Hey you raver fucks, now is your chance to see Fucking Bullshit. For some reason The Death Set decided to throw a punk rock vs Moombathon party tomorrow night (Thursday) at Santo’s Party House and Fucking Bullshit is opening. I know a lot of my friends don’t give a shit about punk, but they do like absurd dance music so now is your chance to get your glow sticks out and try to throw them at my face as I sing punk rock hits for you clowns. And then you can see Cousin Culo, Phi Unit and DJ Reck do their thing. For my punk friends, don’t miss this show because we are playing with the Death Set and the K-Holes and I imagine that I will spend most of the set trying to pick fights with club kids. It should be a lot of fun. Anyway, the show starts at 8 and we play at 9. Seriously, right at 9. Don’t be late. Here is a link to the Facebook invite for more info.
Now for the content of this post I have a bunch of shots that Coach Mike took at our last show and a lovely video. It was a lot of fun and we had everyone signing a long. The lead singer of Iconicide took the mic during a Black Flag cover and sang his death metal vocals all over my punk rock vocals. Clearly I had no choice to flip him in the air using only my neck. Fortunately when his head hit a cinder block he did not die and kept on rocking out. So check out the video, the neck flip starts around 1:45 and enjoy Mike’s pictures. See you cowards tomorrow.
If you are reading this you got pretty lucky. Yesterday my host decided it would be a good idea to limit the amount of connections to my site because I am getting too much traffic. Then they decided not to get back to my emails, so as I search for a new hosting solution my site is scrambled. I don’t want to do new posts since it’s impossible to fucking view anything on here so I am gonna wait until I get this sorted to update but since the galeries are already uploaded here are links to the last two SXSW updates I have planned for you:
And just because I hate to see my updates without some media in them, here is a video by the fantastic JC Brooks & The Uptown sound who I discovered at the Brooklyn Vegan party.
Hey kids. Just wanted to update you on things real quick. I am in LA right now and I am headed to Orange County which is only about an hour away to shoot the Musink tattoo and music fest 12 hours a day for two days. I have been in LA for three days and amazingly busy shooting naked girls and catching up with old friends. It’s been a good time but I haven’t had much time to update my site. I am back to NYC for 48 hours on Tuesday and then I am off on the road again for nearly three weeks. Point being updates may be less frequent than normal. That being said I do have two updates ready to go and I hope to get a chance to work on them tonight so they will be up ASAP.
I also just wanted to remind you that I will keep updating my Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram while I am on the road so if you care you should be on top of that shit. Usually when I travel my site gets boring but my social networks get fun. Just a heads up.
Lastly, I wanted to provide you some content and yesterday I watched an amazing old 60 minute PBS documentary called The Natural History of the Chicken with a friend of mine and the day before I hung out with a real life chicken on the streets of LA so it’s got me thinking about my favorite food. So here are three magical videos about the greatest bird on earth, the delicious and hilarious chicken. See you guys soon.
I have talked about my friend Teddy many, many times on this website but it’s been a while so it’s time for a refresher. Teddy Blanks was the front man for The Gaskets the band I managed for 5 years. They broke up in 2008 and Teddy started making solo music. During this period he released a free EP called Complications which we will come back to in a second. Teddy started playing shows out and he scored the soundtrack for the very successful indie film Tiny Furniture (out Tuesday on Criterion DVD).
A few years ago Teddy co-founded what has become a very successful graphic design studio and put his music on the back burner a little bit but he has now shifted back into full on music making mode. Yesterday he released a bunch of new music starting with a re-release of Complications. Complications has been remixed and is fully ready for you to put into your face. The album is a concept album based on the writings of New Yorker staff writer and surgeon Atul Gawande. If you have never heard pop songs about medical oddities and songs using disease as metaphors for life this is your lucky day. The album is completely free you can listen to it below or download it here.
Teddy also has released all the music that he wrote for Tiny Furniture. Much of it didn’t make it into the movie including a Sinead O’Connor cover that they couldn’t afford the rights to. Most of the music is instrumental but there are a couple pop gems in there including When You Come Home, the song used in the trailer for the film. You can download all the Music From & Inspired by Tiny Furniture for free here.
On top of all that Teddy has released three new demos. You can download all three demos here. Teddy is hard at work on a new album but these tracks didn’t make the cut, but they are still great songs. Somewhat Hasty is a personal favorite of mine.
