I know about a billion people are going to blog about the Lady Gaga Vs Beyoncé video, but I just have to blog about it, this video has a place in my heart. It’s not that I am a huge Lady Gaga or Beyoncé fan, in fact, I am not really a huge fan of this song, but the video is fucking amazing and for so many reasons.

Let’s start with the fact that Jonas Åkerlund directed it. He is one of the craziest music video directors of all time. Just search for him on YouTube and see what insane shit you find. I have been waiting for the Director’s Label Åkerlund DVD since the moment I heard about the Palm Picures series. Now I am almost glad they haven’t released it yet so Telephone can be on it.

More importantly, I am a big Exploitation geek.  Exploitation Cinema for the point of this conversation is characterized by cheap very specific genre pictures made in primarily the 1960’s and 70’s that “exploited” things such as sex, violence, race, popular trends etc.  Some of the more popular genre’s are Blaxploitation, Grindhouse Horror, Spaghetti Westerns, and Sexploitation films.  But the genre’s get much more specific with things like biker movies, drug trip films, and one of my favorites, Women In Prison.

There are an insane number of Women In Prison films starting with 99 Women in 1969 and continuing through out the 70’s.  The highlights of the genre are the Jack Hill films starring Pam Grier – The Big Doll House & The Big Bird Cage. (Jack Hill also directed the Greir films Cofee & Foxy Brown.  Quentin Tarantino took the name for his film Jackie Brown from Jack Hill and Foxy Brown.) And this Lady Gaga video is purely Women In Prison.  All it’s missing a shower scene and an escape scene. All the aesthetic elements are there.  On top of that it borrows from other exploitation films.  The key theme of revenge is very important to many of the female led action exploitation films of the ’70’s and the wardrobe while very Gaga, has clear influences from biker films, cheesy sci-fi films and Jack Hill’s legendary Switchblade Sisters.

Clearly you noticed the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill. This video is an homage to Quentin Tarantino’s homages. It takes elements of these exploitation films that Tarantino loves to steal from and recontextualizes them so it looks like Akerlund is stealing from QT. I mentioned that QT loves Jack Hill so much that he named a movie after him, but he also distributed Switchblade Sisters as part of his failed distribution company, Rolling Thunder Pictures. The references to some of my favorite movies, directors and genre’s makes this video in my mind an instant classic even if I could care less about the song. It’s just that good.

I do need to wrap this up quickly because I am ranting but there are two other small things in the video I should mention. One is the line that I am sure will be talked about on all the blogs – “I told you she doesn’t have a dick.” Lady Gaga quite literally shows her critics her womanhood by taking off her pants and revealing once and for all that she doesn’t have a dick.  (Unless of course they used CGI…) Finally confronting these stupid rumors in a video like this takes some balls, which clearly she doesn’t have.

And lastly, my boys from Semi Precious Weapons make a cameo playing exquisite corpses. At least Cole and Justin do.  I didn’t notice Dan or Steve.  I am continuously proud of those guys. You know you have made it when you have been killed off in a major pop video.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but it is 3am and I have been getting ready to leave town for three weeks all day today.  I think might be losing my mind a little bit. I am headed to SXSW and then to Winter Music in Miami where almost exactly 2 years ago I photographed a barely known pop singer’s birthday party. Oh right, that was Lady Gaga.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY[/youtube]

So I am doing a little bit of work for The Fashion Spot during this fashion week and last night I was on my way to cover a Patricia Fields party in Midtown. But right before I left my house I got a text from my editor there telling me I needed to get over to the John Varvatos store because Guns and Roses were doing a private set. Yeah, that’s right, Guns and Fucking Roses were playing for like 200 people in the same location that CBGB’s used to be.  Fashion Spot was on the list and I just had to go over there and drop some names.  Of course when I got there it was at max capacity and they weren’t letting anyone in. I was cold and frustrated and about to give up when I saw that the bouncers were all wearing PBR hats.  I knew that NYC PBR rep Dan James had to be inside. I hit him up and he came out and they still wouldn’t let me in.  He wasn’t sponsoring the event but he had a bunch of PBR shwag.  One of the bouncers asked him for another hat and he traded them hats in trade for letting me in.  That was a huge move. It almost makes up for him being a Jets fan.

