And so begins a series of extremely Not Safe For Work updates from the Gathering of The Juggalos…

Every year at the Gathering of the Juggalos they have a Ms. Juggalette contest.  I had heard horrific things about how like how last year one of the girls fucked herself with a microphone for whatever reason. This year they couldn’t even find all the contestants to do it and two of them quit mid contest.  I think the two that backed out quit because the first girls “talent” was to masturbate on stage until she squirted all over the front row of the crowd. Seriously.

I didn’t actually take any photos of this because she was pretty far away from me but you can imagine what that would be like.  The whole thing is a crazy mess of half naked Juggalettes giving eachother lap dances. I am sure if you ever want to enjoy the concept of sexuality again you probably don’t want to look at these pictures. They are not for the faint of heart.

Also I met two 16 year old kids at the Gathering who were showing me all the autographs they got so I sent them over to the winner of the Ms. Juggalette pageant and she signed their t-shirts or something. It was really quite adorable, although if I were them I think I would have burned that marker… or at least sold it on ebay.

So click here for some extremely NSFW photos of the Ms. Juggalette contest at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

So you know the Gathering of the Juggalos has bands.  You know it has crazy drugged up juggalos. You probably even know they have helicopter rides. But did you know they have comedians? Three out of the four nights of the Gathering a 2 AM comedy event jumped off. It was hosted by a very serious man named Upchuck the Clown. The first night featured New Yorker Hannibal Buress and Ron Jeremy. The second night featured Tom Green and the third and final night featured the comedy stylings of Galagaher. Let’s get into it.

The first night of the Gathering we got in about 9pm and by around midnight we still didn’t really know where we were going or what we were doing.  We had tried to set up an interview with Hannibal Burress but the phones weren’t working so we weren’t sure what to do.  We decided we would figure out where the comedy tent was and see if he was around there. We asked a security guard where the tent was and he pulled out a map. We never got a map so after we found the comedy tent we decided to walk back to the entrance of the Gathering to try and get maps.  When we got to the gate Hannibal just happened to be standing outside. I met Hannibal a few months ago, so I reintroduced myself and my editor asked him a few questions. He still hadn’t been inside yet and we offered to walk him over to the tent since that place is labyrinth like if you don’t know your way around.  We walked around the Gathering watching him interact with juggalos which was maybe the funniest thing to happen all week. I also convinced him to buy some Faygo so he could spray it all over the crowd.. which he did.  His set was great. I was worried he was going to get Tila Tequillaed but he held his own and he got a “Fam-i-ly” chant out of the Juggalos. The whole thing was pretty amazing and a great start to the Gathering.  Also when we asked him how he got this gig he told us that he has the same booker as Rob Schneider and when he turned the gig down Hannibal got it. I still have no idea if he was kidding or not.

After Hannibal Ron Jeremy did his thing. I run into Ron Jeremy all the time at the porn convention bullshit I shoot.  We have been to the same parties and once I ran into him at Lit Lounge of all places. He works for Hotmovies and I tend to shoot a lot of their stuff. He always seems super creepy, even for porn standards and he has never been even the slightest bit friendly to me. He seemed to be in a better mood than normal at the Gathering and was borderline charming with people so I decided maybe I should bury the hatchet and try to talk to him. I said “Ron, I have shot so many events you have done, its crazy that I always run into you.”  He just looked at me blankly and said sarcastically “Oh yeah, we are really bonding.”  I don’t really know what his deal is but I did see him invite an extremely ugly girl back to his trailer. She told me she would totally fuck him. Anyway, his comedy wasn’t very funny. A lot of it was one liners I heard him tell over and over again. That being said, he was actually pretty good at telling them. He has good delivery and he pulled out dozens of them while doing question and answers. I don’t even know what else to say so I will leave it at that.

