When I saw the bill for the 4th Anniversary of Eugene Mirman’s comedy show Tearing the Veil of the Maya I knew I had to be there. When I first moved to NYC I was at underground comedy shows like Tearing the Veil two or three times a week. I hung out at comedy parties and I knew most of the down town comics.  When I saw the bill for the show at the Bell House I realized I used to hang out with every person on the line up except for the Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac who is fucking hilarious. I knew it would be a good show and a good chance to see old friends.

I had no intention of shooting the show but I happened to have my telephoto lens on me from an earlier shoot so I pulled it out and took about two photos of each comic. I wasn’t really thinking about doing a post about it but I figured I could maybe put a few shots on my Tumblr or something. It was really too dark to shoot anything. The show started out with AD Miles and Leo Allen just completely killing it. Miles told a story about how his wife busted a robber who broke into their home and Leo did a slide show that explained that dogs were funnier than cats, and vomit is funnier than diarrhea. It was joyful. Wyatt Cenac came on next and was fucking great. I had only seen him once before and I am a pretty big fan so it was great to see him get into it. But right after Wyatt finished the night took a weird turn.

A special guest was introduced. It was Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers. I was pretty excited. This guy has made a career out of doing crazy shit (plus making awesome music) and I was pretty excited to see what he would do.  He came out and did some jokes about child rape and just horrifying shit like that. And people were less horrified than they were confused. Pretty soon it was clear that him telling these jokes was the actual joke.  He then introduced himself and explained that he had been doing cover jokes, like he was a cover band and then he proceeded to do his actual set. It was pretty clear that Gibby Hanes is not a comedian, but he is a showman and as he offended more and more people with his poorly timed totally offensive jokes people actually started laughing and when he pulled out a little plastic doll leg from his bag he almost had the crowd on his side… A least until he referred to it as a “negro leg”. He said “negro leg” about 10 times before some girl in the audience yelled “stop saying negro!” and then “you aren’t funny!” He got on her case and started yelling offensive stuff at her.  The crowd reaction was mixed. It got the biggest laughs but people also started yelling shit out at him in her defense.  At some point he asked to be booed off the stage which he may have been going for to begin with, but people wouldn’t do it and so he told the crowd he had one more thing for them.  He reached in to his bag and was about to pull something out when the girl who started the whole thing jumped on stage and tried to grab the mic from him.  When Eugene Mirman ran on stage to stop her she turned to head back to her seat which is when Gibby shot her in the back of the head with the confetti cannon he was trying to pull out of his bag. He had probably meant to spray the audience, but it was perfect kismet that the the climax of his act just happened to be the perfect weapon.  The crowd was pretty much silent as he walked off stage, but as Eugene Mirman tried to calm down the crowd people started to realize what we had just seen and everyone just started uncontrollably laughing.  I was pretty much crying. The whole thing was so fucked up and so funny and so brilliant. I was almost  hoping the girl was a plant because that would have been some real Andy Kaufman shit right there… Either way it was life changing.

Eugene finally settled the crowd down and the love-of-my-life Kristen Schaal read Taint Monologues from her new Sexy Book Of Sexy Sex. She was amazing and it really got the crowd back into it immediately. Then Todd Barry performed and there are few comedians as good at just talking about what just happened as Todd.  Todd’s material is great but when he is just ranting at the audience and making shit up he is brilliant. Gibby gave him so much material and he fucking killed it. It was the perfect ending to easily one of the best comedy shows top to bottom I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of comedy shows…

Like I said I barely took any photos and most of them sucked, but I needed to tell this story and there are a few okay images of some really fucking funny people. So you should click here to see all the photos from the 4th Anniversary of Tearing The Veil Of The Maya at The Bell House.

I just wanted to give you guys a quick update today. I am shooting Ryan Keely’s How To Have Sex Like A Porn Star sex seminar all day today. We are actually on a break as we speak. So I am not really going to have time to edit or upload any of the pictures from last night. But I have been meaning to post this video for a few days now so this is a perfect time.