So after an hour of waiting packed like sardines in a 120 degree clothing store Guns and Roses made the stage… Well at least Axl did, I am pretty sure none of his backing band were actually in Guns and Roses, but I didn’t really give a fuck. I met Slash at Sundance last year so I’m all good.  Guns and Roses were pretty much all I cared about in 1991.  In the late ’80s and early ’90s all I listened to was rap and metal.  And by rap I mean shit like Young MC and Run DMC and by metal I mean Poison, Motley Crew and G’n’f’n’R.  I wanted to see Guns and Roses with Metalica in ’91 so fucking badly but my mom wouldn’t let me go with all my friends.  Well, if I had told my 11 year old self that I would be two feet from Axl Rose singing Sweet Child o’ Mine I would have lost my shit.

Now, admittedly 20 years later it’s not quite the same thing.  There were 200 people there instead of 20,000, Axl has put on a few pounds and my enthusiasm for ’80s hair metal is not quite what it once was, but I was still pretty excited.  I told a girl next to me that I was going to take off after 25 minutes, but Axl fucking brought it.  I stayed for the entire set and it was nearly 2 hours long.  Brooklyn Vegan has the set list if you care.  Speaking of set lists, I escaped with Axl’s set list, so that was pretty fan boy of me.  I think it’s probably the only set list I have ever taken.

Anyway, the show was actually really great.  They played some of the new stuff that people didn’t really care about, but they played the hits and they did an AC/DC cover which was great. Axl was much more relaxed than I imagined him to be.  He was joking around the whole time.  People waited hours to see them and actually a ton of people left before he even showed up.  Because of this people were calling him “Asshole” when he got on stage.  He was joking about how he had never heard anyone rhyme Axl with Asshole.  He just took it in stride.  He was actually really hilarious. He kept smiling the whole time. He was clearly having a blast, joking about someone had stolen his shirts. He was not nearly the Asshole Rose I assumed he would be.

I have to say it must be sort of weird for him to be playing for a bunch of people who don’t really give a fuck about being there.  There were a few serious fans but most of the people were just fashion week types and people who have the pull to get into some exclusive G’n’R show.  A lot of people sang a long to the hooks on the hits, but the bouncers didn’t really have to keep any screaming fans from tearing his clothes off.  Even when they finished their set to Paradise City the crowd just sort of started filing out instead of demanding an encore.  The band had to run band on stage before the crowd left so they could finish their set. It could have been sort of awkward and embarrassing but Axl just kept going and he fucking killed it.

It was really great seeing Guns and Roses on a $5000 PA.  By the end you could barely hear the vocals. It was like they were playing in an actual punk club.  At once point Axl excitedly screamed something about playing CBGB’s.  It was sort of epic. Again, I just wanted to say, before I finally go to sleep, that despite the sound system, and the shitty crowd and the heat and the fact that he is old as hell, Axl really put on a great show and I could not have been happier to have been there.  I figured when the entire 1990s passed without me seeing my one time favorite band that I probably was not going to get the chance, but here we are a decade later and I was shooting them live from 5 feet away.

Lastly, it was insanely hot in there and I was shooting over people’s heads and I was generally a bit disappointed with the shots I got, but none the less, there are some images here that I think really capture the night. I hope you dig them because this show is something I am going to remember for a long time.

Click here to see all my pictures of Guns and Roses at the John Varvatos fashion week party.

Ps. I forgot to mention this, but I sort of have to say something about it. On the same table where Axl kept his beer, he also had a box of tissues and he kept going over there and using them between songs.  I am not sure he would have had a box of Kleenex on stage with him 20 years ago, but if he had the sniffles you have to admire his dedication.

Ps. These were posted on TMZ.

PPs. GNR Fans… these images are available as 16″x20″ archival art prints. Contact me for details.

So I posted the link to these pictures on the Village Voice a while ago so I didn’t feel a real need to get them up right away.  I have 800 photos that I took at the Semi Precious Weapons video shoot last night and I don’t have the energy to edit them right now so I am just going to throw up these pictures and call it a day.

