So I haven’t updated since Christmas.  Bad form, but fuck it, everyone else was on vacation… I guess I was too.  Really I just didn’t have internet for a few days but I’ll pretend I was vacationing. I finally made it back to NYC today.  I am pretty jealous that I missed some serious photo opportunities in the blizzard.  Today my cab got stuck in the snow a block away from my apartment. Somehow snow came through my air conditioner and I made a snow ball in my bedroom. It was nuts. None of that matters… It’s time to get back to work.

I am going to start this week off in a totally weird and random way… with songs written by professional wrestlers.  I want to do more Mp3 blog posts on Driven By Boredom and I felt like today would be perfect for one since I haven’t slept yet and I need to crash for a bit and then try to catch up on life.  I almost thought about not posting at all again today but I need to get some stuff cooking for you guys.  I haven’t shot any parties in a while so I need to get back to work. I have a bunch of nude stuff that I shot over the holidays but I might wait until after New Years for most of it.  We shall see.  I got on another trip on the 6th of January but I am going to do a better job of keeping DBB up to date while I am on the West Coast.

Anyway, this post keeps getting more rambly and incoherent as I type so let’s start talking about this music so I can go to sleep…

For some reason I have two full albums of rap songs written by pro wrestlers on my computer. I am not sure when I downloaded these but they are fucking hilarious.  The first one, Hulk Hogan’s is called “Hulk Rules” and is credited to him AND “The Wrestling Boot Band”.  This 1995 album is a classic and is filled with song about Hulk Hogan and eating vitamins.  The most mocked song on the album is probably “Hulkster in Heaven” which is about one of his fans dying and he sings a sentimental tribute to him. It’s absolutely horrifying. That being said, I chose for you a more uptempo jamming hit called “Hulkster’s Back” because I love you.

Hulk Hogan – Hulkster’s Back

The next track is off “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s classic “Be A Man“.  This rap album feels like a response to Hulk’s album only it came 8 years later.  While Hulk’s is cheesy in that early 90’s celebrities rapping kinda way, “Be A Man” is actually trying to be some sort of actual rap album. I feel like Randy Savage really thought that this was going to give him some serious street cred.  He hired what appears to be actual black people to help him with his album.  They rap with him and hype him up throughout the record. (As a side note whatever rap careers those rappers had ended the day this record dropped.) The whole thing is substantially more embarrassing due to the earnestness of Savage’s attempt to become a rapper. And while this album is absolutely full of hits I really had no choice but to drop you guys with the title track “Be A Man”. It is a homophobic diss at the Hulkster himself.  He calls out the Hulk and his movie rolls, while praising his own cameo in Spiderman. It’s all very adorable. You just wanna hug him.

Macho Man Randy Savage – Be a Man

I wanted to give you one more Mp3 because it seemed like that would be the reasonable thing to do, so I googled Pro Wrestling Musicians and found out that John Cena has a rap album too… but I don’t give a fuck about that guy because he didn’t wrestle in the 1980’s so I dug a bit deeper into google and found this amazing Rowdy Roddy Piper song called “I’m Your Man”.  It’s actually kinda awesome and since I couldn’t find a good Mp3 I am going to hook you up with this sweet video of it. I mean seriously, it’s no “They Live” but it’s pretty fucking amazing.

See you guys tomorrow…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa1Q6xpoM8c[/youtube]

So this is the 6th part in a series called All My Friends Are In Bands. Each time I do this I post three videos from musicians I am friends with or directed by friends or something like that.  Normally I talk a little bit about each band and video and it’s sort of a lengthy post. This time I am using these three videos as an excuse to do a really quick update because I have to go on a secret mission today. You will find out more later or more sooner if you follow my Twitter.

Anyway, real quick, the three videos I have for you are my boy Shwazye’s (aka Aaron Smith) solo track Said It All Before, Trouble & Bass’ AC Slater teamed up with Dell “o8o” Harris for a track called “Right Now” and finally a preview to Loli Lux’s video “Wannabe” which I am in.  Well I am in the actual video that comes out in January, not the preview. Still, I gotta represent.

So yeah, watch the videos and I will talk to you fuckers on Saturday.

Aaron Smith – Said It All Before (Rock Version) from Aaron Smith on Vimeo.

AC & DELL – “RIGHT NOW” [official] music video from Trouble & Bass on Vimeo.

