So today I went to the Kings County Brooklyn Supreme Court building to get assigned some jury duty.  Turns out I will be serving on a Grand Jury for two weeks minimum. This seems like it could be really bad for Driven By Boredom for a bit.  Not only will I have to wake up at the crack of dawn every day but I can’t even tweet about the trials or I go to jail or something.  What a fucking bummer.  On the bright side I get $40 a day which is about 1/4th of what I carge for two fucking hours.

So yeah basicly I am probably not going to be posting a lot of updates over the next couple weeks and I am going to have to cancel a bunch of stuff. But I do have to say that my favorite model on earth is coming to visit me next weekend and hopefully I can get her to come out of retirement long enough to make you guys a little bit happy… and don’t worry I have a few updates ready to go next week already.

The end.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A39yUsdlzKk[/youtube]

Everyone and their mother on Twitter is talking about how today is the anniversary of Kurt Kobain’s death.  Half of those people probably weren’t even aware of music in 1994. I wasn’t going to just send some comment in a Tweet about it because Kurt Cobain’s death was probably the single most important event of my life.

In 1990 I found out about Nirvana through my friends older brother. I heard Bleach and I hated it. I only listened to hip hop and hair metal. I was 10 years old. Nevermind came out a year later and I liked it but I always sort of liked Weird Al’s version of Nirvana a little bit better. It wasn’t until 1992 and the release of Incesticide that I really became a big Nirvana fan.  But once it took hold it took hold hard.  By 1994 Nirvana was pretty much the only band I listened to. They at least informed all my musical choices. I liked Hole and I liked the Meat Puppets and stuff but Nirvana was pretty much my world. I was as obsessed as you could be with a band. I never in my life fell half as love with a band as I did Nirvana.

When Kurt Cobain died I was 13 years old, about to turn 14. I would enter high school a few months later so that summer was a pretty important time for me. I was in this guy Mikey Banks’ van when I found out. He had a TV in his van and we were watching MTv. I thought was pretty sweet to be watching TV in a van until Kurt Loder came on and told the world that Kurt Kobain was dead. Cobain had been in a coma a few weeks before and came out of it okay. Somehow I was hoping this would all be okay too. Maybe he was faking his death.  We drove back to Mikey’s house right away. I was never really friends with that guy even though I went to school with him for 9 years. My only real memory of him is sitting at his house watching MTV totally in shock.  My friend Keith went to the bathroom and cried.  I just stared blankly. I didn’t fucking know what to do.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y18okpx0mjY[/youtube]

I was never going to see Nirvana live. I couldn’t fucking get over that. I wasn’t surprised that Kurt Cobain killed himself. He had so many people in his family kill themselves and the Nirvana poster above my bead that said “I hate myself and I want to die” was a pretty big warning sign so I wasn’t surprised. But I was angry. I was never going to get to see Nirvana play and I was never going to have any new music to listen to. I was fucking blown.

The thing about Nirvana was that for a 14 year old kid who didn’t know shit about music outside of the radio Nirvana was underground.  Yeah they were this huge band and all but they were alternative. They were non conformist and as punk rock as top 40 got back then.  So when Nirvana died and everyone in my school acted like they were these huge Nirvana fans it really fucking got to me. When Unplugged came out and everyone was listening to it I was pissed.  These kids never listened to Bleach. They only cared about this watered down acoustic Nirvana.  So I said fuck it.

I was done with Nirvana now. These poseurs could have Kurt. The only problem was I didn’t know what else to listen to.  I had to get some new music.  So I went back and reread Michael Azerrad’s book “Come As You Are”.  I went through it page by page looking up every band that Kurt mentioned listening to in it and I went out and bought CDs. I tried out Flipper, Mudhoney, the Melvins and the Vaselines.  I didn’t like any of it.  I eventually grew to love Mudhoney couldn’t fucking believe how bad the Vaselines were and how much better the Nirvana versions of their songs were. But I kept buying albums and on May 29th, 1994 on my 14th birthday my friend Eric Dahlberg bought me a Black Flag album and it changed my life in an instant.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yJIdLFzatw[/youtube]

That summer all I listened to was punk rock.  Black Flag instantly changed my life but I was listening to bands like the Sex Pistols and the Misfits and Fear and the Circle Jerks. Rancid came out around that time so I was listening to them and some popy shit like NOFX and Bad Religion.  I loved the Descendants, the Dead Milkman and the fucking Ramones.  This new punk rock shit opened my eyes.

