2024 Pepe Fest – 8.10.24

On Saturday, I went to Pepe Fest, a festival honoring one of the most infamous memes, thrown by Beeple at his studio in Charleston, SC. Now if you know what all of those words mean, you can skip the next five paragraphs because I am gonna drop a Pepe/Beeple for Dummies, given that most of my readers will have no fucking idea what is going on.

Okay, let’s start with Pepe The Frog. Pepe was a character created by an artist named Matt Furie for a comic book called Boy’s Club. Boy’s Club was about a bunch of animals living together and partying just being dudes (look, I have never actually read the comic, I hope that is a fair description). In one strip Pepe is caught peeing with his pants pulled all the way down and when confronted about why he did that he said “Feels Good Man”. Those three words spurned a meme that would eventually spiral out of control, used by 4chan trolls to express the worst possible views and became a symbol of the alt right and the rise of Trumpism in 2016. 

Matt Furie was pretty pissed about this, and there’s a good documentary about the lengths he took to get the good name of Pepe back. It’s appropriately titled Feels Good Man and is a good dive into the alt right and the rise of Trump meme culture, incells and 4chan in general. I do think Furie’s efforts paid off, because these days Pepe is almost entirely used in a positive, or at least harmless ways. I don’t think I saw any memes all weekend that I thought were too fucked up. 

One thing the documentary barely touches on is the very early days of digital art on the block chain. There is one scene where a crypto bro in a Lambo buys a jpg for $39k which seemed absolutely crazy in 2019. That same jpg sold in 2021 for nearly 10x that. But the documentary doesn’t go deep into “Rare Pepes”. Despite listening to people talk about Rare Pepe’s for three days straight I don’t know enough about the history not to just quote Wikipedia, so just read that.

Quickly though, the first Rare Pepe’s were minted in 2016 on the Bitcoin blockchain, which predated Ethereum NFTs by about a year. You could create your own, and sell them for Pepe Cash and then use that to buy other Rare Pepes. Eventually there was a Fake Rares collection and now there are Notable Pepes on Ethereum and a billion other Pepe NFTs that little the internet. There is also a $PEPE coin that I bought $20 of for the meme and then sold for like a grand after I forgot about it for a year. I’d say I wish I bought more, but if I had I probably would have sold it way before it 50xed. 

Now that Pepe has been explained, we also have to talk about Beeple. Beeple is the alias of Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist who started uploading one artwork every day and has been doing that every day since 2007. In 2020 he started selling his Everydays as NFTs and sold an image of his first 5000 Everydays for $69 million dollars in 2021 at the peak of the NFT bubble. He has used that money to buy a massive art space in Charleston, SC which we will get to in a minute. 

Okay, this is where you can jump back in if you want to just know about the party and not the very basic explanation about what the hell is going on. So when I moved to Wilmington, NC the first thing I did was find out what actual cities were in driving distance. Raleigh was close, only two hours away. Charlotte was a little farther, but still an easy drive and finally Charleston, SC, the one city of the three that I had never been to. I was immediately looking for an excuse to get down there, so when I saw Beeple was throwing a party at his insane studios I had to go.

You had to own some Pepe stuff to get in, and I didn’t really qualify for a ticket. I bought back a little of the $PEPE I sold so I could RSVP, but there as also a Pepe art submission. Despite going to art school, I am trash at drawing, so I knew I wasn’t getting in that way, but if AI is good for anything, it’s good for making low effort art. One day I had the phrase “Be the meme you want to see in the world” suck in my head and I had MidJourney shit out a photo of a vaguely Pepe looking frog looking in the mirror and I had made a meme. I made it before AI got good at Pepe, and I just made it to post on Twitter or something, but when I saw the Pepe contest, I just dug around my computer until I found it and sent it in, not expecting to get picked but I did.

