This is the first of many changes that are going to be happening to Driven By Boredom over the next few months. I have been hinting at a site redesign for a long time and my hope is that it is actually on it’s way. I am supposed to have a new draft of the design in a few days and once it gets pretty close to where it needs to be we are going to start implementing it. That is going to be a huge process because it means reuploading 30+ gigs of photos one gallery at a time but once it’s done everything is going to work so much better.
One of the big new features to the site is what I am calling B-Sides. B-Sides is a separate blog that will show up on the main site right under the newest photo gallery and will feature a variety of content from site news and events to videos and music. It will give me a chance to update the site as often as I want without bumping important content down the page. If I am out of town and don’t have time to get up full galleries I can still post my friends new music video or let you know about why the hell I haven’t updated. It’s going to lead to a lot more content and I am pretty excited about it.
I want to get people used to the B-Sides now so I will be posting on there a couple of times a week just to get a bit of content on this blog before the new page launches but once the site does launch you should see me updating it a lot more. I hope you guys are at least 15% as excited about this as I am. It should be fun.
Just saw this trailer for Django Unchained the new film from Quentin Tarantino. It’s been out for a minute but I wasn’t aware of it until last night. Since 95% of people have never seen any of the Django films let me give you some info about this film and why I am fucking exited about it.
I am a film nerd but it’s kinda under cover these days. I actually moved to NYC mostly so I could see films that I couldn’t see when I was living in Richmond, VA. I pride myself in having an eclectic taste and watching the Hollywood blockbusters as well as the underground indie stuff and all the film classics but my specialty is exploitation film.
I could give you 100 pages on exploitation film but let’s try to make it simple. Exploitation pictures were generally low budget films that exploited things like violence, nudity, etc to make a profitable fim cheaply. My personal favorite subgenre is Blaxploitation which “exploited” the previously untapped African American filmgoing market. Before 1971 there were pretty much no films catering to a huge American population. These films were made cheaply and often featured sex and violence to sell the picture.
As you probably know Quentin Tarantino is a huge exploitation fan and pretty much every film he makes is a reference to a bunch of them. Jackie Brown is actually named after exploitation director Jack Hill and his Blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown. His Grindhouse film Death Proof is just his own attempt at making a Carsploitation film and Kill Bill is just one reference after another.
Okay, so let’s get to the point cause this is beginning to drift. Tarantino is remaking Django. It’s been made 30 times and the original was pretty much a remake of a remake. Four years ago I reviewed Sukiyaki Western Django, the Takashi Miike remake of Django which actually featured Quentin Tarantino in an acting roll and I am going to quote that to you for some important background…
Let’s start with answering the question: What is a Spaghetti Western?
Spaghetti Westerns were Westerns made by Italian’s shot in Spain, primarily in the 1970?s. They used Italian actors to play Mexicans in the west. They also employed international actors and had them all speaking different languages to each other. The most well known of these movies were the Leone/Eastwood “Man With No Name” films… A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More and Good The Bad And The Ugly. In these films Clint Eastwood spoke English to the Italian actors speaking Italian. When the film was released in the States, Eastwood’s dialogue remained his own, but the Italian actors had their voices dubbed into English. This was reversed for the Italian releases. These films were generally low budget, but often ultra violent making them especially interesting to American audiences. These movies gained significant influence in the world of American filmmaking.
So the next thing we need to talk about is Yojimbo. Yojimbo was a samurai film made in 1961 staring Toshiro Mifune made by the legend Akira Kurosawa in 1961. It was about a samurai who comes to a small town that is stuck in a war between two rival gangs who run gambling houses. Yojimbo convinces one gang to hire him for protection and then plays the two gangs against each other, getting money on both ends. Despite my love for Kurosawa and Mifune it is not one of my top 5 favorite Samurai films… however two of it’s remakes are two of my favorite movies of all time.
The first of these was the previously mentioned A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. This put Spaghetti Westerns on the map and made both Eastwood and Sergio Leone famous. Only 2 years later a bad ass motherfucker named Sergio Corbucci decided to remake A Fistful Of Dollars… only this time he added more blood. You know that scene in Reservoir Dogs when Mr. Blonde cuts off that cops ear? Well he stole that from Corbucci’s remake 1966 Django. Corbucci, while not as well known as Leone, is probably just as amazing, and definitely way more fucked up.
Okay so now Tarantino is finally doing is proper remake of the Django story and I could not be more excited. By the look of it Tarantino is not only referencing the original Django film but other Corbucci films as well. Specifically I see references to my favorite Corbucci film “The Grand Silence” which featured Klaus Kinski as a bounty hunter. The choice to cast the German actor Christopher Waltz seems as a bounty hunter seems like a direct homage to Kinski’s roll. The Grand Silence also features a lot of amazing snow scenes which you don’t see a lot of in westerns and you see a lot of great snow shots in the Django Unchained trailer.
