Okay, so admittedly that title doesn’t make sense.  I realize that paparazzi is Italian and soy is Spanish… But I don’t speak Italian and my abilities in Spanish past the Taco Bell menu are suspect.  But I do know most of the lyrics to La Bamba and Richie Valens, No soy marinero, pero, soy capitan, soy capitan. So there for, this makes sense some how.

The point is I make for a shitty paparazzo.  When I had down time at Sundance it was usually only for an hour or two so it never made sense to try to see a movie or do anything outside of the downtown area so I would just hang out on Main Street and see if I could shoot some random celebs.  I just sort of practiced being involved with the paparazzi.  I met a bunch of the guys and shot some photos.  My shot of Amy Poehler got picked up, but didn’t sell, the rest I had no luck with.  I am just not cut out for harassing these people.  And these photographers told me to get shots that don’t even make sense to my esthetic.  Evidently they want full body shots and people waving at you and things.  I don’t know.  They were stalking people I have never even heard of, yet they had no idea who Rob Corddry was.  That is just not right.  I missed shots of Perry Ferrell and Paul Giamatti because I had my settings wrong and Michael Cera told me not to take his photo, so I didn’t.  It was sort of a disaster.  Running after Kristen Stewart from Twilight was pretty fun though.  I had no idea who she was but when everyone started running I got to jump over some stuff.  The shots I got of her sucked, but at least I got to make believe like I was chasing after Michael Jackson or something.

I did have a few good shots though.  I got some good ones of Wesley Snipes and Guillermo del Toro speaking in spanish to eachother.  I talked to Rob Corrdry about his show the Winner.  I got to briefly talk to Kelli Garner, who I spent an hour googling after I saw her in Thumbsucker several years ago.  I saw the only two funny cast members of SNL (Poehler and Bill Hader) and shot Sam Rockwell and Liam Nielson while talking to a friend who was working the door at the Gibson lounge.

The best shot I got (which I found hilarious, but evidently no one cares about) was of Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame hugging a bunch of small children.  This guy is a convicted child pornographer.  Okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but I am not sure why anyone would let him near their kids. The parents thought it was hilarious, as did everyone else.  When he saw me take the shots, he said “This is going to get me in trouble isn’t it?”  Well, evidently not.  No one cares enough about Joe Francis… But as far as I am concerned Joe, it was the shot of the week.

Click here to see my failed attempt at stalking celebrities for money.

PS.  This is the last of my Sundance shots.  It only took me three weeks to get them all up!  On to new adventures now… That is if I can get my gallery software to start working properly again.

Just a quick update with some non party, non nude work I did….

I shot all the photos for the website for this photo contest.  There is a poster too, but I haven’t seen it yet.  I will get an image of that when I have one.  I photographed all my cameras for fun a while back.  I blogged about it here.  These Swiss guys found the photo on Flickr and liked it and wanted me to redo it.  I did, and then they paid for my rent for two months.  I love them.

Anyway, the photo old from Flickr is below and the website with the new shots is here.  The last of Sundance goes up in about ten minutes and god willing my gallery software is going to stop fucking with me and we will have photos from the Vice party on Wednesday, Webster Hall on Friday and 2 hours at the Comic Con on Sunday.  I will put them all up tomorrow if they have been uploaded by then.  See you soon.

Ashton Kucher had a movie at Sundance called Spread. There was an after party for the premiere at the Entertainment Weekly Loft. It was sort of a crazy event. I met a lot of celebs at Sundance but the only time I got star struck was at this party. I got a shot of Slash and Anthony Kiedis together. When I saw Slash I wasn’t that excited, and when I saw Kiedis I wasn’t that exciting, but something about watching the two of them talk took me back to my childhood when Guns And Roses and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers were two of the biggest bands in my world (along with Motley Crue, Run DMC and Bel Biv Devoe). It just blew my mind a little bit. During the party Ashton made a toast to the cast of his film and said some really sweet stuff about Demi Moore and how he couldn’t live with out her. Everyone oohed. Reeve Carney played some musics and the whole thing was streamed live via little web cams the a number of people had, including Demi. I had a sort of amazing conversation with Reeve and Alan Cumming. I asked Mr. Cumming why he had a stamp on his forehead and he told me it was because he was too cold to take off his gloves so he told the door person to put the entry stamp on his head. Amazing. I shot Paris again, this time with her BFF Brittany Flickinger. I swear Brittany was making eyes at me, but maybe it was just because I was holding a camera.  But really I think we fell in love for a moment there.  She is actually asked me if I wanted to get a shot of her and Paris. She was holding our absinthe but wouldn’t hold it up into the shot because Paris has her own liquor company or something, but Paris did grab about a dozen mini bottles of Tourment for the road.