Side note, I minted it as a free NFT just so I could give it to people at the festival, but I forgot about it, so if you want to mint one for some reason, it’s still open for a few days

So because I got my art into the show I got invited to an artist dinner on Friday night and an artist brunch on Sunday. I felt super out of place on Friday. I knew one person and am not invested in Pepe culture so I was just sort of standing around for a bit of it and I ended up leaving early, but it was still a really cool thing and I met a bunch of people which made me slightly less awkward the next day at the actual Fest. It’s really funny that I have spent my entire life in an incredibly social field and was never uncomfortable in any space, but shit like this gets me. 

On Saturday I went over to Beeple Studios and it was fucking incredible. The museum section was closed but the event space was absolutely insane. You will see the pictures, but imagine a room the size of a basketball gym but three of the four walls are covered in massive digital screens. The support beams are covered in screens and even the tables had screens. It was really amazing. 

I brought my camera but it was so dark in there and I left my flash in the car. I wasn’t trying to take the shuttle bus back to my car to grab it so I made due and took a few photos of the space, and some of the speakers and stuff. A woman named Pepelangelo was doing a live painting and had a whole wall of her images of Pepe as masterpieces. The Venus Devouring Pepe Goya homage was my favorite. There was some other physical art as well and that room was will lit so I got photos there. Inside the space they had Pepes on the walls, including mine, but there were so many I only saw mine twice. They also had speakers talking about Pepe and Rare Pepe’s and memes and all sorts of stuff. There was also a Pepe art contest and the four winners got to draw live later that night. 

There was a four hour break in between events. I tried to go to a museum but I got there 20 min before closing so I just walked around downtown Charleston for almost two hours. It was 99% humidity and like 95 degrees out so not the most enjoyable time, but it was cool to see the city. I got some food and cleaned up at my hotel room before heading back out.

The night event was infinitely cooler than the day time one and I was really impressed by the day time. First of all the gallery/museum section was open and it was awesome to see Beeple’s art in real life. He does a lot of pop culture stuff, but like, with dicks, so you might not think it would work in a museum setting, but it really does. Seeing the 5000 Everyday’s across a massive wall was amazing. His collection of old computers was pretty great as well. 

There was a Pepe costume contest so a ton of people were dressed up, but Beeple also had a bunch of people walking around with incredibly realistic masks on making them look like celebrities but because you have to wear the masks over your head they are slightly too big which ads to the uncanny valley aspect and just made them look so cursed. There were also Pepe’s walking Boston Dynamics robot Pepe dogs and three people in Beeple masks. It was also super unsettling in the best possible way. 

There was a scavenger hunt for Pepe swag (I ended up with a pretty sick frog hat that my girlfriend told me she will leave me if I wear in public), an outdoor patio with a giant inflatable Pepe, and a Cyber Truck for some reason. OG Pepe artist Rare Scrilla DJd Pepe themed music. The live drawing contest had the tablets projected on the screens so you could see people work from anywhere and the winner won $5000, I think, it’s possible they just won an oversized check and some shoes, I didn’t look into it. The costume contest happened super quick, for $1000, but it gave us some of the best photos of the night. 

Beeple also made Everyday #6311 live from the event. He has a terminal set up in the middle of the room and you can watch him work on a screen on the other side of the terminal, but then it was also projected on the walls. He gave himself a 30 min timer and then it was uploaded to the internets almost immediately. 

At the end of the night, after the costume contest, printers in the ceiling shot out prints of the four art contest entries as well as Everyday #66311 and a few other Pepe themed Beeple Everydays that were numbered to just 7. People crawled all over each other to grab them. I grabbed one and it was the artist who won the contest. He was standing right in front of me and I asked him if he wanted it and he did so I gave it away. The karma paid off later when the one person I knew at the event gave me one of the Beeple prints. He was signing them, but the line was crazy so I just went back to my hotel room. 

I did bring it to the brunch though and he ended up signing it there. The brunch felt so different to the dinner. I didn’t feel awkward anymore and had a great time. I met some rad people and talked to Beeple for a bit. Plus I had several biscuits. Look, I don’t know why I am talking about Biscuits when this thing is nearly 2000 words already and I have a 6am flight to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos, but here we are. Let’s just get to some pictures.

Click here to see all my photos from 2024 Pepe Fest at Beeple Studios in Charleston, SC.

