I had plans right now but she’s apparently hung over and moving slowly so it looks like I have time to get up some more SXSW photos.

Thursday I didn’t have any actual work to do so I took it pretty easy. I started my day by seeing a movie. The SXSW Film Festival is pretty wonderful and I have covered it several times in the past, but this year I only got to see one movie but it was a good one. The Big Sick is a new film by Michael Showalter of the State & Stella. His movie Hello, My Name Is Doris was at SXSW a few years ago and I loved it but not nearly as much as the Big Sick. The movie was written by Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon about a real life incident where she got really sick and ended up in a coma. Kumail plays himself and it is so god damn funny and sad and amazing and I spent 80% of the movie either laughing or crying or both. I met Kumail about a week after he moved from Chicago to NYC after seeing him to stand up. He did one of the funniest sets I had ever seen and he was just in the audience of the show. One of the comedians was running late so the host Seth Herzog put him on and he killed it so hard. After that I saw him probably a dozen times before he moved to LA. For a time my two favorite comedians in NYC were him and Pete Holmes and Pete now has an amazing show on HBO and Kumail is in one of the best movies I have seen this year. Amazingly both of those projects came from a SXSW live podcast taping with Judd Appatow who produced both projects and told the story about that meetin in the Q&A.

Speaking of the Q&A one of the people to ask a question was fellow Chicago comedian Hannibal Buress. I didn’t even realize he was in town so I hit him up and he told me to come by the MTV Woodie Awards because he was giving out an award. I took forever to get there and I got there just in time to see him give the award. I got to see Rick Ross play too which was not awful. I went with Hannibal’s crew to Mohawk for the House of Vans party and saw a handful of rappers that were all from Chicago (to continue on the theme). I got to see the Cool Kids for the first time since probably 2008 and finally French Montana played.

So yeah we finally get to the point of this meandering name dropping post. French Montana (who is not at all from Chicago) headlined the Vans party. I was sort of near the stage so when he stared playing I took a few photos. Then A$AP Ferg showed up which was kinda funny because the day before I shot Playboi Carti and A$SAP Rocky showed up. Seemed like A$AP Mob was following me. Then the next song Rocky showed up again. After they left I shot one more French Montana song before calling it a night.

Don’t worry this post is almost over. I didn’t shoot a ton of photos yesterday but here are a handful of photos of French Montana and friends. The end.

Click here to see the photos of French Montana, A$AP Ferg & A$AP Rocky at Mohawk. 

This CMJ was my best in a few years. Every since CMJ stuck my friend Teddy Blanks in the back room of some bar that should never have had bands play there I have been down on the festival.  The last two years I sort of avoided it completely and was planning on doing so again but luckily I got a gig working for Sailor Jerry Rum and they got me off my ass and I had a great time in the process. Every event they had me cover was a good time and I was psyched to work the Brooklyn Vegan Day parties at Public Assembly.  I have worked for Brooklyn Vegan in the past and I was glad to be working with them again, plus it was in Williamsburg so I didn’t even have to get on a train.  On top of that there were free Sailor Jerry drinks so everyone was clearly going to be properly partying all day.

Friday’s party ended up being a lot of fun but musically a little down tempo for my liking. I walked as A Place To Bury Strangers were midway through their set. They were good performers and so fucking loud which of course I was into, but they are just a little bit droney for my personal tastes. Everyone else I talked to was psyched about them though. Plus I took some pics of them in the Sailor Jerry air stream and they seemed like good people. Chelsea Wolfe was another performer that everyone seemed really into. Her music was really pretty and I get the attraction but it was a little too sleepy time for me to listen to at a rock club. When I am out and about I want to rock. For me the highlight of the day was Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis who did things with an acoustic guitar that I didn’t think possible. He didn’t exactly put on a wild show or anything but the guy is a legend and he impressed.

Saturday’s party was a bit more up my alley. I was kicking myself because Peelander Z was leaving right as I go there. I have seen the crazy Japanese rockers a half dozen times over the last 10 years and they are always amazing. They were a highlight of this years SXSW for me. Luckily I grabbed them and took some photo of them in and around the Sailor Jerry air stream before heading into check out the New Orleans booty bounce madness that is Vockah Redu. He did an insane NWA cover and I found out that I had actually met his dancer before and we have some mutual friends. If you get a chance to check out Vockah you fucking owe it to yourself to do so. The band that I would most likely go home and listen to (I am actually listening to them now) was a California punk band called Fidlar who headlined the second stage. They are no Fucking Bullshit of course but I would go see them any time. Headlining the main stage was Idle Warship a hip hop/soul group fronted by Talib Kweli. They were great and I am pretty sure they covered Devo and there was just awesomeness all over the place. Oh, and also there was a guy dressed like a stegosaurus. Wild.

