In the coming months Driven By Boredom is going to get a make over. The facelift is tentatively scheduled for April 1st but knowing how these things work, and on my limited budget, it could be 2015 before it really happens.  Part of that redesign is going to give the party photos their own part of the website so that I can do more blogging about other things without bumping the photography down to the bottom of the page.  This is going to let me do a lot of shorter blogs and do posts on videos, music, events and other things that I usually just post on my Tumblr account. I really want to do a lot of shorter posts like I was doing when DBB 3.0 first launched and soon I will be able to do that.  I mention this for two reasons, one is to keep you updated on things on DBB, and the other is because I am about to do one of those type of posts right now… (This actually ended up being a lot more substantial than I thought it was going to be…)

Hulu Plus announced recently that it has worked out a deal with the Criterion Collection to stream their films uninterrupted.  Criterion owns the digital rights to over 800 films and over 150 films are available now.  The films will be shown with commercial before the movie so that you don’t have to have unnatural breaks while watching.  Some Criterion films will be available on a rotating basis with commercial breaks as part of Hulu’s basic service.

I actually just quit my Hulu Plus subcription. Many of the TV shows I wanted to watch weren’t available to stream on mobile devices. It seemed totally pointless. I have no real interest in watching every episode of Cougar Town or The Dick Van Dyke show. I am pretty sure the addition of Criterion Collection is going to get me to sign back up. If you aren’t familiar with the Criterion Collection you probably have no business watching any of their movies anyway (although they do have a couple of Michael Bay films in there…) but they have one of the largest libraries of film classics around.  All their films are amazingly restored and are usually the best (and in many cases only) versions around.  Criterion DVDs run between $30 and $40 for a single film so being able to watch them all for $7.99 a month seems like a steal.

I am a huge film nerd and one of the main reasons I moved to NYC was so I could watch movies. I was driving 6 hours to NYC from Richmond, VA every month just to watch films that I couldn’t get in Virginia. When I was living in Richmond I was watching more than 30 movies a month and amassed a DVD collection of well over 1000 films (Including 36 from the Criterion Collection). Unfortunately when I moved to NYC I had much less time and much less money to devote to my film habit. I watch maybe 5 movies a month now and usually they are Hollywood films because I don’t devote the time to figuring out what is playing at Film Forum or the Angelka.

I just wish that Netflix streaming and this Hulu Plus Criterion thing existed when I was living in Richmond. I probably would have watched 50 movies a month and had an even deeper understanding of film history.

Anyway, here are the trailers to 3 of favorite films in the Criterion Collection.  More than 20 of their films are in my top 100 list so it was impossible for me to pick my three favorites so I picked 3 films that you may not have seen before that are also easily accessible.  I understand that not everyone has the patience to sit through hours of silent Stan Brakhage films.

My first pick is Man Bites Dog which is in my top 10 films of all time for sure. It is a French mocumentary about a serial killer that is unflichingly realistic and one of the most brutal, and often funny, films I have ever seen.  My second selection is The Harder They Come. Another one of my all time favorites, it is about a Jamacian guy who can’t make it as a musician so he turns to crime.  But after he becomes famous for his crimes his record becomes a huge hit and he becomes a folk hero.  The movie was made entirely in Jamacia and features Jimmy Cliff in the starring role. The soundtrack is one of the best Reggae records of all time.  The last film I chose was F For Fake. It is a documentary about art forgery directed and hosted by Orson Welles. The movie is a documentary unlike any other I have ever seen and has an amazing twist ending.  If you haven’t seen it you need to.  Enjoy the trailers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPhaieTg4o[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvIEfPxLjcY&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n52q_BywGuY&feature=related[/youtube]

Trash was pretty much the first party in NYC that I was going to every week.  I had been to Motherfucker and a few other parties but I didn’t have a regular hang out until I started going to Trash. I remember going to their 5th year anniversary party and thinking how I had missed out on more than 4 years of Trash madness. Well 4 years later the celebrated their 9th anniversary and I have spent a lot of time enjoying their madness.

In the 4 and a half years I have been going to Trash they have been at four venues and I have shot the party more than 75 times. Seriously, that is insane. The worst part is that I probably got paid to shoot it less than 10 times. I never work for free these days which is why I don’t shoot Trash as much any more but it is the one party that I will break my rule and shoot for free just because I want to hang out with DJ Jess and all my friends there.  Luckily since it was the special occasion of the 9th Anniversary I did manage to get paid for it…

The party was fun as always and featured a Valentines Day photo booth and some burlesque and go go dancers and that sort of crazy NSFW type thing that you come to expect from Trash.  I ventured upstairs for a minute and caught Joachim Garraud do his thing at Girls & Boys, but I spent most of the night hanging with the family in the Studio.

