While everyone is busy watching the fucking Grammys for some insane reason I am going to be posting photos of a band that while probably hasn’t written a new song in a decade is deserving of whatever Grammy they give out for pouring beer on their fans.  If that is not a category it probably should be.

When I went to the Philly Tattoo Convention I had no idea that Murphy’s Law was going to be there. I was pretty fucking psyched when I saw their name on the schedule. They were one of my favorite bands when I was an angry punk rock youth.  I probably saw them a half dozen times in the 90’s but I haven’t seen them since.  I still listen to their music though. I just had one of their CD’s in the car that I was borrowing a few months ago. The point is that even if I am way to old to get in a circle pit I still love this fucking band.  Serious New York hardcore that is as fun as it kicks ass. Also, Murphy’s Law’s front man Jimmy Gestapo is one of the owners of NYHC Tattoo on the Lower East Side which I just won a $100 gift certificate to at one of the fundraisers for Jessie Lee.  Clearly it is fate that I would get to finally see Murphy’s Law again…

As I mentioned I have seen Murphy’s Law a bunch of times and they were always fucking amazing. Their shows were crazy and violent and distinctly remember knocking some guy out with an elbow at one of their shows when he was trying to hurt people in the pit. Any time you get a band that has a huge punk, hardcore and skin following it always got a bit rough.  Still, they were so fun and didn’t take themselves nearly as serious as the other hardcore bands I was listening to back then so seeing them was always just a really good time. They would pass out beers and smoke weed with the crowd and even for a straight edge kid like myself it was always a great show.

I had a feeling though, that this show at the tattoo convention was not going to live up to their normal standards.  The show took place in a fluorescently lit room surrounded by people tattooing and people selling tattoo related stuff from little cubicles. The crowd was clearly not there to see Murphy’s Law although they had about 20 serious fans standing in front of the stage. But a lot of these fans were my age and older and I was pretty free to take pictures without worrying about getting my camera smashed.  And although I was enjoying taking pictures I was pretty disappointed in the vibe.

Slowly that started to change.  More and more fans gathered and as they played their hit songs the area in front of the stage really started moving.  A decent pit started moving and this girl decided to flash the band and the crowd and started making out with people.  Beers got passed around, bottles of Jager started being chugged and people started getting loose.  As the show got better shit started getting weirder.  Jimmy got off stage and got onto the mechanical bull for an entire song.  When he got back on stage a man in a giant zombie Gumby costume was waiting for him.  Soon a guy dressed as bloody bunny joined them on the stage.  Half naked Bombshell Brats and burlesque dancers got on stage.  The band was fucking losing it with all this weirdness going on.  The crowd got more and more into it and realized some shit like this could only happen in a brightly lit hotel conference room.  People started climbing the make-shift scaffolding they had set up for the suspension show and people started jumping on stage.

By the last song the place was just chaos. Half the crowd was on stage singing along.  It ended up being maybe on of the best Murphy’s Law shows I have ever seen and I would venture to guess one of the weirdest of all time.  A lot of the photos I took sucked. My flash was suffering a bit because I had taken more than 1000 photos that day and the fluorescent light made it nearly impossibly hard to make the show look any good from a photography standpoint. That being said I think these photos give you a pretty good idea of how insane the show was and there are a few quality shots in here somewhere. Also these photos are not safe for work which is a weird thing to say about live band shots, but it’s not every day that a band headlines a burlesque show.

Anyway, this write up as gotten a bit long and rambely so I am going to shut the fuck up now.  Just understand that urphy’s Law are fucking awesome and this show was completely fucking bizarre. Oh yeah and fucking click here already to see all the pictures of Murphy’s Law at the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention.

I was going to post all my Philly Tattoo Convention updates in order and save this one for last, but it is really just too good to post on the weekend. I wanted to get it up before my traffic falls off on Saturday…

So at the very end of Saturday at the convention my friends the Bombshell Brats hosted a party.  If you aren’t aware Bombshell Brats is “alt porn” site based out of Jersey that has been in the works for fucking years. They finally got their shit together and have just TONS of content from years worth of building the site.  They also have a bunch of girls who live in Philly and Jersey that they decided to bring out to the tattoo convention.  They hosted the after parties on both Friday and Saturday night.  After all the tattooing was done and the suspension show and the bands played they brought out a giant slip and slide, some bowling pins, a twister mat, a lot of oil…. and about a half dozen naked girls.

