Most of you are probably too young to remember the days when you had to watch actual slide shows of vacation photos. I remember my grandparents went on a safari in Kenya in the 80’s and I had to sit there and watch all these slides projected on the wall for what seemed like hours. I thought the elephants and giraffes were cool but when you are 7 years old it gets really tedious really quickly. Vacation photos are almost always boring but fortunately for you guys I don’t do vacations like most people.

I rarely go on vacation because my whole life is sort of a vacation but once a year, every year, three of my closest friends and I go on a fishing trip in the small town of Lewes, DE. This year was a little bit different because sadly my friend Jamie’s grandmother died and it was just three of us. We also had the fishing boat we were going to go on get canceled twice which means we had to go fishing on a pier instead of on a boat but it was fun and relaxing and I have some pretty weird friends. My friend Barry is a 6’6″ tall in shape black dude with questionable taste in style and my friend Sam is a short nerdy Jewish guy. I have known them both since I was 10 but the three of us look really weird rolling into Dairy Queen together.

After the fishing trip I spent a day in DC with my parents before heading out to LA for my girlfriend’s birthday. She wanted to go to the desert to celebrate so we spent a day in LA, four days in the desert and then I hung out for another few days in LA. When we got back to LA from the desert I did a little bit of work and photographed two naked porn chicks but mostly it was just hanging out in bed with my girlfriend and eating lots and lots of food.

It seems like your normal vacation except that my girlfriend is a porn star and we went to the Salton Sea so shit got weird. You saw the photos we took in abandoned homes in Bombay Beach but you didn’t see the photos we took on the beach or in Niland, CA. Niland is this dying city at the far northeast end of the Salton Sea. It is an amazing place on it’s own but on the outskirts of Niland there is a place called Slab City. Slab City is a free RV park that has people living there year round. It’s sort of like a giant hobo camp in the summer full of crazy people, meth addicts, hippies and outlaws. The sign on the way in claims in spray paint that it’s “The Last Free City”. There is a shoe tree and a venue/bar made out of a bunch of trailers stuck together that has live music on the weekends. I really want to spend some time there at some point in my life. It’s incredible.

Slab City is in the shadow of one of the weirdest and most amazing tourist attractions in the country. “Salvation Mountain” is an art project started by a man name Leonard Knight. He built a mountain out of sand and trash and has been painting it for decades with religious messages.  Despite my disinterest in religion I have wanted to see this thing for years and meet Mr. Knight. Unfortunately he was put into a home for dementia late last year. From what I know about him he was a very kind man and never preachy and created an amazing work of art. A twenty something guy with a beard was working on it when we got there and was very nice as well. I asked him if I could take his picture and he said “This is Slab City. You can do whatever you want.” Amazing.

So yeah, this is not your normal vacation slideshow. We did some touristy stuff like visiting Shield’s Date Garden and Pioneertown but a lot of the photos are just of her naked all over the place so you cannot complain about that. We ran into Vincent Gallo at Dana DeArmond’s place and he gave us tons of tips on the Salton Sea, we hung out with a really cute puppy and there are outtakes from two shoots with naked porn babes. So yeah, you get some pretty shots of clouds and landscapes and touristy things, but you also get naked girls, dead fish and adorable puppies. It’s a pretty fun gallery and it’s all shot on 35mm. You even get some black and white stuff.

So click here to see all my NSFW vacation photos starring two of my best friends, Kimberly Kane and a bunch of other interesting people and places.

My vacation continues on and I will be back in full swing after Labor Day but I wanted to bring you another update to hold you over until I get back. I did post a B-Side the other day about the odd coincidence that famous republicans like to star in movies with apes, but that doesn’t count as a full update.

The other day I posted a bunch of my 35mm black and white nudes, today I have for you some 35mm black and white portraits. Like I mentioned in my last post, over the last few years I have been keeping a roll of black and white film in my old Pentax and bringing it on shoots with me and such like that. I was going through a bunch of my black and white stuff and after I put all the naked girls together I put together a gallery of portraits. I don’t love all these shots but there are a lot of pictures that I think you guys will really enjoy. If nothing else these last two updates are a nice break from all the color digital party pictures and fun things you expect from Driven By Boredom. So here is a vacation from the norm while I am on my vacation.