After that I headed home for 90 minutes and then right back to Public Assembly for another Sailor Jerry party… but we will get to that another day.

Click here to see all the photos from both Brooklyn Vegan CMJ Day Parties!

PS. Shout out to the cute girl with hot dog tattoo who is a big fan of Driven By Boredom. Keep me bookmarked!

I just wanted to update you guys with SOMETHING since I know you guys miss me so much while I am on vacation.  I am sure I am losing tons of Twitter followers too because I am just talking about SXSW all day. It’s all a shame.  I need to throw you guys a bone or something content wise.  So I decided I would do mini reviews of the films I have seen and then drop a few red carpet shots to sweeten the deal.  Okay, maybe you still don’t care… well you know what? I am sorry I can’t just post drunk and/or naked people all the time. Damn.

The first film I got a chance to see was also my favorite.  It was James Gunn’s Super starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page.  It was about a guy who’s wife left him for a drug dealer played by Kevin Bacon so he flips out and decides to become a superhero by dressing up like one and hitting people in the face with a fucking wrench. It is ultra violent, very funny and actually heartfelt. Rainn and Ellen are both pretty amazing it in and Kevin Bacon is an amazing bad guy.  James Gunn used to work for Troma back in the day and if you know what that is than you will appreciate that this film is pretty much a Lloyd Kaufman movie if Lloyd had a budget, great actors and a little bit of restraint. It also happens to be a lot more thought provoking than you would expect from an ultra violent comedy super hero movie. It’s just simply very very good.

The next film I saw was Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins.  Miike is one of my top 5 favorite directors and I have seen at least 35 of his films and 13 Assassins is well up there with the best. It is a pretty typical samurai flick but with the twisted Miike touches you expect from the guy who brought you Audition and Ichi The Killer. You sometimes forget you are watching a Miike film until he throws a limbless naked girl bleeding from her severed tongue at you… maybe I have said too much.  The film has great sword play, fantastic characters and some Ernest Goes to Camp like elements that make it really fun to watch. If you get a chance to see it you really need to do so. Sadly Miike couldn’t get out of Japan for obvious reasons so he missed the screening. I was pretty disappointed since I am such a huge fan but he sent a letter to be read to the audience that was extremely touching and he wanted us to all watch his movie and think about Japan in it’s time of crisis.

Next up I saw Paul the newest movie from the Sean of the Dead guys Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It is about two comic book nerds from London who come to the states to go to Comic Con and then travel to a bunch of famous UFO sightings. On their journey they meet up with an actual alien named Paul who is voiced by Seth Rogan and is running from the government.  The movie was funny and entertaining but I thought it was a little uninspired. One of the reasons I loved Sean of the Dead so much is that it was an interesting take on an over done genre. Paul was filled with pop culture references and cameos but it felt very much like Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back but without the great Kevin Smith dialogue. But then again maybe I am just not nerdy enough to appreciate all the Sci-Fi jokes.

Lastly I saw Paul Fieg’s Bridesmaids. I have seen trailers for this and it didn’t look that great but I was really hoping it would be good. I pretty much like everything Judd Apatow as produced but this was his first film targeted towards women. The TV show he is producing for HBO is also targeted towards women (It’s just called “Girls”) and Girls just happens to be written, directed and starring my friend Lena Dunham.  I just know that Girls will be compared to Bridesmaids and so I was hoping it would be funny for Lena’s sake even though the two projects don’t have much of anything to do with each other.  Fortunately Bridesmaids was hilarious. Kristen Wiig stars in this as the Maid of Honor in her friends wedding and it all becomes disastrous and then everything ends up okay in the end like pretty much every movie about a wedding but there are the laughs and strong character development you expect from Apatow’s film tree. This movie is going to make a star out of Melissa McCarthy who plays the brides tough and overweight sister-in-law. She kills in every scene and according to her IMDB is Jenny McCarthy’s cousin. Weird.

Kristen Wiig not only starred in Bridesmaids but was also Simon Pegg’s love interest in Paul.  She also clearly hates me as you can see below…

Oh man, so excited. I got a new totally ridiculous tattoo. Many years ago while I was visiting some friends at college I was at a party and some how we all kept telling everyone to “Party Forever!”  As people kept leaving we kept yelling “Party Forever!” at people there were only three of us awake and it was 10 AM and we were in someones kitchen trying to cook two dozen eggs at the same time. None of it made any sense but it was pretty funny.  From then on the words “Party Forever” have been stuck in my head.  As a guy who parties for a living and doesn’t know how to sleep, “Party Forever” is a pretty appropriate slogan even though the whole thing is a total joke and about a year ago I decided it would make a funny tattoo.