Three friends of mine have come together in an unholy force of nature to create one of the funniest videos I have seen in ages.  My brother edited a video shot by the ridiculous Nick Gallo starring the notorious Fat Jew.  It’s called the SkinNY and is about two babes from Orlando that move to NYC to take on the big city.  Actually I should just stop talking about it and you should just watch it. It’s fucking hilarious.

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

Here is some more madness from the NFL Draft.

While I was waiting in line I heard some chants of “Fuck Tom Brady”.  I turned to see who people were shouting at and it was some asshole holding a mic wearing a hideous Tom Bundchen Brady throwback jersey. As I began to shout obscenities at both him and the Jets fans he was talking to I realized it was none other than comedian Nick Stevens a guy who I vaguely knew years ago when I was hanging out in the NYC comedy scene.  I at once started chanting “Fuck Nick Stevens” but for some reason the chant didn’t really catch on.

Nick was interviewing people as Paul “Fitzy” Fitzgerald, an asshole Boston sports fan (ed note: redundant).  It’s pretty much a given that the only thing worse than a Philly sports fan is a Boston sports fan and Nick plays the heel well.  I mean seriously, the Patriots were garbage for thity fucking years and all of a sudden everyone in Boston acts like they are life long die hard Pats fans.  Where the fuck were you guys when Marino was embarassing all of New England touchdown by touchdown? And don’t get me fucking started on those low life Red Sox fans… Honestly I don’t give a shit about basketball but I route against the Celtics just because I know when they lose another douche bag Pats/Sox homer is crying himself to sleep somewhere north of NYC. Fuck you all.

Oh, sorry, I was on a tiny tangent.  Fitzy is actually a pretty fucking funny dude, and is well aware of the contempt the rest of NFL fans have for him and his ilk. I hope after the Caps win a few Stanley Cups I can feel the same wrath on the way to MSG to watch Ovechkin make Sean Avery cry orange and blue tears.

Shit, again, off on a tangent.  Just watch this video, it’s really funny if you like football, and if not, you can just watch me dressed up like a skinny jeans wearing jock making a fool of my self.  I show up in the background a few times, but I have speaking rolls around 2:35 and again at 3:24. Enjoy.

PS. Fuck the Bruins too.  Just sayin’.

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

Despite being hosted by the hilarious Eugene Mirman, this might be the most boring gallery I ever post on here. It’s a bunch of people you don’t know standing at a podium. That being said, SXSW Film’s theme is “Tomorrow Happens Here” and my guess is that a number of these people will be familiar faces in a few years.

One of those faces will hopefully be my friend Lena Dunham.  Her film as I mentioned before won Best Narritive Feature.  She also won the Chicken & The Egg award which honors the best emerging female director. I went with her to the after party so there are a few shots from that thrown in with the film awards photos.

You can check out the list of winners here and try to dedicate your life to figuring out who the hell is who.  Most of these pictures are of presenters.  My hatred of captioning is why I don’t work for Getty or Wired and instead run a party blog, so you are going to just have to deal with it.

I just want to give a shout out to Travis Senger and his producer who made White Lines & The Fever: The Death Of DJ Junebug. I met those dudes during the music fest and they seem like good dudes. I haven’t seen their film yet, but it’s playing at Tribeca so hopefully I’ll get a chance to see it.

And lastly, I didn’t get a chance to see many of the films that won, but nearly every film I saw at SXSW I loved.  Janet Pierson and her staff did an amazing job of curating this festival and any of the films who won awards are well worth tracking down… especially Tiny Furniture….

Click here to see some extremely boring photos of people standing at podiums accepting and giving awards!

“What is the difference between Courtney Love and a porcupine?”
“If you get pricked with a porcupine’s needle, you won’t get AIDS.”

Ahh… Neil Hamburger aka America’s Funnyman returned to NYC last night and I was there to bring you the pictures. What’s that you say? Pictures of comedians are boring? The crowd is 95% dudes? Well, fuck you. If you wanted to see the show you should have been there.