Tom Green did his thing on the second night and was unfortunately the only comedian I missed which is ironic because he is the one I wanted to see the most. I sort of covered this in the Tila Tequila post but I will give you a quick break down.  Tom and I have a mutual friend who helped us set up an interview with him. Unfortunately the lack of phone thing screwed that up. Add to that the fact that his plane got delayed and we would have never had a chance.  We decided to meet him at the comedy tent and try to set something up. When Tom got there I introduced myself and he had been excited to do the interview so we set it up for after his set. His set was an hour and he was already 45 minutes late so I figured that Tila Tequila who was scheduled at the same time would be over well before his set was but clearly that didn’t happen. Tom showed up at Tila’s set and we got to escape the mobs of Juggalos with him but we never got to do the interview. It was certainly a weird experience with one of my favorite comedians.

The last comedian on the list was Gallagher. I had a run in with him the night before and he seemed a bit off but mostly friendly. I had seen him still out, fucked up out of his mind at 8 am so I was excited to see what state he would be in during his stand up. He also did not have the best things to say about juggalos in out conversation with him so I was wondering how this all would go. I also knew he was very conservative and he did not disappoint when he opened with a joke about Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer. He spent a while telling pretty unfunny racist and homophobic jokes which the juggalos seemed to enjoy despite the fact that ICP has about 50 songs about killing bigots.  As awful as that was Gallagher still had moments that I just couldn’t help but laugh at. My dad was a huge Gallagher fan so I grew up on this guy and a few of his jokes had me almost in tears. Still the whole thing was just foreplay for the Sledge-o-matic act everyone knows and loves and came for.  Unlike most Gallagher audiences who cover themselves up with plastic sheets, the juggalos awaited food being smashed on them with open arms. Gallagher has his food smashing routine down to a science and it was actually brilliant. He brought people up on stage and let them smash watermelons and played music and gave out hoola hoops and the whole thing turned into a crazy party. It was fucking awesome.

Anyway, pictures of comedians tend to be pretty boring, but there are a lot of crazy ones of Galagher. I pretty much ruined my camera shooting them so I hope you enjoy them.

Click here to see pictures of all the comedians at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

When I looked at the schedule for the Gathering of the Juggalos one of the things I was most excited about was Method Man & Redman. They went on right before the Insane Clown Posse and the place was packed with people.  All of those people were there to see ICP but most of them were also pretty fucking psyched to see the stars of How High? (I was surprised as you are that they make music too!) When they came out people went nuts started throwing plastic bottles around the crowd.  These bottles weren’t like the stuff thrown at Tila Tequila, this was just people having a good time. Maybe a few of them just wanted to see ICP, but 99% of the people throwing shit were just throwing bottles of water just to get people wet.

Unfortunately I am not sure anyone told Method Man & Redman where they were playing.  They just kept calling the crowd “Illinois” as if these people all lived in this 350 person of Cave In Rock, IL. They also seemed pretty confused why no one was clapping.  Juggalos don’t clap… When they like someone they “Woop Woop”. You can’t “Woop Woop” very loud and you can’t do it for very long so I think the guys were feeling disrespected.  When people started to throw stuff Method Man said “If you see someone throwing something, punch them in the face”.  That was probably the wrong tactic because a few seconds later he got hit in the face with a full beer can.

He grabbed his face and threw off his hat and Redman stopped the show. When Redman saw Meth was bleeding he said “He’s cut, we are cut.” and was ready to walk off stage.  Method Man on the other hand was not.  He flipped out.  He grabbed a barrel full of water and threw it on the stage. He started screaming “Who the fuck threw that!” like he was going to go into the crowd and kill them himself. It was nuts.  He refused to leave and started the next song and absolutely killed it. Everyone was so pumped up. He had this huge gash in his face but just kept going getting crazier and crazier.  At one point he got into the crowd and was rocking it.  Even security that lined the front of the stage was dancing and getting down. It was awesome.

