If you recall I front the world’s greatest punk cover band, Fucking Bullshit and while most cover bands are just for fun and kind of a joke, I take my band way too fucking seriously. I have wanted to be in a band my entire life and it turns out I am pretty good at it. I might not have any musical talent but I can put on a mother fucking show and to me that is 95% of live music. You may never get a chance to buy an album from us but we are pretty worth seeing. (And you can always get a T-shirt!) During the show at Lit I broke a bottle of beer, picked up part of the glass and cut my chest with it. I don’t enjoy pain and I have never cut myself before, but the ghosts of GG Allin and Darby Crash took hold. Who fucking knows what I will do for the next show…

When it comes to having a band the best thing about being a photographer is that you have a lot of photographer friends. Two of my favorite photographers (both in quality of work and quality of people) brought their cameras to our recent show at Lit Lounge.

Steve Prue is a commercial photographer who also happens to shoot a lot of naked girls. He and I have shot so many of the same girls it’s not even funny. His portrait work is a lot better than mine, but he likes my event work better than his so we are somehow even. Great dude and great photographer. He dragged the hell out of his shutter and tried to get the hell out of my way and got some wild pictures from my show.

Tod Seelie is a guy that you never need to worry about him getting the hell out of the way. Tod has shot some of the craziest bands and events I have ever seen and does it better than anyone. For a guy who shoots mostly 20 something white people he puts himself in a lot of danger to get the shot. If you crossed a party photographer with a war photographer you would get Tod. I was an honor to have him shoot my band and post it on his website with all the other insane bands he shoots.

Tod’s best of shots can be found here and the entire gallery of images can be found over here. As far as Steve’s shots go I posted my favorites below and the rest you can find on the Fucking Bullshit Facebook page.

Thanks a lot to both of the guys and make sure to check out my favorite shots and a video of our “encore” below – Body Count’s legendary track “Cop Killer”.

Ps. Fucking Bullshit is playing again THIS SUNDAY at LuLu’s in Greenpoint. I don’t have the details but Like us on Facebook and you will be in the know!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3y0kTaPHz8[/youtube]

Last spring a guy named Jeremy Rocklin approached me about doing an episode of his web series New York Lives on me.  They are great little documentaries about interesting New Yorkers or places/events in New York. I loved his work so I agreed to do it.

I sat down with him months ago and he interviewed me for about an hour about the website and my life and all that stuff… but he needed more footage.  He wanted footage of me shooting a girl and shooting a party.  I had an idea to shoot a girl naked in Chinatown but people kept flaking on me.  Finally Veruca James was visiting from Chicago and was really into the idea. We went down there with Jeremy and shot some crazy stuff all over lower Manhattan. You may have seen the photos here.  A few days later I brought him to Lit Lounge and he shot a little b-roll footage of me shooting the Thursday party there NC-17. It was pretty dark and he didn’t need much stuff so that was quick and easy.  Finally he came with me to Red Rocket tattoo where my friend Betty Rose gave SB from Rocky Business his first tattoo… it just happened to be of my logo.

Jeremy got great stuff and sent me the video. I thought it was great, but in the months he was working on it I ended up losing 30 lbs.  I hated seeing how fat I was in all the footage. It seriously was awful. Plus I had this horrible mustache as you will see in the film because I played “mustache guy” on an episode of this HBO show Girls that will be out in January.  There wasn’t that much footage of me talking in the documentary, it was just my voice over photos and video, so I begged Jeremy to reshoot part of the interview.  Luckily for my ego he agreed and we shot a little bit more footage at my apartment a couple weeks ago.

He finally put it all together and created this madness that is 7 minutes about my life. This thing is perhaps the first in the series. It focuses on the girls mostly but he want to do future episodes about my new punk band and my Miami Dolphins club. I hope it happens cause shooting this was a lot of fun.  Just wanted to thank my friends who helped out on this… Veruca, SB and Betty Rose. And thanks to Ballpoint Pens and The Death Set for the music!

Now check out the documentary! And be warned… it’s NSFW.

Over a year ago one of my best friends Ross Harman took his own life. I managed his band The Gaskets for five years and when he died I decided I had to play manager one more time. I reached out to many of his musician friends and got them to cover songs of his for a tribute album. A year later we had created a tribute album featuring 15 bands and 18 songs.

We were going to just put the album out digitally but the album was so good that we knew we had to do something more permanent so we decided we would try to raise money to put it out on vinyl. We held a fundraiser for him in Richmond, VA and raised over $4000. We raised so much money that now we are trying to raise money to release his solo albums, Calcutta and Symphony, as well.