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

Pepe Fest

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Dylan Moore Is Back

When I was in Vegas for the AVN Awards I found a staircase in a parking garage I really wanted to photograph someone naked on. I spent two days trying to make that happen but people were busy and it was a long walk in heels. I ran into my friend Dylan Moore (who you can see more of here) at the ALF party and we talked about shooting again, so when I ran into her as the tradeshow was ending the next day I asked her if she wanted to hit that stairwell, and we did it.

But after that we decided to go back to her hotel to take even more photos. I couldn’t stay long but we took a bunch of fun photos that you are hopefully about to look at. She did splits on furniture, she jumped off of TV stands (she moved the TV), she changed twice and I just captured the madness. I honestly barely got out of the chair and she did all the work which is honestly my favorite type of shoot. Sometimes when I am shooting in a hotel room after shooting other shit all day, I just want to lay down and try and find reasons to shoot from the hotel bed. Yes I am that lazy, but also it makes butts look good so everyone wins.

Also, I haven’t shot any nudes since this Vegas trip. It sucks. I don’t know what to shoot in North Carolina and I went to NYC on the weekend before 4th of July and everyone was out of town. I need to get back to LA soon just to shoot (and see my newborn niece) but in the meantime I am just stretching out the NSFW content I do have. I still have one more shoot to go, and it’s a good one. But it’s also of Dylan from the first time we shot. So I need to find at least one more shoot to post before I post those right? So if anyone knows any naked people within two hours of Wilmington, NC, let a guy know. I am not ready to retire quite yet.

As per usual, all these photos are gonna be on my pay site, Girls of Driven By Boredom. I realize I just told you that I won’t have anything new for a bit, but I am gonna start reuploading old shoots there in high res, but there are also tens of thousands of nudes on there already so sign up. Thanks!

Now click here to see all the photos of Dylan Moore in her Vegas hotel room.

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

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Remembering My Hero: Doug Sakmann

When I found out my friend Doug died, it didn’t fully hit me right away. I have lost far too many friends and when I first found out I though that maybe I was just permanently broken. The sadness I felt was more about the pain of life, how unfair it was for another one of my people to be gone, than it was the pain of his death. Later that day I found out another, less close, friend had died and the sadness I felt was compounded by the guilt for not feeling more.

That night I went to dinner with my girlfriend and this pressure of sorrow was weighing me down. She wanted to talk to me about Doug, who she never got to meet, but I didn’t want to talk about anything. I didn’t even want to eat. But I couldn’t not talk about Doug and I started telling her story after story about our friendship and how much he meant to my life and I broke down in the restaurant, crying into my food. I was just glad to be feeling something. 

I found out that Doug died a week ago, but I couldn’t write this post for so many reasons. I didn’t want to break down again of course, but I also had just so many things to tell you about Doug, so many stories, so many ways he impacted my life, I didn’t know how to do it. I wrote over 1200 words and deleted almost all of it because it just felt like a review of our friendship, just a list of things with links to old blog posts like footnotes in a research paper. It didn’t feel right, so here I am starting over again. Doug deserves that, and our mutual friends reading this deserve that. I have sadly become known for posts like these, and it helps me process, but I know how much these posts have meant to other people and I need to get this right. 

So let’s start at the beginning, skip to the end and then just write some more.

RIP Doug Sakmann

My friendship with Doug starts more than 20 years ago during the very early days of this website. I started it in 2001 and very quickly it became popular enough that I realized I could get free stuff if I blogged about it, so I would reach out to companies I loved and often would get sent products. One of those companies was Troma, a low budget, b-horror film studio that I am going to assume you are familiar with if you are reading a post about Doug. 

In 2002 Troma sent me a VHS screener copy of a documentary called All The Love You Cannes. The movie was about the Troma team trying to get the word out about their company at the Cannes Film Festival by any means necessary. They caused absolute chaos and the star of the film was a man named Doug Sakmann who managed to get kicked out of his hotel room and piss off (and on) his own coworkers with his insane behavior. It was so goddamn funny and 22 year old me was obsessed. After I wrote about the movie I emailed the link to Troma and I realized the guy I had been emailing with was the same Doug as the one in the movie. I told him he was my hero. 