So enjoy these mostly unpublished shots. Some of them have been on my Tumblr (which I am still updating daily even on vacation) but a lot of them have never been seen before. and I will be back on Tuesdays with some insane photos you will not want to miss.

Click here to see a big gallery of my 35mm Black and white portraits from the last two or three years.

I grew up watching WWF Wrestling Superstars in the 1980s and then again in the late ’90s I watched a little more wrestling when WCW/NWO were having a Monday night ratings war with WWF or WWE or whatever the fuck it is/was but by 2001 I was pretty much out of wrestling. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the sport and I certainly could talk wrestling with someone relatively competently. I just don’t have the same interest in it as I did as a kid.

The Insane Clown Posse has their own wrestling league called Juggalo Championship Wrestling or the JCW. They host a main event called Bloodymania at the Gathering every year (I shot Bloodymania 4) and I was tempted to photograph this years chapter but by the time Bloodymania 6 rolled around on Sunday I was pretty much over taking photos. I shot nearly 7000 shots in the 5 days I was at the Gathering so I was ready to call it quits. I had an idea that I would hang out backstage and maybe get some wrestling portraits.

I didn’t know what the rules about photographing wrestling behind the scene, I know it would be terrible etiquette to photograph the heels and the heroes next to each other and I didn’t know enough about the events of the evening to figure out who was who so I asked Upchuck the Clown, the host of the evening, what I should do.  He decided to introduce me to an old wrestler who was running the promotion who then proceeded to yell to all the wrestlers that I was from the Insane Clowns and I wanted to “make their picture” and put it on the “Psychopathic Internets”.  He also told me that when I got the photos developed I should send him 8″x10″s.  He kept calling wrestlers by their wrong names insisting, for example, that the Headbangers were called the Head Hunters. At one point in the evening I was trying to photograph a wrestler in the pitch blackness that was the back stage area and I hit something on the camera which caused the auto focus to fail so I went back in the tent to get some light. The promoter saw me there and when he realized my camera wasn’t working he accused me of not being a professional and asked me where my photography shop was. The whole thing was sort of amazing and three hours later when I was losing my mind with exhaustion I couldn’t stop laughing thinking about him. One of my fellow journalists actually started crying laughing when I told her the story. The dude was bad ass though and introduced me to some wrestlers to get some pictures.

The last thing I will say is that it’s pretty depressing seeing what wrestling has done to some of these older guys. To anyone who doesn’t think professional wrestling is a sport spend an hour back stage before a wrestling match and you will see the pounding these guys have taken over their whole careers and see what athletes these guys really are. This gallery is pretty small because I was just taking a few shots here and there but if you are a fan of wrestling of any era you will recognize a bunch of these guys.

Check out all the backstage shots from JCW’s Bloodymania 6 at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

One of the main differences between this years Gathering of the Juggalos coverage and years past is that I was actually working for the festival as their photographer. After covering it for the last two years I convinced them that it would be a good idea to have an in house guy and I was that guy. My all access pass got me backstage so I got a lot of shots that no one else had. The problem was that on the main stage the backstage is just a field with trailers in it so there is almost no light back there so every photo taken at night had to be just shot with flash with no fill light in the background or anything. I still got a lot of cool shots but they probably aren’t as nice as they could have been if we weren’t standing in pitch black darkness. Just saying…

Highlights for me were shooting the Geto Boys in clown make up with ICP, meeting Onxy and  The Pharcyde, getting to shoot George Clinton and having Bushwick Bill spray me with spray paint. Okay, that last one might not have exactly been a highlight but it was at least really weird. Anyway, there is a bunch of cool stuff in this gallery and you should check it out.

Click here to see all the backstage photos from the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

Let’s keep getting up all these live music photos from The Gathering of the Juggalos! Up next we have photos of the master of funk George Clinton, the master of P, Master P and the master of what-the-fuck-is-he-doing-on-this-bill-oh-wait-it-kinda-makes-sense Danny Brown.