I think that’s about all I have to say but I will be back in a year with the Trash 10th anniversary pictures so get excited for that. But in the mean time you should just…

Click here to see all the pictures from the Trash 9th Anniversary Party at Webster Hall.

PS. Do these photos look more pixelated than normal to you guys? Something seems amiss…

While everyone is busy watching the fucking Grammys for some insane reason I am going to be posting photos of a band that while probably hasn’t written a new song in a decade is deserving of whatever Grammy they give out for pouring beer on their fans.  If that is not a category it probably should be.

When I went to the Philly Tattoo Convention I had no idea that Murphy’s Law was going to be there. I was pretty fucking psyched when I saw their name on the schedule. They were one of my favorite bands when I was an angry punk rock youth.  I probably saw them a half dozen times in the 90’s but I haven’t seen them since.  I still listen to their music though. I just had one of their CD’s in the car that I was borrowing a few months ago. The point is that even if I am way to old to get in a circle pit I still love this fucking band.  Serious New York hardcore that is as fun as it kicks ass. Also, Murphy’s Law’s front man Jimmy Gestapo is one of the owners of NYHC Tattoo on the Lower East Side which I just won a $100 gift certificate to at one of the fundraisers for Jessie Lee.  Clearly it is fate that I would get to finally see Murphy’s Law again…

As I mentioned I have seen Murphy’s Law a bunch of times and they were always fucking amazing. Their shows were crazy and violent and distinctly remember knocking some guy out with an elbow at one of their shows when he was trying to hurt people in the pit. Any time you get a band that has a huge punk, hardcore and skin following it always got a bit rough.  Still, they were so fun and didn’t take themselves nearly as serious as the other hardcore bands I was listening to back then so seeing them was always just a really good time. They would pass out beers and smoke weed with the crowd and even for a straight edge kid like myself it was always a great show.

I had a feeling though, that this show at the tattoo convention was not going to live up to their normal standards.  The show took place in a fluorescently lit room surrounded by people tattooing and people selling tattoo related stuff from little cubicles. The crowd was clearly not there to see Murphy’s Law although they had about 20 serious fans standing in front of the stage. But a lot of these fans were my age and older and I was pretty free to take pictures without worrying about getting my camera smashed.  And although I was enjoying taking pictures I was pretty disappointed in the vibe.

Slowly that started to change.  More and more fans gathered and as they played their hit songs the area in front of the stage really started moving.  A decent pit started moving and this girl decided to flash the band and the crowd and started making out with people.  Beers got passed around, bottles of Jager started being chugged and people started getting loose.  As the show got better shit started getting weirder.  Jimmy got off stage and got onto the mechanical bull for an entire song.  When he got back on stage a man in a giant zombie Gumby costume was waiting for him.  Soon a guy dressed as bloody bunny joined them on the stage.  Half naked Bombshell Brats and burlesque dancers got on stage.  The band was fucking losing it with all this weirdness going on.  The crowd got more and more into it and realized some shit like this could only happen in a brightly lit hotel conference room.  People started climbing the make-shift scaffolding they had set up for the suspension show and people started jumping on stage.

By the last song the place was just chaos. Half the crowd was on stage singing along.  It ended up being maybe on of the best Murphy’s Law shows I have ever seen and I would venture to guess one of the weirdest of all time.  A lot of the photos I took sucked. My flash was suffering a bit because I had taken more than 1000 photos that day and the fluorescent light made it nearly impossibly hard to make the show look any good from a photography standpoint. That being said I think these photos give you a pretty good idea of how insane the show was and there are a few quality shots in here somewhere. Also these photos are not safe for work which is a weird thing to say about live band shots, but it’s not every day that a band headlines a burlesque show.

Anyway, this write up as gotten a bit long and rambely so I am going to shut the fuck up now.  Just understand that urphy’s Law are fucking awesome and this show was completely fucking bizarre. Oh yeah and fucking click here already to see all the pictures of Murphy’s Law at the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention.