So we started a Kickstarter fund to raise $2000 of the $5000 or so we needed to really do these albums right.  I put it up late last night and just posted it to Facebook and Twitter and went to sleep. When I woke up we had raised $800 already. It has really been amazing. I sort of feel like we are going to hit our goal of $2000 by the end of the weekend or something crazy like that but I want to keep going and see if we can raise the full $5000.  We could really make something special.

Anyway, I know most of you don’t know who my friend Ross was but he was really an amazing musician. All his music, solo or with The Gaskets, is available for free at TheGaskets.com. Check it out and think about donating to this project.  Plus for those of you who are into my photography you have a chance to get prints of mine on the cheap. There is a bunch of other stuff you can get too. Kill Shop Kill donated some T-shirts and Revolve-CD donated some CDRs for those of you who don’t have a record player.  For just $5 you can get the digital download.  And every dollar counts.

So click here do donate to the Ross Harman tribute album Kickstarter! Thanks!

Fucking Bullshit played a show at Lit Lounge last Thursday and Coach Mike Pics was there to take photos.  He only took a handful mostly because I told him before the show started to be careful because might try to destroy him in a fit of punk rock violence. Once I started to run out of steam at the end and flop around on the floor he got his shots.

I just wanted to link to these and get up a few photos while I wait for my tire to get changed. I have been in VA all weekend doing a fundraiser for a tribute album dedicated to the music of one of my best friends, Ross Harman, who died one year ago today. I will be back in NYC tonight and then I am leaving again Friday so I needed to get something up so this page isn’t a wasteland.  Pics from the party last night will be up tomorrow, a naked girl for Thursday and hopefully I can get up the party pics I shoot for PBR on Friday. So yeah, there are some heads ups so you aren’t worried about me after I didn’t update for four days. I know how much you care.

Click here to see all of Coach Mike’s pics from the Fucking Bullshit Show.

I am in an online art show over at Dirty Pilot. Dirty Pilot is an online art gallery out of Boston and they saw some of my public nudes in a show in Philly that my friend DAZE curated.  Dirty Pilot asked me for similar shots for their show so I gave them five of my public nudes and I asked them to sell the art super cheap so people might actually have a chance to buy it.  Aside from my dirty photos the show features some sick photos photos by DAZE, Charlie Ahearn, Dave Schubert and Ellis G. The show is up on DirtyPilot.com until May 15th.

I can’t post any of the shots on my site because they are all nude and I wouldn’t want to offend anyone obviously so you are going to have to go over to Dirty Pilot to check them out.  And buy some art already, it’s good for you!

Also the flyer features a shot of my friend Vicki AND I had this update autopost so while you are reading this I am actually at jury duty. How exciting is that?

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.

There are two things I know about fans of Driven By Boredom; You guys hate it when I talk about sports and love it when I post photos of naked girls.  I think I have finally figured out a way to use your love of boobs to get you to care at least a little about my sports related blogging. And it’s for charity! It’s so rare these to find a way to make nudity tax deductible…

As you may know I am a huge fan of the Washington Capitals hockey team.  The Caps finished their regular season schedule yesterday and they are getting ready to face my local team the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs.  The Caps are the top seed in the East but they are playing the Rangers that kicked the shit out of them twice this year. Living in NYC I can’t stand the fucking Rangers and I am pretty worried about the match up so I have decided to grow a playoff beard for charity.

In the NHL it is tradition for hockey players to refuse to shave during the playoffs as a matter of superstition.  In the last few years the NHL has used this tradition to raise money for charity and I think it’s a really great idea.  Personally I love growing really stupid facial hair so this is a perfect excuse not to have to shave for a while.  The playoffs in the NHL last several months so if the Caps play as well as they are capable I could be looking pretty awful for quite some time!

So if I am going to be growing this beard there needs to be a good reason for it and that’s where you guys come in.  I need you to sponsor my beard! I am trying to raise a bunch of money for the Friends of the Fort Dupont Ice Arena a charity offering free or subsidized skating programs to children.  The Fort Dupont Ice Arena is the only skating rink in the DC area and it gives inner city kids a chance to enjoy skating which is something I loved growing up and took for granted as a kid with parents who could afford to take him skating all the time. I am asking you guys to sponsor my beard and help these kids get to skate!  Now I know a lot of you don’t care about hockey or the Fort Dupont Ice Arena so that’s where the boobs come in!

