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In the future the world will be full of clones and no one will know how to communicate in real life anymore because we will be all plugged into our computers at all times. We will sit in little pods 24 hours a day digesting information from all over the world with out moving out of our cells. Some people will gain the infinite wisdom of the universe, but most people will just spend their time coming up with creative ways to use emotions and to buy novelty pop culture t-shirts to decorate the flesh-shells of their clones that are living their sim life. Or something.

Today I had the shocking realization that time is much closer than we think, and this revelation had nothing to do with monkey cloning or the fact that Gmail insisted on letting me know about their new emoticons. It has every thing to do with one of the videos posted on myspace’s main page today. Watching this video was absolutely spine crawling. The video consists of Chad Vader being interviewed about his political leanings by Obama Girl. For those of you who have a life and are not aware of Chad and Obama Girl, they are two fictional characters featured in over played viral videos. They are representative of the down fall of media and entertainment and now they have crossed over into a world that should not exist. They are FICTIONAL characters, from different spheres of the internets, talking to each other. This video is like that weird movie in the 80’s where all the beloved cartoon characters of the day teamed up to teach you lessons about drugs, except 100 times more horrible and upsetting. I would much rather watch Alf talk about heroin than have to get my political incites from an minimum wage earning Sith Lord and a model who’s entire career is based on a three minute song she didn’t write or sing, or have really anything to do with. What is going to come next? Chris Crocker interviewing Goatse about gay marriage? Maybe LonleyGirl15 and Ms. Teen South Carolina could learn to Crank That. Or a major right wing presidential candidate reciting Chuck Norris facts? Oh wait, that happened. The apocalypse is upon us. Repent!

I am part of the problem. All your base are belong to my dick in a box.

I checked out a new party last night called One Night Stand, which is a sort of great idea for a party name. It is put on by Jake Destroyer. Jake recently contributed to an article in the New York Times about the effect female DJ’s have on fashion. This article has some of the funniest quotes I have ever read in it. My favorite being:

“A lot of these girls are just novelties,” said Alisa O’Connor, 21, of Brooklyn, alluding to the D.J. who flaunts glitter and angel wings to distract from the fact that she is playing prerecorded CDs. But “if she is a good D.J.,” Ms. O’Connor said, “I’m going to respect her for what she wears.”

You are going to respect her for what she wears because she is a good DJ? WTF? That is like a quote from the Onion or something. Sorry, I am getting off topic.

The party is at St. Jarome’s on Rivington east of Essex.  It is a small place, but that made for a very good time and I could see this becoming a great small party.  This girl Abby go-gos and she is better than your standard go-go fare.  I am pretty sure I will be there next week.  I will post the flyer on Wednesday if I think about it.  Anyway, good times were had, but you can see that for yourself.

 

The Alphabet of Photoblogging is an A-Z 26 day long series about what to look for when doing nightlife photography and what to do to get your photo taken. For the rest of the alphabet and more info click here.

Nothing makes a bad photo look great than a celebrity. People have made entire careers out of taking bad photos of celebrities. If you get a photo of a famous person you can leverage it into hits through gossip sites or try to sell it for actual monies. These things are exciting. You also make the promoter of the party happy because his place looks like the spot to be. The only issue celebrities is that you sort of have to be careful around them. If you piss off a celeb by taking their picture you risk them leaving the club which really pisses off the promoters and venue owners you are working for or with. A lot of these people go to clubs to escape all the people outside trying to take photos of them all the time. I usually just walk up and ask them if I can get a photo and if they say no, you have to respect that. I have had a few say no and a few pose with their friends for me. Then again, if Britney, Lindsay, Brad, Angelina or Suri Cruise walk through the door, I am getting the shot no matter what. We all need to eat right?

I have known Nick for a very long time. When we lived in VA I used to hate him because he would always hit on my girlfriend in front of me. Once I broke up with her we became pretty good friends and now that we both moved to NYC and are blowing shit up here it is nice to have someone I have known since back in the day. His partner in crime Krames just moved to the city too and I expect big things from Cobra Kai in the future. They put on the best parties in VA and I am sure that will continue up here. Case in point: Last night.

Last night, with the help of Taste, they brought you some of the finest DJs around including Dances With White Girls and DJ Bloodbath. On top of that Tracy Jordan… I mean Tracy Morgan from 30 Rock was haning with his wife. Evidently they are Taste Wednesdays regulars. They seemed very cool and posed for a ton of photos even though the one I took of them making out was unreasonably out of focus. The truth is I did not shoot well last night. Honestly it was probably the worst night I have had of shooting in a month, luckily the shots of Tracy came out well and made it a good night of shooting anyway. Anyway, click here to see more photos of Tracy Morgan and Nick The Duke.

 The Alphabet of Photoblogging is an A-Z 26 day long series about what to look for when doing nightlife photography and what to do to get your photo taken. For the rest of the alphabet and more info click here.

