Sunday night Comedy Central premiered Hannibal Buress’ first hour long stand up special “Hannibal Buress Animal Furnace”. Hannibal decided to throw a party at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn to celebrate the special.

The sold out party opened up with Hannibal hosting an amazing stand up show. Amy Schumer opened up and although I had never seen her before she absolutely killed it. My boy Donald Glover went on after her and did what he said was his first stand up set in like nine months. He was brilliant as always and talked a little about his role on season two of Girls.  I mention this only so I can plug my cameo on Girls next episode. I play “Mustache Guy”. Get excited. After Donald Morgan Murphy came up and I have had a fake crush on her for like the last 7 years. I saw her about a month before I moved to NYC and I’ve run into her a half dozen times since and she is always fucking hilarious. Aziz Ansari headlined the comedy show and proved why he is one of the biggest comedians to come out of the NYC downtown comedy scene. Years ago, before Aziz was on TV or hanging with Kanye I think a lot of people knew he was going to make it. He would kill it every time he hit the stage and I think he’s only gotten better and better. I was close to crying during his set.

After the comedy show Hannibal showed a documentary he made leading up the taping of his special. I was running around a little bit while they showed it but the parts I saw were funny and at times touching. The documentary is a special feature of the Animal Furnace DVD and is going to be available online.  After the documentary screened Hannibal finally played his Comedy Central special. Hannibal is one of the funniest comics in New York and Animal Furnace was fantastic. People had been standing up for hours before the special even started and everyone was glued to the screen watching and laughing their asses off.

Sunday just happened to be the premier of The Eric Andrew Show on Adult Swim as well and Hannibal is the co-host so at 12:30am he played that live. Adult Swim is known for their insane programing but the Eric Andrew show is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. It reminds me of the Tom Green Show before Tom Green was om MTV. It is filmed like a cable access show and is bizarrely funny.

Lastly the homies Ninjasonik closed out the night with a live performance. Most people there came to see comedy and had been standing up for nearly five hours and bounced before the Ninjas went on but there was still a good group of friends and fans left and they put on a great show with guest  spots from Johnny Nelson and Starcity.

Overall I cannot tell you how psyched I was that Hannibal thought of me to shoot his party. He even tipped me (he was possibly drunk) but I would have shot this show for free. Despite it being a really long night it was one of the better events I have been to this year. So go buy Hannibal’s awkwardly named special or just watch it however one might go about doing such a thing. I assure you it is funny.

Now click here to see all the pictures from Hannibal Buress’ Animal Furnace premiere party at the Knitting Factory.

If you don’t know what Is Anyone Up was, don’t worry it doesn’t matter any more. Hunter Moore shut down his revenge porn site after people kept submitting underage photos and him having to deal with too much bullshit to keep running the site. Plus I think he got a bunch of money when he sold his site. Hunter is still out there DJing and throwing parties and he had an Is Anyone Up event booked at Webster Hall on Saturday so the party seemed like a perfect way to eulogize his site.  Hunter DJ’d and things got weird and some people got naked and scenesters got really excited about the whole thing. It was a pretty standard shit show.

After the show was the after party. Hunter walked out into the street and hundreds of people followed him. I described him on Twitter as the pied piper of skanks. He gave me a handful of cash to take photos so I followed the mass of tattooed 20 year olds down the street until they stumbled on the East Village dive bar Grassroots Tavern. At this point Hunter bought all of the kids, plus everyone else in the bar a round of shots and gave a toast to the death of his site. 20 minutes later he bought another round and gave the oddly pissy bartenders some serious tips. You’d think they would have been happier that someone had just bought 200 shots, but whatever. They wouldn’t even let anyone get naked in the bar so they had to get topless in the street instead. Tragic.

After the party was the hotel lobby. Somehow everyone ended up at Hunter’s hotel hanging out in the lobby until security kicked everyone out. I didn’t even bother taking photos. People were trying to plot the next move outside but I had been offered a ride to the J train so I took it. I had no interest in watching the sunset with a bunch of underage Hunter Moore fans.

Over all I actually had a pretty fun time. The pictures are awkwardly NSFW and I think you guys will enjoy them. I have no idea what Hunter’s next move is going to be but I hope he keeps hanging me fistfuls of cash to take photos of it. RIP Is Anyone Up.

Click here to see all the photos from the last Is Anyone Up party at Webster Hall.

Five years ago my SB-800 flash came in the mail. I had an old manual flash and my camera came with a flash but without the high tech lasers that shoot out of flashes these days it’s really hard to use auto focus in the dark. When I got the flash my photographs got a lot better and when I relaunched Driven By Boredom as the version of the site it is today I only uploaded the galleries that I photographed post SB-800.

A few months ago when Tyga was blowing up the charts with his Top 40 hit Rack City I went back to my archives to pull a photo of him that I knew I had from 2007.  When I opened that folder on my 2007 hard drive I realized that not only was it the first night that I got the flash but it was also just a really great night.  I realized that the 5th anniversary of the night was coming up and I planned to reedit the pictures and repost them today.  So let’s get into it.