When I think of beards the first person I think of is Kari Ferrell the Hipster Grifter. To give you a little refresher on the Hipster Grifter she was a girl who made headlines in NYC after she got caught scamming a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters out of money but seducing them and then convincing them to give her money through a variety of cons including a story about how she was dying of cancer.  What made her more interesting than your standard con artist was that she is hilarious.  When the story broke all these people came through with hilarious stories about her including pictures of her now famous tattoo proclaiming her love for beards.  I first heard of Kari when a friend sent me nudes of her. I thought they would be all over the place so I posted them on my site.  Oddly, I was the only person who had them and the nudes generated my site hundreds of thousands of hits.  After Kari did her time in jail she came back to NYC and we actually became friends. She is clearly a little bit insane but she seems to be pretty reformed, is holding down a real job and is a really fun girl to hang out with so I asked her to help support my beard fundraiser!

Anyone who sponsors my beard with $25 or more will get a personalized photo of a topless Hipster Grifter holding some sort of sign about you which she will make hilarious obviously. If you want her to make it for your website or your band or your company you can do that too. Think of the promotional value!  She will even make the fan sign safe for work if you want to put it on your Facebook page or something. The possibilities are endless really.  And all this can be had for just a TAX DEDUCTABLE $25 donation to a great charity!  And if you donate a lot of money like $100 I am sure we can get her to do something super weird like come over to your apartment and rub exotic oils into your beard. She didn’t agree to that but she does love her some beards.

So check out my personal donation page and sponsor my beard! You can pay with Pay Pal or a credit card.  If you want a fan sign just email me your donation receipt and let me know what you want the sign to say.  If you don’t want a fan sign you can just do the right thing and support my beard!

Oh, and I’ll be updating my picture after every game so you can come back to my page and check out how embarrassing it is that a 30 year old man can barely grow facial hair!  Good times! Go Caps!

A while back I brought you a new site I started called Unseen NYC. Unseen is a street art blog that my friend Rick was doing in Denver and I helped him open a NYC branch. That site is still going strong and needs your submissions! But Unseen NYC is more than just graffiti and street art, it’s a collection of all the small things that make NYC an interesting place to live and to me an important part of that is signage.

I love great signage and sign design.  I love photographing food related items so resturant signage is one of my favorite things to shoot when it comes to inanimate objects.  I also love interesting neon signs and they photograph great I tend to shoot a lot of food related neon signs. I had this idea for about a year to document New York City’s most interesting neon signs but I didn’t really have time to start a project that has almost no potential to drive traffic or make any money. It would be purely a project for my own personal enjoyment and I am pretty busy to be starting large scale projects like that.

Fortunately I have a new intern and so far she has done a great job.  One of the first things I had her do was drive me all around NYC while I took photos of neon signs.  We drove all the way up 2nd Ave from 14th to 42nd and then back down 3rd all the way to Delancey St. I shot over 100 neon signs and she wrote down where they were all located.  Then I had her just start uploading the pictures on to a really simple Word Press template and New York Neons was born!

So thanks a million to my intern Jess Muir and I hope everyone takes a look at my new website NewYorkNeons.com!

Here are a few of my favorite shots so far…

Now that all the SXSW stuff is behind me I plan on taking a break from photos updates this weekend. I thought this would be the perfect time to post about this interview I did with a website called The Set Up.  I do interviews from time to time (I am actually doing another interview on Sunday…) but I thought I would feature this one because it features some questions I get asked a lot.

The Set Up is a geek interview blog where they ask people from different industries what sort of tools they use to get the job done. I think the site mostly is about tech people and what sort of software and hardware they use but I got to talk about all the camera equipment that I use as well as being self effacing about what sort of computer stuff I am dealing with.

I did the interview a couple months ago so a few things have changed. The main thing is that I have been using a program called Photo Mechanic that I love to do the basic edit of my photos. I don’t mean editing the photos themselves but editing out the bad shots, thumbnailing them and sticking my logo on them. That stuff used to take forever and now it is a breeze thanks to Photo Mechanic. Then again as you will read in the interview my old process was a fucking mess.

Anyway, I might not update for the rest of the weekend. My Alma Mater VCU is playing their first Final Four game in history tonight and I plan on watching that and doing nothing else today. Tomorrow I have an interview and a photo shoot and then if VCU wins tonight I am going to get on a bus and get my ass to Richmond to watch the Rams play in the national championship game on the VCU campus and hope for a riot that I can photograph…

So click here to read my interview with The Set Up!