Childish Gambino played the Prospect Park Bandshell yesterday. It was the second of two huge outdoor NYC gigs. Monday’s show was in Central Park. Over the last year or so have become pretty good friends with Donald Glover and the whole Childish crew and they are honestly all really rad dudes. Seeing them kill it in front of such a huge crowd was really awesome. Plus I had great access to the show so I got some nice live shots and some pretty fun backstage stuff.

When I walked in fellow photographer and Donald’s right hand man Ibra Ake was trying to get the proper credentials to bring me and two other girls backstage. The three of us ended up in this little VIP area for a bit and I ended up hanging out with them most of the night. One of those girls happened to be Gabourey Sidibe who you might know from her Academy Award nominated starring role in the movie Precious. Her and her friend were rad people. Actually pretty much everyone hanging out in the Childish dressing room seemed to be good peoples. No rockstar bullshit in that crowd.

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun and I got some rad pictures. Kilo Kish and Donald’s brother Steve G. Lover came out during the encore and killed it. Evidently they had some more fun stuff planned but their set went over and they got cut short. After the dressing room got really wild with fresh pomegranate seeds and working out with medicine balls. Crazy shit.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Childish Gambino show at the Prospect Park Bandshell.

Ps. If you look closely in one of the pictures you can see Ibra & Donald working on the cover to the Royalty mix tape that drops next week. How’s that for some secret exclusive shit…

Last month I shot NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts yearly fundraiser the Tisch Gala. It’s the third time I have shot the event and it’s always a good time and always a star studded affair. This year was no different with Tisch honoring Mary Campbell’s 20 years of service to Tisch. Alec Baldwin, Martin Scorcese, Tony Kushner and others spoke about Mary and many other celebrities came too honor Dean Campbell and help the school raise money.

I shot the reception before the event and the after party and got to eat an amazing meal in between so I was pretty psyched. I unfortunately didn’t get to take Scorcese’s photo which made me cry a little inside but I did get some shots of Alec Baldwin, Bill Paxton and Tony Kushner as well as some sweet shots of Dean Campbell dancing her ass off.

Click here to see all my shots from the 2012 Tisch Gala at the Marriott Marquis.

Sunday night Comedy Central premiered Hannibal Buress’ first hour long stand up special “Hannibal Buress Animal Furnace”. Hannibal decided to throw a party at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn to celebrate the special.

The sold out party opened up with Hannibal hosting an amazing stand up show. Amy Schumer opened up and although I had never seen her before she absolutely killed it. My boy Donald Glover went on after her and did what he said was his first stand up set in like nine months. He was brilliant as always and talked a little about his role on season two of Girls.  I mention this only so I can plug my cameo on Girls next episode. I play “Mustache Guy”. Get excited. After Donald Morgan Murphy came up and I have had a fake crush on her for like the last 7 years. I saw her about a month before I moved to NYC and I’ve run into her a half dozen times since and she is always fucking hilarious. Aziz Ansari headlined the comedy show and proved why he is one of the biggest comedians to come out of the NYC downtown comedy scene. Years ago, before Aziz was on TV or hanging with Kanye I think a lot of people knew he was going to make it. He would kill it every time he hit the stage and I think he’s only gotten better and better. I was close to crying during his set.

After the comedy show Hannibal showed a documentary he made leading up the taping of his special. I was running around a little bit while they showed it but the parts I saw were funny and at times touching. The documentary is a special feature of the Animal Furnace DVD and is going to be available online.  After the documentary screened Hannibal finally played his Comedy Central special. Hannibal is one of the funniest comics in New York and Animal Furnace was fantastic. People had been standing up for hours before the special even started and everyone was glued to the screen watching and laughing their asses off.

Sunday just happened to be the premier of The Eric Andrew Show on Adult Swim as well and Hannibal is the co-host so at 12:30am he played that live. Adult Swim is known for their insane programing but the Eric Andrew show is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. It reminds me of the Tom Green Show before Tom Green was om MTV. It is filmed like a cable access show and is bizarrely funny.