Back in the day pretty much every Wednesday I would go to two events, Invite Them Up at Rififi and High Voltage at Sutra. Invite Them Up was a legendary night in downtown “alternative comedy” hosted by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. On April 25th, 2007 they were hosting a comedy auction to raise money for the show because Rififi was falling apart and they needed new lights and things. Looking back on that night it was a pretty amazing crowd with a lot of comics that were big at the time and a lot of comics who have blown up since. I remembered getting in a bidding war with now reasonably famous Nick Kroll over a theme song written by Stella member and director David Wain. I ended up losing, but I did win Jon Benjamin’s fake mustache who now has his on TV show. Jenny Slate was looking adorable that night and she went on to make a name for herself as a Saturday Night Live cast member who accidentally said fuck on the air in her very first episode. Kristen Schaal was there and I had a crush on her at the time and she went on to steal the show regularly during the two seasons of Flight of the Concords and pretty much everything else she’s been in. I had no idea who Hannibal Buress was back then and now he’s one of the funniest comics in NYC. And I still haven’t mentioned Michael Showalter, Todd Barry, Morgan Murphy, Brett Gelman, Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Jon Glaser, Seth Herzog, Joe Mande, etc, etc… It was a pretty amazing party.

After that I headed to High Voltage at Sutra which was one of my favorite parties in NYC ever. I met so many friends at that party and made out with so many girls and got so many people naked in bathrooms there. It was awesome. The party then moved to 200 Orchard where it got a little bit worse and then to Annex where it got a lot worse Dimitry finally pulled the plug on it after a few months there. I showed Dimitry these pictures recently and he told me that he had to sneak Tyga in because he was underage and he rolled to the party with Travis McCoy who was at the time in the Gym Class Heroes. I remember Travie being there but I didn’t know who he was at the time so I didn’t take his photo because he had a camera with him and I pretty much never take photos of photographers unless I know them. Looking back at these pictures there are a ton of people in there now that I didn’t know at the time but I later became good friends with (and perhaps saw naked) later.

After High Voltage I headed over to Manor for the short lived Misshapes spin off Bleach. The party got shut down because they constantly let in underage kids and I was really psyched it got shut down because the week after this they told me they would kick me out if I took any photos because the Misshapes are super serious people. Whatever, the party was a lot of fun and there are so many pictures of people here I didn’t know at all at the time and am friends with. I had just met Sophia Lamar and Raquel Reed and the band VIP was hosting and there is a pretty funny shot of Johnny Makeup wearing a Mouseketeers and holding my business card in his mouth. There are some Ruff Kids and Misshapes in this gallery and a bunch of cute girls who I may or may not have made out with at some point in the next two years. I think I might have gone home with a girl I met that night. Those were the days…

Anyway that was five years ago when I loved doing this shit and I did it for free while I was working as a bus boy at a hotel in midtown. I am old and jaded now and won’t leave my house unless you are paying me five times what I would have been psyched to make back then. But this is life: you get old, you stop enjoying partying with college kids downtown and then you die. See you all in Hell.

Click here to see the photos I took five years ago today on a really fun Wednesday night.

Way too long ago my tattoo artist Betty Rose through a party for her eight year anniversary at working at Red Rocket Tattoo. I had just received my new camera in the mail and she has a bunch of cute tattooed babe friends so I met them down at the jazz club Fat Cats for jazz and ping pong. After that we all headed over to B Side for my friend Shain’s going away party and fooseball. At the end of the night I ended up in a bathroom to take photos of two girls making out topless just like old times. A few days later Betty Rose hooked me up with some cheap tattoos which are not quite finished yet but will be soon. Good times.

Click here for the reasonably NSFW photos from Betty Rose’s anniversary party and Fat Shain’s going away party.

On Monday Roxy Cottontail had me come out to her new weekly party Mondaze at WIP.  Nicky Da B and Zebra Katz performed and Rusty Lazer, DJ Wonder and DJ Fresh Direct all DJ’d. I got a chance to play with my new camera and I even shot some video that you will probably never see. I still don’t have the hang of the new camera yet, but I got some decent shots. The party was a good time but I am going to make this write up really short because I wrote it once and my site decided it would be funny to delete it for no reason. So yeah, that happened.

Click here to see all the pictures from Mondaze at WIP.

