The Most Interesting Show In The World – 10.28.10

Let me start this post off by saying that I cannot find a listing anywhere on the internet of who actually preformed at this show so my apologies to the acts who I don’t know the names of because they were all pretty amazing.

The Most Interesting Show In The World was a Dos Equis sponsored event at Webster Hall last night featuring all sorts of insane circus type madness with Andrew WK playing ring leader. He performed several songs in between and sometimes during the acts.  There were burlesque acts, trapeze artists, a bubble boy, an illusionist, a death defying balance act, frankly just general madness all around.

The highlight of my night was the bubble act which in itself was not so amazing, but while this guy trapped himself into a bubble there were two girls put into giant bubbles, confetti filled balloons were dropped from the ceiling and several giant bubbles were thrown about the audience while liquid bubbles were blown everywhere. It was total pandemonium coming from every angle while this insane bubble act was going on.  It was fantastic.

Andrew WK was also fantastic. I can’t think of anyone else more suited to lead this crazy show. He is so enthusiastic and got the crowd really going at all times. I have seen a lot of burlesque in my day but few hosts could make it seem as exciting as Andrew WK.  I just wish he played “I Love New York City” at some point. I think people would have gone nuts. During his last song he got into the crowd and a mosh pit formed and there was an actual live snake in the pit as one of the performers who roamed the crowd got caught up in the pit with her giant albino boa constrictor. It was nuts.

Speaking of live animals, the illusionist Elliot Zimet was for the birds. Sorry, you didn’t deserve a pun that bad. But he did have an unreasonable amount of birds in his set producing dove after dove after giant fucking parrot. Seriously, he pulled the biggest parrot I have ever seen out of a green cloth that I think he sprayed out of a spray pant can.  Some of his act was a little cheesy, he was like the Vanilla Ice of illusion, but his act was still pretty on point.

The other main non-burlesque act was a guy who balanced on a basket ball on his head on top of a bunch of bottles and then he got on top of some blocks and held himself in the air with just his hands above a moving circular saw. Then he pushed away the blocks and fell about two feet and caught himself just inches from the saw. It was on point. If anyone knows his name let me know and I will include it here. (Update: His name is Rudi MacAggi! Thanks!)

He rest of the show was burlesque acts that the photos do justice. You don’t really need any description, although I would like to give a shout out to my friend Melody Sweets who did a pretty sexy number that has shown up on this website before… Also I should probably give a shout out to DJ Jess who kept the crowd going before the show began and Andy Shaw for having me out to the event.

Okay, that’s all I got. Be sure to check out the totally insane photos from the Most Interesting Show In The World at Webster Hall by clicking right here!

Andrew WK Hosts The Most Interesting Show In The World

Andrew WK Hosts The Most Interesting Show In The World

Andrew WK Hosts The Most Interesting Show In The World

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Rando – 10.26.10

I have so much shit to do in the next 24 hours before I go to DC for the Colbert/Stewart March To Retore Fear/Sanity thing and then all the Halloween madness.  It will be a hectic weekend but we will preservere, but in the mean time I am going to dump this update on you with the quickness.

All you need to know is that it was another episode of Rando at Gallery Bar and the Drop The Lime and Captain from Trouble & Bass were the guest DJ’s. Bronques was in the house which was good to see after he has been MIA from NYC for ages. And there were some cute babes hanging out as per always.  Good times, but I gotta go… I’ll try to rap at you tomorrow and I hope to see you guys tonight at the Most Interesting Show In The World.

Click here to see the pictures from Tuesday night’s Rando at Gallery Bar.

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Zombie Beauty Pageant – 10.24.10

I cover most of the NYC Zombie Crawl events because my buddy Doug Sakmann runs the things. He also does Strip For Pain, makes porn with Burning Angel and then does totally legit shit like film festivals and commercials. It’s been well documented that I love the dude, but sometimes his events can be a bit much for me.

I hate being sticky and he always smells like fake blood. It’s made with syrup and every time I smell pancakes I think of Doug and his blood. After the Dolphins lost on Sunday I had no interest in doing ANYTHING much less going to Beauty Bar to get covered in fake blood for some sort of insane beauty pageant.  But Doug and his right hand woman Autumn yelled at me for not coming and then my friend Darenzia was hosting and she gave me shit and I hadn’t seen Beauty Bar owner Mike Stewart in ages and Michael T was MCing and Erica Starr produced the whole thing and I knew I would get crazy pictures so the pressures over came me and I relented and got in my borrowed car and I drove to the East Village and pulled my camera out. (How’s that for a run on sentence?)

