It is that time of the year again. It was my 5th year in a row at Coney Island for the contest. I got media access this year and got to shove other photographers out of the way to get shots that probably 50 other photographers got. Pretty exciting. My man Joey Chestnut AKA the greatest American hero won a sudden death over time. It was all tied up at 59 hot dogs each in 10 minutes. They lowered it to 10 min this year because they did some research and found that the original contest was only 10 minutes. I am not sure that is a good thing. Anyway, Joey came out a head with a big lead after two minutes, but by 8 minutes Takeru Kobayashi was up two dogs. Joey came back and tied it at the last second. It was pretty exciting. They had to go into over time and be the first to eat 5 dogs. Joey won by roughly seven second. It was intense. I took far too many photos. You can see them here.

I have never really been an autograph collector exactly, but I had a few here and there. I had this one wall in my bedroom that I hung all sorts of stuff on. I had framed photos and a copy of the first record that came out on my old punk label and a three autographs:

1. The first autograph was John Snider from the Dukes Of Hazzard. I was a HUGE Dukes fan growing up and I found out that for a dollar her would send you a personalized autograph. It said “To Nate: God Bless. John R. Schneider.
2. The second was a letter that John McCain sent me thanking me for working/donating to his 2000 primary campaign. It is absolutely scary that a guy I would work so hard for would totally sell out and pander to the right like he has done. It pretty much makes me sick, but in 2000 I really trusted him and thought he would do a lot of good for this country.
3. The third autograph was from John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. He was filming a scene in Old Town Alexandria, VA where my friends and I used to hang out every day. We kept yelling shit out whenever they started a take because we were punk ass kids. This guy Crazy Willy almost got arrested for it. I had been sitting watching this for about 30 minutes when I got an idea. I ran across the street to a CVS where a friend of mine worked… A girl who later got arrested for robbing a Ben And Jerry’s in full view of cameras where she was friends with half the staff who worked there. They came to her house a few hours after and found all the money, in a deposit bag with all the receipts. Amazing. Anyway, I ran into this CVS and asked her to hand me a WANTED poster that was hanging up. This guy had been hiding pornography in children’s books at the library or something. Anyway, I got this poster and got John Walsh to sign it. Awesome.

So, long story short… One day I realized when looking at this wall that all the autographs were of people named John. I thought this was very weird. I also am a big They Might Be Giants fan and they are both named John and I had their autograph… and when I was 10 I got John Ramita Jr’s autograph on an X-Man comic. These are weird conicidences. After that for about a month I became obsessed with collecting Johns’ autographs. I thought that since a signature is sometimes refered to as a “John Hancock” it was even more significant. I went on ebay and bought John Larroquette, John Lithgow and Neil Patrick Harris… okay, that last one is not a John, but it was only $3 and I am a pretty obsessive Doogie Howser fan.

Okay, long story short. I wanted to do something for a 4th of July update, so I decided to work on this idea of signing your “John”. John Hancock has the most recognizable signature in United States history. I wanted to do a little project to see how well people remembered their history books. Who remembers what his signature looks like? I just wanted to see peoples interpretation of it. I asked everyone to sign his name the way they think it looks on the Declaration of Independence and then I took a picture. I didn’t let them look at anyone else’s signature so everyone had their own view of what it looked like. Some people took it more seriously than others, and some people were just embarrassed that they didn’t know what it looked like. A surprisingly large amount of people had no idea what it looked like and basically mocked me for successfully completing 5th grade history class. I did not include those people in the project. Here are some interesting facts:

• Only 4 of 50 people underlined John Hancock. To me that is the first thing I think about with that signature.
• Almost everyone got the big J an H right.
• At least 5 people spelled his name blatantly wrong.
• It seems like 5% of the people involved in the project are completely illiterate.
• Two people wrote “John Han” and then drew a picture of a penis. Those people happened to be very close friends and did the exact thing as each other coincidentally only minutes apart. I made them redo them.
• Only one of the 50 people were actually named John.
• I shot 27 women and 23 men.

So what do we learn from this? I am not sure. But you should try the experiment on your own. Then look at his actual signature here. How did you do?