From then on we stayed in touch, but it wasn’t until 2006 when I moved to NYC that we met at a Halloween party where he was hosting his “world’s most dangerous game show” Strip for Pain. By that point he had left Troma and moved to Philly to start his own company, Backseat Conceptions, but he would come up for events all the time and I made sure to see him pretty much every time he was in town. Never once did we live in the same city but we became very close and he impacted my life in so many huge ways despite the distance. 

Doug & Me The Night We Met

Doug would come up at least twice a year to throw the NYC Zombie Crawl and as long as I was in town would photograph it, most of the time for free, despite hating it. The first few were a blast and I got crazy photos, but how many times can you photograph the same thing before you hate coming home sticky and smelling like pancake syrup from all the fake blood. Still, I would do anything for Doug and it was a chance to see him and we always talked about doing a zombie crawl book together.

After the pandemic Doug stopped doing zombie crawls. Events were canceled for a long time and by the time they came back he was dealing with his own losses in life. I injured my back, got wifed up and stopped going out so even if Doug was in town I am not sure I would have made it out. I still kept in touch with Doug via social media and the occasional text but I hadn’t heard his voice until a few weeks ago when he called me to tell me the Zombie Crawl was coming back and he wanted me to send him a bunch of photos for a gallery show around the event. He told me he was finally getting out of his depression after losing his brother and wanted to start doing things again. We talked about new Troma movies and a touring gallery show and finally doing that zombie crawl book. It was so great to hear from him and we talked for a really long time. 

It took me a while to go through all my zombie photos but I sent him an edit of a few hundred. It took him a while to get the selects back to me and it took me a while to edit them and send him the high res photos. I finally got them back to him almost exactly one week before he died. On June 23rd, three days before his death I landed in NYC at 9am. It was the day of the Mermaid Parade, an event I somehow never photographed in all the years I lived in NY. I was gonna go with my friend Mike but he had an emergency and couldn’t make it and I was exhausted so I just took a nap instead of going all the way out to Coney Island. The next day I saw Doug posted on Instagram that he was at the parade. If only I had seen it I would have been there in a second, spending one last day with my friend I hadn’t seen in way too long. But I didn’t see it and I cannot tell you how much I regret it. Tears are bouncing off my keyboard just thinking about it.

Doug Sakmann & Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD

In my early days of living in New York I called Doug while he was on his way home from the AVN Awards where he got kicked out of another hotel for chaotic behavior. He had drunkenly punch a slot machine and they kicked him out even though he paid for the machine. He decided to come back wearing a fake mustache and they arrested him. It seemed hilarious to me at the time. I was really jealous of someone who could just be so punk rock and not give a fuck. He didn’t have a care in the world about any of it. I turned that phone call with him into an interview I titled Doug Sakmann: American Hero.

Doug really was my hero. When we first met it was because he was an absolute maniac and I loved that. I have so many great Doug stories from those days but as crazy as Doug was, what made him my hero was his ability to get everything done in the midst of all that chaos. I remember the exact moment my whole view of Doug changed. It was 2008 and I came to Philly for the Basckseat Film Festival he was throwing. We spent all night partying with porn stars and doing god knows what. At some point Doug passed out and I was a little worried because he had a film festival to run. I was totally sober but he was the one who woke me up the next morning and he was a completely different person. I spent the morning with him and just watched him run the festival like a goddamn professional. He was so impressive to watch, commanding an army of volunteers despite being on three hours of drunken sleep. 

Late during zombie crawls one minute Doug would be swinging off a light post spraying fake blood out of a Super Soaker on to the crowd below and the next minute he would be inevitably be talking to the police, assuring them that all of this was absolutely normal. I have never met anyone so out of control and so in control at the exact same time. He invited me to be in a Troma movie in 2018 and I couldn’t make it on the dates they needed me, but I did spend a day as an (unpaid) extra just for the experience. Doug was running the show, making Lloyd Kaufman’s job as easy as possible, while also setting off insane special effects. It was this ability to create order out of chaos that made me hire him as a produce for every ad campaign I have ever done.

