with the president of NYU John Sexton.

All and all a very cool night and I got to eat a bunch of mini deserts after I finished shooting all the tables.  Good times.

Click here to see all the photos from the 2010 Tisch Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Finally I am ready to start dropping some sweet Miami pictures on you.  Honestly my Miami trip was a bit disappointing from a productivity standpoint. I only have 6 galleries total and only 4 of them art Basel related. We have one Miami Dolphins related gallery and one half naked girl gallery as well as the parties. Many of the clubs I partied in were no cameras inside and I don’t have the hook up in Miami like I do in NYC so I sort of had to just go a long for the ride. I had some adventures though and I might have to tell you a few stories while showing you the pictures.

My first night in Miami was Wednesday. It was pre Art Basel and I got into Miami probably around 11pm. I met the girl I was staying at at Liv. Mark Ronson was DJing. She told me not to bring my camera in which was ultimately a mistake because tons of people were shooting. It was so fucking hectic in there I spent a lot of time wanting to leave so I never actually thought about going back for my camera. By the time I realized I was having fun in there it was too late and that part of the night went undocumented. What was weird about Liv is that there were so many damn people I knew there. A lot of New Yorkers in town for Basel but a lot of other Miami cats that I have run into over the years.  It ended up being a lot of fun.

After I headed over to Purdy Lounge which is pretty much a dive bar. They have a pool table and couches and that shit and it was pretty empty when I got there. But evidently that place is the normal Wednesday late night hang out spot because by 4am that place was packed and people were getting crazy. I ran and grabbed my camera but by that time it was nearly 5am and last call was ontop of us. Still I managed to meet some babes and take a few pictures which you will see below.

As we gathered outside the club to find the next party I saw Simon Rex aka Dirty Nasty outside. I met him at Sundance a few years ago and we have some mutual friends so I sort of knew who he was. All these girls were throwing themselves at him which was pretty funny to watch.  He was looking for Mark Ronson who showed up to the party late and was inside.  At some point everyone decided to go back to my boy Blu Jemz hotel room and I ended up driving Jemz, Dirty Nasty and Mark Ronson and my Miami roommate Malika to a hotel after party 5:30am.  The after party is probably best not mentioned for the interests of everyone involved but I will say that it was really funny to hear people kissing Mark Ronson’s ass who just an hour ago were talking shit about his DJ set at LIV.  I got home around 8 am. What a life we lead…

Click here to see all the (slightly too dark) pictures from my quick stop at Purdy Lounge in Miami.

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.

This weekend I was out of town at Exxxotica NJ a porn convention held in Edison, New Jersey (and sponsored by DBB friends Hotmovies.com). Porn conventions are always a strange thing to shoot. I look for weird fans, half naked girls and semi-famous people. There is always a good mix of that so it’s pretty easy to get good shots.  On the other hand after doing a few of these it gets a little boring, but one thing I like about shooting porn conventions is seeing my porn friends who I only get to see a few times a year. There really are a lot of people I only see at conventions and as weird of a community as porn is, there are a ton of awesome people I am excited to see and hang out with.

This years convention got off to a really shitty start however. When I got there I found out that Burning Angel model and good friend of mine Jessie Lee got badly hurt in a car accident.  My other friend Joanna Angel was driving but both her and (BA employee) Jojo were fine. Jessie Lee wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Jessie broke her neck and has been in the hospital since friday. She is in stable condition and as far as I know she will ultimately be fine, but she has more surgery ahead of her and a lot of rehab. Joanna was legally at fault in the accident and she has insurance so from what I understand her medical bills will be covered, but Jessie was in the middle of moving to LA and is not going to be able to work for a while so she needs help monetarily. Joanna and Burning Angel set up a page where you can donate to Jessie and also find out the latest information on her condition. So go to helpomgitsjessielee.com right away and donate some money and tell your friends.  Later in the week I plan on publishing photos of Jessie Lee that I posted on here to hopefully draw some more attention to her cause.

Because of all this shitty news I didn’t take very many pictures on the first day of the convention. I was exhausted on day two of the convention so I didn’t really do a whole lot then either, but still there are a lot of really epic photos and I shot the entire show without using my flash once.  I have two more galleries coming today and tomorrow from Exxxotica including shots from the after party on Saturday and shots from the legendary Strip For Pain.

I wanted to give a big shout out to Andy San Dimas who let me crash with her the whole time I was in NJ.  I was expecting to sleep on a floor or have to drive back to NYC but instead I got to stay for free in a nice comfy bed with for my money one of the hottest porn stars in the world. She even bought me room service. What a fucking rad girl.

Also additional shout outs to the Bombshell Brats crew, Ellen Stagg and Steve Prue. Fellow naked lady photographers who I am always super happy to see…

Finally, these photos are obviously NSFW and full of awesomeness so you should click here to see all the shots of Exxxotica NJ at the New Jersey Convention Center in Edison, NJ.