I originally was just going to get the words “Party Forever” somewhere on my leg, small and inconspicuous, but when I was in Austin for SXSW I came up with a new plan.  I was at a party called Skull By Skull Now which is a party hosted by some really awesome scum fuck bike kids called the Skidmarxxx.  They throw it every year and it is like the closing event of SXSW just much much more dangerous.  They light off fireworks, throw paint, beat people up and just set shit on fire. It is total mayhem.

At the party they were giving out $10 tattoos in a garage.  It did not look extremely safe. The tattoo artists were smoking and pretty much ashing their cigarettes on the tattoos.  I saw a guy pay for a swaztika tattoo made out of ejaculating dicks with a bag of coke. Getting a tattoo at this party was a bad idea, but when I saw a skull wearing a party hat on the flash sheet I got in line.  I was up next when the cops raided the place and threatened to arrest everyone so I never got my tattoo. But from that day forward I knew what I had to do.

A month or two later I ran into Dan from The Death Set who had been one of the few people I had known at Skull By Skull. I hadn’t seen him since and we were catching up.  He showed me his new tattoo which it turns out was done by an old friend of mine. She had just started tattooing and needed victims to practice on.

I have only seen Minka Sicklinger once or thrice in the last two years, but when she first moved to New York I saw her nearly every day.  She was a frequent site in the photos on Driven By Boredom.  She was like the third unofficial member of the Just Friends Crew. I almost never see any of those kids anymore, and they are very missed, but after talking to Dan I figured I should hit up Minka.

Minka is both an illustrator and an amazing up and coming tattoo artist.  She has been tattooing for less than a year and people are talking about her everywhere. She has been getting referrals from people seeing her tattoos on trains. She has only done like 60 tattoos, but already they are fucking sick.  I spent about three hours with her today and she gave me one of my favorite tattoos to date.  I have had several people tell me already that they would buy the design as a t-shirt so maybe a DBB/Minka collab shirt is in the works.

Now Minka is currently working out of her house and already has a waiting list, but you need to hit her up ASAP and get in line.  You need one of her tattoos NOW. You also might want to hit her up for illustration needs because she is a bad ass artist with a very unique style. Oh, did I mention that she is awesome too? Plus she has an Austrailian accent. I mean, let’s be reasonable, you need her arts in your life.

So what you need to do is go to Minka’s two sites and check out her work.  Clearly you need to check out her tattoo blog to see all of the fucking bad ass tattoos she has done, but you aslo need to check out her fine art site to see her illustration and fine art work which is bad ass as well.

Anyway, I am going to stop talking about how happy I am with this Skull-Wearing-A-Party-Hat-With-A-Gold-Tooth-Party-Forever tattoo and let you look at it, and then go harrass Minka.  See you guys this weekend…

Let me start off by saying that I hate the reputation my site has for being pornographic. Yeah, I shoot naked people from time to time, but the vast majority of stuff on this site has nothing to do with sex or nudity. On top of that my photography, while trashy at times, tends to be pretty tame.  It’s mostly just topless girls.  That being said, I am about to review a porn film so I guess I am just going to have to deal with the haters. At least the nudity brings in a shit load of traffic.

When I was in LA in June, one of the things I did out there was to shoot a spec assignment for Vice that was to ultimately land on the Viceland blog.  Months has passed and my editor took forever to get back to me and he finally just disappeared, so I have no idea what happened to the story.  Hopefully the editor will return one day and at the very least I will get a rejection so I can post the article on here.

The article in question was a behind the scenes look at the filming of a porn feature LA Pink.  LA Pink is a parody of Kat Von D’s show LA Ink and is the most ambitious effort from Brooklyn based alt-porn company Burning Angel.  Director, star and friend Joanna Angel told me that I could hang out on set for a day and shoot photos.  It was pretty exhausting day and 95% of the time was spent shooting dilologue and nearly all of it made it into the film.

LA Pink finally came out last weekend and Joanna gave me a copy. The film is nearly three hours long and has 9 sex scenes in it.  That is crazy.  It is a double disk DVD and has a shit ton of bonus features, which although I haven’t watched yet, I know for a fact has some insane behind the scenes footage. And here is the craziest part… The movie is actually good.