My freshman year in high school my friend Tom and I started the punk rock club. We had these meetings at school that were totally pointless because no one else liked the music. It was just the two of us and this senior girl named Mary.  The school made us actually do something so we decided we would start a magazine.  The first issue was the most embarrassing fucking thing ever. But Mary started taking us to shows. My mom would let me go into DC with Mary cause she knew her mom and Mary was 18.  A few months later my parents were letting me take the subway into the worst neighborhoods in DC to see local punk bands.

As we met these bands we came up with and idea to put out a record. We hit up our favorite bands and then borrowed money from our friends and parents until we had raised about $1600 to put out a record. And in July 1996 just over a month after my 16th birthday Raise The Flag: harDCore Volume 1 came out on our very own record label. It sold 900 copies in about 3 months just in DC and with no distribution other than a couple record stores. Pretty much every single copy was sold personally by Tom or I.

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

Over the next two years Tom and I put out four more issues of our zine. We released some tapes and a CD and started booking shows. We were big names in the DC punk scene at 17 years old. I started photography to shoot the bands on our label and it turned out I was pretty good at it.

By the time I graduated high school Tom and I had dissolved our partnership.  We became close friends again later in life but for a while we hated each other. I wanted to skip college and keep working on the record label but Tom spent all our money and my parents were ready to kill me if I didn’t go to school. So I went to school and I majored in photography.

In 2003 I met a band called The Gaskets and I spent 5 years managing them.  I booked their shows, got their music pressed, took all their photos, had their t-shirts, buttons and stickers made and ran their company.  When they broke up I started taking Driven By Boredom seriously and started my own business. And for the last two years I have been making a full time living running my site and taking photos and I couldn’t have done any of that without punk rock.

Punk rock was the best education I ever had.  It taught me so many skills from photography to event planning. It taught me that even a 15 year old kid could run a business and do it successfully. It taught me how to make stickers, buttons, t-shirts, zines and records. It taught me how to talk to people and network and promote. It instilled in me the love of photography. And above all it ingrained in me the do it yourself, DIY or die mentality that has lasted me my entire life.

So Kurt, wherever you are, I fucking love you and your music, but if it wasn’t for your death I wouldn’t be half the person I am today.

Kurdt D Cobain rest in peace.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv96yJYhk3M&feature=channel_video_title[/youtube]

I turned 30 last May and I realized something. In my life I have worked in the music industry in nearly every imaginable way except one.  I stared a record label when I was 15. I ran a zine about punk for 3 years. I have written and blogged about music. I have booked shows and dance parties. I have booked tours for bands. I have managed bands including one for 5 years. I have photographed bands and DJs both live shots and portraits.  I have been in a half dozen music videos. I haven’t actually recorded any bands but I have been in recording studios with bands helping out in whatever ways I could for countless hours. I have made flyers, stickers and album covers. I have promoted, built websites for and done everything you could imagine for a number of bands.  Music was my life for so long but one thing I have never done was play in a band.

I have no musical talent, but that hasn’t stopped me from fucking around with bands.  I was in a band in high school that I played random things like washboards and kazoos in but we never played a show. I have even made some really awful music more or less as a joke. I once sang background gang vocals on a Camper Van Beethoven track.  I even once filled in for a band that was missing a bassist at a show.  I stood there holding a bass that was plugged into a cardboard box that had the word AMP written on it. One of the dudes from PCP Roadblock stood in the back of the room and yelled “TURN UP THE BASS” as the guitarist and drummer played three songs while I stood there banging on strings.  Other than that the closest I have ever come to playing a show was singing Elvis at my friends post elopement wedding party.

Now, one thing I have to say is that I cannot sing for shit. I have no voice and no timing.  All that being said, I am a fucking lunatic and I have a pretty good feeling can thrash around on stage with the best of them. So when I turned 30 I decided to try to start a punk band. After months of talking about it we are finally going to have our first practice on Tuesday.  This band is pretty much going to be a joke.  The guys in the band are all in other bands and they are going to practice with me once a week until we get our shit together to play a few shows for fun.  If I could play three real shows I would cross a huge item off my bucket list.  So we are going to probably just be a cover band.  At least to start with. I sent everyone three of my favorite punk songs to learn and hopefully we can get them down on Tuesday. I guess the ultimate goal would be maybe 5 covers and 5 originals which seems like a pretty good 20 minute set. I’ll let you guys know how it goes although I probably won’t be promoting the shows too much if they ever do happen because 95% don’t give a fuck about punk and wouldn’t enjoy the show even if I could sing.