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If you knew Doug, you don’t need me to tell you this but Doug wasn’t just fun, he wasn’t just a good producer, but he was also about the nicest friendliest dude you could imagine. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. Every post I have read memorializing him has talked about how wonderful of a fucking human he was. His last ever text to me was wishing me happy birthday and telling me that he loved me. I was on a midlife crisis, self loathing birthday shit and didn’t even bother to text him back. We are almost the exact same age and his birthday is coming up and I won’t even be able to repay the favor, but I hope he knows how much I loved him. Fuck, there are those tears again.

This post is almost 2000 words at this point and I still want to drop you guys a bunch of links so you can go back and look at all the fun times we had together. I documented almost all of it. I just want to tell you how much he impacted my life. He introduced me to one of my first friend groups in New York even though he wasn’t even living there. He’s the reason I went to the AVN Awards for the first time which completely changed my career. He introduced me to Lloyd Kaufman who is another hero of mine, and because of that connection I got to shoot my only Village Voice cover despite freelancing there for a decade. I partied with Jackasses, movie stars, porn stars and professional eaters with Doug. We got our logos tattooed to each other. He snuck me into Comic Con, he booked the best show of my short lived musical career, and he even convinced me to go to a fucking baseball game. I should also note, that my website is deeply broken so many of the galleries don’t work, but at least you get the stories and some of the pictures. 

It took me almost a week just to get started with this post and then four more days to finish it. I spent hours just looking for photos of Doug, trying to find a handful without zombie makeup on him. I have so few photos of him when he wasn’t “on”. I think part of that was the nature of our relationship, 90% of the time we hung out it was at some big event, or we were working. I guess I just wasn’t shooting photos during the downtime. I only found a couple of photos of him and I together. He was always in front of the camera, and I was always behind it. I fucking miss you so much man. I am so fucking sad your gone, and I am so sorry I didn’t text you back telling you how much I loved you too. 

Click here to see over 100 photos I have taken of my brother and hero Doug Sakmann over the years.

RIP Doug Sakmann

 

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Heidi V & Nova Hawthorne

Hello! I am back with some “new” pictures that I took back in January during the AVN Awards week. I am settling nicely into my new North Carolina life but between the move and getting the new place together I really haven’t taken very many photos. It’s a super weird experience for me but I have recently come into some dumb crypto money so my priority has been on getting used to my move and not working, but that’s not really a long term situation so hopefully I’ll get back to traveling and taking wild photos and all that shit. Meanwhile, I have some photos of my old pal Heidi V and her friend Nova Hawthorne. 

I met Heidi years ago and we have taken photos a few times now and she’s always an awkward joy to photograph. She’s very fun and for the second time brought me a pretty friend to take photos with as well. Nova Hawthorne was staying with Heidi during the AVNs so one day I went up to their room to take photos. The light sucked so we pulled out one of their webcam lights and made it work. They are pretty bad technically because that’s kinda my thing, but you can tell the girls are having a blast and capturing actual fun is also kinda my thing.

All the photos below are very cute, but there are also some pretty sexy photos as well, but you gotta go to Girls of Driven By Boredom for those. Sorry but those are the rules. Anyway, I am gonna get back organizing my office, watering all my plants, feeding my fish and whatever else I do in my new weird life. 

Click here to see all the NSFW photos of Heidi V and Nova Hawthorne!

 

Heidi V & Nova Hawthorne

Heidi V & Nova Hawthorne

Heidi V & Nova Hawthorne

 

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Jade Baker @ The Chelsea Hotel

Last summer I photographed Jade Baker for the half dozenth time. I love taking her photo and when she told me she was staying at the Chelsea Hotel I got over there as quickly as possible. We shot a ton of photos and I was really happy with them and was ready to put them up, but she then was going through a rebrand to “Rosie Jones” so I waited to upload them for a couple of weeks.