The Beauty Pageant started out slow and I missed most of the first round so I don’t even really know what was going on but they narrowed the field down to a handful of girls.  They took a break in between rounds and I said hello to everyone and got pulled into the bathroom with my favorite fat naked chick Sammie Sprinkles. I don’t think I had ever seen boobs that big in real life, so I was pretty pumped to shoot them. Round two consisted of girls eating weird eyeball and intestine food and telling the crowd what their favorite zombie movie is. They were all wrong.  Let’s go to the list:

IGOR’s TOP 5 Zombie Movies:

  1. Dawn Of The Dead
  2. Wild Zero
  3. The Evil Dead II
  4. The Return Of The Living Dead
  5. Dead Alive

I would have also accepted Night of the Living Dead, any of the Living Dead Films, and Zombi. Speaking of zombie movies… Check out this article I wrote a few years ago.

Moving on…

The third and final round of the Zombie Beauty Pageant was the bloody t-shirt contest. It was like a wet t-shirt contest except instead of water (or Faygo) the girls were covered in fake blood.  It was totally insane and horrific. It looked like their had been a mass execution. Beauty Bar will never be the same.

Ultimately, Suicide Girl and burlesque performer Bettina won and everyone went home completely fucking sticky and smelling like a Waffle House.  The end.

Click here to see all the insanely bloody, totally fucked up pictures from the Zombie Beauty Pageant at Beauty Bar.

Oh, and these photos are very obviously NSFW!

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Unseen NYC

Despite his loyalty to the New England Patriots my friend Rick is a good dude. I met him living in Richmond, VA and even though he left way before I did he is one of the few RVA kids I still keep in touch with.  He moved to Denver, CO where he started working for a domain hosting company.  I have nearly 40 domains still registered with them even though he doesn’t work there anymore and they jacked up the prices on me. Since he left Domain Site he has been doing a lot of SEO stuff and freelance work and he is helping me with another site I run.  He is the person who got me to actually use Twitter. (Follow him!Follow me!) He does a lot of web work, but his best project has to be Unseen Denver.

Unseen Denver is a street art website but it has a more poetic feel to it.  It’s about finding things that most people are too busy to notice. It’s not just about big graffiti murals and throw ups. It’s not about just names written on walls.  It’s about accidental art, people just writing their thoughts on walls, it’s signs and notes and things just found on the street hidden unless you are looking for them.  Yes there are tags and yes there are throw ups on there, but it’s not the focus.  And the best part is that it is all user generated. People just send in image of the art they find while walking around the city.

I have been documenting similar stuff myself for years. I even had a few of those pics show up on the Converse blog a while back. When I saw what he had done with Unseen Denver I approached him about bringing the site to NYC.  He told me he had been thinking about it but never had anyone in place to help him promote it and find photographers.  Well, he just found someone.

Say hello to Unseen NYC.

I sent Rick about 100 of my NYC street art pictures and Rick set up a really, really simple blog. He is going to post one picture of mine a day until we get other people involved. I posted about it on Facebook the other day and got a bunch of response so I think this project might take off.  Once people start submitting photos Rick is going to do a serious design for the site and we are going to start writing featured posts and making the site more like Unseen Denver.

So the point of all this is… WE NEED YOUR HELP! If you are walking around in NYC and you see some street art you like… take a photo. You could shoot it with a $5000 large format camera or you could shoot it with your camera phone. It doesn’t matter.  Just get that art and send it in! This should be a lot of fun if we get a ton of people involved.

HOW TO SUBMIT!

Please send your photos to UnseenNYC@trypnotik.com. Please include:

  1. Your Twitter handle (if you have one)
  2. Your name / web site (if you don’t use twitter)
  3. Headline
  4. Neighborhood where the picture was taken (if you don’t know what neighborhood, send the cross-streets)
  5. Your Photo

If someones face is in the photo, you must have their permission before you send it in.

We do not wish to incriminate our local artists, so please do not ever send information identifying outlaw artists.