Okay, true. The girls did start out in bikinis but they did not stay in them very long.  These girls crashed into one another, slid around in oil and fought each other for bowling pins.  Why was not exactly clear but it did make for a pretty crazy thing to watch. At some point the burlesque girls from Rigor Mortis Revue got involved and shit got taken to another level.  They even had random girls from the aduience getting naked and ripping each others clothes off.   It lasted like 2 hours and I took so many photos I had to switch to another memory card.  Most of them were half out of focus cause I was shooting without a flash in low light but since I shot several hundred of them, I think we managed to get a few keepers.

The thing ended when a girl smashed her head on the floor and pretty much started like twitching on the ground. It was a pretty awful ending to a fun event. I am sure she is alright though. You can shake of a concussion right?

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say. These photos are absurd. I have no idea how any of this was legal. There were cops all over the place. These pictures are totally NSFW and complete madness. If you want to see more of these girls go to BombshellBrats.com, but before you do that clearly you need to look at my pictures…

Click here to see all the photos of the Bombshell Brats naked slip and slide madness at the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention!

So for something like 3 months I kept seeing this model who I loved but I could never figure out who she was.  I kept seeing pictures of her and not realizing it was her and thinking “wow I would really love to shoot her”.  Every time I would check to see who the model would be and every time I would see the name “Miss Crash“.  In the last month I have now ran into her twice, once on each coast, and while I still haven’t been able to shoot her I did get to see her perform at the Philly Tattoo Convention last weekend. And let me tell you… this girl knows how to put on a fucking show.

I should start by saying that this gallery is very fucking NSFW.  While there is not much nudity there is a lot of blood… and not the fake kind you might have seen in the burlesque performances I posted about yesterday.  We are talking legit human blood dripping out of self inflicted holes all in the name of entertainment.  Crash does a suspension show. I have posted a lot of suspension pictures in the past and for a lot of people they never get easier to look at.  Personally I have always wanted to suspend but I am scared enough of it not to actively try to do it. Although I am sure one of these days it is going to be me hanging from some hooks.

Anyway, Crash brought out three girls who did a series of suspensions.  The girls were cute and they did hangs from their elbows, stomach and knees. Knees to me area always the worst. That shit looks so fucked up and makes for some amazing images.  Even Crash said something about how she doesn’t hang from her knees anymore. That shit is seriously brutal.  The girls hangs were pretty impressive and the crowd was really into it but it was nothing compared to Crash’s performance.

Crash came out and did a super aggressive burlesque strip tease thing that by itself was better than 90% of the burlesque out there.  Of course in most burlesque the girl doesn’t have two meat hooks hanging out of her back when she takes off her clothes. Crash was running around fucking shit up and throwing in some pretty amazing booty shakes.  For a skinny white girl, Crash has one Hell of an ass.  Once she had whipped the crowd into a fury she was handed some needles that she proceeded to stab into her face.  Unfortunately I was behind her the whole time and I couldn’t get a great shot.  Luckily when she moved onto stabbing the foot long needles into her stomach I was there for the shot.  After she was good and bloody she was hooked up to the makeshift scaffolding and the performance really began.  She just fucking got loose up there swinging about and kicking shit and just losing it.  The crowd was just screaming. It was pretty fucking impressive.  She was just kicking off the scaffolding and her partner grabbed on to her legs and she continued to hang.  She finally cut herself down and took some more clothes off, did some more booty shakes, this time even more covered in blood and called it a show.  The whole thing lasted only a few minutes but everyone was blown the fuck away.

I was shooting in very low light so I had both a show shutter speed and a very limited depth of field.  I knew 75% of the shots I was taking were going to be out of focus so I popped off about 200 shots of her performance.  I would love to shoot her again in better light or with strobes because I missed some fucking killer shots.  That being said out of the %25 of shots that did come out I got some crazy fucking photos.

So be warned, some of these shots are graphic, but if you have a strong stomach you need to click right fucking here to see Crash’s Suspension Show at the Philadelphia Tattoo Convention.

Also, Crash is a total babe and an amazing woman.  You need to go to her fucking website right now and see a lot more of her. Get on it.

