So for whatever reason my settings were fucked up and when I ran all my images through my little filter thing I realized that my contrast was set too high, and has been since I went to Miami.  I am not sure how I noticed, probably because I liked the Girl Talk stuff so much, but I think that stuff could have been even better.  Anyway, these images are the most noticeably fucked up I think and I fucked up when adding the watermarks too so some of the horizontal images have vertical water marks on them too.  I also then failed to put the vertical watermarks on at all. (So please credit me if you use a non marked image!) Now normally I would fix this, but no one was out last night, I know because I went to Le Royale, Trash and Ruff Club and they all were sort of dead.  Now maybe they were all at Webster Hall, but my best guess is that it was just too damn cold out and people are gearing up for a five day weekend next week.  Then again what do I know.  So these photos are a bit screwy, and pretty boring, but you get what you get.  I like a few of them anyway.  Shout outs to Melitza and Nicole for your birthday celebration last night.  Hip hip hurray, etc.

Check the technique.

I normally don’t spend a lot of time at Meatpacking District bottle service clubs, but I was hired to shoot at Cain on 27th last night for a party called Playhouse.  I was a bit concerned at first when the door people looked at me like a leper when I walked in in a hoodie and high tops, but it turned out to be a blast. There was a really good mix of people from the night club types you would expect at a club like that mixed with the Michael T set of Amanda Lepore, Andre J and Cazwell, mixed with a lot of cute 19 year old FIT students set off by a sick DJ and team of super hot go-go dancers called Raising Cain. Plus some of the Retro Kidz showed up, which is always fun, especially for someone like myself who wears Starter jackets and listens to Public Enemy daily. Anyway, I had a gay ol’ time and then I went with some Brazilian girls (not THE Brazilian girls) to get them tattooed at 4AM but all they did was speak Portuguese the entire time and then they went to meet up with a Brazilian tattoo artist and I had no idea what anyone was saying. Still, it was a fun time.

Check out all the photos, there are some good ones, including WAY too many photos of the sexy gold dressed go-go team. Speaking of their gold outfits, they were intensely amazing and I talked to the designer of said outfits and she may have possibly been the most attractive woman in the whole place.

As you may know, I managed a band called the Gaskets for 5 years. They are currently taking a break, possibly forever. Since the break lead singer Teddy Blanks, who’s birthday just happens to be today, has been working on new music. He has about 5 or 6 songs that he has done very rough demos, but he recently bought a studio mic and has been recording some better quality demos. One of my favorite songs that he has done was called “The Itch” which is a song based on a New Yorker article. The article was about a woman who contracted HIV and developed an itch on the inside of her head. She would wake up at night bleeding from scratching her head in her sleep. One night she scratched into her brain. The article was horrifying and one of my favorite New Yorker stories ever. Teddy made a great song out of it. I decided to send the song to the author of the article and he loved it. The New Yorker contacted Teddy and I last week about it and Teddy did a new demo, set up a myspace page and the New Yorker blog wrote about the song. So check out the blog here. And his Myspace page here.

He is currently working on a solo album which he starts recording in December and is working with Cobra Krames on a 4 song EP collaboration. Their first song comes out on a Krames Mix Tape to be released in the hopefully near future. I will certainly be blogging about that.

Download A Sample Track: Teddy Blanks – Hold Your Head Hold Your Head

We are getting closer to getting caught up.  With this update I have all the party photos up at least.  I have some other stuff going up Friday I hope.  Anyway, Saturday after Girl Talk I stopped by Rated X because Rochelle an I had planned a photo shoot.  Unfortunately I ran out of memory at the previous show so I showed up and she didn’t want to come back to Brooklyn to get another memory card and I didn’t really have enough room to shoot her, so I deleted a few photos off the card and shot about 10 photos of her and a few more of the hot body contest.  So basically just naked people.  Other than Rochelle, there is only one naked girl in this gallery, but some pretty hilarious cock shots.  Enjoy.