The party was a lot of fun, but I got out of there early because I had tons of editing to do before I crashed. I didn’t take that many shots, but most of the ones I did were of celebrities. You can check them out here, it is mildly exciting.

Okay, I don’t know what it is with the photos I take at Cain, but for some reason, for the second week in a row, they have gotten super delayed.  That is a lot of probably unnecessary commas.  My gallery software is total bullshit and is in no way designed to deal with as many images as I give it, and once in a while for no reason it decides to rebuild itself which takes like 70 hours.  So it is just hanging out.  Just 30 hours left!  Fuck.  And while that is happening I can’t upload the Vice photos or the Webster Hall shots from last night.  Fuck.  In the mean time though I can get rid of some more of this Sundance stuff… Just 4 more galleries to go.

The first of the 4 remaining is from the makeshift Tao they build in Park City every year.  I have consciously avoided going to Tao in 3 different cities, yet somehow I got booked to shoot at the Utah Tao. Of course I was shooting for Le Tourment Vert absinthe and the idea was to get shots of celebs holding our drinks, or near our drinks, or near our sexy model dressed up as a green fairy.  This worked pretty well, but when I took a shot of Sting, he put down his drink before I took the picture and I got yelled at because he wasn’t holding the drink and the other sponsors would get mad or some insane drama like that.  It put me in kinda a bad mood, but in the mean time I got to meet Russel Simmons who is kinda a hero of mine and got to hang out with the fairy and one of the cocktail waitresses.  I met a cute girl from CSI named Cara Santana and her friend Aaron Paul who is on a few shows that I might watch if I had a TV.  The two of them have the same agent and he told them not to hook up with each other at Sundance, so they made me take a photo of them hugging each other looking all sexy like so their agent would think they were doing it.  Or something, they were cool kids.  I got off at 2AM and I was jut about to go upload photos when Paris Hilton rolled in.  My people told me to get the shot but her body guard was having none of it.  I was going to give up and I started to leave, but then I thought “Fuck it, I need this shot.”  I just sort of stayed in the back ground until she picked up a drink glass and toasted her friends with it.  That was it, our product was in the shot.  I took the photo and dipped before the body guard could give me shit.  Then I went home and spent 2 hours editing photos.  The end.

Check out all the shots here.  Oh, and I posted some of these shots before, so if you recognize them, it is from this post.

Before I went to Sundance my friend Leah emailed me about doing some pro-bono work shooting interviews for the Flavorpill blog Flavorwire. When I met her over 2 years ago she a contract employee for Fpill and now she is the managing editor Flavorpill New York. I am pretty proud of her. Anyway, that is not at all the point, the point was I didn’t know if I would have any time, but I thought it would be good to get them on my resume and get some celebrity shots in the process. I emailed the Sundance project head and told her I might be available… I never heard back from her. I talked to Leah later and she told me they had found someone.

When I got to Sundance I found out I was that someone. The absinthe I was working for loaned me out to Flavorpill to do some cross promotional shots. (Which is why you will notice some green hats in some of the pictures…) I have to give a shout of to my partner in crime the charismatic Bess Devenow who did all the interviews and wondered around Park City with me. I shot a lot of photos and obviously not all of them made the interviews so I figured I would post the best of the rest here.

Oh yeah, and two things to point out about the interviews.
1) During the Zach Gilford interview Paris Hilton decided take a break from whatever she was doing at the MySpace Cafe and come sit down next to me to have a smoke. It was the third time in 3 days that I had seen her. She was following me everywhere!
2) Bobcat Goldthwait is fucking amazing. I don’t think I have ever heard him talk without screaming. He still sounds the same, only less loud.

I know I posted these already but here are the links to the interviews:

Zach Gilford Interview

Lauren Lee Smith Interview

Mary & Max Interviews

World’s Greatest Dad Interviews

It is not often I hit 4 parties in one night, but Saturday I did just that.  I had to hit up some birthday parties and stuff, so I figured I would just run around Brooklynand see what was what. Brooklyn is 100 times better than the city on Saturday.  I was in Manhattan to see a movie and just driving through the LES made me want to shoot myself in the fucking head.  Anyway, instead of telling the story of the night and then showing pictures, let’s tell the tale via the pictures.  If you want to see the whole gallery just click here.  Also, because I was doing 15 things at once, I forgot to upload all the vertical images, so the tale will be told via the horizontal.  It is safer that way.  That means if you check out the gallery and you see only horizontal images, just wait it out, the vertical ones will be up shortly.  Let’s begin.