The Adult Video News awards are basically the porn Oscars. They are held every year during January and happen at the same time as the Adult Entertainment Expo.  They tend to feature a shit load of porn stars and some minor celebs.  This year Dave Attell hosted and I got a shots of Dave Navarro and Margaret Cho.  I think Flavor Flav was there but I didn’t see him.  Anyway, the red carpet step and repeat stuff is pretty boring, both to the viewer and to the photographer, but I had a reserved spot for me and had a good time yelling at people to look at my camera.  The lone of porn stars was never ending and I took nearly 1000 photos, which was a huge mistake because I didn’t bring a back up battery.  My battery lasts over 800 shots, so I rarely bring out my back up.  So during the end of the Red Carpet my battery died and it was amazingly embarrassing. I have never really had anything like that happen to me before especially not while I was standing next to Getty and Wire Image guys. I spent the rest of the carpet trying to convince porn stars to do funny shit for the entertainment of my fellow photogs. “Show us your teeth!”  It was a good time.

 Click here to see all the pictures from the Red Carpet of the 2010 AVN Awards. Mildly NSFW.

While everyone is looking back at the last 10 years I am going to give 2009 its due.  2009 marked the first calendar year I was completely self employed and the creation of my awkwardly titled corporation: Driven By Boredom Productions LLC. It has been a good year and I have done some fun stuff. I have never been one to put too much importance in hobnobbing with celebrities or I would probably travel north of 14th street once in a while, but people seem to care about celebrity stuff so I put this gallery of some of my better paparazzi shots from the last year. I put it together when working on my makeshift event portfolio so if you checked that you have seen a bunch of these, but then again if you have been reading my site over the past year you have probably seen them anyway.

This is my last post of the decade, so check out the 2009 celebrity gallery, and I will see you in 2010.

So I am trying to book Sundance gigs this year so I made a makeshift event work portfolio. I created eventsbyigor.com two years ago to book a Sundance gig, and I finally updated it with some halfway decent photos.  I got gigs at Sundance the last two years so let’s hope we can pull it off this year too.

So this site is very hastily put together and a bunch of it is just celebrity bullshit, but I figured you guys might want to check it out anyway.  I am not sure why I picked the shots I did exactly, but it is some of my better, more commercial (as in not naked) event work.  One of these days I will redo it with an actual best of the best gallery and a design that isn’t horrible, but for the moment this will have to do.

Click here to check it out.

So I have managed to get on the press list for the WIRED store for whatever reason so I decided to check out another one of their parties.  I figured it would be good content for the Village Voice.  The event has something to do with global climate change, Kofi Annan and male models, but I am too tired to figure out how all that goes together.  Hopefully this link can explain some of it. I tend to be pretty interested in things without vowels.

Anyway, model Jamie Burke’s band Delilah played as did Theophilus London and Dan Black.  Mark Ronson supposedly DJ’d but apparently showing up two hours late for a 3 hour party was a mistake on my part.  I am actually pretty into Theo London after seeing him twice now (here’s pics from last time) and Delilah was not as bad as you would expect from a band fronted by a male model.

The publicists gave me a list of celebrities that RSVP’d several of which I know personally.  I made some inquires and found out they never actually RSVP’d but I guess convincing press to show up to your events is what publicists do. Not that I am killing myself to shoot celebs anyway, but it makes the Voice happy to get galleries like that. One celeb that did show up trumps pretty much everyone they had on their list. Abel fucking Ferrara.  If you don’t know anything about him, look him up.  He is pretty much the quintessential New Yorker and one of the least apologetic directors of all time. When he found out that the equally unapologetic Werner Herzog was remaking Bad Lieutenant he told him he could “Die in Hell”. Getting to meet him was an honor and makes taking photos reality show stars feel even more empty than it actually is.

I didn’t shoot a ton of pictures from the night because aside from showing up late I spent a lot of time watching Ease Da Man harass models, put Mishka stickers on everyone/everything and shove as many CK One samples into his pockets as humanly possible. I also spent as much time as possible flirting with a rad cocktail waitress who mildly resembled Sasha Grey (The picture of her holding olives does not do her justice, but it is really funny). All and all despite a severe lack of sleep and a mild lack of things to take photos of I had a pretty good time, and I am pretty sure everyone else did since the place was still packed at 1030 when they started kicking everyone out.