The first time I saw Girl Talk was probably in 2003… Maybe 2004. I was managing the Gaskets and we took one of our first shows to NYC. We were playing an Electro showcase at the Delancey. The night before the show we parked about 15 feet away from a fire hydrant. The next day the car was gone. We had no idea how to get it back. After freaking out in a bagel shop someone told us to call 311. We did that and they told us it would have been towed to the Brooklyn Naval Yard. We could get the car back if we paid $250, the only problem was that it was my friends sisters car and he didn’t know her license plate, or model year or really anything about the car. His sister was at summer camp and we couldn’t reach his mom. Several hours later it was getting late, we had no luck and then his mom called us. She for some reason was in whatever state that Mt. Rushmore is in and was visiting the giant stone presidents and did not get service. Unfortunately she didn’t know the plate number, but she knew it began with a J and what the model of the car was. This was not enough information for them there, but some how my friend talked them into telling us what the rest of the license plate was over the phone. We were told to take some train there and then walk over a mile through the projects to the impound. When we got there it was closing in 30 minutes and we had no proof that we owned the car somehow we convinced them to let us have the car. It was a miracle, but we had to pay another $250 for the parking ticket. Had we not gotten the car out right when we did we would have not have been able to get it out until Monday.

Anyway, that was a wondering long story and I am watching Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds, while I write this so it probaly was not the most well told yarn. So I will get to the point. We ended up playing a show that about 30 people showed up for with Girl Talk and the son of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth from The Talking Heads/ Tom Tom Club. Chris Frantz was actually there. Girl Talk was pretty nuts even then. He was jumping around the crowd, playing a bit of a song and then going nuts and the coming back to change the song. I didn’t really get it, but it was clearly punk rock as fuck.

After spending $500 dollars on the car, a tank and a half of gas, and tolls, we made exactly $27 dollars. Amazing.

We played with him a few more times in Richmond with Krames but it was never more than a hundred or so people. So it was pretty fucking nuts to see him play in front of 2000 or so screaming fans. I just wish the Gaskets could have played that show. 3 sold out shows in a venue as big as Terminal 5 is pretty amazing. The show was pretty mind blowing with fake money, beach balls and toilet paper guns. He got progressively more naked as the night went on, and when he took his shoes off, these girls started kissing them and dancing around with the shoes. It was intensely weird. I had a lot of fun though. I probably would have had a lot more fun if I didn’t fill up my memory card. Luckily Nicky came to my rescue and let me borrow one of his.

Okay, I will stop rambling and tell you just to look at the photos, (Or at the Voice here) there are some pretty great ones.

I am not sure if there were a lot of Op Ivy fans in the crowd Saturday when The Death Set opened up for Girl Talk at Terminal 5, but when they covered Bombshell the crowd went nuts… Or at least I did.  I was pretty amazingly psyched to hear someone do an Op Ivy cover for the first time since I was in high school.  They also ended their set with a Nirvana cover representing two of my top 10 favorite bands in 1995.  Seriously though, The Death Set were fucking awesome.  I usually hate seeing bands when I am not familiar with their music but I had a blast.  Ninjasonik did a couple of tracks with them too and got the kids going crazy which led to one of the best stage dives I have ever seen.  Anyway, good times, good photos.  Rock and roll.

I hit up both Trash and Ruff Club on one night so this gallery is a two-for one affair.  I spent most of my time at Trash but I hit up Ruff Club around 3 or so.  At Ruff I met some NYU girls who told me they were polyamorous and were in to hedonism. I saw them make out with a bunch of guys and each other in the few minutes I met them.  These  are my type of people.  At Trash I met a girl who had a really brilliant idea for a website and I want to help her with it, so I am going to keep the idea a secret.  But I didn’t get her number or anything, so dear, if you are out there, hit me up.  Let’s make some art.  Lastly, there is one boob in this gallery so watch out!  Be oh, so careful at work… Or something.  Not that anyone with the type of job where seeing boobs would get you in trouble would ever look at my site at work anyway.

Okay.  So I am super behind on getting photos up.  I just have too much stuff and not enough time in my life.  Sorry I keep bitching about it.  I have a little text update for you now because I have had a weird weekend and hopefully the photos from Friday will finish uploading before I go to sleep tonight and I can hit you with that update.   So here are a few short stories.