As I mentioned my friend Mike is in town and his band Daiquiri is on tour with Neil Hamburger as of today. They weren’t on the show last night, but Mike was running Neil’s merch and got me into the show. When I got there I was pleased to find that the two guys who introduced me to Neil were there already. I shot some photos of them, a few shots before the show, of the pretty hilarious opener JP Incorporated, and by the time the show was over I was a few shots away from having an actual galleries worth of images to sell to the Village Voice, which means I don’t have to go out tonight. It’s always good to get paid to shoot something I actually want to be at instead of pretty much everything else I shoot.

At the show I met Gavin McInnes who as you probably know was one of the founders of Vice. I had a super awkward conversation about how I now shoot Dos/Don’t for the magazine he referred to as his abortion. If you haven’t already you need to check out his site Street Carnage where he reclaims his Dos & Don’ts in a section called Street Boners. Honestly, he has probably made fun of half the people reading this site right now. Plus the site has ton of TV Carnage videos. I have been a TV Carnage fan for the greater part of this decade so it is good to see them online. If you have no idea what I am talking about, again, just check out the site.

I also met a music reviewer named Mark Prindle who started reviewing records online since before you realized the internet and AOL were two different things. I didn’t know who he was because I am not really into this whole “internet” thing, but some of the kids I were hanging with seemed to be more excited about seeing him than they were Neil Hamburger.

I also met a man named Greg Turkington before the show that seemed to vanish just before Mr. Hamburger went on stage. The Clark Kent like transformation that Greg makes into America’s Funnyman is impressive. Had I met him under any other circumstances I would have never guessed who he was. He walked around the club without anyone recognizing him. I didn’t take any photos of him out of uniform because frankly that would have been just wrong. After the show he was hanging out with comedian Todd Barry. I have shot Todd a bunch of times but it was still pretty funny to see them talking about hotels with Greg in the Hamburger suit but completely out of character. It was like catching a mall Santa smoking… with Todd Barry.

Afterwards I scammed free pizza off of people at Alligator Lounge and then walked home. It was a good night.  Click here to see all the photos from Neil Hamburger at Knitting Factory Brooklyn.

PS. Not sure if I mentioned this, but the show was funny. Also Neil threw a drink at the Asian guy below for heckling. Fantastic.

Now that my site is running reasonably smoothly again we can finally get the photos I took LAST Friday during the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. Yeah, we are behind, let’s get started.

Friday night’s show started with a reunion of my favorite comedy show in New York City. The show has appeared on this site before, most notably when I covered their last three shows. But when I shot their 5th year reunion was also important because it happened to be the first time I had shot nightlife photography with an on camera flash. It was sort of the starting point for me taking event work slightly seriously.

I had to see Invite Them Up get back together if only for a night. The show is hosted by Bobby Tisdale and Eugene Mirman and features a number of comics inter spliced with weird chants and bits from Bobby with Eugene taking his 10 minutes towards the end of the show. Often times there is music.

Friday Bobby was in full swing playing out his infamous mic checking bit for longer than anyone reasonably should. Bobby is not a reasonable man. Bobby lead the crowd in a number of rousing chants, although he unfortunately left out any mention of Connie Chung or Margaret Thatcher, two ladies who get a lot of play in Bobbys chanting.

Bobby brought on SNL writer John Mulaney to open the show. John sat next to me on the plane to South by Southwest this year and we had a very awkward conversation where I accidentally talked shit about several projects he worked on. I don’t mean to not like SNL I just think most of the cast is annoying, and yeah I like Dimitri Martin live more than I like his show, but John is a funny fucking guy and had me laughing his whole set.