Anyway, if you want to check out the pictures from the WIRED Tck Tck Tck party click here.

I got a last second email from my editor at the Village Voice asking me to cover the WIRED Magazine Store opening.  They opened a new store in the Meat Packing district and they threw a big party with an open bar and free food.  The place was insanely packed and until it cleared out a little bit I could barely get any pictures. It was pretty crazy for a room full of tech geeks. Clearly they know how to party… I mean they got Moby to DJ…

Moby also designed an interactive mural in the store. Several other celebrities worked on the store design including a gaming area designed by Tony Hawk and a green area designed by Adrian Grenier. On top of Moby a number of celebs showed up. The biggest of them probably being Chris Noth from Sex In The City, and far more importantly, Law And Order: Criminal Intent which is one of my favorite shows.  When I saw him I meant to tap him lightly on the shoulder, but right as I went to tap him, he walked towards me and my tap became a shove. He looked at me like he wanted to punch  me, but I told him I was a big CI fan and he posed for some pictures.

Another favorite show of mine is 30 Rock and Scott Adsit who plays Pete on the show was there. I told him I had seen him at another event, but he was with his kid so I didn’t want to bother him.  He told me it was his nephew and thanked me for bothering him now. I thought that was pretty funny.

I also met musicians Gavin DeGraw and Nicole Atikins, but the one celeb everyone was most excited about was Vince Offer aka the ShamWow! guy. People were running up to him to get his picture and he made crazy face and gave thumbs up signs all night.  That guy is pretty epic. He also once punched a hooker. The really weird thing about meeting him was that the slap chop rap remix was in my head all day for some weird reason, and when I get to the party, there he is… “Hi, it’s Vince with the Slap Chop. Slap your troubles away…”

Yes indeed, slap your troubles away…

Check out all the pictures from the WIRED party here.

NYU has been good to me. I wanted to go there in high school but my parents didn’t want me to go to school for photography. They came around eventually but I never even applied. I ended up in business school at Penn State before switching my major during orientation and eventually transferring to a decent art school after two years of bullshit at PSU. Anyway, I feel like now I am finally part of the NYU family as Tisch School of the Arts keeps hiring me to shoot their parties which I am very grateful for. I shot for them the first time at Sundance when they needed a photog last minute and I happened to be there. Since then they have hired me several times with the most recent party being the biggest.  Tisch throws a huge gala every year to raise money for scholarships. The gala honored several people including Marcia Gay Harden Ron Howard and producer Brian Glazer.  They asked me to cover the reception and the dinner after the event. They had two rooms for the dinner, one for students and faculty which I covered and one for the celebrities and big donors which was covered by nightlife photog icon Patrick McMullan.  It was pretty cool working with him and I got to shoot a few celebs during the reception anyway. Tisch gave me permission to post my photos from the event on DBB which was pretty great of them.  Most of the celeb shots are below, but you can click here to see the rest of the shots from the party.

EXXXotica day two was pretty intense for me. I was on just a few hours of sleep and I had to shoot a party for Inked Magazine around noon before I even drove my ass to New Jersey. I got there and just felt miserable until about 8PM when I was ready to leave. On my way out I convinced an unnamed Burning Angel to shoot nudes in my car. I used to drive a two door GTI before I moved to NYC, but I can’t afford it so it normally lives at my parents house. But I had it for the weekend and I had this idea to set the back up like a photo booth and shoot people. It didn’t really go over as well as I would have liked, but I did shoot a few people and those pictures will be up in a day or two. (That’s why I am keeping the Burning Angel’s identity a secret for now…)

Anyway, so by the time we finish shooting it is 845 and I am ready to leave. But when I got back 2 Live Crew was playing and I was a HUGE fan of them in like 1990. I know it is weird for a ten year old to love 2 Live Crew, but I did. After they played I tried to say my good byes. After an hour of saying bye I ran into two of the dudes from Cleric who do the music for Strip for Pain. They convinced me to stay and hang out after and we spent the remainder of the show making fun of the go-go dancers.