Now the meat of this post is going to be the 3 covers we are going to end up practicing on Tuesday:

The first is Girl Problems by State Of Alert.  S.O.A. was Henry Rollins first band and he is really dismissive of them.  But their only record, the No Policy EP, is my favorite punk album of all time. Girl Problems is my favorite song on it even though when I was 15 and listning to it the only girl problems I had were that they wouldn’t talk to me.

SOA – Girl Problems

The second song is Drink, Fight & Fuck by G.G. Allin.  I plan on naming my first photo book Drink Fight Fuck and this song is sort of what violent punk is all about.  The irony here is of course that I don’t drink, but I think I might make an exception if we ever play a show. I got in a lot of fights growing up but having a $3000 camera in your hand makes it a lot harder to decide to throw a punch so I have been pretty fortunate not to have done extremely stupid in a few years. And as far as the Fuck part goes… no comment.

GG Allin – Drink Fight Fuck

The last song is Depression by Black Flag.  The Keith Morris version of this song is great but it’s really the live version from Decline of Western Civilization version that I hope to be channeling when I sing it. Black Flag is the band that got me into punk and really changed my life. The DIY mentality of punk is probably the only reason I have been able to run my own business. If it weren’t for Black Flag I would probably be working at a bank or something.

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

One of my best friends goes by the name of Barry Gamble. He is wondrous man that I met when I was eleven years old. In fact my four closest friends in the world were all in the same 5th grade class with me. Considering the class probably had about 16 students that is pretty fucking impressive. But back to Barry.  Barry is a weird dude. He is one of my favorite people on Earth but he does not really make a lot of sense as a human. He has some of the strongest opinions of anyone I have ever met but most of them contradict each other. His fashion sense is unexplained borrowing elements of punk and hip hop culture mixing it with exclusively Old Navy T-shirts that he buys off the $5 rack. He is a fitness fanatic and at 6’4″ he is kinda an imposing dude yet he has never been in a fight and the only sport he has ever excelled in is bowling which he has a 200+ average. He was the capitan of the varsity cross country team  his senior year in high school despite never running a varsity race. He was one of the slowest members of the JV team yet he was beloved by all that they bestowed upon him the honor of captain which was probably as funny to them as it was to me.  He is not just a slow runner, he is an unreasonably patient man and does everything with purpose and intern is one of the slowest mother fuckers I have ever encountered.  This trait as earned him the nickname Slo’ Barry which I will personally carve into his tombstone if I somehow manage to outlive him.

On top of Barry’s physical gifts he is also quite the showman.  He is a pianist and singer and we once started a 1979 style rap group called The Party Rock Three. Together with a group of three other gentlemen came in third place in our high school talent show for our rendition of Soft Cells rendition of Tainted Love. Barry won the male beauty pageant at his collage three years in a row making him the only three time Mr. Lynchburg College in school history. He was robbed of his fourth crown purely because he was the front runner. I drove several hours to witness him defend his title and he was the clear winner despite losing in the end. But above all, Barry is a friend.  A friend who dedicated a song in my honor for some reason.  I have no idea what gave him the idea to write a song about me to the tune of Elton John’s The Measure of A Man, but he did and I thank him dearly for it.

Below the video I present annotated lyrics.  Click the highlighted links to learn just a little more about me than you ever wanted to know. God save us all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APA3AR5073U[/youtube]

He’s taking pictures every night
Which he then shares on his website
He gets the ladies in the mood
So that they model in the nude
Join him in the bathroom for a shoot.

Take off your clothes, untie your shoes
Show him your boobs
You’ll see Igor is a man

He downs hard liquor twice a year
Best of the best at chugging beer
His appetite a god did make
I’ve seen him eat 5 lbs of steak
He drowned his beef in A1 and cleaned his plate
He seldom drinks, he’s a good dude
Eats lots of food
He is a mountain of a man

It’s the warmth of his voice, the touch of his hand
Tattoos you’ll never understand
Heart on his sleeve, reluctance to dance
That’s why Igor is a man

He’s always got time for his friends
And his baby brother Ben
Obsessed with football in the fall
I hope his Dolphins win it all
His posture sucks, he never stands up tall

One of a kind producer of work
Sometimes a jerk
You’re the measure of a man

Happy Presidents Day! Oh wait… it’s not technically Presidents Day anymore… I sort of fell asleep reading a Time Magazine article on singularity and woke up and it was Tuesday. I’ll take my sleep when I can get it. I’ll also post date this blog post so it looks like I actually got it up by midnight. So I guess I win.