By the time she had announced her new name I got the 35mm back and I loved it, so I abandoned the digitals and I uploaded the film photos with the announcement about her new name. So months go by, I get busy, I upload other stuff, I plan a move, I move, I spend a month unpacking and during all of this I end up completely forgetting about these digital photos and they just languished on my hard drive until now!

So we have a ton of really fun photos of Jade, who is once again going by Jade, in an absolutely iconic location that I am so glad I got to photograph in before I moved. It wouldn’t have felt right.

On some quick housekeeping notes, I have now been living in Wilmington, NC for five weeks and I still don’t have my office fully set up, but the last piece of office furniture is being delivered today and then I will get my printers and my postage scale and all that boring shit set up so I can start shipping stuff again. A lot of my merch is still hard to get to at the moment as my closet is just full of garbage but by next week I should be ready to go. You can stuff order now, and it should ship early next week. 

Also, these photos of Jade and the 35mm version of this shoot and hundreds of other shoots are all available on Girls of DBB. I don’t have an OnlyFans anymore so that is the only place to get my NSFW content. I am not really working right now as I get my life together, so signing up for that site helps me a ton. It’s pretty cheap, especially if you sign up for a few months at a time. 

Now click here to see all the uncensored digital photos of Jade Baker at the Chelsea Hotel.

Jade Baker

Jade Baker

Jade Baker

Jade Baker

Jade Baker

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Dylan Moore

Okay, this post was supposed to go up in January. I had it all ready to go and then I just ran out of time before I went to the AVN Awards. And then when I was in Vegas I ran into Dylan again and we did this mini shoot in a parking garage that I posted in my last update and so I didn’t want to post her back to back but then this move happened and I have been swamped and don’t have a working office and long story short I just needed to get something up and this was the next in line. As I mention below, we did a second shoot on the same day as this one, but we also did a third shoot in Vegas that is probably great but honestly I haven’t even looked at the photos because my life has been a mess since I got back. Give me two more weeks an I should be back in business. My desk comes this week so that’s a start… anyway, here is your post from January:

Back in October a model named Dylan Moore reached out to me. She was coming to NYC and wanted to shoot. We had a mutual friend who connected us but she apparently followed me back in the Tumblr days. I was down of course and I showed up at her hotel and we did a pretty quick shoot on the bed in her I <3 NY shirt.

When we were done shooting in the hotel room we went out on the balcony area and took a few more photos. She seemed comfortable with public nudity but I didn’t want to get her kicked out of her hotel room. I did have an idea… I had wanted to shoot at this secret spot in my neighborhood since I found it in 2016 but for whatever reason I had never done it. I also had a second spot in mind but you had to be crazy to do it. Dylan was down for both and we got on the train and headed to Brooklyn… but that’s for another post….

Anyway, Dylan is a great model and she really liked the photos we took so I hope we get to shoot again soon (Spoiler alert: we did). Honestly I don’t have a ton more to say because I have a whole second part to this day and I am about to head to Vegas for the AVN Awards and I want to get this up before I leave (Editor’s note: lol). 

All these photos are paywalled cause that is the world we live in now, so the link below will take you to Girls of Driven By Boredom which has probably over 100k photos on it so you might as well sign up for decades worth of NSFW photos. 

Now click here to see all the photos of Dylan Moore.

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

Dylan Moore

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AVN Parking Lot Photo Shoots

Back when the AVN Awards were at the Hard Rock Hotel I did so many mini photo shoots on the parking deck roof or in my rental car in the parking lot or wherever I could find a place to spend five minutes shooting photos with a model when she had a quick break from signing autographs or partying or whatever else people do in Vegas during a porn convention. The AVNs recently have moved to Resort World and I didn’t know any of the good hiding spots yet, but when I parked my rental car near a stairwell I realized it was the perfect place to shoot. 

I tried to shoot several people in that stairwell but it was in a lot that was adjacent to the hotel and you had to go outside to get there which means a) they had to go outside in the cold wearing skimpy clothing b) they had a ten minute round trip walk in high heels. So pretty much everyone flaked, which happens at lot at AVN anyway.

