I got hired to shoot a private going away party last night and then I randomly wondered around New York from party to party taking a few pictures here and there.  I decided I would just stuff everything into one gallery and let that be that since nothing really was big enough for a full gallery.  After the private thing I went over to Happy Endings for Unstoppable Perfect and caught the tail end of their open bar… not that I drink, but it is usually when the party is most bumping. Saw some folks I had not seen in a while… look how happy they look to see me!  After than I went over to Fat Baby for Rock It and ran into my ex for the first time in months.  It was nice to see her and her best friend who I haven’t seen in ages either.  There was some drama, but that seems to all have worked itself out.  I hope I get to hang out with those kids again some time.  I thought that this adorable girl asked me out on a date, but I heard her wrong.  She demanded me out on a date.  That was nice.  Then I escaped and ran off to 40 C for One Night Stand and spent most of the time standing out front enjoying the fantstical weather.  Then I met up with my friend Sam and a DC friend and went over to Lit to say hello.  NC-17 was weird as usual with a lovely mix of people I love with an overwhelming amount of  strangers that I wonder where come from.  At least they dance their asses off.  Then I ate a bannana split at Odessa which was surprisingly well worth the 8 dollars I had to pay for it.  Anyway, there are a bunch of random photos from the night here that are completely underexposed.  Lovely.

Today is a 1 year anniversary of sorts. Exactly 52 Wednesdays ago I tried out my SB-800 flash for the first time. That is when the galleries on this site start from. That means there is exactly one years worth of photos on this site. That is 24,354 pictures. That is roughly 67 pictures a day. Impressive.

Anyway… What the fuck? Every time I go to the Annex some asshole has taken down my stickers… and only my stickers. It is very intentional and if I saw that shit happen I would probably start punching motherfuckers. Grrr… Then some other bullshit happened and I felt pretty uninspired. My friends from Florida hung out, and Jake Destroyer vomited in his hand while he was DJing and just kept DJing… It was pretty impressive. (Update: Unfortunately Jake is a giant vagina and made me take down the photos of him covered in his own vomit.  (Update: Jake managed to grow some testicles and let me keep some of them up!) Also, I brought my old car back from DC for a few weeks and I was sitting in it listening to this old punk CD I found at my parents house when a cop knocked on my window because he thought I was being sketch and wanted to see if I was drinking in the car or something. In the two years I have lived here I have seen about 5 cops ever until the last month, and since then there are 2 cops on every block. Some shit went down for sure… but I asked the cop about it and he just started giving me crime statistics and how much safer I was that if I lived in Bed-stuy… but seriously something is up. Anyway, as we were talking the CD was playing, and it went to the next track and the song was a Pist song about killing cops. It was pretty amusing. I am sure he couldn’t dig on the lyrics, but it was pretty appropriate. It reminds me of a time I went through a sobriety check point and NWA’s Fuck The Police randomly shuffled on my iPod. Amazing.

Okay, pictures go here, blah blah blah.

So anyways, Greenland goes on after Prabir.  They have a new member now who happens to be from India which led Prabir’s keyboardist to remark to me “Hey! We had an Indian in our band first! That’s not fair!”  I thought that was pretty brilliant.  South East Asia is so popular these days.  (Remember I said that when I post half naked pictures of this insanely hot Indian girl I met a few weeks ago… we have a photo shoot planned!)  Anyway, Greenland were sweet.  Jamie from Greenland’s cousin and childhood best friend (Peter) were there.  I hadn’t seen either of them in years.  Peter had never seen Greenland before and he and his little brother (who I have not seen since he was like 4 years old) were totally rocking out.  Good times were had by all.  Anyway, I mentioned in the last post that I have been experimenting with band photography.  I have shot Greenland a bunch of times and I am sure I will shoot them again, so I was just fucking around with LONG exposures.   At first it was just like 1 second, but midway through their set I started shooting with 4 second shutter speeds which ended up being pretty weird.  I think I got some cool stuff, although I am not sure I want to keep doing this, I missed a lot of good stuff in the process.  Anyway, check it out and maybe let me know what you think in the comments.

Greenland – It’s So Complex (I Just Want Sex)

When I was at the wedding I talked to the lead singer of Greenland and to Prabir of Prabir And The Substitutes about their show at the Black Cat in DC the following night.  I didn’t even think about the fact that I too was going to be in DC that night.  The next day I was looking for something to do, when I realized that they were playing.  I called Greenland and got on the list and showed up right before Prabir went on.  They were great as always.  I seem to be taking a lot of band shots of late, and like it more than I used to.  I don’t really have it down though.  I did nothing but band photography for 8 years, but I was always shooting punk bands and using cheap ass cameras and just getting the shot however I could.  Now that I am using a real flash I have changed my technique and I don’t really have a style.  So take this stuff as practice… you will see more of what I mean when I get to the Greenland shots in the next post.  Anyway… these photos start out pretty emotionless, and get more energetic and interesting as I fucked around with different shutter speeds.   I really need to go back and look at band photography books and get inspired again.  I have a ton of them…  Anyway, here are the shots from Sunday night.