I am still not sure that the guys got who they were playing for.  They kept repping Illinois and were upset that the crowd wasn’t louder.  When they had everyone clap in unison the crowd did not do a great job of staying with the beat. It was actually pretty funny. The juggalos sensed that the Wu were not feeling enough love so they started chanting  “Fam-i-ly, Fam-i-ly” which they do to let artists know that they have been accepted into the culture.  They also started chanting “O-D-B” giving props to the former Wu Tang member Ol’ Dirty Bastard who actually recorded a song with ICP a few years before his death. The Family chants confused Meth and Redman who asked “is this good?”  When they realized what they were saying Method Man seemed genuinely touched and he pounded his hand to his heart and said “I hope whoever threw that shit at me can hear this. We are family!”  The guys then grabbed all the bottles of water left on the stage for them and threw them into the crowd.  It ended up being really great and I felt pretty much just the opposite of the way I felt when Tila Tequila went down. That shit was just upsetting.

Anyway Method Man is suing ICP too, so I guess he didn’t deal with it quite as well as I thought, but it was still a nice end to a moment that should never have happend. Who the fuck throws a full beer can at Method Man?  Fucking savages.

Click here to see the pictures of Redman & Method Man rocking the Gathering of the Juggalos and a lot of pictures of Method Man bleeding from the face.

And then click here to read my Village Voice editor’s report with quotes that are accurate and actual audio clips from the show.

Ps. They also talked about making How High 2. They better not be fucking with me…

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

Before I headed out to the Gathering of the Jugalos my editor at the Village Voice and I discussed ideas for different web galleries we could come up with to go a long with her feature story. One of the ideas we came up with was documenting the face make up that juggalos wear.  Many people rocked the standard black and white looks of the Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope.  Others rocked their own specific clown looks and a number of people changed up different looks every day. I was actually surprised that more people didn’t get “painted up” as they say, but the ones who did tended to do it up.

The Voice published the gallery yesterday and someone in the comments said “these pictures are boring. these people could be anywhere. a decent photojournalist would show some context.”  Um, what the fuck are you talking about? Of course they could be anywhere. These are just photos of the make up. He should perhaps check out some of the other photos I took on the Voice.  Anyway, I am not sure why I am mentioning it other than I wanted to tell that guy to fuck himself and it’s against Voice policy to get into it with the commenters on their site.

Okay, now on to the photos… Click here to see up close and personal photos of juggalo face paint at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I have spent the last few days talking about pretty much nothing but Tila Tequila. It is a weird thing for me since I didn’t know a thing about her before Friday. I vaguely had some sense of who she was, but I had no idea she made music until I saw her on the Gathering of the Juggalos schedule. I still, days later, haven’t figured out why Juggalos hate her so much. Some girl told me it was because she is on MTv but so was Tom Green and the Juggalos loved him.  Tom Green actually came out on stage during her set and no one threw anything at him.  If you look at the picture of him below you will notice that the Faygo bottle flying in the air is actually going past him.

Now let me explain how I got these pictures. I had actually just left Tom Green.  I was hanging out with him before his set at the Gathering. I was a big fan growing up and I love his web TV show, so it was great to meet him and I wanted to see his set. Plus Gallagher was hanging out so the level of surrealness was through the roof. I didn’t want to leave but I was afraid I would miss something exactly like what ended up happening.

I had heard all these rumors that people were going to attack her but I didn’t really believe it. I hadn’t seen any of the Juggalos throw more than a half full Faygo bottle at anyone. Everyone was so nice to us I couldn’t really see them throwing rocks and fireworks and shit and piss at her. Still, if they did and she got kicked off stage it would be something I needed photos of for the Village Voice story I was working on.  I made my way over to the second stage and waited, and waited, and waited….

I didn’t think she was ever going to show up but I was having a pretty good time hanging out on the back of the stage.  I was the only photographer there and I was talking to Sugar Slam who is the star of the Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial which was like talking to Tay Zonday or Chris Crocker or something. I also was flirting with this cute girl with one leg who is an internet sensation of her own. Maybe an hour after she was booked to go on security came by and kicked everyone off the back stage but with my VIP pass I managed to stay on stage.