Since I saw a lot of the sex scenes in person I just decided to mostly skip them when watching the movie.  I just watched the story, and it is pretty fucking funny.  The film is well shot despite some of the porn required terrible sets and bad continuity. The acting is surprisingly good with Joanna and boyfriend James Deen delivering solid performances.  James is the star of pretty much every porn parody film, so he has had a lot of practice.  The real star of the movie is porn veteran Sean Michaels who is maybe the greatest living actor.  While on set, he had my cracking up with the seriousness he delivered his ridiculous lines.  I have would give the best supporting actor role to my boy Brian Street Team who while having a minimal role delivered at least 50% of the laughs. He also gets a blow job from three insanely girls which I saw in person and is probably one of the hottest and funniest porn scenes I have watched.

Other sex scenes include Joanna solo, Joanna and Draven doing a lesbian scene, Joanna getting double penetrated by James and Sean, a crazy threesome involving Coco Velvet and Andy San Dimas that almost broke the table, and a lesbian orgy that turns into reverse gang bang involving every girl in the film and James Deen. It also features your standard boy girl sex scenes with Joanna & Sean and James & Misti Dawn, but they were shot at the same time and inter-spliced to form a Voltronesque super scene.

On top of all the laughs and crazy sex you also get to see my feature film debut an extra! I play a guy on a couch who is twittering while he is waiting for a tattoo.  I was actually twittering about playing a twitterer. How fucking meta.  Other interesting notes are the fact that the film was co-written by NYC nightlife icon and good friend DJ Jess. Joanna was actually on LA Ink and has a big Kat Von D tattoo. The film was edited by DBB friend Doug Sakmann and from what I can tell pretty much the only song on the sound track is a ShiraGirl song which features a former intern of mine on bass.  Fucking awesome.

So yeah, go to Burning Angel now and buy your copy.  You can watch the totally safe for work trailer below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42NIJkdtjxA[/youtube]

My friend Kiki Valentine has been trying to get me to go to the variety show she hosts every month since the fall.  Things keep coming up every month, but finally I made one, the Easter Spectacular!.  Her show is a semi-secret affair that combines a variety of performance art in a quite uncensored manner that requires the location to be a mystery until a few days before when performers are announced.  The show I saw featured juggling, comedy, magic, hoola-hooping, and a whole lot of girls taking off their clothes. If not a burlesque show exactly, it is a burlesque environment.  Now burlesque is not normally my thing, but there were some really great performances.  Kiki hosted the whole thing as Amy Winehouse in perfect character even when things fucked up.  She made the mics not working and the curtain not open hilarious.

The highlight for me was actually a juggler named Michael Karas who did two acts, one where he juggled fire dressed as Jesus, and the other where he juggled while stripping and then juggled five balls for his finale.  At one point he dropped one of his fire sticks and it went into the crowd and he nearly set his Jesus robes on fire… Other than that though he was pretty on point with the throwing and the catching.  Other highlights included two friends of mine, Coco La Pearl who ate fire and deep throated a banana with skill that is usually reserved for only the most revered porn stars and Justina Flash who did some surprisingly impressive things with a hoola-hoop.  She also happened to be covered in silver paint and fully topless which helped.  Also worth mentioning was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen.

Famed performer Queen LaQueefa dressed up as Michael Jackson and fucked a baby doll with a strap on and put out two birthday candles with her vagina but none of that compared to the horror of her second act.  She dressed up like a meth head version of Mary and had a comedian friend dress up like a hip hop Jesus. She then proceeded to suck on Jesus’s toes, rip off her clothes showing off her stained ass, wiped it with toilet paper and then threw that as well as used tampons at the crowd.  So, okay, maybe it wasn’t real shit on her ass or real blood on the tampons, but the effect was still unbelievably revolting. She then pulled an airplane sized bottle of vodka out of her vagina and then Jesus fucked her with a strap on as the curtains closed.  It was certainly like nothing I had ever seen before, and I feel like that was probably a good thing.

Anyway other performers I haven’t mentioned yet were Magic Max The Magician and his amazingly round assistant Stormy.  Honestly she is built like a beach ball… and I know that sounds mean but there is something strangely hot about that.  There was this really intense thing were this extraordinarily hot girl named Meira got attacked by naked men dressed as bunnies.  They would rip her clothes off and then she would bop them on the head, so to speak.  At the end she was naked and covered in blood.  There was a comedy duo named RAPE who tried to sell the crowd fake vaginas, a visiting burlesque dancer named Miss Sugarpuss, a dancer named Misty Lux who came out in one hell of a costume and a woman named Philly Caramel who did an act where she worshiped delicious Peeps to the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell hit “You’re All I Need To Get By”.  I was really into that since all I really listen to these days is 70’s soul records.