Lastly the homies Ninjasonik closed out the night with a live performance. Most people there came to see comedy and had been standing up for nearly five hours and bounced before the Ninjas went on but there was still a good group of friends and fans left and they put on a great show with guest  spots from Johnny Nelson and Starcity.

Overall I cannot tell you how psyched I was that Hannibal thought of me to shoot his party. He even tipped me (he was possibly drunk) but I would have shot this show for free. Despite it being a really long night it was one of the better events I have been to this year. So go buy Hannibal’s awkwardly named special or just watch it however one might go about doing such a thing. I assure you it is funny.

Now click here to see all the pictures from Hannibal Buress’ Animal Furnace premiere party at the Knitting Factory.

I went to the 2012 NFL Draft with my crew from Dolfans NYC. I always love going to the draft because as you may have noticed all my friends are hipsters who only like sports ironically. They will act like they are a die hard Mets fan or something and then can’t name 5 players on the team. So when I get to spend two days hanging out with people who love football in the middle of the off season it gives me a chance to talk sports which I so rarely get the chance to do.

So the NFL Draft works like this. On Wednesday we all met up and got in line around 8pm. Around midnight they give you a wristband so you just spend 4 hours hanging out yelling at people about how much their team sucks more than your team. After you get your wristband you come back the next day and spend another hour in line before they let you in to the actual draft. Round one is Thursday night followed by rounds 2-3 on Friday and then rounds 4-7 on Saturday. I only watched the first round because honestly the actual draft is pretty tedious. It’s the hanging out that’s a lot of fun.

Also on the way out I ran into the Dolphins #1 draft pick Ryan Tannehill and got his autograph. As you may notice I tend to shoot a lot of famous people and the like and I would never, ever consider asking anyone for an autograph but for some reason I had to run up to a 22 year old kid who just happend to have his name called out by the dolphins to get his signature on my hat. I don’t know what it is about the Dolphins but that shit is everything to me.

Anyway, I really love a lot of these photos but as you may have noticed my site is totally fucked right now. We are fixing that next week but for now if you are having problems getting them to work I am also uploading them to the Dolfans NYC Flickr account here.

Now click here to see all the pictures I took at the 2012 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall.

Five years ago my SB-800 flash came in the mail. I had an old manual flash and my camera came with a flash but without the high tech lasers that shoot out of flashes these days it’s really hard to use auto focus in the dark. When I got the flash my photographs got a lot better and when I relaunched Driven By Boredom as the version of the site it is today I only uploaded the galleries that I photographed post SB-800.

A few months ago when Tyga was blowing up the charts with his Top 40 hit Rack City I went back to my archives to pull a photo of him that I knew I had from 2007.  When I opened that folder on my 2007 hard drive I realized that not only was it the first night that I got the flash but it was also just a really great night.  I realized that the 5th anniversary of the night was coming up and I planned to reedit the pictures and repost them today.  So let’s get into it.

Back in the day pretty much every Wednesday I would go to two events, Invite Them Up at Rififi and High Voltage at Sutra. Invite Them Up was a legendary night in downtown “alternative comedy” hosted by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. On April 25th, 2007 they were hosting a comedy auction to raise money for the show because Rififi was falling apart and they needed new lights and things. Looking back on that night it was a pretty amazing crowd with a lot of comics that were big at the time and a lot of comics who have blown up since. I remembered getting in a bidding war with now reasonably famous Nick Kroll over a theme song written by Stella member and director David Wain. I ended up losing, but I did win Jon Benjamin’s fake mustache who now has his on TV show. Jenny Slate was looking adorable that night and she went on to make a name for herself as a Saturday Night Live cast member who accidentally said fuck on the air in her very first episode. Kristen Schaal was there and I had a crush on her at the time and she went on to steal the show regularly during the two seasons of Flight of the Concords and pretty much everything else she’s been in. I had no idea who Hannibal Buress was back then and now he’s one of the funniest comics in NYC. And I still haven’t mentioned Michael Showalter, Todd Barry, Morgan Murphy, Brett Gelman, Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Jon Glaser, Seth Herzog, Joe Mande, etc, etc… It was a pretty amazing party.