George Clinton was at The Gathering of the Juggalos last year and it was awesome. He returned this year and I think it was even better. I sort of wish I shot more than just the first three songs because he has so many weird puppets and things on stage with him. It’s so weird to see a giant alien smoking a joint hanging out back stage next to Onyx. I think one of the strangest parts of seeing George Clinton at the Gathering is realizing that no one in the crowd cares about him and they are just waiting to see Dark Lotus headline. I bet 90% of the people reading this have never even heard of Dark Lotus. The whole thing is very surreal.

Click here to see all the pictures of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

You would think that Master P has enough money that he wouldn’t need to be playing the Gathering of the Juggalos but clearly he knows that juggalos are a hungry audience and playing to them is a good idea. Juggalos on the other hand were not really psyched about Master P and his No Limit soldiers. They threw more shit at him than anyone else but Master P took it like a champ. They threw so much shit back at the Juggalos including a ton of $1 bills and a hundred or so t-shirts. People seemed psyched about this but they seemed more psyched to throw bottles of water at Master P’s head.  Although he was older and fatter than I remember, Master P still brought it and had a ton of energy and the same crazy dance moves. He made all the juggalos say uhhh nah nah nah nah.

Click here to see all the photos of Master P at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

When I saw Danny Brown on the Gathering of the Juggalos I was like “What the fuck?” Here is this underground rapper on Fool’s Gold Records playing the Insane Clown Posse’s music festival. I don’t really know Danny but I still feel like he is a homie because aside from being on Fool’s Gold he tours with my dude Childish Gambino and I have photographed him opening for Das Racist and I had photos of him published in Frank 151. So it’s weird to see someone like that play the Gathering, but then I thought about it. Danny is from Detroit so you know he is really familiar with ICP. He is one of the most fucked up rappers in the game so juggalos will at least think he’s funny. Plus he is a weird ass dude and juggalos love that shit. ICP totally hyped him and he went over surprisingly well. There were a pocket of juggalos who knew every word and the ones that didn’t seemed to be really into it. Danny ended up hanging out all day and could be seen driving with ICP on golf carts all over the place. It was pretty funny.

Click here to see all the photos of Danny Brown at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

This weekend I am going to get up all 14 galleries of bands I have left from the Gathering of the Juggalos and I am going to get it done in five posts so let’s start with three of my favorite sets from the Gathering: Onyx, Three Six Mafia and The Geto Boys.

When I looked at the Gathering schedule there were two groups I HAD to see. They were The Pharcyde (who I already mentioned) and Onyx. Onyx were one of my favorite rap groups growing up and I recently have been listening to them a lot. I have this idea of starting a punk band that is co-fronted by a rapper friend of mine and I have been listening to a ton of really agressive rap like Onyx and MOP. I tweeted about how I wanted to start a punk band that sounded like Onyx and when I was talking to Sticky Fingaz he remembered the Tweet and gave me his email to send him some music. Onyx put on a fucking amazing show. This was a group that came out 20 years ago and (with the exception of MC Hammer believe it or not) most aging hip hop acts I have seen have been unfortunately mediocre. Onyx came out full force and didn’t stop. By the end they were  climbing scaffolding and when they finally did Slam the juggalos lost their shit. I came away so amazingly impressed and was talking about their set all weekend.

Click here to see all the pictures of Onyx at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Geto Boys played right before the Insane Clown Posse on Saturday night. Evidently they haven’t played together in years but they are ICP’s favorite band and I am sure they handed them a ton of cash and got them on stage. Whatever the case the Geto Boys seemed psyched to be there. Bushwick Bill was rolling around the Gathering all weekend and he and Scarface came out wearing clown make up. Scarface was even wearing a Psychopathic jersey on stage. They were fucking incredible and seeing Bushwick Bill slide around stage in real life is both amazing and a little terrifying. I got some amazing photos of them with ICP after the show which I will be posting later so look for that plus Bill tried to spray me with spray paint which was mildly surreal.

Click here to see all the photos of the Geto Boys at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Three Six Mafia were a group that I was always aware of but didn’t really start listening to until the mid-2000’s. Probably around 2004 I bought one of their CDs and I was hooked. I fuck with them so hard and they have so many god damn hits. I mean they won a fucking Oscar. You cannot, not fuck with them.  Right now the group is just DJ Paul and Juicy J who have a ton of hits in their solo careers and they played everything. I mean it was just one amazing track after another. All the security dudes in the pit were losing their shit too. It was fucking amazing. Also I did one of the less professional things in my life before their set. My friend bought a bunch of nitrous balloons right before they went on and handed me one. I felt if I was going to do drugs before any set Three Six Mafia was ideal. I actually finished the balloon off in the photo pit and was pretty much retarded for their first song and a half. Woops.