Anyway, we are continuing the All My Friends Are In Bands series with three more videos from musicians that I like both as musicians and as peoples. This week features some videos I wanted to post about a while ago and probably did on my Tumblr already but fuck it, these are all videos I really dig and I want you guys to fucking pay attention to.  Let’s get started.

The oldest one is Johnny Nelson’s “Put Em In A Body Bag”.  I fucking love this song, the video is fucking tight AND most importantly Johnny Nelson has a fucking DBB tattoo so you know that dude is family.  But once again I just wish I was in the fucking video.  Come on guys, we need to start putting me in these fucking things. It’s not like I am doing anything better before midnight…  Honestly though, this song and video are amazing and his brother Telli from Ninjasonik is along for the ride.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5kCKiovnOg[/youtube]

The second video is Hussle Club’s “Loose Tights”.  Prince Terry is obviously part of the Driven By Boredom family despite flaking on his DBB tattoo and his Hussle Club is pretty fucking bad ass but I am sure you know about that by now.  The video is sick too although I do have one problem with it. He gets off the J train at Bowery and then ends up at the Delancey F train. I mean there is a J stop in the same station, clearly you missed your stop homie. You live a block from there, you should have that figured out by now…  In all seriousness… good song, good video… watch that shit now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5A5qFFQJdo[/youtube]

The third and final video is a documentary about the Death Set’s tour with Girl Talk called The Adventures of Quanni Cannonz.  When that show was in NYC at Terminal 5 I shot it and that’s how I both discovered the Death Set and met Ninjasonik.  All those dudes are fam now so that show was a pretty momentous occasion.  Plus it was a fucking amazing show.  I had seen Girl Talk a bunch of times before anyone ever heard of him but seeing him for the first time in front of a sold out crowd was fucking nuts.  Anyway, the Death Set killed it opening for him and this documentary is fucking hilarious.  It’s 20 min long but well worth watching.

The Death Set – The Adventures of Quanni Cannonz from The Death Set on Vimeo.

In the coming months Driven By Boredom is going to get a make over. The facelift is tentatively scheduled for April 1st but knowing how these things work, and on my limited budget, it could be 2015 before it really happens.  Part of that redesign is going to give the party photos their own part of the website so that I can do more blogging about other things without bumping the photography down to the bottom of the page.  This is going to let me do a lot of shorter blogs and do posts on videos, music, events and other things that I usually just post on my Tumblr account. I really want to do a lot of shorter posts like I was doing when DBB 3.0 first launched and soon I will be able to do that.  I mention this for two reasons, one is to keep you updated on things on DBB, and the other is because I am about to do one of those type of posts right now… (This actually ended up being a lot more substantial than I thought it was going to be…)

Hulu Plus announced recently that it has worked out a deal with the Criterion Collection to stream their films uninterrupted.  Criterion owns the digital rights to over 800 films and over 150 films are available now.  The films will be shown with commercial before the movie so that you don’t have to have unnatural breaks while watching.  Some Criterion films will be available on a rotating basis with commercial breaks as part of Hulu’s basic service.

I actually just quit my Hulu Plus subcription. Many of the TV shows I wanted to watch weren’t available to stream on mobile devices. It seemed totally pointless. I have no real interest in watching every episode of Cougar Town or The Dick Van Dyke show. I am pretty sure the addition of Criterion Collection is going to get me to sign back up. If you aren’t familiar with the Criterion Collection you probably have no business watching any of their movies anyway (although they do have a couple of Michael Bay films in there…) but they have one of the largest libraries of film classics around.  All their films are amazingly restored and are usually the best (and in many cases only) versions around.  Criterion DVDs run between $30 and $40 for a single film so being able to watch them all for $7.99 a month seems like a steal.

I am a huge film nerd and one of the main reasons I moved to NYC was so I could watch movies. I was driving 6 hours to NYC from Richmond, VA every month just to watch films that I couldn’t get in Virginia. When I was living in Richmond I was watching more than 30 movies a month and amassed a DVD collection of well over 1000 films (Including 36 from the Criterion Collection). Unfortunately when I moved to NYC I had much less time and much less money to devote to my film habit. I watch maybe 5 movies a month now and usually they are Hollywood films because I don’t devote the time to figuring out what is playing at Film Forum or the Angelka.

I just wish that Netflix streaming and this Hulu Plus Criterion thing existed when I was living in Richmond. I probably would have watched 50 movies a month and had an even deeper understanding of film history.