1. Friday on my way home from work I was on the Subway and it was packed.  I got on at the 6th Ave L stop going towards Brooklyn.  When I got on it was pretty empty, but by the time we hit 3rd Ave it was standing room only.  A woman got on and had a bunch of stuff in her hands and I thought about giving her my seat, but I was working on an iPod play list and I didn’t feel like moving.  A stop later I looked up and realized that she was pregnant.  She was really skinny and wearing loose fitting clothes, but when the train moved you could see her belly so I immediately offered her my seat.  She refused to take it, so I went back to working on said playlist.  As we were going under the East River I she dropped her bag and I looked up and she was falling.  With one hand still holding my iPod I grabbed her with my left hand and caught her right before she went head first into the Subway wall.  I spun her around and into my seat and everyone gathered around her.  She woke up a second later and had no idea where she was.  She asked the guy next to me if she was at Bedford yet.  He told her that she wasn’t there yet, and that she had fainted and that I had saved her.  When she got to her stop she wanted to get off.  I figured we should try to get her medical attention, but I wasn’t getting off at that stop.  I was going to get off any way, but the other guy said he would help her off the train.  I figured she would be good with him, but as the door closed I saw them part ways and he just walked the other way.  I hope she is okay, it was pretty intense.
2. Saturday night I was on my way to San Loco to get some food at 330 AM and a couple was walking towards me.  They were the only people on the street so I was looking at them.  The girl, a completely average looking woman, from the couple looked back at me and right as I passed her, she barked at me.  It was bewildering.
3. I got a new phone.  The Google phone, the G1.  I think it will be sweet one day, but this version has a lot of problems.  It has a touch screen and a keyboard, but you can’t use the touch screen for any text, so that you are constantly having to open the keyboard in unnecessary situations.  It does not make any sense.  Also my photos look like shit on it, it doesn’t play iTunes files, and I so far can’t figure out how to make it vibrate when I get texts.  But there are a lot of things I love about it.  The Google Maps stuff is amazing, and once my contacts are in, it is going to be amazing for organizing my life.
4. I shot Girl Talk this weekend for the Village Voice.  Death Set too.  They were both great.  I will have pictures from that and the hot body contest from Rated X up this week.  As soon as possible.
5. I went to a sports bar in NJ to watch football at a Miami Dolphin themed bar called Miami Mikes.  It was fucking awesome.  I think one of the main reasons I am not getting anything done right now is that I get no sleep on the weekdays so I sleep all day Saturday, then Sunday is wasted by football.  My weekends are a blur.  But the Dolphins won and I got to be in a mosh pit esque scene every time the scored a touchdown.
6. On my way to Girl Talk I tried to park in a parking spot that I had no business parking in.  Some how I got in.  I had to do like a 20 point turn, and I bumped the cars a bit, but I got in.  When I got out though, I was in shock.  There was not even an inch on either side.  It should not have been possible.  These people walked by and were like “Man, I can’t believe they boxed you in like that! How are you going to get out?  And I was like, I JUST PARKED THERE! I AM THE GREATEST PARALLEL PARKER WHO EVER LIVED!”  For those that don’t believe my greatness, there is photographic proof below.  The guy said “You should take a picture!” and I said “What do you think I am doing!” and I pulled out my camera.

Hopefully one more update tonight…

Okay.  Here are all the football related photos from my trip to Miami.  I got passes to be on the field before the game and we had crazy close seats, and my photos are still pretty bad.  I know I don’t have a telephoto lens or anything, but it gives you some new found respect for sports photographers… although I always thought I would be good at that.  I didn’t really shoot a lot, but there are a bunch of pictures of the practice facility tour and and the guest speakers.  We had Brian Wiedmeier COO of the Dolphins, Jeff Ireland GM of the Dolphins, head coach Tony Sporano and former all pro guard Keith Sims.  There are also some cheerleader photos in there if you don’t care about football.

The trip was a blast and the Dolphins won a far too close game which came down to the wire.  It was pretty fun and we got on the jumbotron a bunch of times.  Totally exciting.

Check out the pictures from the weekend here.