Last night I planned on shooting High Voltage it is new location and my friends birthday at Beauty Bar.  Unfortunately when I got there it was 1AM and I had forgotten my memory card.  I had no time to go back, so I bought two disposable cameras and took photos anyway.  I am going to drop off the film right now, but I am not sure if I can get them up today.  I am going to try my best. In the mean time, you have to watch this video, it is so hypnotic…  Make sure you watch until the end, its the best part.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq3ZjY0Uf-g[/youtube]

A day late, a dollar short.  My friend Kristine asked me to come see her in the Beauty Bar monthly beauty pageant.  Not only did she compete, but she in fact won.  The thing responsible for her resounding victory was her choice to stab her self repeatedly in the vagina with a prop knife.  It may or may not have made her cum; who can tell these days.  Anyway, the fact remains that she won $250 and I couldn’t be more proud of someone winning something I care so little about.  Also at the event was a tiny Marlyn Manson, which caused me to spend half the night thinking about which celebrity I would like to see a minature version of.   The answer is Wilford Brimley.  PS.  These photos are not very good, but they are of cute girls in their underwear, so that counts for something.

Last night was one of the most insane of my life. You see, I don’t do drugs recreationally. As you may know, I don’t even drink except for on my birthday and New Years Eve. I was straight edge until I was 19. When I was 19 someone offered me crack and I did a hit just so I could say that the first thing I ever did was crack. I just thought it was really funny to be straight edge, and drug/alcohol free my whole life, and then doing crack first. I did like two hits, and I didn’t really know how to inhale right. I barely got high, but I did smoke it out of a light bulb. The next time I tried anything else was when I got drunk on my twenty first birthday. Later I tried several drugs, only once, just to see what it was like. I tried to attack my friends on Mushrooms, I tripped for 60 hours on way too much AMT, and I watched my house almost burn to the ground on Acid. Basically, every time I try a drug something insane happens. Last night was no exception. I thought I was done doing drugs forever. In the mid-late 90’s many of my friends were club kids. The DC rave scene was one of the biggest in the world at that time. All my friends did all the party drugs. In college one of my best friends dealt ecstasy in huge bulk. But all that time I never tried E. One of my rules is that I don’t pay for drugs, and I figured no one would give me E for free. Until last night. I was given 2 E pills and with out too much thought I took them. I was with OJ at the time, and when he found out I just dropped two of these pills at once and it was my first time he sort of freaked out. The first hour was awful. I got all hot and numb. I felt nice, but that is not why I do drugs. I don’t want them to be fun, I want them to tear my mind up and tell me something about what my body/mind is capable of. I want drugs to blow me away. Instead I was hot and bored. I eventually convinced the people I was with to walk to a friends house. Being outside was great, but everyone else just wanted to sit around. After a few minutes at my friends house I needed to leave. People were just annoying me for no reason. It was not really fair to them, but I was sort of freaking out. I just wanted to be outside and talk to OJ. So I talked him to going on a walk for me. I told him I didn’t want to walk through Washington Square Park because I wanted to see bright lights. He took me on a trip through SOHO and around the West Village. At some point I didn’t know where I was and I was sort of freaking out. I wanted to be close to something I knew so I would be safe if I went crazy. So we walked back. On our way back I felt a breeze and I was really enjoying it. OJ said there would be a nice breeze in the park, so we walked back through it. As we got to the middle of the park some kids just started running through the park screaming. Then we saw a large group of people chasing them. OJ and I turned to watch what we thought was going to be a fist fight. I was just about to pull out my camera when we saw white flashes and heard gun shots. They were standing just a few feet from us firing off about 5 or 6 shots. I was so fucked up on E that I couldn’t really figure out what was happening. OJ said the gunshots were headed right past us. I don’t even know. It was just like a movie. Everyone started running. I just stood there watching. I wasn’t scared at all for some reason. OJ grabbed me and told me to run. So I did. All I remember was running away, and I don’t think I was running very fast. Some of the guys involved were running behind me. Two cops ran up, both over weight, fumbling to get their guns out. The cops asked people what was happening, and one of the guys, who could have been the shooter, started telling them there was a shooting in the park. When we stopped running I was covered in sweat and two blocks away, so we must have been moving pretty fast. OJ didn’t say anything for about two minutes after. Once he knew we were okay, we both started laughing and thinking about how amazing it was. I thought it was great at the time, but as the night went on, the seriousness of the situation began to sink in. We then went to High Voltage so I could try to take some pictures. I couldn’t really see what was going on. I couldn’t possibly explain what was going on in my head. This cute girl kept talking to me, but I just couldn’t deal with her. If I told someone about the shooting they just kept asking me questions that I couldn’t explain. If I told someone about the drugs they just made fun of me and tried to rub my back. I did not want to be touched. I was very embarrassed to be so fucked up, as that is not how I am, so we left. OJ wanted to tell everyone in town about what happened, even to strangers on the street. He got countless people to buy him drinks because of it. We went to Lit, Beauty Bar, Fat Baby, Motor City and Max Fish before we called it a night. I went over to my girlfriends house and talked to her until seven in the AM. My whole body hurt and I felt miserable. At that point I started getting visuals and I just watched the ceiling for a while. I tried to be sexy with her, but I couldn’t take my pants off or get hard. It was awful. I then turned my phone of and slept until 8pm. (although I was up for a few hours at some point) What a fucking weird night. I found out today that those pills had mescaline in them, so who knows what could have happened. It was certainly an experience I will never forget, and I feel like OJ and I bonded forever. That being said, I will never do that shit again. Jesus. Don’t do drugs kids.