This write up has become long and confusing and is a perfect example of why I started writing about film on my site but I hope this gives you some background about the movie and I hope you search out some of these amazing Spaghetti Westerns. Anything by Leone or Corbucci is very worth picking up. Lastly here are a few clips from some films so you can see what the hell I am talking about.
Tomorrow is an exciting day! I am celebrating my birthday, my band is playing and zombies are taking over Brooklyn!
The Brooklyn Zombie crawl is tomorrow starting out at 6pm from Trash Bar and wondering all over Brooklyn until it ends up at Public Assembly around 9pm for an after party that you cannot miss. If you don’t know about the New York zombie crawls you just need to do a search of my website. They are insane. But the real insanity doesn’t happen until the zombies get to Public Assembly.
My band Fucking Bullshit is playing punk rock covers to a packed house of zombies for what will no doubt be our greatest show. I will be wildly drunk because I am celebrating my birthday and I will be in rare form. You cannot miss this shit. Seriously if you ever see a Fucking Bullshit show this should be the one to see.
The whole after party should be insane. It starts at 9pm and Andy Shaw’s band Bikini Carwash is opening. My band goes on at 9:45pm and then it’s just a fleet of naked zombie girls doing all manor of things after that. There is zombie burlesque and the infamous Strip for Pain. If you want to see Burning Angels naked in real life instead of just on the internet you need to show up. There will be PBR and Sailor Jerry drink specials and I can probably hook it up with free booze if you bother me enough. The whole thing is going to be a shit show.
The after party is $15 or $12 if you come dressed as a zombie but I assure you it will be more than worth it. You got cheap drinks, punk rock covers and a lot of zombie boobs. You need this shit in your life.
Hey you raver fucks, now is your chance to see Fucking Bullshit. For some reason The Death Set decided to throw a punk rock vs Moombathon party tomorrow night (Thursday) at Santo’s Party House and Fucking Bullshit is opening. I know a lot of my friends don’t give a shit about punk, but they do like absurd dance music so now is your chance to get your glow sticks out and try to throw them at my face as I sing punk rock hits for you clowns. And then you can see Cousin Culo, Phi Unit and DJ Reck do their thing. For my punk friends, don’t miss this show because we are playing with the Death Set and the K-Holes and I imagine that I will spend most of the set trying to pick fights with club kids. It should be a lot of fun. Anyway, the show starts at 8 and we play at 9. Seriously, right at 9. Don’t be late. Here is a link to the Facebook invite for more info.
Now for the content of this post I have a bunch of shots that Coach Mike took at our last show and a lovely video. It was a lot of fun and we had everyone signing a long. The lead singer of Iconicide took the mic during a Black Flag cover and sang his death metal vocals all over my punk rock vocals. Clearly I had no choice to flip him in the air using only my neck. Fortunately when his head hit a cinder block he did not die and kept on rocking out. So check out the video, the neck flip starts around 1:45 and enjoy Mike’s pictures. See you cowards tomorrow.
If you are reading this you got pretty lucky. Yesterday my host decided it would be a good idea to limit the amount of connections to my site because I am getting too much traffic. Then they decided not to get back to my emails, so as I search for a new hosting solution my site is scrambled. I don’t want to do new posts since it’s impossible to fucking view anything on here so I am gonna wait until I get this sorted to update but since the galeries are already uploaded here are links to the last two SXSW updates I have planned for you:
And just because I hate to see my updates without some media in them, here is a video by the fantastic JC Brooks & The Uptown sound who I discovered at the Brooklyn Vegan party.
Hey kids. Just wanted to update you on things real quick. I am in LA right now and I am headed to Orange County which is only about an hour away to shoot the Musink tattoo and music fest 12 hours a day for two days. I have been in LA for three days and amazingly busy shooting naked girls and catching up with old friends. It’s been a good time but I haven’t had much time to update my site. I am back to NYC for 48 hours on Tuesday and then I am off on the road again for nearly three weeks. Point being updates may be less frequent than normal. That being said I do have two updates ready to go and I hope to get a chance to work on them tonight so they will be up ASAP.
I also just wanted to remind you that I will keep updating my Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram while I am on the road so if you care you should be on top of that shit. Usually when I travel my site gets boring but my social networks get fun. Just a heads up.
Lastly, I wanted to provide you some content and yesterday I watched an amazing old 60 minute PBS documentary called The Natural History of the Chicken with a friend of mine and the day before I hung out with a real life chicken on the streets of LA so it’s got me thinking about my favorite food. So here are three magical videos about the greatest bird on earth, the delicious and hilarious chicken. See you guys soon.