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

Remember the All My Friends Are In Bands series of posts where I show you guys 3 music videos from my friends bands? Well it continues today.  I am in Miami for Art Basel and a Miami Dolphins game and it is going to be pretty hard to get any actual photos to you this week so I have a few updates planned that don’t involve party photos although I may try to get some party photos up too. We shall see.  Anyway, in today’s post we are going to talk about two friends videos and then one other video that I just had to share with you…

The first video is Drop The Lime’s new rockabilly track called Hot As Hell. This shit is pretty fucking awesome.  If every DJ was dropping “baseablilly” tracks I would probably hate my job a little bit less. Just kidding, I love my job, but having epic rock and roll dance jams would be the way to go. I’m just mad I am not in the video… You guys should see me with my hair up…

The second video is a track called “I’ll Show You” by my old friend Raquel Reed.  The track is pretty awesome and it features Redman doing a verse.  She lives in a house north of the city where a bunch of artists record. She said that one day she came downstairs and heard Redman working with her producer and rapping over her track. That seems pretty surreal but evidently he loved it and helped her get the video made. It’s pretty cool.

Lastly I have for you the newest viral sensation from the Insane Clown Posse. After shooting the Gathering of the Juggalos I have become the go to guy for all the important juggalo related content and I had to find a reason to post this video. This video is ICP’s toy drive. The long story short is that if you bring a toy to an ICP concert for poor kids you get a free ICP Christmas CD.  The long story short is this fucking nearly 10 minute video featuring Sugar Slam pretty much parodying the SNL skit that is parodying her. I mean it is so bad it is brilliant. It also features the line “With the tags, fag” which is so fantastic it is unbelievable. Also I met Sugar Slam and ICP so I think this can still fall into the All My Friends category in some loose way. Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4yfD_it-I&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6KZX9I9jA[/youtube]

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

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!

Let me start by saying this is a really dumb post.  I can’t express how stupid it is, but hopefully some of you creeps will enjoy it any way and the rest of you will at least find it slightly amusing.

More than two years ago I was on YouTube and I noticed that all the videos of girls making out had between 30,000 views and 2,000,000 views. This seemed insane to me but I kept checking around and they really all had just tons of hits.  As a guy who watches girls make out nearly every day of his life I actually avoid taking photos of that shit because half the time it’s just girls doing it to get me to take their photo and it is sort of embarassing and shitty to my actual lesbian friends.

All that being said, one night I was at Trash, it was actually the 10th year anniversary of me losing my virginity now that I think about it… and I ran into two friends of mine who both happened to have amazing lips.  Like really rad lips and they were in the same place at the same time and I had just seen this YouTube phenomina of girls making out getting tons of hits… AND I had my video camera on me which never happens. It seemed like fate. I asked the girls if they wanted to make out on cam, and for whatever reason they thought that was a really good idea. Probably because they both are super cute and have dope lips. Even straight girls gotta love rad lips.  So they made out for a few minutes and we taped this video and then I never did anything with it and totally forgot about it.

Two years later there have been many, many people who got the same idea I had and now there are a billion videos of girls making out on youtube and none of them have any hits.  So it seems totally pointless to upload this video now, but my friend Trev from The New Pop offered to edit something for me since I did him a favor recently. I couldn’t really think of anything but I searched old video files and found this.  So I gave it to him and he edited out some bullshit and slapped the Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco remix of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” over it and called it a day.

So now, a few weeks later I have nothing to post today and I am feeling a little bit sick and I think it is a perfect time to unleash to the world this video of two hot girls, with really amazing lips making out at a party. So I hope you enjoy… either the girls, or the stupidity of the whole thing. Merry Xmas.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kro2BDKQnXo[/youtube]

I feell like we just did one of these posts where I talk about bullshit you don’t care about and offer no content… Well it’s time already time to do it again. Sorry.

You may have noticed that I haven’t updated this site in several days.  There are three reasons for that.  The first and most important reason is that I was putting together a package for a watch advertisement that I am hopefully going to shoot this month.  I had to cast models and locations and then just put the damn thing together so that took up a lot of time.  Secondly, if you notice the last update was about Monday Night Football.  Well that MNF game was one of the most crippling moments of my life so I had to sleep all fucking day the next day an mourn for the Miami Dolphins. The last reason was because of camera issues.

As you may know I bought a new camera and a few other accessories. The Nikon D700 is an amazing camera and I thought it would inspire me to go out and shoot a lot, but the camera is actually so similar to my D300 that I actually didn’t feel the need to play with it that much.  It is much better in the dark, and it has a full frame sensor, but other than that for practical reasons its pretty much the same camera.  I also was waiting on my new lens to go with said camera (17-35mm 2.8).  When I got it I hated it. I shot two events with it and midway through the second one I realized it was WAY too wide for me. The distortion is awful and I just don’t feel right with it. On top of that I got it used and the lens sticks when you zoom and I missed a bunch of shots. I am going to try to return it, not because I hate it, but because it sticks and is in way worse condition that the ebay auction led me to believe. Unfortunately they are not responding to my emails and until I can get my money back I can’t buy a new lens. In the mean time I think I will be shooting with my fixed 20mm lens.

