If you know anything about me you should know that I fucking hate the New England Patriots. As a die hard Miami Dolphins fan and a New Yorker it is my duty to start bleeding from the ears when anyone so much as mentions that pretty boy fuck Tom Brady. I always hated the Patriots but ever since these insufferable pricks started going to Super Bowls my hatred has grown. Add to that more than 5 years living in NYC I not only hate the Patriots but everything about Boston and everyone who lives there. So in 2008 when the New York Giants beat the Patriots to keep the 1972 Dolphins as the only undefeated team in football history I became an instant Giants fan… at least for a few weeks. When the Giants won I danced in the street hugging every Giants fan I met.

Fast forward four years an I once again became a die hard Giants fan if only for one day. I started out my night at Tammany Hall because my friend Dimitry was doing a party there and it seemed like a good place to be but when the Giants scored and there was barely a round of applause I realized that watching football with hipsters was a mistake and I made my way up to Murray Hill to watch with the frat boy types. My Dolphins club, Dolfans NYC meets every week at Third & Long on 35th and 3rd Ave so this seemed like an ideal place to watch the game… and it was. It was 90% Giants fans with a small contingent of Dolphins fans in there for a good mix.

When the Giants won the place went nuts. The bar threw on New York New York and I sang with everyone and started hugging and high fiving like I was a Giants fan since birth. When it was getting close to a Giants victory I grabbed my camera and started shooting. After signing Frank Sinatra (and Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind) with the crowd at Third & Long I made my way down Third Ave shooting the Giants fans partying in the street. I missed as many shots as I took because I was having so much fun. (I even missed a shot of a cop tackling a guy throwing a trash can witch pretty much ruined my night from that point on.) By the time I made it down to the Lower East Side the partying had subsided and I took the train home. It was a great night and I am so, so glad everyone in Boston cried themselves to sleep last night.

Click here to see all my shots of the New York Giants Super Bowl celebration… live from New York.

Ps. Fuck Boston.

It’s New Years Eve and we are all about to be partying and what not like we all do at  this time of year but I wanted to look back on the year and talk about three things that really made a difference in my life in 2011 and I am looking forward to them still being a big part of my 2012. 2011 was a pretty great year for me and I hope 2012 is even better for me and you and everyone who reads this damn website.  Thanks for paying attention.

1) Fucking Bullshit

I worked in some way with music for most of my life. When I was 15 I started a zine and shortly after founded a record label. I started booking shows and taking photos of bands. Later in life I managed a band for 5 years, I started booking dance parties and went on tour with bands and DJ’s and even worked in the studio with bands. I did everything you could imagine except be in a band. And like every single person who works in music all I really wanted to do was be in a band.  Finally in 2011 I got my chance and I started my punk rock cover band Fucking Bullshit and we are somehow way better than we ever should have been and it’s more fun than I ever thought it would be.  We get the New Years started with a bang with our next free show January 5th at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn. Come see us!

2) Dolfans NYC

I have been running the New York City Miami Dolphins fan club for a few years but this year I think we really established ourselves. Even though the Dolphins have sucked we have had a big group at our bar, Third & Long, every single week. We brought a HUGE group to the Meadowlands for Jets and Giants games and we are starting to be taken very seriously by the Miami Dolphins organization. Their Weekly TV show did an interview with us and we have had more and more contact with the team. 2012 seems like it is going to be even bigger for us as we are helping to promote the 40th Anniversary reunion of the 1972 undefeated Dolphins team in North Jersey. If the Dolphins ever started wining some games we would be in Phin Heaven.

3) Travel

2011 was amazing for me as far as adventuring is concerned. The year started off with a trip to LA and Vegas and then my yearly trip to SXSW but this year really got crazy when I went back to LA and ended up driving across the country. I ended up being out of town for 28 days and I did almost no actual paid work and was living on savings and ad money. Fortunately when I got back in NYC I met the Sailor Jerry Rum PR girl Dana Dynamite who over the last six months has become a great friend and Sailor Jerry has hired me to work Lolapalooza and then Voodoo Fest in New Orleans and then Fun Fun Fun in Austin and even Art Basel in Miami. Even though I rarely drink alcohol, Sailor Jerry is the perfect client. Their brand is all about tattoos and partying and half naked tattooed girls. They send me out to amazing parties and I get to talk bands into getting free Sailor Jerry tattoos. I even got a free tattoo out of the deal. It’s been pretty fucking amazing.  2012 is looking like it will be just as adventurous as on the 12th I head to LA for a week vacation before heading to Vegas to shoot the AVN Awards and then back to LA for a few days before heading to Aspen to cover the X Games for Sailor Jerry.