You can also submit by posting pictures to our Facebook page or if you take a cell phone picture you can just upload it to Twitter and put the hashtag #UnseenNYC in the Tweet.

So in conclusion: Check out UnseenNYC. Send us pictures. And let’s make an awesome website together representing the secret art of greatest city in the world. And I’ll leave you with a few of my shots…

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The Most Interesting Show In The World

This party is going to be serious.

A who’s who of party promoters have been called upon to get the word out about this insane party at Webster Hall on Thursday with Shaw Promotions leading the charge.  This event is going to be awesome and everyone is going to be there and clearly you should be there too.  Why? Because if you are awesome enough to read this awesome website you are awesome enough to attend this awesome show and that is of course awesome.

What is this show you ask? Well it is the most interesting show in the world! Dos Equis is presenting this party and evidently the Most Interesting Man In The World has personally curated this event. Andrew WK will be hosting the show and complimentary Dos Equis will flow all night long. There will be a Hungarian illusionist, a burlesque star and “many other mind blowing talents”. Clearly this is not to be missed.

The show is on Thursday from 7:30 to Midnight and  I will be there taking photos so it will be a once in a lifetime chance to see me in public before midnight.

Oh, and the best part of the whole thing? Driven By Boredom readers get complementary admission!  This is a private event but you can get complimentary tickets by clicking right here for you and a guest. And of course you must be 21 and older because there is going to be a 4.5 hour open bar and crazy acts of madness none of which are at all suitable for children.

So again, click here to get the tickets and check out this promotional video which happens to feature DBB friend burlesque superstar Melody Sweets!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gDoWbN–Q[/youtube]

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Moodswing360 CMJ Showcase – 10.21.10

So clearly I am running a bit behind on updates but here are the photos from last Thursday’s Moodswing360 CMJ showcase at Santos Party House.  I have been sort of avoiding a lot of CMJ but I had to come out because my boy Shwazye was headlining with LMFAO and a few other friends like Dances With White Girls, Skeet Skeet and Maluca were going to be doing their thing.

Santos was totally hectic and packed all night. I think it was pretty much a good hectic though and lots of fun bands played on both levels. I finally caught Das Racist which I had been meaning to check out and I thought it would be fun to shoot LMFAO (it was until I got champagne sprayed all over my camera). There were so many California based playing that it was one of the most California parties I have ever been to and I have been to a lot of parties in California. Also due to LMFAO’s “party rock” vibe there was a weird fist pumping Jersey Shore set there as well making for an odd, but ultimately fun vibe.

I sort of half assed it on my coverage because their was so much to shoot and I knew I could do very little work and still have a ton of pictures. I took a few pics of each band and I shot a few crowd photos but I mostly just hung out with friends who I haven’t seen in ages.  I had an awkward conversation with two people who I didn’t recognize because I am an asshole and have a terrible memory and I met a cute girl who asked me if I needed an intern. In the two seconds I talked to her she seemed qualified but I haven’t heard from her, but at least it reminds me to put the word out again.  I wasn’t going to look for a new intern until it got closer to the new semester, but I’ll put this out there anyway. I am looking for a reliable intern who is in college and is NOT a photographer. I am looking for marketing, PR, or tech people who can help on the website side of things, not the photo side.  Get at me if you are interested.

Sorry for the tangent, let’s get back to the party photos.

Click here to see the photos from the Moodswing360 CMJ Showcase at Santos Party House.

LMFAO @ CMJ

Cisco Adler Of Shwazye

Gobble Gobble

Skeet Skeet

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Mog CMJ Showcase – 10.19.10

On Tuesday I got to shoot Mog Music Network’s CMJ Showcase at Brooklyn Bowl.  The party was headlined by Yo La Tengo with performances by The Screaming Females and Dom and a late night DJ set by Dam Funk.  It was a pretty crazy party. There was a huge line around the block and the place was packed all night. The Yankee’s game was playing, people were bowling, the food was delicious and the bands were killing it.

For me the highlight of the night was Yo La Tengo doing Devo’s version of “It’s A Beautiful World”.  Devo’s verison of that song is one of my all time favorite songs and Yo La Tengo killed it.  I really had a lot of fun watching Dam Funk DJ.  All the Mog staffers were getting down to old school west coast hip hop and funk and Dam Funk would hold up the record between songs to let you know a) what he was playing and b) that he was actually spinning records. Oh yeah, and he had a keytar. Amazing.