And finally two weeks after SXSW ended I am finally getting up the last images from my ninth straight year. This gallery contains a bunch of photos from various parties I hit up during the music part of the festival.  There are a couple shots from a Wavves show and then I shot a day party that Ayad from Passion Pit put together and then rolled over to Hotel Vegan the Brooklyn Vegan party. That night I was sent to a party that had already ended so I just hung out at the bar and took a handful of photos. Thursday night I hit up the Spider House to shoot a little bit of Psych Fest the highlight being getting a waitress’ phone number and then Friday I went to see the Gories at Emo’s East but I didn’t shoot much because I didn’t have a photo pass and I wasn’t trying to fight mother fuckers to get shots of bands. And finally on Saturday night I put my camera down and just enjoyed the Off! show and then made it over to the Vice party. I was going to shoot Trash Talk but after I took three photos someone kicked my flash and the door that holds the batteries in flew into the mosh pit and was never seen again.  I had planned on going back later to search for it but then ASAP Rocky started a fight when someone threw a beer at him and chaos erupted and the cops broke up the party. I ended up that night at a house party where pretty much everyone I met that week just happened to be hanging out. I decided not to take photos but instead got a bunch of hot girls in my friend Mike’s van and we suddenly had a moving party.

Okay, this is going nowhere and I don’t have photos of half that shit so I am gonna put the keyboard down and just show you some of the damn photos.

Click here to see the photos from rest of my SXSW trip.

Ps. Shout out to Bleached and JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound the two best bands in this gallery.

Mess With Texas is a three day event that happens during South By Southwest. I was there the whole time and it was the bulk of the stuff I shot during South By Southwest. Normally if I had so many pictures from one event I would break it down into several posts but I am on the road and I don’t have time for such things so this is going to be one MASSIVE gallery.

The event was sponsored by Sailor Jerry so they brought in one of the best old school tattoo artists in the world, Oliver Peck, to do Sailor Jerry tattoos on people. He tattooed a bunch of musicians during the three days including Theophilus London, Stalley, members of White Mystery, Fidlar, The Crocodiles, Dum Dum Girls, Skindred, Passion Pit and a bunch more that I am sure I would have remembered if I had slept more than 4 hours any day in the last two weeks.  Oliver even tattooed a little bunny on me.

I don’t have time to get into the whole fest, but you can see the line up and I will hip you to my favorite acts.  I had seen Fidlar before but they were awesome again. This other punk band Ceremony was fucking awesome as well. I thought Saturday’s headliner A$AP Rocky lived up to the hype and Dinosaur Feathers are a New York band I am looking to see again when I get back home.

Anyway, I gotta figure out where I am gonna sleep today so I will leave you with this MASSIVE gallery MWTX.

Click here to see all 500+ pictures from Mess With Texas.

I just wanted to get a few photos from South By Southwest up really quickly. This week has been so insane and is going to keep getting more insane. On Tuesday night, the night before SXSW Music kicked off Panache threw a party at the Scoot Inn. I was only there for a few hours and I don’t have time for a long update but I really was digging on this band Natural Child even though I only took a couple of shots of them and Thee Oh Sees were awesome as always. I gotta go take more photos of bands and rum branding.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Panache SXSW Pre Party at the Scoot Inn in Austin, TX.

As I write this I am currently on a flight from LA to NYC on my way home from shooting the Musink tattoo convention and music festival in Orange County, CA. I was out there working for Sailor Jerry and having some fun along the way.  Sailor Jerry once again set up a trailer to tattoo bands, promote the brand and host some serious games of corn hole. Dan Smith was doing the tattoos all weekend and tattooed bands like New Found Glory, Bayside, Paramore, Against Me and a bunch of others.

I personally had a lot more fun than I expected. I am not a huge pop punk fan and was not exactly excited to see bands like Yellowcard bastardize the punk rock I hold so dear to my heart, but across the board the bands were a lot better live than I expected. Even Yellowcard put on a pretty damn good show. New Found Glory and Alkaline Trio really proved why they were the headliners of the two days of the festival I attended putting on some pretty fantastic shows. I don’t think I am gonna go home and buy their records but I was glad I got to see them do their thing.

I didn’t spend a lot of time inside the tattoo convention part of the festival as I had to stick around the Sailor Jerry airstream for the most part, but I did get to make a few rounds and saw some amazing work done.  My favorite had to be a Steve Jobs leg tattoo that I think won one of the tattoo contests. There were also an unreasonable amount of hot girls at the tattoo convention so that was a reason to venture inside to the air conditioned part of Musink.

One last thing I should mention about this festival is that Hayley Williams and Taylor York from Paramore showed up to watch Hayley’s boyfriend from New Found Glory play. I shot a couple of pictures of them and then Taylor came back and got a Sailor Jerry tattoo from Dan on Sunday.  I posted a few of those pictures on my Tumblr and it was as if the internet exploded. Evidently there are like 2000 Twitter accounts dedicated to Paramore. It is sort of insane.  So if you came here from one of these Paramore Tumblrs (Hayley herself posted one of my pics on her Tumblr) looking for more pictures you are in luck. There are a couple more pics of Hayley and a bunch more of Taylor getting tattooed.

Anyway, I am gonna get back to flying in this airplane now. I will see you guys on the ground.

Click here to see the HUGE gallery from the 5th annual Musink tattoo and music festival in Orange County, CA.