On Friday night I ran into Dylan Moore, who I recently shot in New York. (I have two NYC shoots with her to publish already.) The convention was about to end when I ran into her and she mentioned she had a hotel with a great room we could shoot in, so we drove over there, but before we did, I finally got to shoot someone in that stairwell because I had once again parked my rental car right next to it. Dylan immediately hung herself over the 4th floor railing which scared the absolute shit out of me given that I once was sued by Larry Flynt and an Instagram famous douchebag over a girl breaking her foot “falling” off a roof on a shoot I did for Hustler. Once I got her to stop that we shot a bunch of film and Instax and didn’t really shoot much digital, but I still have a handful of photos for you. (Plus a full hotel shoot with her still to come.)

One of the people I talked to about shooting in that stairwell was a model I met at the convention named Michelle Masque. I had tried to shoot her during the day on Friday and it didn’t happen so on Saturday when we finally met up I figured we could just go to the main parking garage and shoot on the roof. The problem was it was so bright out and the shadows were so harsh. I took some daylight flash stuff with my point and shoot 35mm camera so that might end up being cool, but a lot of the stuff we shot was pretty harsh. Still, we got some nice stuff I think. Plus she got to try on an outfit she had just bought and found out it was a little too big, so she was able to return it right after the shoot and so it worked out for everyone.

Shortly after my shoot with Michelle I went to the hotel Starbucks to get a coffee and I ran into my buddy CJ and his wife Sania Mallory who I really wanted to photograph. They were just going home so I said why don’t we do something quick on the parking garage before they bounced. Fortunately, in just the half hour between my shoot with Michelle and my shoot with Sania, the sun had gone down enough and the light was absolutely perfect. I photographed her and her and then her and CJ together and then I ended up shooting her with this dude Tiny Smallz who was staying with them. And then finally I shot them all with their other friend David for a nice family portrait.

Lastly, a few hours later I ran into my old pal Goldie Fawn. She was one half of what was maybe my favorite AVN shoot of all time and is in my new zine Off The Hook. I don’t think I seen her since we shot back in 2018, and I really wanted to take her photo this year but it hadn’t happened yet. Fortunately when I ran into her in the hotel lobby she had just finished walking the AVN red carpet and she had a few minutes before she had to go back into the awards show, so once again we went to the parking garage. I had to get some cameras out of my rental car so we ended up just shooting her on my rental car in her incredible gold red carpet dress. This shoot was so quick and we got so many fun shots. Goldie rules and I am so glad we got to do this quick shoot right only an hour before I went to the airport to head back home. 

Lastly, before I leave you with links, I should mention that my book Instaxxx which has NSFW instant film photos from hundreds of photo shoots is on sale right now. I am moving at the end of the month and trying to get rid of some stuff before I go. It’s 25% off right now. Just saying. 

Okay, so a bunch of these photos are tame enough to post on Flicker but like, it doesn’t make a great gallery so I am pay walling everything. Sorry. All these photos are exclusive to Girls of Driven By Boredom, but just a reminder that there are tens of thousands of high res nude photos on there all for one low price, so like, get it together and throw in a few $ and go look at the 100 parking lot photos and then go look at everything I have shot for decades. 

Now click here to see all four shoots I did in the Resort World parking garage during the 2024 AVN Awards week in Las Vegas.

Sania Mallory

Michelle Masque

Sania Mallory, CJ Linde, Tiny Smallz & David Hener

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Assholes Live Forever AVN Party – 1.24.24

If you aren’t familiar with Assholes Live Forever, you’ve still probably seen one of their t-shirts in some viral post. The “edgy” clothing company has blown up in the last few years and I see it everywhere. Normally I am probably a little too woke to be associating myself with a company that posts sexist memes as a marketing strategy but the company happens to be run by my buddy Kirill, the former party photographer Kirill Was Here, who I have known since our nightlife days in NYC fifteen years ago. Kirill took what we were doing in nightlife and turned it into a TV show, a Vegas residency and now a hugely successful fashion brand and I am proud as hell of the dude, even if I would probably hate his internet persona if I didn’t know him. 

