Okay.  So I am super behind on getting photos up.  I just have too much stuff and not enough time in my life.  Sorry I keep bitching about it.  I have a little text update for you now because I have had a weird weekend and hopefully the photos from Friday will finish uploading before I go to sleep tonight and I can hit you with that update.   So here are a few short stories.

1. Friday on my way home from work I was on the Subway and it was packed.  I got on at the 6th Ave L stop going towards Brooklyn.  When I got on it was pretty empty, but by the time we hit 3rd Ave it was standing room only.  A woman got on and had a bunch of stuff in her hands and I thought about giving her my seat, but I was working on an iPod play list and I didn’t feel like moving.  A stop later I looked up and realized that she was pregnant.  She was really skinny and wearing loose fitting clothes, but when the train moved you could see her belly so I immediately offered her my seat.  She refused to take it, so I went back to working on said playlist.  As we were going under the East River I she dropped her bag and I looked up and she was falling.  With one hand still holding my iPod I grabbed her with my left hand and caught her right before she went head first into the Subway wall.  I spun her around and into my seat and everyone gathered around her.  She woke up a second later and had no idea where she was.  She asked the guy next to me if she was at Bedford yet.  He told her that she wasn’t there yet, and that she had fainted and that I had saved her.  When she got to her stop she wanted to get off.  I figured we should try to get her medical attention, but I wasn’t getting off at that stop.  I was going to get off any way, but the other guy said he would help her off the train.  I figured she would be good with him, but as the door closed I saw them part ways and he just walked the other way.  I hope she is okay, it was pretty intense.
2. Saturday night I was on my way to San Loco to get some food at 330 AM and a couple was walking towards me.  They were the only people on the street so I was looking at them.  The girl, a completely average looking woman, from the couple looked back at me and right as I passed her, she barked at me.  It was bewildering.
3. I got a new phone.  The Google phone, the G1.  I think it will be sweet one day, but this version has a lot of problems.  It has a touch screen and a keyboard, but you can’t use the touch screen for any text, so that you are constantly having to open the keyboard in unnecessary situations.  It does not make any sense.  Also my photos look like shit on it, it doesn’t play iTunes files, and I so far can’t figure out how to make it vibrate when I get texts.  But there are a lot of things I love about it.  The Google Maps stuff is amazing, and once my contacts are in, it is going to be amazing for organizing my life.
4. I shot Girl Talk this weekend for the Village Voice.  Death Set too.  They were both great.  I will have pictures from that and the hot body contest from Rated X up this week.  As soon as possible.
5. I went to a sports bar in NJ to watch football at a Miami Dolphin themed bar called Miami Mikes.  It was fucking awesome.  I think one of the main reasons I am not getting anything done right now is that I get no sleep on the weekdays so I sleep all day Saturday, then Sunday is wasted by football.  My weekends are a blur.  But the Dolphins won and I got to be in a mosh pit esque scene every time the scored a touchdown.
6. On my way to Girl Talk I tried to park in a parking spot that I had no business parking in.  Some how I got in.  I had to do like a 20 point turn, and I bumped the cars a bit, but I got in.  When I got out though, I was in shock.  There was not even an inch on either side.  It should not have been possible.  These people walked by and were like “Man, I can’t believe they boxed you in like that! How are you going to get out?  And I was like, I JUST PARKED THERE! I AM THE GREATEST PARALLEL PARKER WHO EVER LIVED!”  For those that don’t believe my greatness, there is photographic proof below.  The guy said “You should take a picture!” and I said “What do you think I am doing!” and I pulled out my camera.

Hopefully one more update tonight…

Okay.  Here are all the football related photos from my trip to Miami.  I got passes to be on the field before the game and we had crazy close seats, and my photos are still pretty bad.  I know I don’t have a telephoto lens or anything, but it gives you some new found respect for sports photographers… although I always thought I would be good at that.  I didn’t really shoot a lot, but there are a bunch of pictures of the practice facility tour and and the guest speakers.  We had Brian Wiedmeier COO of the Dolphins, Jeff Ireland GM of the Dolphins, head coach Tony Sporano and former all pro guard Keith Sims.  There are also some cheerleader photos in there if you don’t care about football.