Check out all the photos here.

Okay. Let’s start by staying happy 4th of July. When I think of the 4th I think about going to the beach with my family and setting off hundreds of dollars worth of free fireworks every year. My dad used to loan one of the maintenance guys at his law office a few thousand dollars every year and he would open a firework stand and sell fireworks for a few weeks. He would always pay my dad back with fireworks as interest. So every year we would always have the sickest, most dangerous fireworks. My friend Marshall and I used to take them apart and make bombs out of them. About a year ago, my parents turned my old bed room into a guest room and they made me clean out the room. When I was going through all my stuff I found one of the bombs we made. It is huge, and I think I am going to set it on fire today and see what happens. It is at least 12 years old, probably older. It will either do nothing, or blow up in my face. There is not really a fuse and I remember putting gun powder in it. Yikes.

My second point of order is that it is my dog Freedom’s 17th birthday today. This is a completely unreasonable thing. My dog has been deaf and mostly blind for several years. He can barely move. He can’t walk up stairs and he can no longer run. That being said, he never seems like he is in pain, and is always happy to see me when I visit my parents, so I am very glad he is still hanging in there. I got him in the 5th grade and I could not have been happier to have a dog. I wanted a big dog, or a pug… but my parents wanted to get a Westie.. they won. I wanted to get the biggest one of the puppies, but my brother wanted the smallest… he won. Still, I was just ecstatic to have a puppy. I had him sitting on my chest when I was resting on the ground. He jumped for possibly the first time in his life and it was about the cutest thing I had ever seen. I almost vomited cupcakes.

Anyway, if he just makes it one more year, I can probably sleep with a girl who is younger than my dog, and I think that will be a feat worth mentioning.

Anyway, happy 4th, I hope you have fun. I will be busy blowing up bombs and watching people devour hot dogs for sport.

Enjoy this video of America’s Greatest Hero: Joey Chestnut… See you at Nathan’s

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzBIH8Frq-8[/youtube]

WLTF is a personals acronym for “Would Like To Fuck”. It is also the name of an online art magazine dealing with sex. Issue number 1, is actually the second issue and it features images representing the theme “Let’s Fuck, Not Fight!” I had meant to submit some photos, but I sort of forgot until after the deadline. I asked them if I could still send some in and they said it was probably too late. I sent in a few and I guess they liked one of them enough to publish it. The shot I have in the magazine was an unpublished shot that I took with my 35mm point and shoot camera on the set of Hell’s Kittens a porn that I got behind the scenes on. It was truly a weird experience. You can see my digital images from that here.

Anyway, check out the magazine, it is pretty sexual in nature, so be warned…

My friends Day By Day are getting ready for the second season of their show Stupid Face.  They just posted this new music video called “We So Broke”.  Evidently, poverty is the new bling.

Check out these photos I shot of Day By Day when I was out in LA in January.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16LbA_fQmko[/youtube]

So last night was weird. I did have a lot of fun though. I was there for about 15 minutes when this girl I had not seen in months showed up and when I went to say “hi” she sort of ignored me. So I said “Do you remember me?” To which she replied, “You are that photographer for that shitty website.” Then over the next few minutes she proceeds to tell me my site is shit, I am shit and that I am a creep, all the while she is caressing my face. I was not sure to make up for it until she told me she needed to puke. I took her around the corner so no one would see her and bought her a Gatorade and some gum while she puked and hung out with her until we could find the people she came with. We ended up getting along and it was actually kinda nice. After that I met a DJ named Jen Lasher who was part of the same club scene that I was moderately part of in the late 90’s in DC. That was cool. Anyway, while I was talking to her, Mr. Photog came up to me and told me about a photo project he is working on that involves taking photos of people in bathrooms… WITH CLOTHES ON?! I am not sure I get why he would possibly want non naked photos, but I agreed. I felt weird being on the other side of a camera in a bathroom, so I did what came naturally… I showed him my tits. Now to get the shot, he had to climb up on the sink and put one foot on the door and suspend in the air. Right after he finished taking the shot, someone opened the door and he tumbled out onto the floor. It was quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen. The guy who opened the door did not quite no what to make of it, and when he saw me walk out with my camera in my hand too, I am pretty sure he was just bewildered. He kept telling me that it was just between us.