After that I headed to High Voltage at Sutra which was one of my favorite parties in NYC ever. I met so many friends at that party and made out with so many girls and got so many people naked in bathrooms there. It was awesome. The party then moved to 200 Orchard where it got a little bit worse and then to Annex where it got a lot worse Dimitry finally pulled the plug on it after a few months there. I showed Dimitry these pictures recently and he told me that he had to sneak Tyga in because he was underage and he rolled to the party with Travis McCoy who was at the time in the Gym Class Heroes. I remember Travie being there but I didn’t know who he was at the time so I didn’t take his photo because he had a camera with him and I pretty much never take photos of photographers unless I know them. Looking back at these pictures there are a ton of people in there now that I didn’t know at the time but I later became good friends with (and perhaps saw naked) later.

After High Voltage I headed over to Manor for the short lived Misshapes spin off Bleach. The party got shut down because they constantly let in underage kids and I was really psyched it got shut down because the week after this they told me they would kick me out if I took any photos because the Misshapes are super serious people. Whatever, the party was a lot of fun and there are so many pictures of people here I didn’t know at all at the time and am friends with. I had just met Sophia Lamar and Raquel Reed and the band VIP was hosting and there is a pretty funny shot of Johnny Makeup wearing a Mouseketeers and holding my business card in his mouth. There are some Ruff Kids and Misshapes in this gallery and a bunch of cute girls who I may or may not have made out with at some point in the next two years. I think I might have gone home with a girl I met that night. Those were the days…

Anyway that was five years ago when I loved doing this shit and I did it for free while I was working as a bus boy at a hotel in midtown. I am old and jaded now and won’t leave my house unless you are paying me five times what I would have been psyched to make back then. But this is life: you get old, you stop enjoying partying with college kids downtown and then you die. See you all in Hell.

Click here to see the photos I took five years ago today on a really fun Wednesday night.

So it appears that my site is working again… at least a little bit. Evidently some huge website was hot linking a bunch of zombie photos of mine and just ruining my bandwidth. I just deleted all the photos. No more zombies for you bro. Anyway, we got two more Austin galleries to go and first up is the MtvU Woodie Awards.

The Woodie Awards are some sort of awards that MTVU gives out during SXSW every year. I am sure a quick google search would explain their exact premise but I am not the sort of journalist that cares about anything. Instead I will just tell you the story of how I ended up at the Woodie Awards.

When I was in Austin I ran into a flyer for the Woodie Awards. The headlining acts were Steve Aoki, Santigold and Childish Gambino. I’ve known Aoki for ages and I have been trying to shoot Santigold for a minute since we have a bunch of mutual friends. Childish aka Donald Glover I met when the Village Voice was doing a cover story on him at last years SXSW and he and I have hung out a few times since then. So when I saw the flyer I was like, this is a thing I should be at. It just so happened I had a break in my Sailor Jerry schedule during the awards so I applied for a press pass. Unfortunately Childish Gambino broke his leg and couldn’t make it, but they had Mac Miller fill in for him.

When I got to the awards I went to look for the press area but all there was was a riser that was about 100 yards away from the stage so that we could shoot the bands. I tried to go back stage with my press pass to no avail. I ran into the Wire Image guy trying to get back there too so I grabbed a press guy and talked him into letting us backstage to get some shots. They weren’t doing an official red carpet but they had a mini one set up for MTV to film on. They told the Wire guy and I that we could shoot on it. Since there were only two still photographers I asked them if instead I could pull them off the carpet so they let me do some quick portraits of people like Skrillex, Dillion Francis, Zedd and A-Trak.

I had seen Aoki backstage before I talked my way in but he was no where to be found. The Wire guy asked one of the PR people if he could get shots of Steve and she walked him over to the trailer. I went with them and the Wire guy got all in my face about it so when he came out of Steve’s trailer I got the PR person’s attention and introduced myself. Turns out we have had many exchanges over email and she let me in. I said hey to Steve and took a few shots of him and Lil Jon and the other DJ’s in there with him and then I mentioned to Lil Jon that I had photographed him at the Gathering of the Juggalos. As soon as I said that everyone in the room just looked at us like “Why the fuck were you at the Gathering of the Juggalos?”  So in what was pretty much the highlight of my SXSW trip I got to talk to Lil Jon about juggalos for like 20 minutes. Lil Jon also was hilarious congratulating Skrillex on his Grammy Awards “Welcome to the club. I only got one of ’em.”