Anyway, here are the trailers to 3 of favorite films in the Criterion Collection.  More than 20 of their films are in my top 100 list so it was impossible for me to pick my three favorites so I picked 3 films that you may not have seen before that are also easily accessible.  I understand that not everyone has the patience to sit through hours of silent Stan Brakhage films.

My first pick is Man Bites Dog which is in my top 10 films of all time for sure. It is a French mocumentary about a serial killer that is unflichingly realistic and one of the most brutal, and often funny, films I have ever seen.  My second selection is The Harder They Come. Another one of my all time favorites, it is about a Jamacian guy who can’t make it as a musician so he turns to crime.  But after he becomes famous for his crimes his record becomes a huge hit and he becomes a folk hero.  The movie was made entirely in Jamacia and features Jimmy Cliff in the starring role. The soundtrack is one of the best Reggae records of all time.  The last film I chose was F For Fake. It is a documentary about art forgery directed and hosted by Orson Welles. The movie is a documentary unlike any other I have ever seen and has an amazing twist ending.  If you haven’t seen it you need to.  Enjoy the trailers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPhaieTg4o[/youtube]

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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n52q_BywGuY&feature=related[/youtube]

I cannot express to you how annoyed I am right now. I have 7 new galleries waiting to be uploaded for you guys and yet the program I use to upload these galleries keeps freezing.  Tomorrow I have a meeting with a design firm to talk about a new design for Driven By Boredom and the first order of buisness is going to be dealing with my galleries. I hate everything about them and hopefully in a few months problems like this will be a thing of the past.  Currently I am talking to people in web forums trying to fix this issue and god willing this problem will be solved by tomorrow.  If not I am going to temporarily upload the galleries to Flickr or something until I solve this issue.

Now my plan was to post this video a little bit later in the week because I had so much photography to get up but since I am just sitting around waiting for my problems to be magically solved I figured this was the perfect time to get this update up.

I have talked to you many times on this site about my friends Teddy Blanks and Ross Harman. The two of them made up the band The Gaskets that I managed for about 5 years. They broke up in 2008. Since then their names have come up on my site because Teddy has been making his own music that I have shared with you and because tragically Ross took his own life in September.

Recently Teddy was interviewed by The Mixed Tapes which “through a series of casual conversations with unsigned and independent musicians, Mixed Tapes explores new artists’ early influences, their struggles, their shifting conceptions on making music, and the challenge of living and working in New York City.” Teddy was interviewed for 3 hours to get the nearly 10 minutes of footage for this interview. It is really well done focuses on his solo music as well as the music of the Gaskets.  And of course a significant section of the interview talks about his relationship with Ross, Ross’ death and how Teddy has been collaborating with Ross one last time.  It is really moving for me as someone so close to both of the guys but I think it’s very much worth watching for anyone.  At the end Teddy performs a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I hope you take the time to watch this and enjoy it.  If you would like to hear more music from Teddy Blanks or The Gaskets click those links.  Also Teddy just joined Twitter. You should follow him and maybe he will actually post something. Thanks.

Mixed Tapes: Teddy Blanks from Michael Melamedoff on Vimeo.

Here comes the newest installment of All My Friends Are In Bands where I bring you semi regular updates of my friends bands amazing music videos.  Today we have some good ones including one video that I am actually in.  I feel like I should be in all of my friends music videos but clearly they have no idea what they are doing so for whatever reason I don’t end up in all of them. Weird.

Luckily some people are smart enough to realize talent when they see it. Loli Lux is one of those people. She got a two for one deal when she asked me to come hang out at her video shoot.  Not only did I take amazing behind the scenes photos but she got the pure talent that is “Igor” in front of the lens as well.  If you look carefully you can see me lurching around in there taking pictures awkwardly.  It will bestill your heart.  Seriously though, this is the first video from Loli Lux and it is pretty bad ass. She got all of her weird and sexy looking friends, put them in a bar and just started shooting. It was a good time and it ended up being a good video for a good song. Watch that shit.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvEB14Qw8Q[/youtube]

Next up we have our boys the motherfucking Death Set. I know you guys saw the pictures I took of them with hot tattooed naked girls recently and I am sure you know they have this new album coming out.  Well they just released the first single off that album called “Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Snap” and they have a pretty fucking awesome video for it.  This video is so good that they had to release another video just to hype it up. Clearly you need to watch it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlX6ClGXtXY[/youtube]