Anyway, I took a ton of good photos last night because I was in a good mood. Look at them.

Ps. This gallery is mildly NSFW.

Converse seems to be reaching out to us downtown hipsters. First Bronques shot their ad campaign and now they have pasted posters all over downtown featuring people like Kid Sister, MGMT, Santogold, and my VA brothers N.E.R.D. Santogold, N.E.R.D. and that dude from the Stroke’s even teamed up to write a song for Converse called “My Drive Thru”. On top of that they asked hipster promoter extraordinaire Andy Shaw to get them a list of people to send free shoes. As the amateur sneaker head that I am I could have not been more excited to have made that list. Not only am I getting free high tops, but my existence has been validated because for once I am getting free swag that is not pornography DVDs. (Not that I mind the porn… Thx Eon!)

So yes downtown, we are being marketed to, and I love marketing. And I love free stuff. And since the whole point of sending out free sneakers is that they can get them in the hands of “early adapters” and “connectors” and other exciting marketing terms like that. So I figured I would do them one better than just wearing the shoes in public, I would blog about them, cause that will make them happy and maybe it will make them so happy that they will want to send me some of the Kurt Cobain high top Chucks that I would have murdered someone for in 1993. And if not it will still give me a chance to blog about shoes, which is something I would do a lot more if I could afford it.

Anyway, I have never owned a pair or Converse shoes that were not Chuck Taylors. But from 1992-1999 I am pretty sure I wore nothing else. I had all sorts of crazy colors but I pretty much only wore black high tops. I wrote A and V on the tips of the shoes representing Alexandria, VA my home town. After a few months, everyone I knew was rocking the AV. I once saw a girl I had never seen before and she was rocking the AV’s, but they were facing her, instead of facing away. I mentioned this to her and she got in my face about it saying I did not know what I was talking about, which was an amazing thing as the originator of said brief trend.

I have always been a brand loyalist. I have pretty much only worn a few types of shoes my whole life. I started out in Roos, moved on to Nikes and Jordans when I was a kid. Once I grew out of child sizes my parents wouldn’t buy me Jordan’s anymore. From 1984-1994 I played soccer so I wore a lot of Adidas, mostly Sambas. My first Chucks were all blue and I wore pretty much nothing else until after high school. For a while I flirted with skate shoes… Airwalks, Vans, and Etnies even SOAPs, but I never had more than a couple pairs and I was still rocking Chucks at the same time. I have even considered tattooing the Converse All Star logo to my ankle so that I could wear low top Chucks without socks and they would look like highs. That is not even a joke (although the idea of me rocking lows, or not wearing socks is).

In 2003 Nike bought Converse and I had a pretty strong punk rock ethos at that time and I was pissed. I thought they were going to ruin the shoe. Fortunately, Nike tapped into what Converse already knew, and made even more crazy designs that were even more collectable. At this same time I started managing a dance band and got further and further away from my punk rock ideals and returned to my love of Nikes. After I bought my first pair of Dunks I was hooked on the shoes that I grew up on. You are hard pressed these days to find me out of Nike High Tops, be they Jordan’s, Dunks or my favorite: Nike Vandals.

This may be why my first impressions of the free shoes I got were a little mixed. Converse sent me a pair of re-released Pro Team Weapons that they put out for their 100th anniversary. When I pulled them out of the gold box, I dug them instantly. I put them on and they fit right away and were super comfortable. I really liked the look of them from the sides. The only problem I have is that when I look straight down at them, I am so used to Nike’s that they look a bit weird to me. They look almost too much like basket ball shoes. And yes, I understand the irony in that, since all the shoes I wear are basketball shoes. Still, I have worn them three days in a row now and as long as they stay as white as they are, I will keep rocking them. (They did get covered in fake blood the first day I wore them, but that came off pretty easily.) That is my second, and only other problem with them… I fear white shoes. Scuffed white shoes make me really sad, so I try to avoid them at all costs. But these were free, and I have gotten some compliments, and they are super comfortable and I think I could pull off wearing them to a wedding. They will remain in my shoe rotation for sure.