The trip was a blast and the Dolphins won a far too close game which came down to the wire.  It was pretty fun and we got on the jumbotron a bunch of times.  Totally exciting.

Check out the pictures from the weekend here. 

Back in September at Jessie Lee’s birthday I shot this little video of ShiraGirl whilst I was photographing them. It is their song Anthem and Devyn Simone of Real World Brooklyn was singing on the track.  I sort of forgot to post this video way back then but I am having some computer issues and I needed to get some update up while I am trying to figure out how to get my Miami photos online.  So yeah, enjoy this little video.   I have 4 photo updates and a bunch of little videos I could post in the near future.  Hopefully I will get some of that stuff done this weekend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNRUIkBPH8U[/youtube]

Thanks to the wonders of NikeID, this website now has an official shoe.  The shoe is red and black to match the sites first layout, the only one I designed myself.  The shoe has BORED burned into it over and over again and on the back of the shoe it says EST. 2001.  My site opened officially on March 1st 2001.  They are Dunk High Be True’s and completely sick.  I might wait till spring to really start rocking them on the regular, but I will probably wear them a few times in the near future.  I hope you are as excited as I am.  Sick.

I am still in the process of editing photos from my Miami trip. I have not had a lot of time to do anything but I had a bunch of videos I wanted to blog about so I am going to put them all in one post even though they have nothing to do with each other other than the director is a friend of mine.

1. Girl Talk Interview by Joe Carabeo

The first time I saw Girl Talk he played right before the Gaskets, the band I used to manage. The next time he played before us in Richmond. The next time we played before him. He started getting bigger and bigger and we didn’t. I would have killed for them to have played this show that Joe taped as part of his RVA House Show series. I have seen Girl Talk like 4 times, 3 times with the Gaskets, but never with more than 100 people. This weekend at Terminal 5 will blow that away.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j023164gBJ0[/youtube]

2. We Are The Champions – Vadim Newquist

Vadim was alerted to a party in the street shortly after my man Barack won the election. He grabbed his camera and went out in to the streets. He edited his one camera shot into an amazingly cohesive documentation of the pure joy that New York felt when Obama won the election. I have seen a number of things that Vadim has done, including a video about me, and this is by far the best. I am breaking my temporary ban on politics to post it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DklLzilyUng&&fmt=18[/youtube]

3. Nassau Chainsaw Video – Doug Sakmann

You guys probably saw the Nassau Chainsaw photos the other week. They were insane as you know. Doug directed their video for Behind Enemy Lines. It is extremely fucked up. Lots of hooks and fire and violence. Not safe for work, but not in a sexy way. Holy fuck.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p57UHlzOzeg[/youtube]

Lenora was one of the curators of the Smut art show I was in the other night.  She is part of the Lowbrow Society for the Arts.  I was talking at the show about how I had not shot anyone naked all night so she unexpectedly volunteered.  We were waiting in line for the bathroom to shoot and when we got in someone had just come out, and it smelled so horrifically bad, but we just powered through it.  I wanted to use a longer exposure but it was very bright in the bathroom so I turned off the lights for half the shoot, but then I couldn’t see what I was shooting and I couldn’t compose, but when I turned the lights on I wasn’t getting the look I was going for.  But out of the 50 or so shots we took I got about ten good ones, so you get to see those.  We hope you dig them.

I just got back from Miami where I watched my Dolphins beat the Seattle Seahawks in most dramatic of fashions.  Then I hung out with a bunch of drunk Newfies and got a few hours of sleep on their hotel room floor in order to save me the $200 I was going to spend on a room.  You see, another trip to Miami has resulted in another broken camera lens so I decided I could not afford to stay another night in the hotel.  I will go into further details about that disaster when I post the extremely hot photos I as taking when said disaster occurred.  It may be a while on those though… In the mean time I have some sexy photos from last week and the Miami Dolphins related photos you probably will be less than excited about.  I only got a few restless hours of sleep last night and I had a lay over (of in all places Richmond) and I need to catch up on some shit.  I don’t have much time over the next few days, but let’s see how things work out.