Anyway, I haven’t quite got the hang of my new camera/ lens quite yet so some of the pictures aren’t quite up to par, but I am working on it and there are a few fun shots anway.  So click here to see all my pictures of the Mog Music Network Showcase at Brooklyn Bowl and then you can click over here to check out my pictures with additonal coverage on MMN.

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Alternative Press 25th Anniversary Art Show – 10.20.10

On Wednesday Alternative Press held the opening for their 25th anniversary art show at Sloan Fine Art Gallery on the Lower East Side and I showed up to cover the event for Complex Magazine. The show featured art by a number of musicians including Marilyn Manson, Black Francis, Shirley Manson, Tim Armstrong and Travie McCoy.  The show also featured a room with art and souvenirs from the Alternative Press archives. It was a cool show with a lot of different types of art represented but I spent the most time looking at the AP archival stuff. I had no idea they started out as a little fanzine mostly dealing with local Ohio politics.  It was very cool.

While I was there I had some pretty interesting conversations. I talked to the founder of Alternative Press Mike Shea for a long time and he introduced me to the AP editor in chief who wrote a cover story on the Insane Clown Posse more than a decade ago. We had a pretty good conversation about ICP and my trip to The Gathering Of The Juggalos. The band the Plain White T’s were there and I realized I met one of them at Sundance two years ago and we talked about our mutual friend. For me though, the highlight of my evening was meeting Michael Azerrad.

Azerrad is a rock journalist who wrote two of my favorite books about music, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Our Band Could Be Your Life. His book about Nirvana completely changed my life. When I was 13 I was obsessed with Nirvana. I didn’t listen to any other music.  I had pretty much memorized Come As You Are. When Kurt Cobain killed himself I realized I wouldn’t have any new music to listen to so I went though Come As You Are and picked out all the bands that Kurt mentioned listening to in the book. I bought CD’s by the Melvins, Mud Honey, the Meat Puppets and on my 14th birthday my friend Erich bought me the album My War by Black Flag. Black Flag changed my life completely. From then on I listened to nothing but punk rock. I started a punk zine, a record label and started taking photos to document my favorite punk bands. My DIY ethos, mostly straight edge lifestyle and my photography career all came from those punk rock days. Without Come As You Are my life would be completely different. On top of that when Our Band Cour Be Your Life came out I was managing The Gaskets and it is the most inspiring books I have ever read about being in a band. I made it required reading for the guys. I shoot a lot of celebrities and musicians and I rarely get excited about meeting them, but meeting Michael Azerrad was a fucking honor.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Click here to see all the pictures from the Alternative Press 25th anniversary art show at Sloan Fine Art.

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This Week In DolfanNYC Pictures – 10.17.10

It’s that time of week again where I post photos of my secret world of Miami Dolphins fandom.  I know how much you love looking at a bunch of random dudes dressed up in aqua and orange and yelling at a TV screen. It’s pretty exciting.  This was a good week though. First of all we won, which of course is the only thing that really matters.  But it was also a good week because my parents were in town and they got to comes see the little community I built. A few years ago there was no place for Dolphins fans to go but with the help of my friend Michelle we started this DolfansNYC club and we have a Facebook group with over 600 members and we pack the bar Third and Long every week. As a group we bought over 60 tickets to the Dolphins game against the New York Jets.  An we also raise money for charity and have raised over $1000 after only 6 weeks of the season.

In short it is one of the more successful things I do in my life and one of the only positive things (in the Puritanical sense of the word) that I do with my life. My parents know about the naked girls and the party pictures, and they are proud that I have my own business, but they don’t exactly love everything about it. I am just glad I could show them the Dolphins club and give them something they can feel good about feeling proud about if that makes any sense.  I mean my dad raised me on football and that is one of the few things he and I really share still and some of my earliest football memories were sitting on the couch next to my mother’s father watching the Redskins.  My dad and I both played high school football and my mom still calls me every time the Dolphins win.  It just means a lot to me to share this with them.

Anyway, I know you don’t really care about these photos, but I figure it shows you another side of my life you might not see all the time. So click here to check out the photos from last Sunday. I shot them all with my new point and shoot Leica C-Lux 3. Since the quality of these pictures aren’t super important it’s a lot easier just to bring a tiny camera and call it a day.

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