So these updates always come with three videos for some reason and I didn’t have a third video this week.  I solved that problem by uploading this old video of me icing Prince Terrence while Hussle Club was on stage at the Knitting Factory.  Remember when Icing people was so funny? Giving people Smirnoff Ice was like a sport for about a week. If you got one you had to bend down on one knee and rink it.  It was pretty funny for a second and then everyone got over it. Probably for good reason.  I shot this at the very tail end of the Icing craze and by the time I took it off my camera no one cared anymore. I haven’t even looked at this video since. I probably should have edited it or something but I don’t actually give a fuck so enjoy it the way it is. Just skip to the 30 second mark if you are impatient. I gotta go shoot naked girls and hang out in the sun in LA now. Have a nice weekend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emF9jpQeOX8[/youtube]

I am leaving town for a two week trip to Vegas and Los Angeles, but don’t worry I have plenty of stuff to update the site with while I am gone.  I still have two parties and two naked girls left over plus some surprises. I will even try to get an update up before I leave tomorrow so I don’t leave you guys hanging. That being said I have a few things I wanted to mention that I figured I could put all in one update so I get this important stuff out of the way before I leave town. So let’s get into it…

The first thing is the most important. I have shot a number of events that featured the Disgraceland Hook Squad. This is a group of crazy kids who do suspensions and flesh pulls and all sorts of other insane shit involving sticking giant hooks into themselves and running around like mad men. You can’t help but love them.  Several of their members got into a car accident back in July and while most of them are recovered one of the people, Spliff is still in the hospital and needs financial help so he can raise the money to move from Texas to NYC.  They were in Texas when the accident happened and they have had to stay there all these months.  They have found a treatment center in NYC that will take Spliff but it’s going to cost a huge amount of money to bring him home. They need to get back home now because his wife Jill, who was also in the accident, is about to have their first child.  She needs her family and friends help to raise the baby and also take care of Spliff so they need to get home before the baby is born. My friend Doug who introduced me to Spliff and Disgraceland has written this blog with a lot more details. You can go there or to Spliff and Jill’s website to donate money.  So many people came out for Jessie Lee when she got injured, I hope you have a little more in you to donate to another friend of the Driven By Boredom family.

On a much happier note I am in a group show at Shadow’s Space art gallery in Philly.  Shadow’s Space is the sister gallery of Fuse gallery in NYC and I am pretty excited to be showing there.  The group show is called “Paper Trails” and it is curated by NYC graffiti icon Chris “DAZE” Ellis.  DAZE and I collaborated on some work for a show a long time ago and I was really glad he thought of me when curating this show.  Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make the opening on Friday because I will be in Vegas but I know a bunch of people from Philly read this site so I hope you guys check out the show. I have four 11×17 photos in it, all shot on 35mm, and they are all of girls naked in public on the streets of NYC.  They are pretty rad.

While we are here I guess I should talk a little about my trip too.  I am headed to Vegas for the weekend to shoot the Adult Entertainment Expo, the AVN Awards, the Consumer Electronics Showcase and all the goings on before and after these events for the Village Voice and the LA Weekly. I might actually skip the AVN Awards and for some reason I haven’t heard back about my CES press credentials yet but I’ll play it by ear when I get there.  I never know what the hell I am doing in Vegas but I do know that I booked a two bedroom hotel suite for myself for some reason so I am going to have some fun either way. After Vegas I am headed to LA for just over a week.  I don’t really have any plans but I think I found a place to stay and I have set up shoots with a bunch of girls. I am going to be doing some more work for the LA Weekly and hoping to shoot some random parties while I am there.  There is also a benefit for Jessie Lee on Thursday which I will be blogging about next week. I am also going to see Jessie Lee for the first time since her accident as she is finally moving to LA the day before I get there. The whole trip should be a lot of fun, a little bit relaxing and hopefully very productive.  It better be because it will be a miracle if I break even on the adventure.  Either way I will be updating DBB often while I am gone so keep coming back. Also, I will be updating my Tumblr with previews of all the crazy shit I am shooting while I am in LA so you should probably get on that.  And of course following my Twitter while I am adventuring is a fucking given.

Finally, I figured I would leave you guys with something fun.  If you have ever wondered to do the secret handshake pioneered by NY nightlife icons like Ninjasonik and The Death Set there is now a how to video which will teach you the handshake. Looks like the “Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Slap Snap” handshake is not so secret anymore. You no longer have any excuse not to be down. Get on it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqxHOmkz9T0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]