So yeah, 2011 was fucking amazing and assuming the world doesn’t end 2012 should be even better. But looking back there was some sadness too and I want to take a moment to remember the people I lost last year. My friend good tragically Colin died of brain cancer in his mid 20’s and my closest grandparent, my grandma Jo finally passed in her 90’s. My grandmother has been one of the closest people in my life so losing her killed me but losing a friend at 25 was so much more tragic. But with death comes new beginnings and 2012 will mark the release of a project I have been working on since the week my best friend Ross Harman died in late 2010. His tribute album will be released in late February and while it will never bring my friend back it will go a long way to helping me deal with his loss.

Let’s hope no one reading this has to deal with any of that loss in 2012 and as a fantastic year.  Happy New Years everyone!

So now that I am finally caught up with all the Fun Fun Fun Fest/Voodoo Fest posts I decided to look back and see if there was anything I missed. Turns out I have four galleries that somehow didn’t get posted. Two of those are Miami Dolphins related. I think part of it was that the Dolphins are not good at football and part of it is that I already blogged the pictures over on DolfansNYC, but most of it was just that I have been insanely busy. But whatever the case these pictures are over a month old and it’s time to get both galleries up at the same time so we can move on.

So as you may know I am one of the founders of Dolfans NYC the New York City Miami Dolphins official fan club. I know to most of you that sounds completely insane when you look at it with the rest of the shit I do in my life, but such is the case. I also care about the Miami Dolphins more than I do anything else and if I could trade naked girls for a Dolphins Super Bowl victory you would never see a boob on this website again. Luckily for you I cannot make such a trade.

Anyway, when the Dolphins come to NYC to play the New York Jets Dolfans NYC has to hold it down. This year we bought 71 tickets as a group and had a lot more coming. We threw a huge tailgate party and caused a ruckus despite losing the game. We also had two of our members beat the shit out of three Jets fans who started shit with them. It was pretty amazing considering I have never seen a away fan win a fight at a football game, much less do it without getting arrested.

Aside from the invasion of the Meadowlands and our tailgate we also threw an event at Third & Long the day before. Nat Moore, a Miami Dolphins legend, came to our bar to watch football with us. He signed autographs and posed for pictures and talked football. I know 95% of you on this site don’t care about things like that but it was a really cool event for our group. The Miami Dolphins video crew even came to the event and filmed us for the Inside The Fins TV show that is shown ever week in Miami. (I am interviewed in Episode 8 if you want to do some digging.)

So let’s get these photos up and get back to your normally scheduled Driven By Boredom madness!

Click here to see Dolfans NYC takeover of Met Life Stadium vs. The New York Jets.

Click here to see the Dolfans NYC Nat Moore meet & greet at Third & Long.

For the last eight years I have been going to Miami to attend a convention of Miami Dolphin webmasters. Yes, you heard me right, a convention of people who run Miami Dolphins fan websites. Eight years ago I was blogging about the Dolphins a lot on Driven By Boredom and people got really sick of it so I started a seperate section of my website where I put all the Dolphins posts that way my fans could avoid the Dolphins stuff if they wanted to. (Sorry that you no longer have that option.) I had only been doing the site a few weeks when I was contacted by the Miami Dolphins. They wanted all of the sites come down and get together.

This has become a yearly tradition for me and I ended up becoming friends with some NYC Dolphins fans and together we formed Dolfans NYC the official fan club for NYC Dolphins fans. Yeah, I know.

This year I didn’t really feel like taking a lot of photos. I was trying to use the trip as a vacation as much as anything. Every time I travel I work constantly so it was nice to get away for a bit. I took a few snap shots on the training facility tour with my digital point and shoot but that was about it. I did pull out my real camera on game day because I ended up heading down to Sun Life Stadium a few hours before the game and I figured I could get some tailgating shots… I did.

So really most of you can just ignore this gallery, but if you are interested you get a mixed bag of bad point and shoot pictures of random Dolphins crap and some nicer pro shots from game day including some shots of the Phins warming up before the game.

Click here to see all my shots from Miami Dolphins Web Weekend 2011.

Okay. This is going to be a quick update for two reasons. 1) You don’t give a shit about these photos 2) I shot these photos with a point and shoot digital camera so they are terrible.