Lastly, I wanted to know a little about the shoes I got so I sent a picture of them over to James Martin at The Converse Blog. He didn’t know a lot about them but here is what he did say:

I don’t know a great deal about them, other than they are re-issued shoes from the 80’s. I am pretty sure they were released after the Weapons, but I am not 100% on that. Your pair seems to be a deluxe edition with better leathers and other materials used compared the general release of the Pro Teams in that colorway. Also the box looks to be pretty cool too, I haven’t seen a gold box with the Converse Century design details.

After talking to James I looked at the Converse website and the shoes are available on there and don’t seem to be any sort of limited edition or anything… so I think he is wrong about that, but they are still very fresh. The box he mentions is similar to the Nike ID boxes that slide out and are a really nice touch. The gold converse box is probably my favorite box since the second generation Ice Creams I have that came in a box that looked like a carton of ice cream. They may still do that, but the new Ice Creams are so damned ugly that you won’t catch me in a pair.

Okay. That was an insanely long post. I did not mean to rant like this, but I don’t often have the chance to talk shoes… or marketing, so I have to get my hits in where I can. So yeah, if YOU have some free shit you want to send me, please do, and maybe I will write an epic blog about your swag too. <3 Swag.

Okay, okay; Check out the shoes for yourself and then download the Pharell/Santogold/Julian Casablancas converse track below:

N.E.R.D., Santogold and Julian Casablancas – My Drive Thru:
N.E.R.D, Santogold and Julian Casablanas – My Drive Thru

Kandace is a Burning Angel girl who strangely enough I met on Suicide Girls. I went on SG looking for some girls to take photos of months ago when I was stuck in DC for a week. She didn’t get back in time, but we kept in touch and finally when I was in town for my grandmother 91st birthday we met up. Kandace does not have the figure or look one might associate with a model, however it was pretty much immediately obvious that she was the exact type of girl I am interested in photographing when she agreed to take naked photos in a shopping mall. She was pretty rad and pretty much everything she does makes you think about sex.  She also has these signs in her house.  Hilarious.

Anyway, the mall is an underground shopping center called Crystal City which is just a few miles from the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. At some point it was a very popular mall until the Pentagon City Mall was built just a few blocks away. I lived probably 3 miles from it my entire life and had no idea it even existed until I was driving around one night looking for the entrance to a seedy 50’s style motel off the side of Route 1. My friend Andy and I had the idea of getting a hold of a tank of Nitrous Oxide ant throwing N20 hotel party there. None of this actually happened but we did stumble onto this mall at 2 AM one night. The Mall itself was completely empty at night and until I shot with Kandace I had never seen so much as a security guard there. Being in it was like being in Dawn Of The Dead or something. You could walk around and see the empty food court and things and the Muzak is playing and everything is extremely creepy and everything sort of goes in a circle and you never really know where you are. There are also several passage ways that lead to other office buildings in the area that are strangely similar to the layout of a level from Doom. Many nights of my high school summer vacations were spent watching my friends skateboard and generally cause havoc in the mall.

Kandace and I roamed all over the mall and the passageways and exits of the mall looking for places to shoot. We did actually see several couples who were using the mall as a late night date experience. We even saw a security guard who walked slowly towards us after a few minutes of my flash going off, but he really never got near us as we moved around the mall to new places. He did not seem to want to stop us, just doing due diligence checking things out. I was not surprised to see a security guard there as the last time I visited this mall my friends and I dumped roughly 12 full bottles of laundry detergent into the water park that was across the street. The last several images from the set of Kandace are taken in front of the water park. Where she is standing at one time was covered in 4-5 feet of foam thanks to our detergent terrorism. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. A friend of mine went back several weeks after our attack to try it again and was immediately met by security. So I have to say, maybe I had some help in securing Crystal City in this post 911 world. God bless me.

The one regret I have of these photos is not including enough background in the shots. I was trying to take the photos as quickly as possible so we would not get arrested, and I didn’t concentrate on really showing the fact that we are in a mall. Some of them are better than others.

Anyway, enjoy the shots. NSFW of course.