I was going to post all my Philly Tattoo Convention updates in order and save this one for last, but it is really just too good to post on the weekend. I wanted to get it up before my traffic falls off on Saturday…

So at the very end of Saturday at the convention my friends the Bombshell Brats hosted a party.  If you aren’t aware Bombshell Brats is “alt porn” site based out of Jersey that has been in the works for fucking years. They finally got their shit together and have just TONS of content from years worth of building the site.  They also have a bunch of girls who live in Philly and Jersey that they decided to bring out to the tattoo convention.  They hosted the after parties on both Friday and Saturday night.  After all the tattooing was done and the suspension show and the bands played they brought out a giant slip and slide, some bowling pins, a twister mat, a lot of oil…. and about a half dozen naked girls.

Okay, true. The girls did start out in bikinis but they did not stay in them very long.  These girls crashed into one another, slid around in oil and fought each other for bowling pins.  Why was not exactly clear but it did make for a pretty crazy thing to watch. At some point the burlesque girls from Rigor Mortis Revue got involved and shit got taken to another level.  They even had random girls from the aduience getting naked and ripping each others clothes off.   It lasted like 2 hours and I took so many photos I had to switch to another memory card.  Most of them were half out of focus cause I was shooting without a flash in low light but since I shot several hundred of them, I think we managed to get a few keepers.

The thing ended when a girl smashed her head on the floor and pretty much started like twitching on the ground. It was a pretty awful ending to a fun event. I am sure she is alright though. You can shake of a concussion right?

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say. These photos are absurd. I have no idea how any of this was legal. There were cops all over the place. These pictures are totally NSFW and complete madness. If you want to see more of these girls go to BombshellBrats.com, but before you do that clearly you need to look at my pictures…

Click here to see all the photos of the Bombshell Brats naked slip and slide madness at the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention!

So for something like 3 months I kept seeing this model who I loved but I could never figure out who she was.  I kept seeing pictures of her and not realizing it was her and thinking “wow I would really love to shoot her”.  Every time I would check to see who the model would be and every time I would see the name “Miss Crash“.  In the last month I have now ran into her twice, once on each coast, and while I still haven’t been able to shoot her I did get to see her perform at the Philly Tattoo Convention last weekend. And let me tell you… this girl knows how to put on a fucking show.

I should start by saying that this gallery is very fucking NSFW.  While there is not much nudity there is a lot of blood… and not the fake kind you might have seen in the burlesque performances I posted about yesterday.  We are talking legit human blood dripping out of self inflicted holes all in the name of entertainment.  Crash does a suspension show. I have posted a lot of suspension pictures in the past and for a lot of people they never get easier to look at.  Personally I have always wanted to suspend but I am scared enough of it not to actively try to do it. Although I am sure one of these days it is going to be me hanging from some hooks.

Anyway, Crash brought out three girls who did a series of suspensions.  The girls were cute and they did hangs from their elbows, stomach and knees. Knees to me area always the worst. That shit looks so fucked up and makes for some amazing images.  Even Crash said something about how she doesn’t hang from her knees anymore. That shit is seriously brutal.  The girls hangs were pretty impressive and the crowd was really into it but it was nothing compared to Crash’s performance.

Crash came out and did a super aggressive burlesque strip tease thing that by itself was better than 90% of the burlesque out there.  Of course in most burlesque the girl doesn’t have two meat hooks hanging out of her back when she takes off her clothes. Crash was running around fucking shit up and throwing in some pretty amazing booty shakes.  For a skinny white girl, Crash has one Hell of an ass.  Once she had whipped the crowd into a fury she was handed some needles that she proceeded to stab into her face.  Unfortunately I was behind her the whole time and I couldn’t get a great shot.  Luckily when she moved onto stabbing the foot long needles into her stomach I was there for the shot.  After she was good and bloody she was hooked up to the makeshift scaffolding and the performance really began.  She just fucking got loose up there swinging about and kicking shit and just losing it.  The crowd was just screaming. It was pretty fucking impressive.  She was just kicking off the scaffolding and her partner grabbed on to her legs and she continued to hang.  She finally cut herself down and took some more clothes off, did some more booty shakes, this time even more covered in blood and called it a show.  The whole thing lasted only a few minutes but everyone was blown the fuck away.

I was shooting in very low light so I had both a show shutter speed and a very limited depth of field.  I knew 75% of the shots I was taking were going to be out of focus so I popped off about 200 shots of her performance.  I would love to shoot her again in better light or with strobes because I missed some fucking killer shots.  That being said out of the %25 of shots that did come out I got some crazy fucking photos.