First of all, can we make a decision about the word afterparty? Is it one word or two? This drives me crazy.  I typed after party as two words three different times in my last post and now I get to this post and look up the flyer for the Gorillaz thing and they have it as one word. Spell check tells me that it’s two words, but I have never been one to use spell check… I just need to make a choice and stick to it.

Moving on… Friday night after Semi Precious Weapons at Iriving Plaza I headed over to Spin New York, which is a Ping Pong spot that The Fader turned into an after party for the Gorillaz Madison Square Garden’s show.  They are in town promoting their newish album Plastic Beach. When I got there the party was a total clusterfuck of people trying to get in and evidently I wasn’t on the list.  I was shooting it for the Voice, but when they confirmed the PR woman never got back to them, and I never got back to the Voice so they didn’t follow up and the whole thing got forgotten about and when I got there I got yelled at by reasonably helpful bouncers who were totally fucking stressed out. Luckily Cornerstone was doing the PR for it and my boy Nick the Duke works there so I got him to start texting people and by the time I found the PR woman she had been texted by 5 different people about me. So I finally got in and she hooked me up with a VIP thing for free Red Stripe & Bushmills for my troubles. I don’t actually drink but I appreciate it anyway.  So yeah, big thanks to Nick and Sonia from Cornerstone.

Anyway, the party was very cool and really hard to shoot.  I am still not used to my new camera and I really need a mid zoom, but I gotta stop bitching about that already.  Even though the party had a big line outside they kept it intimate which made it actually possible to play ping pong and pretty much everyone was.  I didn’t get a chance to play myself, but everyone else was having a ton of fun. Wally Green is a pro ping pong player I met at an equally hard to shoot ping pong related event a few years ago and he was MCing and playing pong.  Rezoud DJd and I heard Juda Friedlander was playing people before I got there.  He was actually walking out when I was walking in.  The Gorillaz guys were all there but I don’t know who was who because they don’t look like cartoons.  I think that Damon Albarn from the Gorillaz was actually playing ping pong with his Blur guitarist Graham Coxon at some point but I am not %100 sure on that.  All I know is someone told me not to take photos of it when it was happening. I took a couple anyway on the sly but they sucked.  I was also not allowed to shoot in the VIP room which I respected. All and all it was sort of hectic but it was a very cool event and I am pretty sure everyone had an awesome time.

Click here to check out all the photos from the Official Gorillaz Afterparty at Spin New York.

UPDATE: Read the comments for some info on who is who….

I am running later than I wanted tonight but I am staying in just to bring you the 4th to last update from the Gathering of the Juggalos.  Three posts tomorrow and we are done. Juggalo Week over.

Tonight I have for you some crazy shit called Bloodymania 4. Bloodymania is a series of DVD’s produced by the Insane Clown Possee’s own wrestling league Juggalo Championship Wrestling. I mean you know you are legit when you have your own wrestling federation. Not even U2 has that!

The JCW is an offshoot of ICP’s fascination with wrestling. They briefly wrestled in the WWF as both a tag team and with a group called the oddities. They seemed to have a lot of fans at the matches, but they were quickly cast aside by the WWF. After that they decided to form their own league and it seems to be fairly successful. They were able to get some big names out to their events all week and Bloodymania was no exception.

I am not going to tell you who won and lost… I mean I don’t want to ruin the DVD for you, but I will tell you that this thing did exist and there were fucking bugs everywhere. I got bit by so many fucking bugs it was insane. People also threw shit at the ring and some of those things hit me. Also a large fat man with his face painted like the wrestler Sting threw water at my camera and called me a faggot. The people around him gave him shit which was nice, but I still wish AIDS on him. Hopefully those AIDS will come via some sort of blood transfusion mishap because I am pretty sure he will never have sex with anyone.

So where was I? Right Bloodymania. This thing featured guest appearances by Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Different Strokes Todd Bridges, Terry Funk and Butterbean! None of them really did anything, but it was cool to see them all out anyway. Booker T and Psycho Sid put in some real work too. That was pretty bad ass. One of my favorite wrestlers in the brief period in high school when I had a fascination with wrestling was the Road Dogg Jesse James. He was part of The New Age Outlaws and Degeneration X and was part of the reason why everyone was telling everyone to Suck It in the late 90’s. He came out during one of the matches looking old and fat and wrestled terribly for about 30 seconds and then got injured and had to be helped back stage. It was pretty sad. I didn’t even get a picture of him because was in and out so quick.

The last thing I wanted to mention about this stuff is that normally when people ask me what kind of camera equipment I use I tell them that it’s not the camera you use but how you use it. Equipment doesn’t make the photographer most of the time… That being said, sports photography is one field that you really need the right equipment. I only brought two lenses with me to the Gathering and neither of them were at all appropriate for this shit. It’s pretty clear that I have my work cut out for me if I want to become a professional professional wrestling photographer.