Okay, so I am really behind on this shit because my gallery uploading program is totally fucked up.  The good news is that I spent a few hours a day uploading files to my server by FTP. So I have photos for you.  The other good news is that I had two meetings today about getting my galleries redesigned so I won’t ever have to deal with bullshit like this ever again.  I have five galleries from the tattoo convention and I wanted them all up this week but clearly this shit has put me back a bit. But I got one for you today and at least two tomorrow and we shall see where we go from there.

Today we start with just a general update from the tattoo convention.  This update includes shots of the actual convention, some shots of specific tattoos, and then some of the shows that were going on including the Rigor Mortis Revue burlesque show, The Freak Kings and the Olde City Sideshow. On top of that we have a bunch of insane shots of people on a mechanical bull. Oh, and did I mention this gallery has a few naked Bombshell Brats?  Well, pretty much every gallery from Philly is NSFW thanks to the Brats.  They just pretty much were everywhere and none of them had any clothes on. It was a pretty good look.

Also when I was at the convention I ran into the guy who really got me into film when I was 16, a girl that I had a threesome with a decade ago and a tattoo artist who gave me a lip tattoo… also about a decade ago.

So yeah. We got old friends, naked girls, mechanical bulls, sword swallowing, burlesque, a penguin boy, Jimmy from Murphy’s Law wearing a ladies wig, a giant stuffed moustache and oh yeah, I guess there are some tattoos too….

Click here to see a ton of shots from the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention! More madness coming soon!

First, I just wanted to update you on my life. I have been in Vegas for the last two days and things have been pretty crazy. They have lived up to the hype of the AVN porn weekend madness that one expects from this insane trip. I will have pretty crazy pictures next week.  I have slept even less than I normally sleep and I am sort of losing it. The wifi at my hotel is fucking horrible so updating my site has been next to impossible. I am fighting through this shit now. I really hope I am going to be able to upload the pictures below.  It took me forever to update my Tumblr but you should check it as there are a couple of crazy pics over there. Hopefully I will be all settled by Monday and will have time to edit and start uploading pictures…

Now, to the meat of this update.  My friend Rhiannon was visiting the US from Australia for New Years and decided to get a Driven By Boredom tattoo.  Of all the people with the tattoo she has been reading Driven By Boredom the longest.  When I first started DBB about 10 years ago I was actively involved in a community of some of the first bloggers. People who ran what was then called E/N sites or “Everything/Nothing” sites. They were the first people just blogging about bullshit. Rhiannon was part of that scene and I talked to her almost daily online for years. About two years ago she came to the states and wanted to meet some of the people she had been talking with for years including another Rhiannon who I actually went to college with. I hung out with them then and we had a little web reunion with some people and it was a lot of fun.  This time she came back and I ended up spending a few days with the Rhiannon’s and Aussie Rhi wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate her trip and she thought the DBB tattoo would sort of sum up the weird several years of her life when she was actively blogging and engaged in a community of geeky strangers all over the world. And I was happy to oblige her and we headed over to Glamour Garage and hit up the amazing Jess Versus got that shit done.

Click here to see more pictures of Driven By Boredom tattoos including more pictures of Rhi’s tats once I get to LA and can upload them!

And the tattoos keep on coming…

Yesterday my homie Jess Versus tattooed two more people with Driven By Boredom logos.  There are now a dozen (or 13 if you count my tattoo) people with the Driven By Boredom logo.   The newest additions are my friends Chase and Johnny Nelson. I have known Chase forever and he has been harassing me about getting the tattoo so I made an appointment with Jess. Johnny hit me up the other day and showed up despite being sick.  Johnny may or may not be the greatest rap icon of our generation so hopefully my tattoo will show up on the cover of the Source or Rolling Stone sooner or later.

Anyway, thanks a bunch to these guys for putting my logo on their flesh for the rest of their lives and thanks a bunch to Jess for doing the tattoos. Go check her out at Glamour Garage and get some ink of your own. And of course if anyone wants a free Driven By Boredom tattoo in the future, hit me up… I’ll see what I can do.

Click here to see even more Driven By Boredom tattoos.

So I got a Ronald Reagan dressed as a pimp tattoo. You might ask why the Hell would I do something like that.  I might tell you it is an indictment of the irresponsible fiscal policies and the theory of trickle down economics. It is satirizing of tax breaks for the wealthy and Reaganomics.  Or I might just tell you that I got it because I think it’s hilarious. Cause it is.