I hate shooting DJs.  Nothing is more boring that watching a guy stand over a computer with head phones on.  Once in a while a DJ will get really into it and it will make for some good shots, but it is pretty much a tedious experience.  Unfortunately it is a shot you have to have.  When the main draw of the party is often the DJ you need to get that shot.  A lot of time the person paying you to take photos is the DJ so you know you need to get photos of them.  DJs are also a shot I get early in the night when I am sort of getting comfortable shooting.  The DJ is expecting you to take his photos, when some times others are weary of it if they don’t recognize you.  Once you get a few shots of the DJ people are more ready for you to take photos of them.  If you know the DJ some times you can get them to pose for you and it looks a lot better than them standing over the turntables looking kinda bored.  All that being said, once in a while I get some really good shots of them though… in fact my desktop background is a shot I took of a DJ about a month ago.  Crazy.

Speaking of birthdays, it was Nick The Duke from Cobra Kai’s birthday last night. His party is tonight at 205 and I will be there taking photos. Anyway, I went to Happy Endings just so I could video tape Marika doing the Gettysburg Address for some reason. But there was not enough light and it sort of turned into a mess so we are going to do it again at some point. I need a video camera with a light on it. Anyway, I met this girl a month ago or something, and last night I invited her to the party. When I met her we got along real well and she was so pretty any everything, but then I didn’t see her for a month. She came out to the party with like five friends including a girl I had to get in because she didn’t have an ID or whatever. I tried to take a picture of the girl who had no ID and she flipped out. She would not accept the idea that I didn’t want to take a photo of her that much, so she spent like five minutes talking to me with her hand over her face. Why the hell would I want to take a photo of a girl who doesn’t want her photo taken. I don’t do this to piss anyone off. It was out of control. So the girl I dug mostly just talked to her friends and we didn’t have a lot of time to talk. I did talk to two of her guy friends who seemed like very cool guys. While I was talking to them the girl with No ID and the girl I like started hugging and looking really cute so I took a picture without thinking about her not wanting her photo taken. I remembered at once and immediately deleted her photos. I told her they were gone but she proceeded to try to break my camera and she hit me in the face a bunch of times including a punch that knocked out the ball to my lip ring. I have lost a bunch of balls in my life, and this was the best one I ever had, and now it is gone. Augh. The bouncers wanted to kick her out, but everyone else with her was cool and I didn’t want them to have to leave because their friend is a psychopath, but the whole thing put me in a really bad mood so I just went home. Photos go here.

My friend had her birthday at Lit last night. I had not seen her in a while so I came out for it. I realized I had not shot Rebel Rebel in 2 months so I guess it is good that I got some shots. I spent most of the night talking to another girl who also had a birthday. I was only there for about an hour but I had some fun and I think I took some alright photos. Happy birthday kids.

 The Alphabet of Photoblogging is an A-Z 26 day long series about what to look for when doing nightlife photography and what to do to get your photo taken. For the rest of the alphabet and more info click here.

I think I have a weird relationship with eyes.  I couldn’t tell you my best friend’s eye color.  I couldn’t tell you about any of my ex-girlfriends eyes.  The truth is I just normally don’t care about eyes.  But once in a while I meet someone with crazy amazing eyes and I am real into it.  I sometimes don’t even notice until I have photographed them, and once I have I pretty much shoot their eyes up close every time I see them.    As you might have noticed, I am a big fan of really up close shots.  I don’t shoot everyone up close, I just shoot them when I get a sense that they might look cool up close.  Usually it is because of some amazing eyes or some nice lips or something… or maybe a horrible disfiguring scar or lack of teeth.  I also make sure to get good shots of anyone with weird fake contacts, even though we all know how silly they are.  I think I want Miami Dolphins contacts… I would look beautiful.

Who wins?  You be the judge!  Puff Daddy must be rolling over in his grave. 

VS.

A “cultural guerrilla” group in France called Untergunther broke into the Panthéon in Paris and over a few weeks fixed a historic clock that has not worked since the 1960’s. They then told the administrator of the Panthéon about it and they were soon charged with the crime and the administrator was fired. The charges were dropped in court and Untergunther said that they will keep trying to restore Parisian historical items.

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris’s network of tunnels. They have now grown up and become nurses or lawyers, but still have a taste for the capital’s underworld, and they now have more than just partying on their mind.

“We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent,” said Klausmann. “But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There’s so much to do in Paris that we won’t manage in our lifetime.”

Read the rest of the article here.

The Alphabet of Photoblogging is an A-Z 26 day long series about what to look for when doing nightlife photography and what to do to get your photo taken. For the rest of the alphabet and more info click here.

Here is a trick:  If you can’t get a good photo out of someone ask them to make a funny face.  Everyone looks good when they are trying to look bad.  If someone isn’t photogenic, they will be if they have their eyes crossed and their tongue out.  They also won’t complain about how bad they look in your pictures, they will just laugh about it and make it their myspace default.  A funny face should not be compared to the “Ugly Face” which is created by motor-boating your lips while shaking your head from side to side in order to freeze the mouth in a most hilarious fashion.  While this is also a great trick for making people look awesome, it is much harder to get people to play along.