After the show I went back to the hotel where everyone was staying. And I have no photos of any of this (I do have some video though) so you are just going to have to believe me when I tell you what happened. All the Strip for Pain guys were staying in a room together and they were completely fucking wasted. There was all sorts of drama going on because 2 Live Crew caught someone getting a blow job in a van, then they got caught fucking in a hotel room and people were pissed and um, let’s just move on. We went up to the room and my friend Doug is out of his mind. This guy just has a knack for getting kicked out of hotels. He started causing a ruckus and by the time he was done the room was absolutely trashed. I have most of that on video that I will get up one of these days. After completely fucking up the room this guy Timmy started yelling at Doug to sober up. He slapped the full beer out of Doug’s hand and stomped it sending an explosion of beer everywhere. Doug then defended himself knocking Timmy’s beer to the ground and stomping on it. By the time this was over I was soaking wet and we were out of beer.

There was an after party down stairs and we decided to try to go to it. The guys just tried to walk in which pissed off the security to no end. 2 Live Crew tried to pull us in but they wouldn’t let Doug in cause he was being belligerent. At some point while I was outside talking to the Cleric guys Doug tried to sneak in. I didn’t see this, but someone gave him a entry bracelet but he was so drunk he didn’t know what it was and when security realized what was happening he flung himself into some standing plants knocking them all over the ground. Nick from Cleric saw Doug crash into a pillar in the lobby so I ran inside to check on him. He was on his knees in front of the elevator.

We all got on and Doug laid on the ground dry heaving. We were trying to deal with him and we forgot to press the button for the 5th floor. On the 6th floor the door opened. It was a hotel security guard and what turned out to be the head of Human Recourses for the hotel. When she saw the scene she freaked out and told us we had to get him up immediately. Doug for whatever reason did not like this. Somewhere in the drunkenness of his mind he grabbed for her leg like an octopus and tried to pull her by the ankle into the elevator. I sprung into action and using all my strength I managed to pry him off her leg. I thought we were completely fucked but I managed to pick him up and hold him still. Everyone else kept their composure and we told her we would put him to bed. The HR woman got off on the 12th floor and we headed back down with the security guard as our escort. Nearly every floor between 12 and 5 someone got on. Every time the door would open Doug would scream, “IN OR OUT!?!” for some insane reason. I just held him tight. By the time we reached the 5th floor there were about 10 guys in the elevator and porn star Gina Lynn who was inching as far away from Doug as humanly possible. The security guard walked us to the room which was completely trashed and the only reason you couldn’t smell the beer all over the walls was because of all the pot smoke. Luckily the security guard was cool and just told us to keep Doug in the room. That was not a problem as he passed out immediately. This was probably not the best thing to happen to him because as soon as he passed out the permanent markers came out and five minutes later his ear was solid black, he had penises on his face and his shoes had been lit on fire. I actually have a picture of the results. I twittered about it!

After that fiasco I ended up going to the after party with the Burning Angel crew and I spent the next hour telling pretty much everyone about Doug’s adventure in the elevator, nearly laughing to tears every time I told it. The party was pretty surreal as it was a lot of porn stars getting drunk and dancing to a really weird NJ cover band. On one side of the room was Ron Jeremy and on the other was 2 Live Crew. It was pretty surreal. I even got to tell Jenna Haze the Doug story, which was cool because she is one of the only porn stars I knew of before I started hanging out with porn people. I really don’t watch that much porn and I have no idea who anyone is ever unless they have a bunch of tattoos or something.

I ended up getting home around 6 am and decided day three was out of the question. Besides I had to get up and watch the Dolphins lose again and have their quarterback get injured for the rest of the season. Fucking awesome.

Yeah that’s all I got for you today, click here to see all the pictures from Saturday at the EXXXtoica NY convention.

Oh, I almost forgot, the Long Island Lolita herself was there. I can now officially say I have met Amy Fisher. I think my life is complete. And by complete I of course mean, completely out of hand. Fuck. See you guys later.