Firstly I went to Ellen Stagg’s birthday party at Legion.  If I invented a fake girlfriend in my head, she would pretty much be it. She is an amazing photographer, one of the hottest people I know, and is a complete pervert.  I am not sure how a better woman could exist… I guess she could want to touch me in bad ways, but not everyone is perfect.

At Legion I met one of Ellen’s favorite models Justine Joli.  I am a pretty big fan of Ellen’s work of her and after taking a few shots of her I could see why Ellen loves working with her.  Pretty much every face she made was on point.  We talked for maybe 3 minutes and discussed both of our sex lives within the first 30 seconds.  I could possibly be in love.  Maybe not, but I hope I get to shoot her one day.

Then I went over to The Charleston on Bedford and N. 7th primarily to pick up some money that I was owed for the SPW event I covered on New Years, but also to hang out with my friend Brendan and to flirt with his girlfriend who gave me the free pizza she got when she bought a beer.  I had not eaten in 22 hours, so it was pretty damn amazing.  I also got a Shirley Temple which was pretty fucking awesome too.  Also, Brendan was playing Earth Crisis when I walked in the door which was pretty hilarious.  I love those kids.

So I am on my way to Savalas when I run into Nick The Duke.  He had just been jumped by this guy we used to know in Richmond.  The dude is kinda a psycho and jumped Nick years ago.  We thought that shit was past us.  The guy is a grown man, I don’t know what the hell he is doing sucker punching people two on one.   It is pretty weak.  Nick was fine though and I am sure that guy will get his eventually. Nick was coming from the Play Hard Social Club party at a secret spot on N. 3rd and Kent, so I headed over there.

The party was pretty bumping for 3AM.  I ran into Prince Terry who I have not seen in far to long and Antwan who I have not seen in even longer.  It was pretty good.  I danced around to some oldies before I realized what time it was and made like a tree and got my ass over to Savalas to wish Michael T a happy 42nd.

So I run over to Savalas, say hi to everyone. Semi Precious was there; Jessie Lee was there; Snakes were there; good times were had. There was a penis cake and I took a bunch of pictures and was about to leave when I decided a better use of that time was hitting on this girl for a minute.  I bought her some sort of Mexican hot pocket from a guy with a cooler and we kissed briefly, mouths tasting of some sort of mysterious meat product and then I drove home.  All the photos of her are vertical, so you are just going to have to wait until they are uploaded, and take your best guess to who she was.  Anyway, good day to you.  The last nudes will be up later today and then I guess we start with the Sundance shit.  Hopefully soon I will be caught up and we can move on to bigger and better adventures together.

Okay, before we get started with this update to NSFW Week, I am sure some of you are wondering where the fuck the Cain photos are from Wednesday.  I am having severe issues with all three of my computers and it is driving me fucking nuts.  If anyone has a PC keyboard they want to give me, it only has to moderately work.  I only use it for image editing, I don’t need to type shit.  Anyway, the Cain photos will be up tonight, but like 5AM tonight.  Then Trash photos tomorrow and another naked girl.  Then the last naked girl Monday and then we start getting the rest of the Sundance shit up.  So now that you are updated, let’s move on to naked girls.

This is Avery Heart.  She’s a Vegas local I met at the AVN Weekend.  I asked her if I could take her photo on the floor of the AEE and she asked me to hold her purse while she posed. As soon as I started shooting 10 other photographers ran over and started shooting, then video cameras and this whole mad scene.  After I took my two shots I just stood there for 15 minutes holding her bag.  She felt pretty bad about this and offered to do a private photo shoot.  Unfortunately by the time we left the expo and got back to my hotel she was running late for something.  So we shot these in like 5 minutes and I shot them at some insanely high ISO and they kinda don’t look great.  But content is king, and you guys probably like cute naked girls more than you like my photography work, so check out these mediocre photos of the pretty adorable Avry Heart.