All that said, I did get a few nice shots and I put up a ton of stuff anyway. So I think you should click right here to look at all my photos from Bloodymania 4 at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

Okay, we are finally finished with all the live band shots from the Gathering of the Juggalos. From here on out all the remaining updates are at least sort of interesting. And I know there has been an unbearable amount of Insane Clown Possee photos but you just have to make it until Wednesday and we move on to some other shit and I go back to work taking photos of hip downtown kids doing whatever they are doing.

Anyway, at the Gathering a bunch of bands played. I avoided most of the bands but I did get a chance to see a few people.  I wanted to see the Kottonmouth Kings and Hed PE because I liked them when I was 17 and I wanted to see Warren G because I feel like Regulators changed my life in some weird way. I also needed to get shots of Coolio and Vanilla Ice because, come on… it’s fucking Coolio and Vanilla Ice! And I also just happened to stumble in on Afroman and some other band I have no idea who are.  And that’s that.

I really don’t have much to say about any of the sets except that Coolio was wearing clown make up, has an ICP tatttoo and was wearing an ICP/Coolio tour T-shirt. Also Afroman stopped his set to smoke weed out of a huge bog and the song just kept playing. It might have been a bit of a Milli Vanilli moment except I am pretty sure everyone there is too high to care.

So yeah, click here to see all the other bands at the Gathering of the Juggalos!

Oh, by the way, did I mention that Vanilla Ice played “Ninja Rap” off the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II soundtrack but changed the lyrics so it was about ICP??

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

So you know the Gathering of the Juggalos has bands.  You know it has crazy drugged up juggalos. You probably even know they have helicopter rides. But did you know they have comedians? Three out of the four nights of the Gathering a 2 AM comedy event jumped off. It was hosted by a very serious man named Upchuck the Clown. The first night featured New Yorker Hannibal Buress and Ron Jeremy. The second night featured Tom Green and the third and final night featured the comedy stylings of Galagaher. Let’s get into it.

The first night of the Gathering we got in about 9pm and by around midnight we still didn’t really know where we were going or what we were doing.  We had tried to set up an interview with Hannibal Burress but the phones weren’t working so we weren’t sure what to do.  We decided we would figure out where the comedy tent was and see if he was around there. We asked a security guard where the tent was and he pulled out a map. We never got a map so after we found the comedy tent we decided to walk back to the entrance of the Gathering to try and get maps.  When we got to the gate Hannibal just happened to be standing outside. I met Hannibal a few months ago, so I reintroduced myself and my editor asked him a few questions. He still hadn’t been inside yet and we offered to walk him over to the tent since that place is labyrinth like if you don’t know your way around.  We walked around the Gathering watching him interact with juggalos which was maybe the funniest thing to happen all week. I also convinced him to buy some Faygo so he could spray it all over the crowd.. which he did.  His set was great. I was worried he was going to get Tila Tequillaed but he held his own and he got a “Fam-i-ly” chant out of the Juggalos. The whole thing was pretty amazing and a great start to the Gathering.  Also when we asked him how he got this gig he told us that he has the same booker as Rob Schneider and when he turned the gig down Hannibal got it. I still have no idea if he was kidding or not.

After Hannibal Ron Jeremy did his thing. I run into Ron Jeremy all the time at the porn convention bullshit I shoot.  We have been to the same parties and once I ran into him at Lit Lounge of all places. He works for Hotmovies and I tend to shoot a lot of their stuff. He always seems super creepy, even for porn standards and he has never been even the slightest bit friendly to me. He seemed to be in a better mood than normal at the Gathering and was borderline charming with people so I decided maybe I should bury the hatchet and try to talk to him. I said “Ron, I have shot so many events you have done, its crazy that I always run into you.”  He just looked at me blankly and said sarcastically “Oh yeah, we are really bonding.”  I don’t really know what his deal is but I did see him invite an extremely ugly girl back to his trailer. She told me she would totally fuck him. Anyway, his comedy wasn’t very funny. A lot of it was one liners I heard him tell over and over again. That being said, he was actually pretty good at telling them. He has good delivery and he pulled out dozens of them while doing question and answers. I don’t even know what else to say so I will leave it at that.

Tom Green did his thing on the second night and was unfortunately the only comedian I missed which is ironic because he is the one I wanted to see the most. I sort of covered this in the Tila Tequila post but I will give you a quick break down.  Tom and I have a mutual friend who helped us set up an interview with him. Unfortunately the lack of phone thing screwed that up. Add to that the fact that his plane got delayed and we would have never had a chance.  We decided to meet him at the comedy tent and try to set something up. When Tom got there I introduced myself and he had been excited to do the interview so we set it up for after his set. His set was an hour and he was already 45 minutes late so I figured that Tila Tequila who was scheduled at the same time would be over well before his set was but clearly that didn’t happen. Tom showed up at Tila’s set and we got to escape the mobs of Juggalos with him but we never got to do the interview. It was certainly a weird experience with one of my favorite comedians.