At some point I tried to shoot Santigold but we were so far away from the stage I didn’t see the point so I just took about 10 photos and then headed back stage. I got a few more red carpet type shots of Machine Gun Kelly and Mac Miller with their awards and then I peaced the fuck out. The whole thing was a pretty fun diversion from all the branding work I did all week… now if only I could find out what the hell a Woodie Awards is…

Click here to see all my photos from backstage at the 2012 MTV Woodie Awards.

So everyone I know only cares about SXSW Music and over the last few years everyone in the tech community is raving over SXSW Interactive but as someone who has done nine South by Southwests I will tell you that by far my favorite part is SXSW Film.  I work my ass off during music week so I use the film fest as a mini vacation. I still work and cover the red carpets and things but I also get to see a bunch of movies. This year I think I saw 8 films and as with every other year they were all at least interesting if not fantastic. I also set up a few mini shoots with actors/directors from movies in the festival so I got some shots of something other than people standing on a yellow back drop.  Here are some highlights…

My favorite film of the festival was Safety Not Guaranteed. It’s a “quirky” film about a three journalists trying to do a story on a guy who posted a classified ad looking for a partner to travel back in time with him. It stars Mark Duplass and my biggest celebrity crush Aubrey Plaza. The film is absolutely hilarious, has fantastic performances from all the main rolls and ends with a bang. I got five minutes with Plaza, Duplass and Jake Johnson to do mini photo shoots which would have been awesome except about 30 seconds before I met the cast I stuck my hand in my pocket and when I pulled out a pack of gum I ripped open a cut on my hand and just started bleeding everywhere. It was really awesome meeting one of my favorite actresses with “I would shake your hand but it’s covered with blood.”

The most fucked up film of the festival was far and away was William Fridkin’s Killer Joe based of the Tracy Letts play of the same name. Matthew McConaughey stars as lawman turned hitman who has been hired by Emile Hirsch to kill his drug addicted mother so he can collect on her life insurance policy and pay back some scary people that he owes money. The also features Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon in secondary rolls that they knock out of the park. Haden Church gives a really dark film moments of much needed hilarity with his dead pan delivery. Another one of my all time celebrity crushes, Gershon is involved in one of the most fucked up scenes ever put on film which I cannot even mention without ruining it but it involves fried chicken.

The most suprizing film was 21 Jump Street.  Every year at SXSW Film there seem to be one or two big blockbusters that premiere there and you aren’t exactly sure why. Festival curator Janet Pierson defended the Hollywood film before it’s introduction as saying they just like good movies and 21 Jump Street is hilarious.  She was right. I loved 21 Jump Street as a kid so I wanted to see it but I had very low expectations but the film ended up being one of the funniest movies I have seen this year. (I know it’s only March but I watch a lot of movies…) Jonah Hill was his normal funny self but he also produced the film and brought Channing Tatum on board. Tatum was unbelievably good in it and you have to give a lot of credit to Hill for believing that Tatum could actually be funny. If you aren’t aware, the 80’s TV show 21 Jump Street was not a comedy and instead of doing a remake the movie just takes the basic premise of the show (young looking cops going undercover in high schools) and making a really funny movie at it. Unlike other TV show film remakes they only took a few shots at the original show and instead focused on making a solid comedy that didn’t feel like a remake.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the premiere of HBO’s TV show Girls. I am gonna probably get into this show a lot more soon since it is written, directed and starring my friend Lena Dunham (and I even have a line in episode 7) but I wanted to at least mention it. Lena came to SXSW two years ago with her film Tiny Furniture and I was standing a few feet away from her when it won Best Naritive Feature and I was super proud of her and knew she was going to do big things.  I had no idea that she would blow up as quickly as she did. She showed the first three episodes of her Judd Apatow produced HBO comedy and they were even better than I imagined. Two Showtime execs were sitting next to me in the crowd and even they had to begrudgingly admit that the show was going to be a hit. Just be in front of a TV April 14th and you will see what I am talking about.