When I knew I was heading to the AVN Awards I hit him up and he told me he was not only gonna be in town but he was throwing a party. When he sent the link it was being thrown by Jardin, a cannabis company in Vegas. Last time I went to one of their parties they had mermaids in the pool and super cars parked in the driveway and was like the cheesy mansion  party vibe you only really see in movies. That last party you could pay to get in, so it was like 20% hot girls and 80% rich bros so it was not where I wanted to be, but I knew and ALF party thrown by Kirill and adult film star Damon Dice would be a lot more fun and I was right. 

I took a party bus to the party with another edgelord friend of mine, Charlie Classic and when we got there it was already popping off. The party was as expected, mansion, pool, step and repeat, backyard yurt filled with pillows, you get the idea. They had a chef cooking up waffles that looked like dicks and Flava Flav was hanging out. The party was mostly porn stars and I had a bunch of friends there so it was a lot of fun, but maybe the best part was Kirill walking around introducing me to girls as the “photographer who inspired my career” which is only a little true but shows you what a good dude Kirill is, and of course it lead to way better pictures. 

Now speaking of pictures, about 1/3 of these photos are too NSFW for this site and are behind a paywall. That’s mostly Kirill’s fault so blame him, but between the girls flashing me, a mini photo shoot on a basketball court and Sabrina Nichole walking around mostly topless all night, I had to post a ton of this site exclusively to Girls of Driven By Boredom. But if you go over there, not only does it have the 20 extra NSFW photos, but they are in a slightly higher resolution AND you will have access to nearly every nude photo I have ever taken which is an absolutely enormous amount, hundreds of galleries, tens of thousands of photos. 

Anyway the party was fun, I took a lot of photos (can’t wait to see the 35mm stuff when it gets developed) and thanks a ton to Kirill for having me. So proud of you man.

Click here to see all the tame photos from the Assholes Live Forever AVN Slumber Party in Las Vegas.

Click here to see all the NSFW photos from the Assholes Live Forever AVN Slumber Party in Las Vegas.

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2024 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

I covered every AVN Awards week from 2008-2020. It was the last big event I did before the world ended. In 2021 they didn’t have the event and 2022 I had just hurt my back and I couldn’t make it. In 2023 I was going to attend but the event was in early January for the first time instead of late January and by the time I realized it, it was too late. But I returned and took a bunch of photos.

I will probably have three galleries from this week that are specific to this week and then two proper photo shoots that you will see eventually, but for now I am gonna hit you guys with the photos from the convention that leads up to the AVN Awards. The event was held in some sort of tent at the Resort World casino. It was a lot smaller than it had been pre-pandemic, but I heard it was even smaller last year so maybe things are headed in the right direction. This was my first time ever covering it without a client and I don’t really need to be losing money on work trips, so maybe I should have gone out on top. I guess we will see if I can find a proper job for it next year.

The convention is just people standing around in line waiting to meet porn stars and I have covered so many conventions and adult conventions and honestly I have nothing to say about it other than I gotta drive to North Carolina tomorrow and I have way too much to do right now to write a whole post. Just enjoy the photos on this one okay?

I didn’t shoot a tremendous amount because I wasn’t working for anyone so I was kinda just wondering around talking to friends and gettin shots here and there, but there’s still 110 photos in this gallery and then another 40 photos that are just on Girls of Driven By Boredom. Ever since I have started hosting my galleries on Flickr I have had to keep my NSFW shots behind a paywall which is tricky for a gallery like this, but we tried our best.

Also, I should mention that at the end there are a few random photos of people waiting for the AVN Awards to start. I was hanging out with a friend in the lobby before the awards and I took a handful of photos while we were hanging out. He took some photos too. I didn’t shoot the actual awards because I had to leave for my flight during them and they don’t let people shoot inside the awards anymore, just red carpet which is the worst so yeah. 

Anyway click here to see my 2024 AVN Expo photos.

And click here to see the uncensored AVN Expo photos!

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

Buy My Zine!

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

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