Weeks ago my Miami Dolphins fan club, Dolfans NYC, met up to go to the NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall. I know many of you are probably horrified that I co-run a fan club for an NFL Football team, but this is reality, you are going to have to deal with it.  Anyway, it happened and we made a lot of noise and even got on TV. We also made signs in support of a former Miami Dolphin named Jim Mandich who was the radio voice of the Dolphins for many years. He meant a lot to the Dolphins community and we wanted to pay tribute as the draft was just a few days after his battle with cancer ended his life.  We made signs that said “Alright Miami!” which was his catch phrase and got them shown on ESPN and NFL Network. I did a few interviews as well and while I never heard/saw them I hope they exist somewhere out there. We even got NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to hold a sign.

Anyway, that’s the story, click here to see the terrible pictures I took at the Dolfans NYC trip to the NFL Draft.

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!

I have excellent news for you guys… The Miami Dolphins lost to the fucking Buffalo Bills last Sunday which means they are officially out of the playoffs.  This means that you only have to put up with one more update about the Dolphins this year since I am going to be out of town for the game this week. They only have one game after this weekend and I am not even sure I will take photos since it will probably be a disaster so this might be the last time you have to deal with hearing about football from me for months. Rejoice.

I do have to talk about our event last week though.  Dolfans NYC threw one last blow out to end the season with the help of Buffalo Trace Bourbon. They provided 300 free wings and a lot of free shots of bourbon and discount drinks at the bar. We did a raffle and accepted donations and in the end we raised another $250. The club this year donated $1200 to charity and raised money to do a big tailgate event at the Jets game, get t-shirts printed and really make this club into something awesome.  I was really proud of what we did this year.

Anyway, check out the pictures from Third & Long if you want. They are all pretty shitty since I shot them on my little digital point and shoot, but the kids at the bar like them.  And then most importantly have an excellent Christmas even if you don’t celebrate it, (I hear Christmas Chinese food is fantastic) and I will see you guys back here tomorrow with my epic Christmas Day Christmas card outtakes update.  If you haven’t seen my card yet, you do not want to miss tomorrows post.

My Miami Dolphins fan club rode in to the belly of the beast last weekend.  It is our third group to the Meadowlands to watch our Dolphins take on the New York Jets.  The first year there were only a few of us.  Last year we had about a dozen… This year Dolfans NYC bought 63 tickets to the game and held a huge tailgate with tons of Dolphins fans from all over the greater New York area.  The size of the group may be different but the results have been the same time. Dolfans NYC has walked out of that stadium with a victory.

When we showed up to Giants Stadium at 11:30 in the morning it was pouring rain. We had bought a little tent but the wind was blowing so hard we didn’t have any idea how we were going to set it up.  We had a bunch of meat in the car that was getting warm so I got out and put everything into these cheap coolers we bought.  The first cooler ripped to bits when I dropped the ice in and started blowing away. After a fierce struggle I got everything into the other cooler and returned to the car freezing and completely soaked.  Around 12 another car showed up and the rain had let up a little bit.  They were ready to face the elements so we tried to set up this tent tying the thing to the cars with ribbon that my friend Michelle bought to hang up balloons. It was a very haphazard set up but it was good enough to get the grill set up.  When the wind picked up a few minutes later the tent almost blew away but we held it down until the wind actually bent the poles so badly that we had to throw the thing away after the tailgate. At some point the rain slowed to a drizzle and a bunch more Dolphins fans showed up and we had ourselves a party.

The game itself was a mess but we had 16 tickets in our section and we just happened to luck out and were sitting with another handful of Phins fans.  We had some very big dudes with us and some very drunk dudes with us and we just ruined the game for every Jets fan around us and that is exactly what we came to do.  In the end the Dolphins won and we were completely drenched and freezing, but I couldn’t be more content as we walked out of Giants Stadium singing the Dolphins fight song.

Click here to see all of my pictures from the Dolfans NYC tailgate at the Meadowlands.

Ps. Fuck Sal Alosi.

After I spent three days in Miami proper for Art Basel I drove bout 30 minutes up the road to Plantation, FL where I was staying for a whole different experience. I was invited to take part in the Miami Dolphins Web Weekend.  The Dolphins invite a bunch of people who run Miami Dolphins websites down every year.  They take us to a game and we do a Q&A with the Dolphins coach and other people in the Dolphins organization.  There is also a community service aspect to it which unfortunately I had to miss because it was at 8am and I was out until 7am the night before.  That being said, my website Dolfans NYC raised $1000 for the Miami Dolphins Foundation charity and we presented the money to the Dolphins CEO Mike Dee Saturday afternoon. My Miami trip took a huge turn for the worse as the Dolphins lost the game with zero seconds on the clock after dropping what would have been a game winning interception. After that I attempted to once again eat The Beast and lost, falling considerably short of the last time I tried it. Disappointment all around but over all it was a fun trip…

Click here to see all the pictures from the Miami Dolphins Web Weekend.