The last comedian on the list was Gallagher. I had a run in with him the night before and he seemed a bit off but mostly friendly. I had seen him still out, fucked up out of his mind at 8 am so I was excited to see what state he would be in during his stand up. He also did not have the best things to say about juggalos in out conversation with him so I was wondering how this all would go. I also knew he was very conservative and he did not disappoint when he opened with a joke about Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer. He spent a while telling pretty unfunny racist and homophobic jokes which the juggalos seemed to enjoy despite the fact that ICP has about 50 songs about killing bigots.  As awful as that was Gallagher still had moments that I just couldn’t help but laugh at. My dad was a huge Gallagher fan so I grew up on this guy and a few of his jokes had me almost in tears. Still the whole thing was just foreplay for the Sledge-o-matic act everyone knows and loves and came for.  Unlike most Gallagher audiences who cover themselves up with plastic sheets, the juggalos awaited food being smashed on them with open arms. Gallagher has his food smashing routine down to a science and it was actually brilliant. He brought people up on stage and let them smash watermelons and played music and gave out hoola hoops and the whole thing turned into a crazy party. It was fucking awesome.

Anyway, pictures of comedians tend to be pretty boring, but there are a lot of crazy ones of Galagher. I pretty much ruined my camera shooting them so I hope you enjoy them.

Click here to see pictures of all the comedians at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

When I looked at the schedule for the Gathering of the Juggalos one of the things I was most excited about was Method Man & Redman. They went on right before the Insane Clown Posse and the place was packed with people.  All of those people were there to see ICP but most of them were also pretty fucking psyched to see the stars of How High? (I was surprised as you are that they make music too!) When they came out people went nuts started throwing plastic bottles around the crowd.  These bottles weren’t like the stuff thrown at Tila Tequila, this was just people having a good time. Maybe a few of them just wanted to see ICP, but 99% of the people throwing shit were just throwing bottles of water just to get people wet.

Unfortunately I am not sure anyone told Method Man & Redman where they were playing.  They just kept calling the crowd “Illinois” as if these people all lived in this 350 person of Cave In Rock, IL. They also seemed pretty confused why no one was clapping.  Juggalos don’t clap… When they like someone they “Woop Woop”. You can’t “Woop Woop” very loud and you can’t do it for very long so I think the guys were feeling disrespected.  When people started to throw stuff Method Man said “If you see someone throwing something, punch them in the face”.  That was probably the wrong tactic because a few seconds later he got hit in the face with a full beer can.

He grabbed his face and threw off his hat and Redman stopped the show. When Redman saw Meth was bleeding he said “He’s cut, we are cut.” and was ready to walk off stage.  Method Man on the other hand was not.  He flipped out.  He grabbed a barrel full of water and threw it on the stage. He started screaming “Who the fuck threw that!” like he was going to go into the crowd and kill them himself. It was nuts.  He refused to leave and started the next song and absolutely killed it. Everyone was so pumped up. He had this huge gash in his face but just kept going getting crazier and crazier.  At one point he got into the crowd and was rocking it.  Even security that lined the front of the stage was dancing and getting down. It was awesome.

I am still not sure that the guys got who they were playing for.  They kept repping Illinois and were upset that the crowd wasn’t louder.  When they had everyone clap in unison the crowd did not do a great job of staying with the beat. It was actually pretty funny. The juggalos sensed that the Wu were not feeling enough love so they started chanting  “Fam-i-ly, Fam-i-ly” which they do to let artists know that they have been accepted into the culture.  They also started chanting “O-D-B” giving props to the former Wu Tang member Ol’ Dirty Bastard who actually recorded a song with ICP a few years before his death. The Family chants confused Meth and Redman who asked “is this good?”  When they realized what they were saying Method Man seemed genuinely touched and he pounded his hand to his heart and said “I hope whoever threw that shit at me can hear this. We are family!”  The guys then grabbed all the bottles of water left on the stage for them and threw them into the crowd.  It ended up being really great and I felt pretty much just the opposite of the way I felt when Tila Tequila went down. That shit was just upsetting.

Anyway Method Man is suing ICP too, so I guess he didn’t deal with it quite as well as I thought, but it was still a nice end to a moment that should never have happend. Who the fuck throws a full beer can at Method Man?  Fucking savages.

Click here to see the pictures of Redman & Method Man rocking the Gathering of the Juggalos and a lot of pictures of Method Man bleeding from the face.

And then click here to read my Village Voice editor’s report with quotes that are accurate and actual audio clips from the show.

Ps. They also talked about making How High 2. They better not be fucking with me…

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.