Click here for all the picture of Three Six Mafia at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

One of my favorite part of the Gathering of the Juggalos is the comedy tent. They actually get some really amazing (and sometimes awful) comedians and you get to see some great stand up sets and you get to see them react to the juggalos which is pretty funny in itself. The weirdest night of my life involved Tom Green & Gallagher at the Gathering and I met my homie Hannibal Burres there before his set. This year there were four comedians scheduled to play the Gathering. I skipped Ralphie May and Jamie Kennedy showed up three hours late so they told him to go home.

I did get a chance to see two, pretty awesome acts. The first was Cheech & Chong which seemed to be one of the most anticipated things at any Gathering I have ever been to. There were hundreds of people waiting in the comedy tent hours before they were supposed to go on. They went on late and people didn’t even care. They were just psyched to see Cheech and Chong.  Tommy came out first and they made him take hits from the biggest bong and biggest joint I have ever seen. After that Cheech came up as some hillbilly character and they switched on and off doing different characters while juggalos screamed things at them. It was a little dated but honestly hilarious and I wish I could have seen the whole set but I was off to something else.

On Saturday night I got a chance to see Bobcat Goldthwait which I was really excited about. I am a pretty big fan of both him as a comedian and him as a director. I met him on a press junket for his film World’s Greatest Dad and he seemed like a great dude and it was amazing to hear his signature voice when talking about serious things like scriptwriting. I was expecting him to be good, but not as good as he was. He delivered the best set I have seen in three years at the Gathering and everyone in the press area stayed for his whole set and the guy mixing the sound was laughing so hard he was crying. He was well researched and did a lot of great juggalo material, picked on some people in the audience and no one said shit or threw anything. At the end he put on an Insane Clown Posse shirt that Upchuck the Clown gave him. It was sort of perfect.

Check out all the pictures from comedy at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos featuring Bobcat Goldthwait and Cheech & Chong.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

The Gathering of the Juggalos lasted five days this year. That’s one extra day than last year. Based on the fact that I haven’t stopped coughing since I got back it was probably a day too long. Wednesday was the opening day and Sunday was a chill day that was over early but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday shit went all night. Each day there was an after party that started at 2AM and in at least one case didn’t end until the sun came up. The parties were held in this little tent called The Bomb House and featured a lot of sick artists and were some of the best events of the Gathering.

On Thursday night Violent J hosted his West Side party where he brought up a bunch of west coast legends to do their thing. Although I generally prefer east coast rap to the west I actually thought J’s party was the best of the three. Warren G started shit off which aside from being awesome it itself was a little blast from the recent juggalo past. At my first Gathering Warren G was actually the first artist as I saw walking into the event. I was pretty terrified so it was cool to see how far I have come in between Warren G sets. He did a Nate Dogg medley which everyone in the crowd sang a long to. They also did Nate’s verses in Regulator. It was pretty amazing. After Warren G a dude name Glasses Malone came up. He is on Cash Money and I don’t know much about him but he went over well. After that you had the Pharcyde… well actually just Booty Brown and Imani are all that’s left of the Pharcyde but I am not fucking complaining. I am a HUGE Pharcyde fan and I was sitting on the stage trying to take photos but just singing along to every word making a fool of myself. I actually caught a juggalo in the crowd video taping me losing it. Seriously the Pharcyde killed it and between them and Onyx it was the musical highlight of my trip. Lil Eazy came up to end the night. He is the son of Eazy E and opened his set doing Eazy E covers which was fucking amazing since I am the worlds biggest white kid from the suburbs Eazy E fan. Again I was singing along to every word until my friends dragged me the fuck out of there cause it was 5AM and we had an hour drive back to our cabin.