So be warned, some of these shots are graphic, but if you have a strong stomach you need to click right fucking here to see Crash’s Suspension Show at the Philadelphia Tattoo Convention.

Also, Crash is a total babe and an amazing woman.  You need to go to her fucking website right now and see a lot more of her. Get on it.

Okay, so I am really behind on this shit because my gallery uploading program is totally fucked up.  The good news is that I spent a few hours a day uploading files to my server by FTP. So I have photos for you.  The other good news is that I had two meetings today about getting my galleries redesigned so I won’t ever have to deal with bullshit like this ever again.  I have five galleries from the tattoo convention and I wanted them all up this week but clearly this shit has put me back a bit. But I got one for you today and at least two tomorrow and we shall see where we go from there.

Today we start with just a general update from the tattoo convention.  This update includes shots of the actual convention, some shots of specific tattoos, and then some of the shows that were going on including the Rigor Mortis Revue burlesque show, The Freak Kings and the Olde City Sideshow. On top of that we have a bunch of insane shots of people on a mechanical bull. Oh, and did I mention this gallery has a few naked Bombshell Brats?  Well, pretty much every gallery from Philly is NSFW thanks to the Brats.  They just pretty much were everywhere and none of them had any clothes on. It was a pretty good look.

Also when I was at the convention I ran into the guy who really got me into film when I was 16, a girl that I had a threesome with a decade ago and a tattoo artist who gave me a lip tattoo… also about a decade ago.

So yeah. We got old friends, naked girls, mechanical bulls, sword swallowing, burlesque, a penguin boy, Jimmy from Murphy’s Law wearing a ladies wig, a giant stuffed moustache and oh yeah, I guess there are some tattoos too….

Click here to see a ton of shots from the 2011 Philadelphia Tattoo Convention! More madness coming soon!

Okay. Technologically everything in my life is insanely fucked up right now.  My phone keeps dropping calls and texting people random things in the middle of the night and one of my external hard drives crashed and my internet pretty much stops working at night for some insane reason. I could deal with all of that if my fucking website was working.  It is not.  I still have no idea why I can’t upload galleries but I think I have found a temporary solution.  I am going to use Word Press’ gallery system which is not ideal but will work for the time being.  Let’s see how this goes…

One of my favorite shoots in LA was with a model named Orian. I discovered her by a series of coincidences.  The first was that when I was visiting a friend in Texas he had this amazing girl with amazing lips as the background of his computer. I was sort of blown away by this girl and I wondered where he found her. I knew that I must try to shoot her!  He had no idea and tragically I just had to move on with my life.  The second coincidence came a few months later.  I was on a modeling website and one of the banners for their site just happened to be the same girl from the same photo set!  I probably wouldn’t have even made the connection if it hadn’t been almost the exact photo he had on his computer.  Her name was Orian and I sent her a message.

Turns out that she had quit nude modeling. She had a boyfriend now and she had retired. We exchanged a few messages but once again tragically I had to move on with my life. This was probably two years ago.  Then randomly about 3 months ago I got a message from the same girl.  She told me she was modeling again and would LOVE to shoot with me. She told me she was a fan of my site and my work and if I was ever near LA she would come and meet me!  I told her I had plans on making a trip in January and she told me to hit her up when I was in town.  When I got to LA she was one of the first people I texted.  She lives about an hour away and I knew I would have to plan around her.

The apartment I was staying in was not idea for shooting but I had this idea that if I put her by the window I could get some nice shots.  Unfortunately because of traffic she ended up coming a bit late and I didn’t think we would have enough light. I decided to try to shoot in the kitchen but my white balance was all over the place and I got quickly frustrated.  I decided to say fuck it and put her back in the original location.  I had to raise my ISO a bit higher than I wanted to but it turned out that there was plenty of light if I opened my lens almost all the way up. It made for some nice soft shots with almost no depth of field. I really love these shots.

I really loved shooting this girl. She has maybe the greatest ass ever and her lips are pretty much life changing. She was a great model and I have already started convincing my photographer friends that we need to make her famous.  She’s already started planning a trip to NYC to shoot with Ellen Stagg (and me again!) and I am sure other NYC photogs will be lining up to shoot her.  I shot some amazing girls in LA but this was probably my favorite shoot. I hope you love it.