Oh yeah, it is not quite Good Morning America, but I was on TV again…

So I was in an art show Thursday put on by the Lowbrow Society for the Arts at Southside Speakeasy in Williamsburg. Fuck you for not coming…. Unless you did. Then thanks. A lot of people did come out. Way more than I expected actually. It was pretty great and a lot of fun. The bar was not lit for art, an my cheap plastic frames made my work look even worse, but I had a lot of compliments and over heard good things when people didn’t know I was there. They were mostly horrified by the homeless cock shot, but I guess you should have been there… The show was great because there were these creepy boob squish balls who had extremely realistic nipples. That was sweet. At the end of the night I realized that I was at a sexy art show and I had not taken any sexy photos and one of the curators volunteered to get naked, so I will have some fun bathroom shots for you on Monday. Why wait until Monday you ask? Because I am in Miami.

Right now I am at a conference of Miami Dolphins webmasters. I go every year and I don’t really tell anyone about my Dolphins site, but it is out of the closet now (and last year when I posted photos). I will have a bunch of geeky photos when I get back. I also had one of the hottest girls I have ever shot come from Orlando to take dirty photos in my hotel room. They are fucking hot as hell and I will get them up next week. She also brought her friend with her, who is also really hot, and hopefully I am going to have time to shoot her too, but I guess we shall see. You guys will be happy.

Anyway, the photos from the art show are here. Probably no updates until Monday. Enjoy your weekend. Go Dolphins!

Richmond, VA is a great town, but a very segregated one. I spent the last few years I lived there on basically the corner of Broad and Belvedere streets. This is a pretty important cross section in Richmond because it firmly separates four of the neighborhoods in Richmond. The northeast corner is Jackson Ward, a black area that at one time was known as the Harlem of the South. Across the street on the northwest side is Carver, another primarily black area. To the southeast is the beginning of the down town area and to the southwest is the fan, home to thousands of VCU college students. Richmond is a pretty dangerous town, and while this area is certainly not the worst in the city, there were three shootings at this intersection with in the first month that I moved into my apartment. They had to cancel a national Step contest because every time they held it someone would get shot. On many nights this area becomes a drag for tricked out cars with huge rims and booming stereos right next to hipster bars, art galleries and coffee shops, however these worlds rarely interact. At least that is the way it was until Tuesday night.

After Barack Obama gave his victory speech I began my drive back to NYC so I could work the next morning. All the hard work was over and I needed to go home. I tried to drive through the Broad and Belvedere intersection on my way to I-95. I saw that all the streets were blocked off. I was afraid something horrible had happened. Richmond can be a very racist town, on both sides. I used to hear storied of black families getting their houses burned if they tried to move into the Oregon Hill neighborhood just a few blocks south. I tried to drive around the police blockade but everything seemed to be stopped. That’s when I heard the drums. I parked my car and got out and walked into a huge swarm of thousands of people running around screaming and chanting. They were climbing on construction vehicles, dancing on cars and shimming up light posts. People were breakdancing in the street. Everyone was jubilant. You had thug black dudes hugging tattooed hipster kids. It was amazing. The Obama win hadn’t really hit me until then. I walked around taking photos with the biggest smile on my face. Everyone was jumping in front of my camera and wanting to be part of the record of this amazing moment. I have seen nothing like it in my life. I was almost in tears the whole time. I saw three muslim women celebrating with a man draped in the Indian flag. I saw gay kids posing with some of the hardest looking dudes I have seen in my life. There were hip hop heads drumming with hippies. It was phenomenal. These were mostly kids in the parade, but every so often I would see an older African American shaking their head in disbelief. They just couldn’t believe what was happening. They never thought something like this could happen in their life times. There were 65 year old men were crying, and that brought tears to my eyes.

I honestly spent more time celebrating than paying attention to the photos I was taking. These shots are not as great as they should be, and I kept missing the really touching moments of people hugging and crying, but fuck, I couldn’t be bothered. I knew I should be shooting, but I really just wanted to be climbing up light posts and throwing fire works too. It was a really amazing thing to be a part of and I think if nothing else, these pictures capture some of that. White and black, in the capitol of the south, living in a blue state for the first time in their lives, celebrating a hope for the world. This might be the cheesiest thing I have ever written in my life, but I mean every bit of it. We were part of history.

Click for pictures. God bless America.