PS. I am staying at my girlfriends house again tonight, so I can’t post the few High Voltage pics because I don’t have my computer with me. They should be up tomorrow between 4 and 10. With pictures from tonight if I can manage to go out.

So yeah I am actually back in Brooklyn and my epic 15 day road trip is over and I barely updated the Road Trip blog. Sorry about that but I probably averaged about 5 hours of sleep at night and the rest of my time was spent sleeping, eating and taking photos of naked babes. Not a lot of time (or quality wifi) to update stuff.

I just wanted to give you a quick wrap up of the last week and a few photos before we head back over to the main blog.

After dropping off April O’Neil in San Francisco I headed straight to SFO airport and picked up Lucy Everleigh. We headed up to Portland where we met up with my friend Chelsea and she helped us sneak some nudes in a oddly populated rose garden. It was raining and the middle of the day, I am not sure why it was so crowded but we managed a few shots.

The next day we met up with a couple of babes for breakfast and made plans to shoot Amanda Pemberton AKA Apneatic. Luckily for us the breakfast babes (Ivy Aura and Artemis Moon) wanted to come shoot with us and we all got naked in a forest and by we all I mean them. Later Lucy, Amana and Amanda’s boyfriend all went to an hourly rate hot tub because we are fucking creepy.

After that Lucy and I drove up to Seattle and got food with my friend Steak aka Rachael Finley who made this feminist juggalette documentary for Broadly that I have photos in (and am also in if you look carefully). We checked out Seattle for a bit but I didn’t see a single fish and then I drove to a hotel in the suburbs to shoot Lucy, Romance and our friend Hunny. We then ate a bunch of crabs and had a weird hotel party.

From there I went and hung out with my favorite human Kimberly Kane and one of my favorite people to shoot Lily LaBeau. I helped them shoot some custom video for someone which might technically finally make me a pornographer and then we went hiking (driving mostly) on Mt. Rainier. It was pretty rad and I took some lovely photos of Lily which aren’t in this update but you will probably get to see them soon.