I have talked about my friend Teddy many, many times on this website but it’s been a while so it’s time for a refresher. Teddy Blanks was the front man for The Gaskets the band I managed for 5 years. They broke up in 2008 and Teddy started making solo music. During this period he released a free EP called Complications which we will come back to in a second. Teddy started playing shows out and he scored the soundtrack for the very successful indie film Tiny Furniture (out Tuesday on Criterion DVD).
A few years ago Teddy co-founded what has become a very successful graphic design studio and put his music on the back burner a little bit but he has now shifted back into full on music making mode. Yesterday he released a bunch of new music starting with a re-release of Complications. Complications has been remixed and is fully ready for you to put into your face. The album is a concept album based on the writings of New Yorker staff writer and surgeon Atul Gawande. If you have never heard pop songs about medical oddities and songs using disease as metaphors for life this is your lucky day. The album is completely free you can listen to it below or download it here.
Teddy also has released all the music that he wrote for Tiny Furniture. Much of it didn’t make it into the movie including a Sinead O’Connor cover that they couldn’t afford the rights to. Most of the music is instrumental but there are a couple pop gems in there including When You Come Home, the song used in the trailer for the film. You can download all the Music From & Inspired by Tiny Furniture for free here.
On top of all that Teddy has released three new demos. You can download all three demos here. Teddy is hard at work on a new album but these tracks didn’t make the cut, but they are still great songs. Somewhat Hasty is a personal favorite of mine.
Lastly, yesterday Paper Magazine debuted Teddy’s video for the opening track to Complications, Faint & Shaky. The video was directed by Ry Russo-Young who’s new film Nobody Walks was a hit at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Films. The video is peep show themed and Teddy does a little strip tease for your viewing pleasures. So watch this video and if you enjoy it, as I know you will, go back and check out all the other amazing links to music I just sent you!
You may be wondering why I haven’t updated in 5 days. The truth is I didn’t realize that I hadn’t. I feel like just yesterday wa New Years Eve, but it appears that is not the case. Luckily for us there is magical things happening on DBB and we just have to wait a little bit longer but good things are coming!
So things have been a bit slow around here but for good reason. I have been busting my ass organizing my life and working on projects that will hopefully make everything awesome in the very near future. So let’s break down the exciting shit coming up for Driven By Boredom.
1) Wild Adventures. I am going on a three week trip that should bring some crazy fucking photos to the site. I am going to LA to shoot a bunch of naked girls, Vegas to shoot an isanyoneup.com party and the AVN Awards, then back to LA and the finally to Aspen to shoot the fucking Winter X-Games. Expect a LOT of amazing content coming soon.
2) Driven By Boredom 4.0. I put a down payment on getting this site finally redesigned properly. This site has out grown it’s design and by March things should be a lot cleaner and a lot more functional. As far as you guys should be concerned the galleries will work properly, mobile viewing will be greatly improved and there is going to be a secondary blog which will make it easier to do little updates daily without moving the quality posts off the front page. On top of that the site is going to be much improved on my end making my job easier and improving boring things like SEO and social networking integration.
3) DBB.TV. I can’t give away too much here but there is finally going to be a proper video component to my website and it is going to launch with the new site design. Right now I have to mini web shows in development and hopefully I will have a few episodes of a third show by the time we launch. The shows are going to be really simple things that I can keep up with without spending too much of my time on it so don’t expect anything too crazy but they should be a fun change of pace for the site.
4) Love Me When I’m Gone. Although this isn’t really anything most of you care about I have been busting my ass working on the tribute album to my deceased friend Ross Harman. Everything is done on it and I am going to be releasing the album in late February. It has been taking up a TON of my time and will continue to do so for a little bit longer but it’s a big deal for me and will lead to things you might care more about like…
5) A Web Store. With this record coming out and this new design in place I am going to be relaunching a web store. I built one a long time ago but never really pushed it but with the launch of the new site the store will be featured into the design. You will be able to buy a bunch of stuff including DBB T-shirts, stickers buttons and tote bags as well as other stuff like the tribute record, Fucking Bullshit t-shirts, and prints. Plus other things I have created over the years that I have in boxes in my apartment like The Gaskets merch and some of my friends projects that I have worked on.
Anyway, there are also a few other things going on that I can’t really talk about yet but just know that even though things are a little slow around here right now there is A LOT of magical stuff coming. I hope you guys are at least 15% as excited about this stuff as I am… Cause I am pretty fucking psyched about all of it. See you guys tomorrow.
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!