All that being said, I did shoot nearly 2000 photos since I talked to you guys last including two parties (Rando & Big Top), a Gods Girl, two corporate type events, and a bunch of press photos for The Death Set that featured some hot naked girls.  You will be psyched about the updates I have for you over the next few days.  I spent several hours editing the images down and they are almost ready to go, but in the mean time they are uploading and I am uploading images for clients and the whole thing is taking way too long so you get this super boring post about why they aren’t up yet.  But in just a few hours I will get up those Death Set pics and you will realize they are well worth the wait.

Since I have you all here I wanted to give a shout out to my boys Semi Precious Weapons who are in town tomorrow night at Irving Plaza. I am going to be there and I hope to see you fuckers out. You get a discount on tickets if you say “Semi Precious Trash” at the door.  I am not exactly sure what the discount is, but who gives a shit, you should be lucky you don’t have to pay $100 to see them at Madison Square Garden.

Also, if you are interested in online gambling for some reason you should look at this link. I had to write about that in order to cash a check. Sorry about that, but I gotta pay for these fucking new lenses and cameras and stuff. Don’t judge me. At least I tried to make it slightly funny right? Right?

What else can we talk about? Did you know I am listening to Elton John right now? What the fuck is up with that? I feel like I had something to talk to you about.  You could vote for my friend maybe? He is trying to win a car, in hilarious fashion, but I think the contest is going to be over by the time you read this. Hmm… We should plug my Tumblr again because there is always good shit going on over there even if I am not updating this site. Speaking of my Tumblr, yesterday I posted on there about how I paid someone $40 to sharpen a pencil for me. I love the idea of artisanal pencil sharpening plus the guy who did the sharpening (David Rees) was the guy responsible for one of the all time most fantastic comics, Get Your War On.  Speaking of…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nhYAOWEKxE&NR=1[/youtube]

Well guess what, I have no updates for you today. You know why? Because I care about professional football more than my job.  Pretty retarded right? Yeah. Seriously, if the Dolphins lose tonight it pretty much means our season is over by the first week of October and I can just go ahead and shoot myself now instead of suffering through another 13 weeks.  But then again if we win tonight it will be clear we are the greatest team to ever play the game of football and I will go out and have sex with the first stranger who looks at me the wrong way. Party forever.  Either way I am not doing any fucking work today so instead you get to watch these videos.

The first one is by this asshole Patriots fan Paul “Fitzy” Fitzgerald who I run into in real life once in a while. The guy is clearly some sort of commie bastard fuck but he seems pretty down on his Pats so I’ll take it.  The second video is the intro to the greatest Monday Night Football game ever played where the 1985 Bears lost their only game to Danny Marino and the Miami Dolphins. Yes I was too young to remember this game… but I do remember when the Wildcat embarassed the hell out of the Patriots who had not lost in 21 regular season games, so you get to watch that too.  Enjoy and fuck the Patriots, fuck Tom Brady and fuck Boston.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u24qIOzbyWY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbaZyDJX-4A&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5c4DKdxU9g&feature=related[/youtube]

The All My Friends Are In Bands series continues. Every time three of my friends have a new music video out I post them up here for you bastards to enjoy.  This week I was sitting on two videos that I wanted to post but I didn’t have a third so I reached out to my Twitter account for a third video.  I got a few suggestions but they weren’t exactly what I needed so I picked a special video for the third one. You should check out those suggestions anyway.  Check out BST’s band live, check out some insane thing Dan Baxter is working on and check out a video for a band that my friend Brian produced. (He produced the music not the video. Anyway, let’s move on to the videos….

We start with a video that my friend Trev directed. I don’t actually know Ralphy Boy, but I don’t hate him at all. Trev runs The New Pop and wrote and directed the movie epically I starred in. Ralphy Boy’s song is called “Get It” and the whole thing reminds me a little bit of “What’s Up Fat Lip“. So check it out already.