I met up with Lucy again the next day and we drove back to Portland and got matching bath tub tattoos (we share a love for warm water and poor tattoo choices) and then got the fuck back to San Francisco where I dropped Lucy off before heading to meet up with my friend January Seraph for dinner and a movie like some sort of normal human who hadn’t just spent two weeks on the road. The Lobster was worth seeing.

I finally left the west coast and after a nightmarish travel experience I ended up in bed back in Brooklyn. The end. Enjoy a few photos of Lucy and assorted babes. Much more soon!

The NYC Zombie Crawl returned to Brooklyn on Sunday. Held every Memorial Day weekend for the better part of a decade I feel like I have photographed this madness dozens of times… but maybe that’s because there is also the Manhattan version of the crawl in October, plus special events like movie premieres, zombie beauty pageants and even zombie raves. I have photographed so many NYC Zombie events that I want to do a book of this stuff quickly to cash in on the zombie craze before people finally get sick of zombies. I mean the Walking Dead has to end eventually right?

Anyway, the crawl started out at Trash Bar in Williamsburg, headed to McCarren Park to harass kickball playersa, then over to Bar Matchless for the insane after party. This year the zombies got stopped by the cops and for some reason they were totally reasonable. After pulling several hundred zombies over, they just redirected them up Bedford Ave instead of Driggs. Despite the fact that zombies were jumping on cars and stopping busses all the cops asked was that we walk with the flow of traffic. They then shut down all of Bedford as we walked to the park. It was sort of amazing considering the zombie crawl had no permits or any sort of permission to be doing this madness.

So I gotta get ready to leave town again tomorrow so I am gonna just leave you with these pictures, but I will be back before I bounce with some wild photos from the after party. So come back ASAP.

Now click here to see all the photos from the 2014 Brooklyn Zombie Crawl!

Yesterday infamous painter Zak Smith went on a bit of a Twitter rant outlying 67 tips for art critics. Zak is good people, a great artist and has some really interesting thoughts on art and art criticism. He’s a successful fine artist and I’m sure he has an MFA from Yale so if you care about that sort of thing you might think he’s not completely talking out of his ass. As someone who’s love of art was destroyed by a combination of art school and disgust at the contemporary art scene I really enjoyed reading his Twitter manifesto. Here are Zak’s points in their entirety. Some of the Tweets have been edited for better organization, but not for content. Let me know what you think.

(Read the article)

So everyone I know only cares about SXSW Music and over the last few years everyone in the tech community is raving over SXSW Interactive but as someone who has done nine South by Southwests I will tell you that by far my favorite part is SXSW Film.  I work my ass off during music week so I use the film fest as a mini vacation. I still work and cover the red carpets and things but I also get to see a bunch of movies. This year I think I saw 8 films and as with every other year they were all at least interesting if not fantastic. I also set up a few mini shoots with actors/directors from movies in the festival so I got some shots of something other than people standing on a yellow back drop.  Here are some highlights…

My favorite film of the festival was Safety Not Guaranteed. It’s a “quirky” film about a three journalists trying to do a story on a guy who posted a classified ad looking for a partner to travel back in time with him. It stars Mark Duplass and my biggest celebrity crush Aubrey Plaza. The film is absolutely hilarious, has fantastic performances from all the main rolls and ends with a bang. I got five minutes with Plaza, Duplass and Jake Johnson to do mini photo shoots which would have been awesome except about 30 seconds before I met the cast I stuck my hand in my pocket and when I pulled out a pack of gum I ripped open a cut on my hand and just started bleeding everywhere. It was really awesome meeting one of my favorite actresses with “I would shake your hand but it’s covered with blood.”

The most fucked up film of the festival was far and away was William Fridkin’s Killer Joe based of the Tracy Letts play of the same name. Matthew McConaughey stars as lawman turned hitman who has been hired by Emile Hirsch to kill his drug addicted mother so he can collect on her life insurance policy and pay back some scary people that he owes money. The also features Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon in secondary rolls that they knock out of the park. Haden Church gives a really dark film moments of much needed hilarity with his dead pan delivery. Another one of my all time celebrity crushes, Gershon is involved in one of the most fucked up scenes ever put on film which I cannot even mention without ruining it but it involves fried chicken.