Next up was Morgan Murphy who I saw opening for Patton Oswalt and Eugene nearly for years ago. When I moved up to NYC she was opening for Neil Hamburger at Piano’s and tried to sneak me in to the sold out show. I have sort of have had a crush on her since then from a far, but now she lives in NYC so now I am probably going to run into her on the street and not make eye contact. I have seen her a few times and she was hilarious as always. She also did a bit of prop comedy with some Jewish New Year 5770 shades which were pretty epic. She told me she had been wearing them all day.

After Morgan was John Hodgman who I have never actually seen do stand up, but I am a big fan of. Considering half his bit was about how everyone recognizes him from his TV commercial you probably know him as the PC guy from the Mac Vs PC commercials. I ran into the Mac (Justin Long) at McDonald’s the other day, so now I have my bases covered. I personally am a fan of John from his work on This American Life and Boing Boing, two of the more nerdy things I have been obsessed with in my life. His roast of Obama was also pretty outstanding. It was good to get to see him do stand up.

Next was an Invite Them Up staple called 30 seconds of stand up where a comic does EXACTY 30 seconds of generally improvised stand up. The very funny Joe Mande stepped up and did his 30 seconds on Friday. He was then followed by Eugene who brought up Larry Murphy to help him do a bit involving Daniel Day-Lewis trying to figure out how to use a Blue Ray DVD player while staying in his There Will Be Blood character. This was all followed by John Westley Harding doing a few songs for a short musical break to the comedy.

Speaking of music, up next was Reggie Watts who makes the most insane music you have ever heard using only his voice and a Line 6. He was brilliant as always, but there is nothing really to say about it. You just need to see him for your self. Your mind will be blown. Even watching him on tape does not do him justice.

The headliner of the show was former Daily Show correspondent and American hating Red Coat John Oliver. I have seen him do stand up a half dozen times and while I am always near tears in laughter, I always leave with just a little more hatred towards the British. His humor is so elitist that he has figured a perfect way to make hipsters laugh by attacking Americans as a whole which hipsters feel a sense of superiority over. So when he makes fun of American’s for being ignorant gluttons the audience some how feels he isn’t actually making fun of them. I think it is brilliant and completely hilarious and had a real sense of pride when I explained that only Americans would create a hot dog eating contest, then get beaten in it and make it a statement of national honor to win it back. And as I hope you know by now, I am a HUGE Joey Chestnut fan. USA! USA!

It was a great show and I was glad to see Invite Them Up back if even only for a night. The room was too dark though and so the photos aren’t great.  They aren’t even as good as the pictures from the day before. That being said, stand up comedy photos aren’t exactly riveting, but I hope you guys check out all of these comedians and if you get another chance to see Invite Them Up you should get on that.

I also wanted to mention that there were four people in the show named John.  I had this idea for a long time to collect autographs of famous people named John as an art project.  I think once I moved to NYC and started being around celebrities a lot more the idea of asking anyone for an autograph seems super awkward even if it’s mostly for an art project. Still, when I saw John Hodgman and John Oliver talking outside, I probably should have added them to the collection/project. There is a pretty good explanation of the John autograph idea here if you want to know what the hell I am talking about.

Anyway, let’s move on.  I need to get some sleep. I have to cover an adult convention in NJ tomorrow which I am sure will be super weird.  I have this idea of turning my car into a photo booth and trying to convince porn stars to pose in it. Not sure if that will actually happen, but it sounds really funny to me right now.  So, please click here to see all the photos from the Invite Them Up reunion and I will talk to you guys when I get back.

The Yes Men are at it again. If you don’t know about them, you should. They are left wing pranksters who protest big corporations using some highly entertaining methods. I have a history with them, as you can read here, and heard about their newest prank and asked them if I could come down and shoot some photos. Other than their people, I was the only photographer on the scene for their test launch. Tomorrow they are launching hundreds these balls at the UN to address the climate week meetings*. Today they had a test run down in DUMBO and we gathered in the sun to watch it all go down. Tons of people gathered to watch, but most of them happened to be part of the wedding that was taking place at the exact same time on the exact same mini beach. It was pretty funny. I would love to see their wedding pictures.