Next up we got the new video from my boy Shwazye.  He just came out with a solo album under his real name “Aaron Smith”.  It’s called Love Stoned and you can get it completely free online.  The album is pretty killer even if it’s a little California for my tastes. That hasn’t stopped me from listening to it a bunch.  I met Shwazye at Sundance a few years ago because we have the same watch.  Dude is always fun to hang out with.  You should read this story about the time I went to Beatrice with him. Crazy night.  Anyway, check out his video for “Said It All Before” right now.

And lastly, this video is not new but clearly very important. As you probably are sick of hearing about by now, my friend Ross Harman died last Monday. His memorial service is this Sunday so tomorrow I am going out of town for it. I will be back Monday or Tuesday. I miss the kid so fucking much but I hope that once I properly grieve with friends and family I can start to move on and get back to my life. Anyway, this is Ross’ band The Gaskets’s video for a song called “Eiffel Tower. It was directed by our friend Grier Dill. It got accepted into the SXSW Film Fest and stars yours truly as the Hitleresque villain Hell bent on destroying pop music. I hope you like it, it’s pretty fucking amazing. And remember all The Gaskets music is available completely free now on TheGaskets.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xiyL52TbeU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14941623[/vimeo]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdwEhWxLp10[/youtube]

Hey! Please read this whole thing. It would mean oh-so-much to me!

As you may have noticed I have not been shooting much recently. Dealing with the juggalos took a lot out of me. I have been staying in a lot and pretty much hanging out by myself. That time has passed it is time to get serious again and get back to work. I have spent the last 12 hours not sleeping but trying to get my life together and I have marked a ton of shit off my to do list but I have a long way to go. But in the mean time, for you guys, I have some house cleaning shit to talk to you guys about.

The first is that we can finally put the juggalos to bed. I will be posting again when the Village Voice article finally comes out but other than that this is a juggalo free zone for the foreseeable future. But, before we do that, I spent several hours last night organizing all the 21 posts from the Gathering of the Juggalos into a lovely easy to handle page that you can share with your friend and loved ones. I also added some additional coverage and links as well. I have been getting so much traffic from this stuff that it would be nice to have a landing page. I actually updated all 21 Insane Clown Posts with a link to this page.  So if you ever want to show any of your friends my Gathering of the Juggalos photos (Please Do) than you can now easily send them to this page:

Click here to see all of my photos and coverage from the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos in Cave In Rock, IL.

Okay, next on the agenda is the Driven By Boredom Facebook page. I have let it sit around collecting dust.  No longer.  From now on I will be adding photos and fun stuff to it and attempting to interact with people. I am going to preview upcoming galleries on there and I am going to post other photos hopefully. I even made it so you can tag all the photos so you can tag your friends in them and that sort of thing. I know I said no more Juggalos, but the very first thing I did was upload 100 funny juggalo images with the idea that people can tag their friends in them in a scheme to embarrass and mock them. Get excited.

So click here to “Like” the DBB Facebook page and click here to tag your friends in these epic juggalo photos.

Now running this Facebook page is going to take time and I don’t have any. I also have a few other web projects I am working on that I could use help with.  I have no money to pay anyone so I am looking for an intern again.  I am burying this way down in this update because the last few times I have made a big deal about finding an intern it has been disastrous. So, if you have any interest in interning for me, drop me an email. If you can’t figure out my email, you probably shouldn’t bother applying. I don’t need photo majors… I need a web intern mostly, although there will be some fun stuff too. You have to live in NYC and you have to be responsible.  I know it is late to be posting this, but if you can get school credit for it, that would be very much preferred.

And down here we have a few little classified ads:

I am looking for New Yorkers who own digital cameras who are interested in documenting NYC street art and graffiti. A friend of mine started an amazing site in Colorado called Unseen Denver and he and I are trying to make a NYC version but we need help! Hit me up if you think you might want to help.

I am shooting Gold Whistle tomorrow at Gallery Bar. It is upstairs from Rando so it should be awesome. It also has the best fucking flyer I have ever seen.

My Tumblr has been absolutely killing it recently. If you aren’t checking it out you aren’t getting the full DBB experience. A lot of the stuff I used to post as little fun bullshit updates is now over there. And as if I have to remind you, you should be following me on Twitter by now.

Lastly, I am going to do a full post about this tomorrow or the next day but I am guest blogging on a site called Late Night Feelings. I am pretty excited about it. It is an artistic but erotic photo blog run by a lot of photographers I love and respect. I am posting almost nothing but never before seen 35mm shots of naked girls. I think you need it in your life. NSFW.

Now, since you have been so awesome in reading this whole post that I am going to give you this lovely video that really doesn’t have anything at all to do with Juggalos… I swear… Nothing at all…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkC7dcxZ5_Q[/youtube]