Okay, there are 250+ pictures from this thing.  I had to put up a lot of mediocre shots so you could follow what was going on in each act, but there is some nice stuff in here too (The Justina Flash shots especially).  Of course, due to Queen LaQueefa these shots are more than a little Not  Safe For Work.  View them all here, but you have been warned.

I was somehow convinced by my friend Barry to see The Fast And The Furious 4, which is actually just called Fast & Furious. Because I had to sit through this, I decided to make it that much tougher for my fellow film goers by spending the entire movie on my cell phone. Now if someone was doing this while I was watching a movie, I would be enraged, but since it was Fast & Furious, I think it just added to the ambiance. I thought we would make the viewing a little art project, so I decided to live blog the whole thing. Below I have posted that account. Keep in mind that you should start from the bottom and read up because it is in reverse order and remember, my Twitter is full of brilliance like this so follow it here.

Also a few comments about the Tweets: a) I was twittering under my jacket so their are some typos and misspellings. b) I called all the girls sluts because none of them were wearing pants. In real life I am 100% pro-slut. c) There were no F&FI flashbacks… I was mistaken… I deeply apologize for misleading people. Now, onto the live blog…

As far as I can tell Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero hasn’t really played much in the United States.  Most of their press quotes are from Canada and a lot of them are out of date.  When I saw the film at the Backseat Film Festival I was one of only four people in the audience and I got in for free.

Vampiro is a bad name for a documentary film about a Canadian born wrestler who became a star in Mexico.  It happens to be the name of the wrestler, but I would venture that with a name change, and a better publicist this film would be the talk of the town.  This should have played at Sundance.  Vampiro was easily the best film I have seen in 2009.  It was completely depressing that they couldn’t sell a few more tickets.  People need to be talking about this movie so I figured I would start.

Did you see the Wrestler?  I did.  It was great right?  Mickey Rourke was amazing…  Well you know who else was amazing in a film this year?  Ian Hodgkinson.  He is the man behind the make up.  He is the former drug addict, former stick up kid, former Milli Vanilli bodyguard turned Mexican Wrestling Superstar.  The movie is the story of Hodgkinsons attempt at starting a new promotion company on the eve of their first televised event.  As the film moves closer to the telecast it flashes back to the last year of his life that is setting up this one big night.  Also inter spliced are interviews with friends and former friends.  The story tells the tale of a man who despite a history of sexual abuse and living on the streets as a criminal and drug addict through sheer determination became one of the biggest stars in a country thousands of mines from his home in Canada.  He gave up a possible pro hockey career to try to make it as a wrestler which led him down a long strange path from Canada, to the streets, to Los Angeles and finally to the country he now calls his home.  22 years after he began, he is on the verge of retiring, trying to get into promotions so he can stop brutalizing his body night after night.  Not unlike in the Wrestler his doctor has told him he needs to retire or face an early grave.  Not unlike the Wrestler his family life is in big trouble.  But unlike Mickey Rourke’s character, Vampiro finds time to spend with his daughter and some how perseveres.  I would be very surprised if the Wrestler was not in some way inspired by either this film or just Vampiro’s life story.  There are too many similarities.  And as much as I love Mickey Rourke (Anyone have Barfly on DVD? Netflix hasn’t had it in two years.) I think Ian Hodgkinson could have had just as moving performance.  When the first tear drops from Vampiro’s face there was not a dry eye in the house…  All 8 of them.  This movie needs to be seen, it is a tragedy that it hasn’t been so far.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97clJGSHfD0&feature=related[/youtube]

Sinead sent me a link to Creative Grooming a very long time ago, and I knew I had to blog about it but I just kept putting it off.  I realized that a) Probably a million people have blogged about this allready and b) There is nothing I could possibly say to express the feelings I have about this.  That being said, I am going to try.  This woman not just styles her poodles in horrifying ways, but there is an entire magazine devoted to covering horrible shit like this.  Her abominations have actually made the cover twice.  She wins actual awards for dressing her dogs fur up to look like… well not dogs.  I mean you would think that just painting a Greatful Dead bear on a dog would be stoneable offense.  I think there is something about that in the bible.  And she is just not happy with her dogs looking like the back of a VW Bus, decided that her dog should look like a snail, a shark and a fucking chicken.  Who the hell would want to see a dog that looks like a chicken?!  (Admittedly everyone, but it is still fucked up.)  PETA needs to stop trying to take away my delicious force fed duck liver and get their asses in gear on this.  If Banksy spray painting some cows pissed them off, this should have them crying in their sleep.  Speaking of sleeping, the only way I have been able to sleep at night since witnessing this is to pretend this is all an elaborate hoax and these dogs have been photoshopped, because I am just not comfortable living in a world where dogs are walking around disguised as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  God have mercy on us all.