Five minutes after arriving at this concert I still had no idea Billy Bob Thornton had a band.  I was given a ticket to “A Celebration Of Music In Film” at Sundance by a press liaison who was trying to do me a favor for covering the Yes Men premiere for the Sundance Institute because the Wire Image guy showed up too late.  I had no interest in going to this “Celebration” but they were pouring the Le Tourmont Vert Absinthe I was working for at the party, so I figured I would pop in, get a few product shots and move on to the other parties I had to cover.  When I got in this pretty rocking twangy country band called The Boxmasters were playing.  People were watching, but no one seemed too animated.  Everyone was just sitting down listening.  I took maybe five pictures from the back of the room before their song ended and the lead singer began with his between song banter.  That’s when I realized that Billy Bob Thornton was fronting the band.  He started in about how he moved to LA to become a singer and that he got into acting by accident and that it was a terrible choice.  He went off on the film community, Sundance goers, critics and film as a medium.  He said the only movies he watches are movies with his children.  He started bitching about how in his day movies cost 35 cents and you got to see a double feature and you were happy about it dammit.  None of this critiquing bullshit from some no talent critic.  This tirade lasted about 10 full minutes before he told the audience that clearly anyone who showed up to his show was not one of the aforementioned film losers and that if he saw a single person out there with their arms crossed judging him he was going to come out into the audience and fight them.  I think everyone believed him, because with in a few minutes everyone in the room was dancing, myself included.  After smoking a pack of cigarettes on stage, making out with random girls in the audience when he got off stage, playing drums and ranting between songs, it was very fucking clear to me that Billy Bob Thornton is a fucking bad ass and someone you should not cross.  This is a good look for a tough rockin’ country band.  Speaking of good looks, check out the photos of the drummer.  The man looks like Clint Eastwood with Jim Jarmusch’s hair. Imagine what that dude was up to 30 years ago.  What a complete bad ass.  The steel guitar player was just too amazing for words and the dashing guitarist looks like a rockabilly version of John Flansburg.  Like I said, it was a good look.  This combined with the fact that one of the dudes from ZZ Top was watching from the side of the stage, made for an intense experience.  I am glad I was at the right place at the right time.

So seriously check out the Boxmaster photos here.  They might change your life.

IN 2004 I had just seen the movie the Yes Men.  The movie was about 2 guys, coincidentally enough, The Yes Men.  They pose as spokesmen for large corporations and either go on TV and apologize for those companies, or satirically exaggerate the positions of the company often with hilarious results.  So I get a call from my friend Miguel.  He asked me if I had ever heard of these guys because they were staying at his place.  Evidently his roommate was good friends with Mike from the Yes Men.  So my friend Teddy and I joined the Yes Men and Miguel and several other people for dinner.  After dinner we went on a prank run with them.  They had  huge bus painted with George Bush’s face on it.  The idea was that they would go around the country pretending to be Bush supporters and make people agree wholeheartedly to the most evil parts of his political agenda.  Teddy and I dressed up as a cowboy and an oil sheik and got on top of the bus and danced while they gathered a crowed and made them pledge to go to any war no matter what, never have an abortion no matter what, and give up the 4th amendment in order to prevent terrorism.  After it was over I decided to give the Yes Men this giant inflatable cowboy costume I had.  I thought they could use it on their US tour.

Unfortunately a week later their bus broke down and I never heard from them again… Until Sundance…

I saw that the Yes Men were premiering their new film.   I didn’t have time to see it, but I did have time to go down to their press wall and bug them about it.  I walked up to Andy and said “Hi, I am Igor, I met  you in Richmond, Va. You stole my cowboy costume.”  He remembered who I was and was sort of laughingly apologetic.  He gave me a bunch of copies of their fake New York Times in trade.  Evidently they are going for a lot on ebay.  When I saw Mike from the Yes Men, he felt even worse about it.  Evidently he lost the battery pack and didn’t want to send it back to me broken.  The good thing to come out of this was that they turned the idea of the inflatable suit in to a big part of their new movie, The Yes Men Fix The World.  They pretended to be representatives for Haliburton and they announced to the world that they had created a large inflatable ball that protects you from danger in the event of catastrophic global climate change.  It looks like a giant tick or something, as you can see below.

So after the press meet and greet I had to leave, but they invited me to the after party.  I brought a bottle of Le Tourment Vert Absinthe with me and everyone proceeded to get super wasted.  Anyway, it was fun times.  Check out the photos.  And note the photo below of the dog who tried to attack the SurvivaBall.  It really works!