Really I just wanted something by Mitch O’Connell who is a favorite artist of mine and when going through his book of tattoo ideas I realized my favorite images were his series of presidents dressed as pimps.  The Reagan stood out to me because when I was a kid I loved Reagan before I understood politics can because it just happened to fit in the spot where I wanted to put a tattoo.

I was born in 1980 a few months before Reagan was elected president. He was with me for all my formative years and as a child obsessed with both Family Ties and jelly beans he seemed flawless. If Alex P. Keaton loved Reagan, you can be damn sure I did. If you are younger than 25 and have no idea who Alex P. Keaton is you need to watch this right away.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCiRuJ8fWYs[/youtube]

Moving on, I photographed this amazing pool party that was held for my friend and tattoo artist Betty Rose. She asked me to shoot it and as payment she offered up this sweet Reagan tattoo.  She did my Aloha Monkey and she killed it once again with my man Ronnie here. She had to make his head and hands a bit bigger than they were in the original drawing for detail, but I think it looks pretty sweet anyway.  So go get tattooed by her already and if anyone else wants to trade photos for tattoos… let a brother know.

Lastly, speaking of tattoos, on Tuesday more people are going to be getting the Driven By Boredom logo tattooed to them.  I have two people confirmed but we could always use more.  My friend Jess is going to hook everyone up proper. If not Tuesday then we can do it soon… So if you want a free Driven By Boredom tattoo on Tuesday or any time in the near future let me know and you can join the ranks of these amazing people who already have Driven By Boredom tattoos!

Ronnie Reagan he’s our man! If he can’t do it nobody can!

The other day I went into Red Rocket Tattoo to talk to my friend Betty Rose about tattooing Ronald Reagan dressed as a pimp on my leg.  She tattooed a monkey’s asshole on me so it only made sense for her to do another really dumb tattoo on me.  As soon as I got there she told me about this birthday pool party she was having and we decided to barter tattoos for photos. Seemed like a fantastic idea. I mean I get to hang out with tattooed babes in bikini’s for a few hours and then I get free ink. Sign me up.

So last night I went over to the Grace Hotel which used to be the Q Hotel at some point for this sweet pool party shindig. There weren’t a ton of people there as it was a low key affair, but everyone was having an insane time. Betty drank more tequila than I have ever seen a human consume and everyone got out of control. My old friend Corinna showed up and immediately got naked and started getting other people naked and things quickly got into the territory of things I cannot speak or post photos of. It was that good of a time. I even went swimming for a bit after I had finished shooting. I then drove people to Harlem and still made it home by three AM.  Total win of a night.  Plus now I have a tattoo appointment for early November after Betty comes back from her birthday party time vacation.

You should probably get a tattoo from her too. I mean she is a babe and a rad tattoo artist. Check out her stuff. And then you should click here to see all the photos from the birthday bash at the Grace Hotel. Oh and they get pretty NSFW. Just FYI.

This is honestly one of the most epic updates from the Gathering of the Juggalos. Other than maybe Black Flag bars you don’t really see a lot of people getting the same band tattoo, but fucking EVERYONE at the Gathering has the Psychopathic Records hatchet man logo. It’s fucking crazy. I started out with the idea of shooting all these ICP tattoos but seriously 75% of the people there had them so I had to concentrate on the more outrageous tattoos, but even then I was sort of ignoring half of them. It just went on and on.  I guess if you are the type of person to travel to the middle of nowhere for an Insane Clown Posse show you are probably they type of person to get there logo tattooed to you. Honestly, I almost got one just to commemorate the event but my editor wouldn’t get a matching one with me.  But I do have both Michael Jackson and Elvis tattoos so I might not be the best judge of good tattoo ideas. But yeah, this gallery is full of hatchet men and ICP tattoos but there are also Dark Lotus tattoos, Twiztid tattoos, Kottonmouth Kings tattoos and pretty much any of that wicked shit. Even Coolio has an ICP tattoo. These kids are seriously down with the clown.

So click here to see a huge gallery of Insane Clown Possee tattoos from the Gathering of the Juggalos. Oh, and be warned, a few girls have ICP tattoos on their exposed breasts, so I gotta rate this gallery a NSFW.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.