Click here to see all the pictures from Violent J’s West Side Party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

On Friday night Shaggy 2 Dope hosted his Beasts of the East party. I was pretty pumped for this because the Fat Boys were going to be there. I know most people think of the Fat Boys as this novelty act from the 80’s but I am honestly a really big fan. How many people do you know that own multiple Fat Boys’ records on CD, tape and vinyl? Unfortunately they canceled but we were still left with a pretty serious line up. In one of the more surreal moments of my life both Biz Markie and Rahzel came out together and beat boxed as a team. We are talking about (along with Doug E. Fresh) the best beat boxers in history performing together. It was awesome. After that shit got even crazier with Raekwon the Chef from the Wu Tang Clan coming out and just destroying shit. Of all three parties the crowd responded most to Raekwon and it seemed juggalos know ever word to every Wu Tang jam. Lastly former Psychopathic records artist Myzery showed up to replace The Fat Boys. Juggalos seemed psyched but I don’t know any of his stuff so I took a few pictures and bounced. The dude is from NYC though so I had to give him some respect at least. Not too many New  Yorkers at Cave In Rock.

Click here to see all the pictures from Shaggy 2 Dope’s Beast of the East party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Saturday night Twiztid hosted the Dirty Dirty Party. Now I don’t really fuck with that much dirty south shit and my friends Wolfpac were playing at the same time so I decided not to shoot much of the party. I showed up late right as Jellyroll was leaving the stage. I had met Lil Wyte earlier in the day so I shot most of his set the party was bumping and there were naked juggalette’s on stage. By Saturday everyone had lost their minds and shit was getting weird. Haystak came on so I shot a little bit of his set and then I rolled over to the Wolfpac’s show. I missed Rittz who I really wanted to see and figured I would miss Project Pat but by the time I got back at 5AM Project Pat had just taken the stage. I figured all my friends had left but they were all there and we jammed out to Project Pat doing a couple of songs that Three Six Mafia had done the night before. All my media crew was completely tore up and it ended up being some of the most fun I had the whole trip. It was daylight by the time we left and I think I ended up going to bed at 9am. Good times.

Click here to see all the pictures from Twizid’s Dirty Dirty party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos. Some shots in this set are NSFW.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

One of the highlights of my photo career is in little red boxes all over New York City right now. After close to four years of working for the web version of the Village Voice I finally got to shoot a print cover, and not just any cover, I got to shoot Lloyd Kaufman. If you don’t know, Lloyd Kaufman is the co-founder of Troma Studios the world’s longest running independent film studio in the world. Lloyd and his crew have been making and distributing some of the worst best films known to man. When I was 14 or 15 a friend who worked at a video store introduced me to the sick world of Troma and I have been hooked ever since. Lloyd Kaufman is one of my heroes and to be able to shoot him for my first Voice cover is a huge honor.

The story was written by my juggalo anthropologist partner in crime Camille Dodero. We traveled to the Gathering of the Juggalos, not once, but twice and we will be forever bonded in Faygo.  I was so psyched she brought me along on her Tromatic journey. You need to read her article on Lloyd!

When the Voice’s photo editor started talking to me about the shoot all I could think about was putting Lloyd in a tutu and having him pose as the Toxic Avenger. Toxie, as he is lovingly called, was the first Troma superhero and The Toxic Avenger was Troma’s first big hit in 1984 and pretty much the basis for everything that has come since. Toxie fights crime with a broom dressed in a tutu and luckily for me the 66 year old Lloyd was ready to take off his pants and put on the pink skirt. The issue was due to come out on July 4th and the original poster for the Toxic Avenger featured Toxie standing in front of an American flag. Troma already had a green screen set up in their office so we just remade the poster with Lloyd as Toxie. It was perfect.

I shot a ton of other photos of Lloyd as well and I was also given a tour of Troma’s Long Island City office. There is so much weird stuff in there and I got to take photos of it all.  After the photo shoot there was a casting for Troma’s newest film, a remake of their classic “Class of Nuke ’em High”. My friend Zac was actually the first person to audition and he ended up getting completely naked and vomiting fake green puke all over the place. Zac is not a skinny man and the whole thing was quite horrific in the best possible way. I decided you need to see all of these out takes so I am providing a wonderful gallery of pictures of Lloyd, the Troma offices and a naked fat man puking. Be warned it is very not safe for work.

So yeah, read Camille’s article and then click right here to see all my outtakes from the Lloyd Kaufman Village Voice shoot and my tour of Troma Studios!