Okay, since my galleries are broken you are going to have to just continue looking at these after the jump. The problem is that these images don’t open in a new window so it might get insanely annoying to view them. As soon as I figure this shit out I’ll fix this. Also, obviously these photos are NSFW but these pictures are a little bit dirtier than you might normally find on here.  Just fair warning… I am sure you won’t mind too much.

UPDATE! My galleries are kinda fixed! Click here to see all the pictures of Orian!

I cannot express to you how annoyed I am right now. I have 7 new galleries waiting to be uploaded for you guys and yet the program I use to upload these galleries keeps freezing.  Tomorrow I have a meeting with a design firm to talk about a new design for Driven By Boredom and the first order of buisness is going to be dealing with my galleries. I hate everything about them and hopefully in a few months problems like this will be a thing of the past.  Currently I am talking to people in web forums trying to fix this issue and god willing this problem will be solved by tomorrow.  If not I am going to temporarily upload the galleries to Flickr or something until I solve this issue.

Now my plan was to post this video a little bit later in the week because I had so much photography to get up but since I am just sitting around waiting for my problems to be magically solved I figured this was the perfect time to get this update up.

I have talked to you many times on this site about my friends Teddy Blanks and Ross Harman. The two of them made up the band The Gaskets that I managed for about 5 years. They broke up in 2008. Since then their names have come up on my site because Teddy has been making his own music that I have shared with you and because tragically Ross took his own life in September.

Recently Teddy was interviewed by The Mixed Tapes which “through a series of casual conversations with unsigned and independent musicians, Mixed Tapes explores new artists’ early influences, their struggles, their shifting conceptions on making music, and the challenge of living and working in New York City.” Teddy was interviewed for 3 hours to get the nearly 10 minutes of footage for this interview. It is really well done focuses on his solo music as well as the music of the Gaskets.  And of course a significant section of the interview talks about his relationship with Ross, Ross’ death and how Teddy has been collaborating with Ross one last time.  It is really moving for me as someone so close to both of the guys but I think it’s very much worth watching for anyone.  At the end Teddy performs a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I hope you take the time to watch this and enjoy it.  If you would like to hear more music from Teddy Blanks or The Gaskets click those links.  Also Teddy just joined Twitter. You should follow him and maybe he will actually post something. Thanks.

Mixed Tapes: Teddy Blanks from Michael Melamedoff on Vimeo.

During CMJ I saw Das Racist for the first time.  They were playing the Moodswing360 showcase at Santos Party House.  They were playing on the stage downstairs which I always hate shooting on.  There’s a ton of uneven front lighting, no back light and the ceilings are black so you can’t bounce a flash for shit.  So when they played it was super hectic down there and I knew I wasn’t going to get great shots so I just popped off a few shots and went back up stairs. I have a lot of mutual friends with the guys so I wanted to check them out but I honestly didn’t even remember much about them when it was all said and done.

That show ended up being a pretty interesting one for both Das Racist and myself.  They got signed to Moodswing and I ended up getting Moodswing as a photo client.  They are really high on Das Racist and told me that their show last Thursday at the Highline Ballroom was going to be nuts. They told me they had a guestlist of 150 people and it had been completely filled up. The venue was totally sold out and I heard that people were paying as much as $100 for tickets on eBay.  So clearly photos were needed and Moodswing sent me out there.

I got there pretty early because my friend Jasmine Solano was opening up. She DJ’d for a bit and then did a couple songs before Detroit rapper named Danny Brown did his thing.  They both were great and got the crowd going crazy getting ready for Das Racist.  I went upstairs and hung out in the dressing room which was quickly filling up with people. Atrak and Nick Catchdubs from Fools Gold were there as was El-P of Def Jux.  People seemed to be getting drunker and drunker. I just figured shit was about to pop off.

When Das Racist finally went on stage the crowd went crazy.  They rocked that shit completely and had the whole place moving.  I have seen a handful of shows at Highline Ballroom and the only person who has come close to rocking it like that was Andrew WK. I hung out on stage taking snaps and trying not to get run over.  At some point I did a lap and took some crowd shots and even the back of the room was going off. It was just a lot of fun. They brought a bunch of guests on stage throughout the night.  Not really sure who everone was other than El-P and Danny Brown but it was clearly a party.

I took like 600 photos or something and it was total madness.  I need to just stop talking about it and you need to look at the pictures.  I feel like this show will be one that people are talking about for a long time.

Click here to see all the shots from the Das Racist show at the Highline Ballroom.