Anyway, this is going to be an exciting week for hilarious radical activism so keep your eyes open, read the papers and check back here. I should have some interesting photos if I manage not to sleep through them.

Lastly, my gallery software is giving me fits right now so I uploaded the shots to Flickr. Hopefully they will be up on DBB soon. Click here to see all the pictures.

*hundreds may be a slight exaggeration.

Update: The picture link now goes to my site and not Flickr.

I met Eugene Mirman for the first time at South By Southwest in 2004. My friend Ross recognized him and struck up a conversation.  I had no idea who he was and little did I know that a few years later I would become a regular at his weekly comedy show Invite Them Up.  When Rififi closed down so did the show and I started going to less and less comedy, but when I saw Eugene was hosting his own comedy festival I knew I had to make and appearance.  The opening night was Thursday and they had a big pig roast which I missed.  I did get to eat some pulled pork at the end, but by then they had run out of plates and forks so I was eating it with my hands off a napkin. At the show I saw a lot of old friends and got to hang out in the card board VIP space ship that Eugene built and had guarded by a bouncer. Since anyone could go into the VIP fort, it was pretty clear that the crowd was nothing but A-listers.

Eugene opened the show followed by one of my favorite comics on earth Pete Holmes.  He was great as always and even though he did the shortest set of the night, his 12 minutes were probably the longest I have ever seen him do.  After Pete one of the great the loves of my life, Kristen Schaal, did an amazing three part bit full of dancing, magic and my favorite childhood game MASH. After pulling him up on stage it was determined that he was going to live in an outhouse with 57 kids, be married to Kristen and drive a convertible Boogermobile (Not that they even make Boogermobiles in hard top). After that Eugene joined her on stage to preform a hilarious play with an audience member.  That audience member immediately got on Eugene’s nerve and the got in a fight on stage that may have been every bit as funny as the bit. You can see in the pictures below her glaring at Eugene in genuine anger.  Fun times!

Up next was Jon Benjamin who did 5 minutes of toilet plunger material before bringing out Larry Murphy (a fan of DBB) doing a character of a Brooklyn cab driver who has directed a movie about his life as a CIA Black Ops operative/ cab driver.  This was followed up with questions from the audience which pretty much consisted of Jon mocking a British guys accent for 10 minutes. At that point Posies front man Jon Auer gave the crowd a short musical break which was not without humor as he asked a girl in the front row to take a picture of him on stage so he could prove to his mom that he did a show with Eugene Mirman.  I found out later that he was a fan of my site after stumbling on it after seeing naked pictures I took of Misti Dawn.  Finally to end the night famed British stutterer Daniel Kitson came out and did 45 minutes. He probably had about 10 minutes planned, but he couldn’t quite get all the words out.  In all honesty he was hilarious.  I was nearly crying at parts, but he called me out for taking photos and said that all photographers were pedophiles, so I had to shit on him a little bit.  Funny guy though, despite his handicap… being British.

Overall it was a great night and probably the longest comedy show I have ever seen.  Luckily I got a seat after the girl doing the door saw me limping around.  So I gotta give a big thanks to her, and of course to Eugene for comping my ticket. Anyway click here to see all the pictures from the night. Admittedly stand up comedy pictures are not the most exciting, but there are a few nice backstage shots at the end too.

PS. Shots from last nights Invite Them Up reunion show will hopefully be up later tonight.

Listen, I spent like 5 hours wasting my life watching Matt Zaller interview celebrities. I seriously watched 60 of them until like 8am. Then I slept all day.  Now I have to go take photos and I don’t have time for a legit update, so let’s put all that wasted time to some use. Here are three of my favorite Matt Zaller interviews.  And let it be said that while he is no Nardwuar he can be pretty fucking funny. God damn.

PS. Every time I see her I fall slightly more in love with Aubrey Plaza.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXRjjM02LQ&feature=channel[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbR8ixhuvQo&feature=channel[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT90XiTHJCE&feature=channel[/youtube]