Lastly, yesterday Paper Magazine debuted Teddy’s video for the opening track to Complications, Faint & Shaky. The video was directed by Ry Russo-Young who’s new film Nobody Walks was a hit at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Films. The video is peep show themed and Teddy does a little strip tease for your viewing pleasures. So watch this video and if you enjoy it, as I know you will, go back and check out all the other amazing links to music I just sent you!
You may be wondering why I haven’t updated in 5 days. The truth is I didn’t realize that I hadn’t. I feel like just yesterday wa New Years Eve, but it appears that is not the case. Luckily for us there is magical things happening on DBB and we just have to wait a little bit longer but good things are coming!
So things have been a bit slow around here but for good reason. I have been busting my ass organizing my life and working on projects that will hopefully make everything awesome in the very near future. So let’s break down the exciting shit coming up for Driven By Boredom.
1) Wild Adventures. I am going on a three week trip that should bring some crazy fucking photos to the site. I am going to LA to shoot a bunch of naked girls, Vegas to shoot an isanyoneup.com party and the AVN Awards, then back to LA and the finally to Aspen to shoot the fucking Winter X-Games. Expect a LOT of amazing content coming soon.
2) Driven By Boredom 4.0. I put a down payment on getting this site finally redesigned properly. This site has out grown it’s design and by March things should be a lot cleaner and a lot more functional. As far as you guys should be concerned the galleries will work properly, mobile viewing will be greatly improved and there is going to be a secondary blog which will make it easier to do little updates daily without moving the quality posts off the front page. On top of that the site is going to be much improved on my end making my job easier and improving boring things like SEO and social networking integration.
3) DBB.TV. I can’t give away too much here but there is finally going to be a proper video component to my website and it is going to launch with the new site design. Right now I have to mini web shows in development and hopefully I will have a few episodes of a third show by the time we launch. The shows are going to be really simple things that I can keep up with without spending too much of my time on it so don’t expect anything too crazy but they should be a fun change of pace for the site.
4) Love Me When I’m Gone. Although this isn’t really anything most of you care about I have been busting my ass working on the tribute album to my deceased friend Ross Harman. Everything is done on it and I am going to be releasing the album in late February. It has been taking up a TON of my time and will continue to do so for a little bit longer but it’s a big deal for me and will lead to things you might care more about like…
5) A Web Store. With this record coming out and this new design in place I am going to be relaunching a web store. I built one a long time ago but never really pushed it but with the launch of the new site the store will be featured into the design. You will be able to buy a bunch of stuff including DBB T-shirts, stickers buttons and tote bags as well as other stuff like the tribute record, Fucking Bullshit t-shirts, and prints. Plus other things I have created over the years that I have in boxes in my apartment like The Gaskets merch and some of my friends projects that I have worked on.
Anyway, there are also a few other things going on that I can’t really talk about yet but just know that even though things are a little slow around here right now there is A LOT of magical stuff coming. I hope you guys are at least 15% as excited about this stuff as I am… Cause I am pretty fucking psyched about all of it. See you guys tomorrow.
It’s New Years Eve and we are all about to be partying and what not like we all do at this time of year but I wanted to look back on the year and talk about three things that really made a difference in my life in 2011 and I am looking forward to them still being a big part of my 2012. 2011 was a pretty great year for me and I hope 2012 is even better for me and you and everyone who reads this damn website. Thanks for paying attention.
1) Fucking Bullshit
I worked in some way with music for most of my life. When I was 15 I started a zine and shortly after founded a record label. I started booking shows and taking photos of bands. Later in life I managed a band for 5 years, I started booking dance parties and went on tour with bands and DJ’s and even worked in the studio with bands. I did everything you could imagine except be in a band. And like every single person who works in music all I really wanted to do was be in a band. Finally in 2011 I got my chance and I started my punk rock cover band Fucking Bullshit and we are somehow way better than we ever should have been and it’s more fun than I ever thought it would be. We get the New Years started with a bang with our next free show January 5th at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn. Come see us!
2) Dolfans NYC
I have been running the New York City Miami Dolphins fan club for a few years but this year I think we really established ourselves. Even though the Dolphins have sucked we have had a big group at our bar, Third & Long, every single week. We brought a HUGE group to the Meadowlands for Jets and Giants games and we are starting to be taken very seriously by the Miami Dolphins organization. Their Weekly TV show did an interview with us and we have had more and more contact with the team. 2012 seems like it is going to be even bigger for us as we are helping to promote the 40th Anniversary reunion of the 1972 undefeated Dolphins team in North Jersey. If the Dolphins ever started wining some games we would be in Phin Heaven.
