This is post one of a series of photo posts from the Fun Fun Fun music fest in Austin Texas that was held last weekend. I was asked to cover the crazy three day party for Sailor Jerry who seemed really happy with my work at the Voodoo fest the previous weekend. They did tattoos and passed out free drinks and I documented at all but I also got to have fun fun fun at the fest and I shot a bunch of bands and a bunch fun times and a bunch of Ryan Gosling.

This first intro post is just full of the crowd shots I took that don’t fit into any specific galleries. These photos are from all over the fest but most of them were taken in the artist/media area that I spent most of my time in because I needed to stay close to the Sailor Jerry trailer. Plus most of my friends are pretentious VIP types and they don’t like to pay for drinks or venture out into public with the unwashed masses.

Also since this is the intro post of Fun Fun Fun I should mention the Ryan Gosling thing.  He was filming a Terrence Malick film called Lawless during the fest and he was there all damn weekend and then he was at all the after parties. I ran into the guy 50 times and EVERYONE was talking about it constantly. Yesterday when I was in Chicago I felt like there was a hole in my life and I didn’t know what it was… I realized that no one had mentioned Ryan Gosling to me in the last twelve hours. So in the next three galleries will be full of “RyGo” as people kept calling him (seemingly just to intentionally make my skin crawl). After that we will move into band photos and this website will once again be a Gosling free zone. So enjoy your Gosling while you have it ladies.

Anyway, I am about to get on a plane so let’s get it on.

Click here to see all the crowd shots from the 2011 Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas.

Okay, this is it. The last post of the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans and we are going to pack a lot into it. I have four galleries of images for you in this one post because I gotta start getting up Fun Fun Fun fest pics later today.  In this post we have mini galleries of Snoop and Kreayshawn and then a mixed gallery featuring live shots of Cheap Trick, Z-Trip, Star Eyes and TV on the Radio. And then finally we have all the random crowd shots I took at the festival. Those probably deserve their own post but I don’t have the time for it…

Snoop Dogg and Kreayshawn were pretty much playing at the same time at opposite ends of City Park in New Orleans. Snoop was supposed to go on a few minutes earlier than her but he ended up going on late. When he did go on his stage lights shined right into my lens and most of my shots had crazy lens flare. As much as I love Snoop I have shot him before so only shot one song and booked it down to Kreayshawn. I know a lot of my friends hate her but I really do love that Gucci Gucci song and I kinda think she is adorable. I also think that the argument that she is racist is bullshit. Whatever the case I had been wanting to shoot her for a while but I only got to shoot about 45 seconds of her set before they kicked me out of the photo pit. My photos were mediocre at best and I only got a few of them. I only got one song to shoot Cheap Trick and TV on the Radio as well and that accounts for why there is only a handful of shots from those sets.  As far as Star Eyes and Z-Trip… well shooting people DJing is just boring so I only took a few shots of them.

Lastly in this post we have the gallery of crowd shots. Most of them are shots of people drinking either out of Sailor Jerry cups, people in crazy halloween costumes or the occasional cute girl. There were a lot of great costumes but it wasn’t really my job to be taking photos of concert goers so I only shot a few photos while I was in between bands. There are also a few random back stage shots like the photos of OFWGKTA members Tyler the Creator and Left Brain.

Anyway, it’s time to put the Voodoo Music Experience to bed and move on to Fun Fun Fun so click below to check out one or all of the four galleries I have left. Thanks.

Click here to see photos of Snoop Dogg at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see photos of Kreayshawn at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see photos of Cheap Trick, TVOTR, Star Eyes and Z-Trip at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see some random crowd shots from Voodoo Music Experience.

I have been a fan of comedian/musician Dave Hill for a long time. When I first moved to NYC I was very involved in the comedy scene because some of my first friends in New York were comedians and girls who liked banging comedians.  Stand up comedy is pretty boring to photograph so I would usually just go to the shows and then go shoot parties after. I never really did much comedy photography although I always talked about it.

Over the last few months I have been wanting to do more editorial work but I don’t really have a portfolio for it so I hit up a bunch of comedian friends of mine to try to do some photo shoots. None of them happened because both comedians and I travel constantly so it was hard to find a good time. I kept trying and finally Dave and I had a chance to meet up.

I went over to his place in the West Village the other day and we just hit the streets to find something to shoot. We didn’t really have any ideas until I remembered their was a pet store near his house. He suggested we walk a bit further and see if a place called Citipups would let us take photos of Dave with their puppies. Citipups were awesome and they let Dave and I play with an adorable Westie puppy and the most awkward looking dog I have ever seen, a cross eyed Boston Terrier.