My friend AJ from way back in the day got arrested for jumping the White House fence. I read about this in the news, but I had no idea it was him until he sent me a myspace message today and I found this video on his profile:

While this video is extremely heartfelt and I feel for every single person who has had to fight in Iraq, but he was not always so heroic…  Although in some weird way Janicki may be some sort of bizarro world hero…

From the article:

The agents scour his service record. It shows that he joined the Army in 2000, when he was 18 years old. Growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, Janicki had rolled with a posse of slackers. They threw beer and weed-fueled bashes at an older friend’s apartment. He quit school and earned a GED. They spray-painted graffiti in Georgetown; Janicki’s tag was “Hero.” One day, he walked into an Army recruiting station hoping he had found a place to belong. The desire to join an alpha crew overwhelmed him.

“I figured the military was the same close-knit group, just more legal,” he recalls.

Evidently I too rolled with this so called “posse of slackers.”  Only I don’t remember much beer at those parties, mostly Special K, E and Cough Syrup… maybe the occasional baggie of meth.  I actually broke my straight edge in that apartment, smoking crack out of a light bulb just so I could say that I smoked crack before weed or drinking beer.  Although I didn’t touch anything again until I got drunk for the first time several years later on my 21st birthday.

I found this video today of him fighting a Teddy Bear on New Years eve 2000 at the same apartment with the same slacker friends. I always thought this was strangely funny and now I have a reason to post it.  Also, featured in the video is my “friend” Dylan who is now fucking this girl who got me jumped about a year ago and spread lies about me supposedly molesting her… I have done a lot of things in my life to get jumped before, but I didn’t do shit to her. I guess it is karma and thanks for taking my side Dyl… you’ve only been one of my best friends for a decade. Way to let mediocre pussy get in the way of that.

Lastly,  I posted this video of him setting his face on fire a few months ago. It is probably the best thing I have ever put on youtube.  Enjoy the hell of it again…

God that is hilarious.

When I first moved to Richmond I was trying to make a Driven By Boredom movie. I told this girl in one of my photo classes about it and she introduced me to her boyfriend Dave Stewart who was also making a similar movie. I really liked what he was doing and I started running their website for a while. I also gave them all my footage… about 30 hours of footage… about 2 minutes made it into their film Teenagers From Mars… They then made a second film, Teenagers From Uranus, which a few clips became huge on youtube. Anyway, Dave and his partner/director/editor Will Carsola are moving to LA to make it as huge stars or something. I just happened to be in Richmond the day before their party and I ran into Dave at a bar and he told me about his party. I decided to stick around so I could take some photos and see a lot of people I hadn’t seen before. When I got there I realized Richmond has a hell of a lot of talent, aside from Day By Day I ran into two of the best illustrators I know, some pretty well known musicians and a bunch of people who are just doing good shit for Richmond. Richmond as a city seems to be fighting the art community tooth and nail, but it is good to see that some people are fighting back still.

Anyway, when I got there the place was just packed and although it was good to see people I was not having a great time… but then around 1 am the bartenders poured everyone in the bar champagne at which point everyone started pouring it on everyone and throwing the glasses at each other. Dave and Will jumped up on the bar for a photo and the place just went out of control. The fact that Soulja Boy came on at that very second helped too… After that the bar became a mad house. People were jumping on tables and off booths. People were spilling beer on each other and silly string was sprayed all over the place. It was the most fun I have had in Richmond since I moved to NYC. I am so glad I stuck around for it. Also Richmond Magazine was doing a piece on Day By Day and their photographer didn’t show up, so they hired me to shoot a ton of photos of Dave and Will…. So if you notice that half the pictures are of two insane bearded men, that is why. Richmond is going to miss you guys… Photos go here.

The Alphabet of Photoblogging is an A-Z 26 day long series about what to look for when doing nightlife photography and what to do to get your photo taken. For the rest of the alphabet and more info click here.

I am not a big fan of go going.  For someone who is obsessed with girls and spends a lot of time taking half naked photos of them, I am strangely opposed to girls dancing around in their underwear.  I don’t like strip clubs, I don’t like burlesque and I don’t like go go.   Maybe it is jealousy but I just find something gross about making your living based on your looks.  Seeing someone spend two hours doing their make up drives me insane and watching a dozen guys drool over a go go dancer makes me queasy.  That being said, I tend to make friends with go go dancers and it always gives me something to photograph.  I feel slightly creepy shooting go gos, but they make for good content for this site.  I seem to be friends with nearly every go go dancer south of 14th street.  I don’t know what it is.  I get along real well with strippers and porn stars too.  Sex workers are just my people and I love them… even though I think go-going is a dumb party gimmick.  My fault, I hope you will still pose for me…

Now this is weird. The mayor of Centerton, Arkansas resigned the other day becuase he discovered he had been living a lie.  Years ago he claims he was abducted by Satanists and brainwashed.  He was living under an assumed name for nearly thirty years.  He only came out about this because his old family contacted him because he started a website about his old life. Wtf?  Evidently Mayor Ken Williams took a truth serum that made him realize he was actually former preacher Don LaRose.  Of course… Why didn’t I think of that?

As Williams regained his memory, he said, he realized that he had a wife and two kids but that he had decided to leave and take on a new identity to protect them.
“I had no choice. The choice was to watch my family killed before my eyes or go with these people, and I chose instead to run,” Williams said.

Wow.