The most suprizing film was 21 Jump Street.  Every year at SXSW Film there seem to be one or two big blockbusters that premiere there and you aren’t exactly sure why. Festival curator Janet Pierson defended the Hollywood film before it’s introduction as saying they just like good movies and 21 Jump Street is hilarious.  She was right. I loved 21 Jump Street as a kid so I wanted to see it but I had very low expectations but the film ended up being one of the funniest movies I have seen this year. (I know it’s only March but I watch a lot of movies…) Jonah Hill was his normal funny self but he also produced the film and brought Channing Tatum on board. Tatum was unbelievably good in it and you have to give a lot of credit to Hill for believing that Tatum could actually be funny. If you aren’t aware, the 80’s TV show 21 Jump Street was not a comedy and instead of doing a remake the movie just takes the basic premise of the show (young looking cops going undercover in high schools) and making a really funny movie at it. Unlike other TV show film remakes they only took a few shots at the original show and instead focused on making a solid comedy that didn’t feel like a remake.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the premiere of HBO’s TV show Girls. I am gonna probably get into this show a lot more soon since it is written, directed and starring my friend Lena Dunham (and I even have a line in episode 7) but I wanted to at least mention it. Lena came to SXSW two years ago with her film Tiny Furniture and I was standing a few feet away from her when it won Best Naritive Feature and I was super proud of her and knew she was going to do big things.  I had no idea that she would blow up as quickly as she did. She showed the first three episodes of her Judd Apatow produced HBO comedy and they were even better than I imagined. Two Showtime execs were sitting next to me in the crowd and even they had to begrudgingly admit that the show was going to be a hit. Just be in front of a TV April 14th and you will see what I am talking about.

So yeah, SXSW Film was fucking awesome. I saw a bunch more stuff too so I just wanted to give quick nods to Mike Birbiglia’s Sleep Walk With me and Fat Kid Rules the World. Both were fantastic films that are well worth seeking out when they are released. And I also should mention that I shot photos of the stars/directors of Sun Don’t Shine, Beauty Is Embarrassing, Compliance and Small Apartments. I did’t get a chance to see any of the films but they all looked great and I hope to get a chance to see them soon.

Now click here to see all the photos I took during the 2012 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX.

Tonight around 4AM I will be headed to John F. Kennedy airport and then off to Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Music, Film and Interactive festival.  I will be covering Interactive and Film for the Village Voice and then shooting a number of parties during SXSW Music.  I will undoubtably take thousands of photos and there will just be tons of amazing content and that sort of thing.  Unfortunately I will be super busy during this time which means a lot less updating. I always think I am going to have time to update but I never do.  During the film and interactive part of SXSW I should have sometime time. I also have a new art project/web site launching next week so you will have that to look at.  But duing SXSW Music, from the 15th – 20th I would, not expect a whole lot from me over here.

All that being said… I will be updating my Tumblr every day with highlights from the fest. If you don’t have Tumblr you should be following me on Twitter because I post all the good Tumblr stuff to my Twitter. Then again during SXSW most of my Tweets are just name dropping, eating BBQ and bragging about cool shit I am doing in Texas. So I will probably lose more followers than I gain next week.  But such is life.

Today in the interest of actually updating my site with content instead of just me giving you a bullshit post explaining why I am not going to be posting I am going to give you links to some highlights of past SXSW trips.  This will be my 8th SXSW trip in a row, although several of those trips were when I was managing The Gaskets and I wasn’t shooting photos so these high lights all come from the last few years.  If you mouse over the photos it will tell you about them and clicking them will bring you to more photos from that day or event.

And for all of you who will be at SXSW this year… I will see you mother fuckers in Austin.

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