We shot a bunch of photos of the dogs in this awful mixed light that they had in the store and then we went out and hit the street for some just standard portraits.  We eventually ended up at Teen Vogue’s Fashion Night Out event which is even funnier if you knew Dave’s history when it comes to reporting on fashion week.

After you check out all the photos you need to check out Dave’s website because it is fucking hilarious.  But before you do that click here to see all my photos of comedian Dave Hill.

I met Childish Gambino aka the comedian Donald Glover at SXSW this year when the web editor of Village Voice Media was writing a story on him for the Village Voice. The Voice ended up having enough time to get Donald into a studio for the cover shoot but they had me shoot some images at SXSW just incase they weren’t able to more shots later. I met Donald again a few days later backstage at the Village Voice / Frank 151 SXSW showcase.  He and Community co-star Danny Pudi spent some time looking though my photos on my iPad before they (with me in tow) got pulled back to Wu Tang’s dressing room. I ran into Donald one other time at SXSW and since then he and I have kept in touch.

Since meeting him I have been listening to his rap EP under the name Childish Gambino and I really love it.  He was playing two shows in NYC in May, one in Manhattan on the 10th and the second in Brooklyn on the 14th. I missed the show on the 10th but I went to the after party with a few friends. He freestyled for over an hour and Questlove filled in for him on drums. It was pretty impressive.  After that he invited us back to his penthouse at the Thompson hotel for an after party. It was a pretty good time so I figured I needed to pay him back by getting my ass to his Brooklyn show and taking some pictures.

On Saturday I showed up to the Williamsburg Hall of Music with several hundred other people ready to see the IAMDONALD tour in action.  Donald came out and did 20 minutes or so of stand up and then played a video that closely resembled one of the old Derrick Comedy sketches.  The video led the audience to his live Childish Gambino performance.  He brought out a full band and did at least an hour set of hip hop jams that rocked the crowd silly.  On one song the band takes a break and a video is played of one of my favorite comedians Reggie Watts crafting a beat for Donald which he raps over live. It was pretty legit.

The whole show was being taped for something and one of my favorite moments of the night was when, before he played his encore, the lights shined on the crowd and it turned out that The Soup host and Community star Joel McHale was one of the camera man and was filming the show from the crowd. The kids all around him went nuts.  Childish came back on, and fucked the crowd up with a killer encore and then I went home and tried to get some fucking sleep.  Good times.

Click here to see all the shots from the Donald Glover/Childish Gambino IAMDONALD tour at the Williamsburg Hall of Music.

A month ago I was a pretty big fan of the TV show Community.  Today I am a pretty big fan of one of Community’s stars Donald Glover. I didn’t really know anything about Donald Glover other than he and his partner in crime on the show (Abed, played by Danny Pudi) were my favorite parts of the show, which is impressive since the show features Chevy Chase and the always hilarious Dr. turned comedians Ken Jeong.  But while I was at SXSW I was asked by the web editor of Village Voice Media if I could take some photos of Donald for a story he was doing on him.

The story was on Donald’s versatility. Not only does Donald do stand up and act, but it turns out he is actually rapper that goes by the name Childish Gambino. When I found out I was going to be shooting him I googled him and listened to a song real quick. I thought it was entertaining enough. I also found out he was one of the main guys in Derrick Comedy a web video comedy team who’s videos I am sure you have seen.

So I headed down to the Austin Music Hall a few hours before Donald was hosting MTV U Woodie Awards there. The original idea was that I was going to shoot him getting ready for the show or something but when I got there I found out that I had 15 minutes to shoot him outside.  It was super bright out and I had no location so we walked around for a bit and couldn’t find anything good. They told me that I should go find a location and that we could try to shoot again right before the show if I was willing to come back. I told them that would work but I wanted to get some shots just incase so we shot for about 3 minutes up against a fence and then up against a truck. They weren’t very inspired but I figured I would get another chance.

Unfortunately they got behind with the Woodies and I didn’t get to shoot him that day, but he showed up to the Village Voice Media music party and I ran into him back stage. He and Danny Pudi spent like 20 minutes looking at the photos on my iPad and we hung out by Wu Tang’s dressing room talked about shooting again in a few days.  Both of the guys seemed like rad dudes. Plus I got to see Childish Gambino live and he absolutely killed it. Seriously, he was amazing. I was not prepared for that.