3) Travel
2011 was amazing for me as far as adventuring is concerned. The year started off with a trip to LA and Vegas and then my yearly trip to SXSW but this year really got crazy when I went back to LA and ended up driving across the country. I ended up being out of town for 28 days and I did almost no actual paid work and was living on savings and ad money. Fortunately when I got back in NYC I met the Sailor Jerry Rum PR girl Dana Dynamite who over the last six months has become a great friend and Sailor Jerry has hired me to work Lolapalooza and then Voodoo Fest in New Orleans and then Fun Fun Fun in Austin and even Art Basel in Miami. Even though I rarely drink alcohol, Sailor Jerry is the perfect client. Their brand is all about tattoos and partying and half naked tattooed girls. They send me out to amazing parties and I get to talk bands into getting free Sailor Jerry tattoos. I even got a free tattoo out of the deal. It’s been pretty fucking amazing. 2012 is looking like it will be just as adventurous as on the 12th I head to LA for a week vacation before heading to Vegas to shoot the AVN Awards and then back to LA for a few days before heading to Aspen to cover the X Games for Sailor Jerry.
So yeah, 2011 was fucking amazing and assuming the world doesn’t end 2012 should be even better. But looking back there was some sadness too and I want to take a moment to remember the people I lost last year. My friend good tragically Colin died of brain cancer in his mid 20′s and my closest grandparent, my grandma Jo finally passed in her 90′s. My grandmother has been one of the closest people in my life so losing her killed me but losing a friend at 25 was so much more tragic. But with death comes new beginnings and 2012 will mark the release of a project I have been working on since the week my best friend Ross Harman died in late 2010. His tribute album will be released in late February and while it will never bring my friend back it will go a long way to helping me deal with his loss.
Let’s hope no one reading this has to deal with any of that loss in 2012 and as a fantastic year. Happy New Years everyone!
When my punk cover band Fucking Bullshit performed our last show we decided to do a Christmas tune. We covered Fuck Christmas by Fear and I disrobed before the song and performed it wearing nothing but a Christmas thong and a Santa hat. I asked my friend Sasha to film it since she is a filmmaker and photographer but evidently she was drunker than I thought and she managed to miss Fuck Christmas completely. I was planning on releasing the Fuck Christmas footage on my website on Christmas day. Alas it was not meant to be.
The one song Sasha did film was our encoure, Depression by Black Flag. We were not planning on playing it and hadn’t practiced it in weeks but someone tucked a dollar bill into my g-string during the last song so I told the crowd if they paid me $10 I would perform another song. They threw enough money at me so we carried on. Unfortunately I was completely wasted at this point and didn’t remember how it started and we just sort of butchered the song. I wouldn’t even bother posting it except the ending is really amazing and this small Asian man comes up to me and asks to take a photo of me. There is also a lot of footage of me pretty much naked and playing with my genitals on stage. I am sure you will enjoy it a lot but make sure if nothing else you watch everything from the 1:45 mark on…
I am going to my parents house in DC for five or six days and I almost never take photos when I am there so I have a feeling I am not gonna update much while I am gone. I do have a tiny update planned for Christmas and some nudes to go up early next week. I will be updating my Tumblr and Twitter of course so follow those things. I also have an iPhone and an Instagram now. I don’t know how to link to that but my name on there is “drivenbyboredom” obviously.
In the Christmas spirit I will leave you with some holiday cheer featuring my favorite X-mas songs. I hope you enjoy them and I will see you guys in a few days.
Since I didn’t update on Thanksgiving and I probably won’t update again until Monday I wanted to give you guys a little Black Friday update. I figured nothing would make you guys happier than watching a few videos of people getting trampled on Black Friday.
By the way I did some Black Friday madness at Best Buy last year and it was kinda fun and I got really cheap hard drives. This year I have been reading Twitter and it’s just post after post mocking people who get up early and wait in line for Black Friday sales. I have heard several people talk about how they should work harder the rest of the year so they would have more money to pay for full price things. I also have heard people talk shit about consumerism and how it’s gross that people buy things.
I just wanted to say fuck you to all of you. How can you judge people like that in this economy. How can you tell parents that they shouldn’t by their kids Christmas presents because it doesn’t mesh with your bullshit vegan hipster lifestyle. Shout outs to all the people out there doing what they can to get the things they need for their families at a price they can afford.
Now all that being said, watch these fun videos of poor desperate people try to kill each other over discount electronics.