Oh, and below I have posted the Mp3 to Trains off their new CD 5 Little Pieces.  When I saw it live I had never really heard anything like it before and it really stood out.  It probably does not give you a great idea of what they sound like, but it might give you a good idea of what they are about.

Prabir & The Substitutes – Trains

The other thing about Jamie’s wedding was that Jamie has been in like 10 bands over the last decade and pretty much all of his band mates were there.  After the two real bands played, they had about 5 old bands have reunions.  They would do a three or four songs.  No one remembered any of the songs and it was sort of a mess but a lot of fun.  The Remotes were Jamie’s most successful band from what I have heard.  They are pretty much just a straight up punk band.  They broke up shortly before I met him in 2002.  They had not played together since. They played three songs and it was fucking awesome.  Everyone knew all the lyrics still and everyone just got crazy.  It was pretty amazing.  I took a lot of photos considering they were on stage for less than ten minutes.

The Remotes – Can’t Get Away

Okay.  I am back in NYC and back to proper updates. I am working on some exciting new things for DBB, but I don’t know if they are going to show up any time soon, but in the mean time, have photos.

At Jamie’s wedding he had a few of his friends bands play.  His buddy Duane has a band called Dark Horse & The Carousels out of Philly.   They were pretty old school rock and roll.  Duane kept dropping his pick and busted his hand open on the strings and blood was splattering all over his guitar and congealing.  It was pretty brutal.  I didn’t get a great shot of it unfortunately, but I did get some pretty good shots overall.

New feature of DBB – Mp3 blogging!

Dark Horse & The Carousels – Hard To Die

Okay, so I am not really stuck. I just haven’t left yet. You see I am planning on driving back to New York and honestly the last thing I want to do is drive for 5 hours. Not that I want to be on a bus for that long, but at least then I could watch Human Giant episodes on my ipod. I also found a few reasons to stay an extra day.

1. Entourage Season 4 On Demand. My parents have this amazing entertainment system thing they just got and it has HBO on demand and I can watch it on a TV the size of my refrigerator. I just rewatched Entourage season 3 last week and was going to try to download season 4, yet here it is at my finger tips.
2. Washington Capitals hockey. I am going to try to watch game 7 of their play off series against the Flyers with some locals. Root root root for the home team. I don’t follow hockey during the regular season, but I fucking love hockey, especially when my team has one of the best players of all time playing in his first ever playoff series. Go Alex! (Wait till you see the Miami Dolphins/ Alex Ovechkin Onion video that will be up in a few days.)
3. I came up with a photo project that is documenting my nascent sexuality from 1980-1999 using Polaroid film to document locations in my neighborhood growing up that make me extremely nostalgic for a time before I started getting blow jobs in night club bathrooms from total strangers who are fans of my site.

Anyway, I will be back soon, I just wanted you to know a few of the amazing thing that happened to me whist I have been in Virginia.

• A female cardinal flew into my parents house. That is the state bird of VA. I was awoken to the sounds of my mother screaming and I had to run down and save her from it. She was flipping out and I barely had time to get pants on. I just opened a door and waved a towel at it.
• I saw a man in DC wearing a leather jacket with plaid shorts. Seriously dude, what the fuck?
• I saw a man shaving whilst driving. He had his whole face covered with shaving cream and he was shaving and then wiping the razor on a towel. Seriously, that is not a joke. My friend Wistar, who has a blog as well, wrote about both me, the wedding we were at, and the shaving guy. So read that shit right now.

Lastly, I leave you with this photo I took of my dad who I am visiting at the moment… click it to see a video of pretty much exactly what my experience in VA is like hanging out with my dad and his friends.

I know none of you guys care, but my Miami Dolphins just signed a contract with Michigan left tackle Jake Long. He is now officially going to be the number one pick in the draft and hopefully the Dolphins left tackle for the next decade.

Lets learn about Jake together!

Here is some bad footage of me dressed up as Elvis marrying my friends and singing Can’t Help Falling In Love.  Be warned, I am extremely sexy.

Seriously, this is why I get paid the big bucks and get all the ladies.  ALL of them.  Every single last one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmNknjC3ubQ[/youtube]