A few days later Donald had this comedy show at SXSW and I was going to meet up with him before it. Unfortunately I didn’t get there in time to shoot again but we made plans to meet up later to shoot. Unfortunately that didn’t happen either.  Luckily he was going to be in NYC and it was looking like this article was going to be for the cover of the Village Voice and I might get to shoot it.  Again, luck was not on my side and the art director of the Voice wanted studio shots which is not what I do.  All of this was a bummer.

Now all that aside it turned out to be a good experience anyway.  First of all, Bill Jensen’s cover on Donald came out today and it is really great and they used a few of my photos. You need to read it now. Secondly, I got turned on to Childish Gambino. I understand why he goes by the pseudonym. If you hear about a comedy rapper you might think it’s a joke, but Childish is seriously awesome.  Download his free EP now. Thirdly, Donald and Danny both said they will let me shoot them in the future which should be fun, plus Donald might by a photo from me which I cannot complain about, and lastly and most importantly the shots I took came out pretty great and that is the whole point of this damn post.

Click here to see all my shots of Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino.

Well, the end of my coverage anyway.  I have finally finished all my South By Southwest posts! And just two weeks later! Luckily I have figured out a better system to deal with shit on the road so hopefully next time I go on a long trip I will be able to be updating much more on the road.  But yeah, this is pretty much the end of my SXSW photos.  In truth I have some portraits of Donald Glover and a mini photo essay on a trip to IHOP with Rocky Business but we will save those for another time. For now I just bring you everything else that didn’t fit into any of the other galleries!

As exciting as that sounds this gallery actually has some pretty cool stuff in it. It’s got celebrities and some nice natural light night time street photography and even a photo of three comedians Permanent Resident ID cards! Pretty exciting stuff. Let’s break this thing down for you a little more even. This gallery starts with a shot of Conan O’Brian in a PRB shirt and ends with a photo of Rainn Wilson jokingly giving me shit for taking his photo.  In the middle are random party photos, street shots, photos from a taping of John Oliver’s New York Stand Up Show, a lot of New Yorkers, shots of Matthew Lesco and a midget Mike Tyson at the convention center, pics from the FourSquare four square court, random pics from the IFC Crossroads House, a portrait of the writer, director and star of Attack The Block and a few photos of Community’s Danny Pudi that I just turned into a hilarious animated Gif.  Good times.

So now that you know what this gallery is all about, you need to fucking click right here to check it the fuck out.

My friend Robyn is an amazing photographer and has been a fan of Driven By Boredom since the very beginning. Well, that’s not exactly true, she probably doesn’t give a fuck about my site these days but she was a big fan 10 years ago when we first started corresponding. She was from Canada so the first time I met her was in 2006 or 2007 when she visited NYC for the first time.  I drove her to Philly to visit the Mütter Museum and I took her to an underground comedy show because she was a huge stand up fan. Amazingly one of her favorite comics David Cross was the suprise guest and she was really fucking excited.  A few short years later Robyn is one of the best photographers I know and she specializes in shooting comedians. She has had posters all over NYC so you have seen her work even if you don’t know it. (She also shot my Twitter avatar.) She even got to shoot David Cross for the Comedy Death Ray 2010 calendar.

That gets us to the point of this damn post.  Comedy Death Ray.  CDR is a comedy show held every Tuesday at the UCB theater in LA.  It features amazing comedians every week and Robyn has taken me to it a few times while I have been in LA and I have always had a blast. So when I got the press release from IFC about Comedy Death Ray doing a special South By Southwest edition at the IFC Crossroads House I knew I had to show up.

The show was held in this tiny studio inside the IFC Crossroads House which was a pretty weird thing.  The Crossroads House was a place people could go and get free pretzels and beer all throughout SXSW and they brought in bands and actors and things to do interviews or play music in the studio. They would let a very small group of press and guests into the very small studio but most people had to watch from outside the sound proof room on TV screens or through glass windows.  As a member of the press I was let inside the studio and it made for a very surreal experience watching all the people outside looking in like we were in some sort of fish bowl.  Every single comedian made a joke about it and they were all very funny.

The line up was pretty stellar. It was hosted by Scott Aukerman who created CDR. He did a bit that wasn’t exactly laugh out loud funny, but was disturbing and sort of amazing. There was a method to his madness but I think the result was better than explaining the whole thing, so all you need to know is that by the end of his bit he had a random audience member shirtless, wearing a wig, with lip gloss all over his face on the floor mooing like a cow. It was pretty nuts.

Thomas Lennon from the State and Reno 911 was up next and did a lot of gay jokes which is justified by bringing up his GLAAD Award for his role as Lt. Jim Dangle on Reno. I think they were more easily justified as just being really fucking funny. (For the record when you do a google search on Thomas Lennon as soon as you get to Thomas Len google prompts you with “Thomas Lennon gay”.) I am a huge fan of Thomas Lennon from the State days, maybe the most underrated TV show ever Viva Variety, and of course Reno 911. I even saw Taxi on a plane because he wrote it although I still don’t have the guts to sit through “The Pacifier”.