So yeah, SXSW Film was fucking awesome. I saw a bunch more stuff too so I just wanted to give quick nods to Mike Birbiglia’s Sleep Walk With me and Fat Kid Rules the World. Both were fantastic films that are well worth seeking out when they are released. And I also should mention that I shot photos of the stars/directors of Sun Don’t Shine, Beauty Is Embarrassing, Compliance and Small Apartments. I did’t get a chance to see any of the films but they all looked great and I hope to get a chance to see them soon.

Now click here to see all the photos I took during the 2012 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX.

As I write this I am currently on a flight from LA to NYC on my way home from shooting the Musink tattoo convention and music festival in Orange County, CA. I was out there working for Sailor Jerry and having some fun along the way.  Sailor Jerry once again set up a trailer to tattoo bands, promote the brand and host some serious games of corn hole. Dan Smith was doing the tattoos all weekend and tattooed bands like New Found Glory, Bayside, Paramore, Against Me and a bunch of others.

I personally had a lot more fun than I expected. I am not a huge pop punk fan and was not exactly excited to see bands like Yellowcard bastardize the punk rock I hold so dear to my heart, but across the board the bands were a lot better live than I expected. Even Yellowcard put on a pretty damn good show. New Found Glory and Alkaline Trio really proved why they were the headliners of the two days of the festival I attended putting on some pretty fantastic shows. I don’t think I am gonna go home and buy their records but I was glad I got to see them do their thing.

I didn’t spend a lot of time inside the tattoo convention part of the festival as I had to stick around the Sailor Jerry airstream for the most part, but I did get to make a few rounds and saw some amazing work done.  My favorite had to be a Steve Jobs leg tattoo that I think won one of the tattoo contests. There were also an unreasonable amount of hot girls at the tattoo convention so that was a reason to venture inside to the air conditioned part of Musink.

One last thing I should mention about this festival is that Hayley Williams and Taylor York from Paramore showed up to watch Hayley’s boyfriend from New Found Glory play. I shot a couple of pictures of them and then Taylor came back and got a Sailor Jerry tattoo from Dan on Sunday.  I posted a few of those pictures on my Tumblr and it was as if the internet exploded. Evidently there are like 2000 Twitter accounts dedicated to Paramore. It is sort of insane.  So if you came here from one of these Paramore Tumblrs (Hayley herself posted one of my pics on her Tumblr) looking for more pictures you are in luck. There are a couple more pics of Hayley and a bunch more of Taylor getting tattooed.

Anyway, I am gonna get back to flying in this airplane now. I will see you guys on the ground.

Click here to see the HUGE gallery from the 5th annual Musink tattoo and music festival in Orange County, CA.

The Adult Video News Awards happens every year in Las Vegas and it honors the great performances in the adult entertainment world.  The world hold its collective breath waiting to find out who won the best double penetration scene. Okay maybe it’s not quite as main stream as the Oscars but I know a lot of people who care probably way too much about these awards and a bunch of people cry every year win or lose.

The show was hosted by Dave Attell with Bree Olson and Sunny Leone and it included an acrobatic show from Belladonna and a hip hop performance from Too $hort that was the highlight of the show. The awards were not without amazing technical difficulties that ended up making the whole thing pretty hilarious.  I had a great time plus the three major female awards were won by girls I have photographed.  My homegirl Bobbi Starr won the big prize, Female Performer of the Year.  EDM fan and twitter assassin Jessie Andrews took home Best Actress and a girl I just shot last week named Brooklyn Lee took home Best New Starlet. I was pretty happy for them all. Jessie’s movie Portrait of a Call Girl won a bunch of awards including best picture as well.

I was shooting the awards for all the Village Voice Media papers including the Voice, LA Weekly, SF Weekly, Miami New Times, Houston Press, Denver West World and a bunch of others… so you might see these shots all over the damn place. Plus I was shooing for AVN as well so they gave me full access to run around and shoot whatever I want so I got some pretty awesome shots of everyone before, during and after the show.

These photos are of course a bit NSFW and they are a lot of fun. You should check them out.

Click here to see all my shots from the 2012 AVN Awards at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.