A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Takashi Miike is probably the most well known and beloved of the Asian Extreme directors. He has directed 75 films in under 20 years including 40 this decade alone. With all that production you have to have some misses and he does. I have seen probably 30 of his films and a lot of his Yakuza films run together a bit. For those not up on Japanese cinema a HUGE percentage of their live action films are based on organized crime. Imagine if they released 100 mobster films in the US. Out of control. The Yakuza is bigger part of Japanese culture than the mob is here, but they still release an insane amount of these films. Some of his biggest successes have been in this genre like Ichi The Killer and Dead Or Alive, but it is his taste for the bizarre that has really made him well known. He became well known in the US after directing the horror film Audition. The film an almost boring romantic film for the first hour and then suddenly breaks your neck with one of the more horrific torture scenes ever put to film. He is one of my favorite directors and if you continue reading I am going to break down my three favorites from the master of the strange. All my favorites are from 2001 a year in which he directed 7 full length films. There is no more fucked up director than Miike. Oh yeah, one other thing, he directs children’s films too… although I can’t imagine what parent in their right mind would let their kid see The Great Yokai War.

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While we patiently await the return of Rated X Michael T and Theo bring a party down town. LA’s Viper room comes to NYC. It was among other things a birthday party for Dina Delicious.  The party was a pretty weird mix of people.  You had the downtown hipster crowd mixed with a few of Michael T’s queens and weirdos and a bunch of bridge and tunnel types in town for the weekend.  Plus you had some of the CMJ crowd as well.  I didn’t stick around that long but it was certainly something to do which is pretty rare on Saturdays these days.  Rated X returns for Halloween next week at a new spot: The Remote Lounge.  I will be there for sure.  Check the clickity click. Mildy NSFW for Dina’s giant titty.

Theo: “How does it look?”
Igor: “Well, you look hot, but you look like you are on heroin.”
Theo: “Perfect, use that one.”

Oh yeah, the other thing that happened last night was that two people came up to me and told me how much they liked my up close shots, so I guess you are probably going to see more of that.  I’ll make a flickr page or something for them soon.

I went with some people to see The Glass last night at 200 Orchard.  I have seen them three times now completely by accident and I have enjoyed them every time.  I hate taking photos of bands at 200 Orchard though.  The photos I took of The Mood, Greenland and Pratique pretty much sucked and these do too.  I am not sure what it is about this venue that makes me a shitty photographer.  My High Voltage shots there always come out well… I wonder whats up.  Anyway, I took photos until they turned on the smoke machine and then I gave up… you can’t take photos in that shit.  It was a nice end to a hectic CMJ week.   Check the mostly sub par photos here.

So this is WAY last year, but I was watching Arabian music videos and these kids were acting real “street” in it. They had like big boom boxes and roller blades and sideways hats and stuff and I was basically crying laughing in a falafel place on St. Marks. Suddenly I was reminded of the greatest song/music video ever. You probably know about it because it is the most brilliant thing in existence. There is this guy Trace Adkins and he decided to do a rap/country song. It is this country song produced like a hip-hop song about how much he loves butts. Then of course he went out and shot a video that looks like a rap video and the combination is fucking hysterical. If you haven’t seen this before get ready to be tickled. If you have, watch it again like it was the first time and laugh until you cry and then vomit tears.

Also has anyone ever met anyone with a voice like this guys in real life? If I met someone who sounded like him in reality I would straight piss myself. And what’s with slapping grandmas? WTF?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epdmJwH-IdU[/youtube]

Adult Drawing is a party where Burning Angel girls model naked and people get to draw them.

So basically these photos suck. There are a few reasons for this. One is that Sinead was there. She thinks I am a horrible photographer and I think she has cursed me because every time she is around I shoot horribly. The real reason is that I kept getting yelled at when I got near the models because I was blocking peoples view despite them specifically asking me to come shoot the party. Also everyone is posing for a whole room and not me so everyone is looking in different directions and stuff.  I just felt like a creep shooting naked girls with a camera phone or something. In the past when I have shot one of the Adult Drawing parties I can pull the girls off into a corner and they will do some private photos I can get up on to the site, but this time I got the reaction that the girls were weirded out by me and no one posed for me except Mayhem. I just shot some of her changing. I meant to shoot January Darling again but she seemed pretty busy. I was going to shoot Azrael but her car got towed. So most of these photos suck and the whole thing sort of depressed me because I thought I was going to get a weeks worth of content and I only got this one post. Blah. Other girls there were Roxy Contin and pin-up model Angela Ryan. Um… these photos are very NSFW.

Gaskets week ends with their appearance at Trash. It was a CMJ night and Voxtrot DJ’d. Teddy from the Gaskets sang two songs and I passed out Gaskets DVDs to everyone. I produced this DVD. It took a year and a half of my life. I gave out 45 of them if you include the one I gave to the girl who yelled at me at Kellogg’s Diner for cutting in line. I was just stressed out trying to make sure everyone saw Teddy perform. A bunch of my friends missed it because they are assholes, but I think it went over pretty well. Anyway, most of the photos have people holding the DVD which will be available in the DBB Store once I get it together. If you got one of these DVDs please watch it and let me know what you think. Okay, photos go here.

I am pretty late with these photos sorry.  They are not very good anyway.  I didn’t shoot much and their set was cut a bit short.  Sorry, no excuses.  This was the first time I had seen them as a 5-piece; it was great.  They opened for HIM which was very weird, but we didn’t actually stick around for them so I am not really sure how weird it got.  I am sort of exhausted so I will just leave you with the pictures.

Here are more photos of the Gaskets shirts. I am going to organize them all on to one page one day but for now it is what it is. Also, I have the Gaskets photos from Wednesday ready to go up, but I have to run out right now so they are going to have to go up tomorrow. Sorry to fucking up, it has been a busy week and I have not been sleeping well, but I have been laying in bed all day not sleeping. So yeah, check out the shirts. Special thanks in order of appearance to Kate, The Just Friends Poppers an Lockers, DJ Lauren Flax and Jessica Leech who could possibly be one of the hottest people I have ever met in a bar. Also, there are a few photos of Pete Holmes who is one of the funniest comedians on earth. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he was hanging out with Kate when I was taking her photos.

Update: I just added some photos of Brendan James to the mix.

So Brad Walsh is having a nightlife awards think over at Junk-Mag. It would be real cool if you could vote for me for best nightlife photographer, but I would probably just vote for Nikola if I were voting, so I can’t really ask for too much.

I am going to have some updates in the morning. I had a pretty bad day because the Gaskets got bumped from our show Friday. Evidently all the shows were running way behind at the Blender after parties so they dropped all the openers. At least we still got paid. If anyone wants us to play a show for some reason tonight, let me know. We will be at Trash per the flyer below (click to enlarge).  Speaking of Trash my friend Kristine pointed out that I forgot to link the photos from Trash last week.  They are here.  Sorry.

Lastly I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my friend Daniela who let me eat some of her birthday cake. She was also the only person I took a photo of tonight.