Next up was New Yorker and hilarious Russian Eugene Mirman. It was actually Eugene’s show Invite Them Up that I took Robyn too those many years ago. I met Eugene at SXSW in 2005 and kept running into him randomly up until I started attending Invite Them Up every week and my run ins with him became decidedly less random. Eugene is always hilarious and always very, very weird and his CDR SXSW performance was no exception. His best bit involved him showing off actual Facebook ads he placed for things ranging from helping you love eye contact with disabled people to blatant extortion. Good times.

Next up was Dave Foley from the motherfucking Kids In The Hall. Robyn as a Canadian was the biggest Kids In The Hall fan I have ever met and she was also a huge fan of DBB so she once stalked Mark McKinney outside of a show and got him to hold up a fan sign for me. I too being a big KITH fan was fucking psyched.  I was also fucking psyched to get to meet Dave Foley which happened not once, but twice at SXSW and on top of that I got to see him do stand up. His stand up was great but there was a short period where it seemed he had lost the croud, but he came back from it with a solid joke and then asked how much time he had left. IFC informed him he had two minutes so he proceeded to just stand on stage silently for two straight minutes. It ended up being possibly the funniest part of his act. Brilliant!

After Dave Foley came Thomas Lennon’s State and Viva Variety co-star Michael Ian Black.  “MIB” as the kids call him is most famous for doing fucking Sierra Mist commercials which is probably a travesty since he has been part of a million brilliant things. Equally tragic is his show Stella getting canceled after one season on Comedy Central. MIB also owns the distinction as the first celebrity I ever talked to via social networking as we once exchanged messages on Friendster about how exactly Stella got the dick on the fish. (The answer: a lot of fishing line.) At CDR he did a comedic monologue about sky diving with Thomas Lennon that involved vomit and his wife calling him a pussy. It was lovely.

Finally Aziz Ansari closed the night out doing almost all new material. I used to be decent friends with Aziz but I haven’t seen him since he got super famous and started hosting awards shows, stealing scenes in Judd Apatow films, and starring in maybe the funniest show on TV that’s not about the weather in Philadelphia. I actually met the guy at SXSW years ago and then he started coming out to parties I was shooting. I was pretty active in the comedy scene when I first moved to NYC and Aziz was one of the few comics who actually liked to go to hipster dance parties. He moved to LA but he is back now so hopefully he will be showing up on DBB more often. His set killed it as always but the craziest part of the whole night was when I tried to talk to him after the show. A huge crowd swarmed around him and he took photos with about, and I am not even exaggerating, 50 people. It was nuts, it was like he was a very patient Beatle getting mobbed by awkward indie rock nerds instead of screaming 15 year old girls. I got to talk to him for a few seconds but I let him get the fuck out of there before he had to pose for another 50 photos.

So yeah, there is a crazy long, oddly personal account of the show. You should click here to see all the pictures from the Comedy Death Ray SXSW show at the IFC Crossroads House.

I got a chance to cover Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear for the Village Voice… and that meant press access. I went down there with my brother and two friends and we got there more than an hour before the rally started and they couldn’t get anywhere near the stage. I on the other hand got to hang out in a press area that while still awkwardly far from the stage, was still a pretty fantastic seat to watch history.

This was an historic event. The crowds dwarfed Glenn Beck’s rally and the left’s answer to the Beck rally. People came together from every age range and every race. It was the most peaceful rally I have ever attended and back in my punk rock days living in DC I attended a lot of damn rallies. The Rally was star studded and a lot of interesting people were in the crowd but I think the most important part of the day was the message.  After all the music and the comedy Jon Stewart addressed the crowd with complete earnestness that might be the best speech I have heard since Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. If you haven’t heard it yet click here to do just that.

Anyway, the convention has been talked about ad nauseum and you can figure out who was there by checking out any national media source so I won’t bore you with the details you can find anywhere.  But I did really enjoy the Cat Stevens Vs Ozzy Osbourne Peace Train Vs Crazy Train battle.  It was really amazing to see those guys share a stage. Unfortunately the photographers were cycling to the front of the stage throughout the event so during that performance I was about 100 feet from the stage and couldn’t get the shots I wanted. That being said I got some fantastic shots throughout the event.

So without further ado, please click here to see all the pictures from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the National Mall in my home town of Washington, DC.

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.