I was towards the back when Tila Tequila finally showed up. As she played people immediately started throwing things at her. I had already been hit with a glass liquor bottle and I was in the back.  She was getting hit by everything her security guards couldn’t knock down but she kept going.  She was going full steam as the juggalos tried to take her down. She got hit in the head with a rotten egg and just kept on using it like styling gel. At this point all my shots were from the back so I decided to do something stupid.  I walked out on stage.

I asked a security guard if I could come out on stage and he told me that I would be an idiot to try it but he wasn’t going stop me.  So I set up camp on the front corner of the stage while she stayed to the back and started shooting.  While I was on the stage I got hit with all sorts of shit, literally. I got covered in what was probably a mixture of beer, Faygo and urine.  My back hurt for two days from stuff I will never know. I saw on the stage rocks and dildos and garbage and rotten everything. It was so gross and the rocks were so big.  M-80s were going off and I am pretty sure people were intentionally trying to hit me with stuff.  Still, I didn’t care. I was the only member of the media there and I wanted to get my shots of this epic show. (Click here if you want to see a video of the show so you can see where I was shooting from.)

Eventually my editor at the Voice showed up with Tom Green (read her account here) and Tom came out on stage to try to settle the crowd down. It did not work. After he left it became a battle field. A guy tried to charge the stage and security ran into the crowd to take away a huge barrel from an angry juggalo. It was chaos. For some reason she took her shirt off to try to persuade the juggalos that she was awesome.  And she was awesome. She was killing it and taking so much fucking abuse. She needed to be playing in front of chicken wire or something. She is the GG Allin of reality TV or something.  Seriously, I was so fucking turned on by how bad ass she was. I have never seen anyone take that much violence with out even blinking. And she never stopped playing.

I didn’t see what hit her in the eye, I heard it was a brick and I heard it was a fire cracker. Either way she was holding an afghan scarf to her face while she sang.  She looked at me for a second and held it to her head and she played on.  A few minutes later she was hit by something else and was leaking blood out of both sides of her face.  When security saw that they basically carried her off stage, but she never relented and talked shit until the very end. It was so bad ass and I got the only shots.

The juggalos chased her into the trailer and started rocking it and breaking windows.  We left with Tom Green and crew and I didn’t see what happened but she did eventually escape with her life. It was one of the more fucked up things I have witnessed but it was pretty amazing to be part of a national news story like that.  I just want to say that as cool as the juggalos were to me, shit like this is pretty hard to forgive.  Most of the people I talked to thought that bricks went to far, but I didn’t find many people who didn’t think she deserved some of it. That’s pretty hard for me to imagine.

Anyway, Tila Tequila is a fucking bad ass in my book. I would go see her any time and I will have her back any time anyone is talking shit.  That girl is a bad ass fucking front woman and she has my respect forever. The juggalos are still mostly cool in my book but this was by far the low point of the trip.

But let’s get on to the pictures finally: Click here to see pictures of Tila Tequilla attacked by juggalos at the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos. NSFW.

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I return from the longest break in recent Driven By Boredom history with a bang. I was in the middle of nowhere in a town called Cave In Rock, IL for an event called The Gathering of the Juggalos. If you don’t know by now, The Gathering is a four day music festival created by the Insane Clown Posse and their record label Psychopathic Records. If you don’t know who ICP are, you shouldn’t be on the Internet because you are not good enough at it. To get to the Gathering I had to take two planes, drive over three hours in a 30 foot RV and then take a ferry from Kentucky over into Illinois and then drive down about 5 miles of gravel roads into the woods. There was no cell service much less internet. I got back in the early afternoon yesterday but I spent about 5 hours trying to sell images of Tila Tequila getting attacked, but more on that later… I finally fell asleep around 9PM after being awake for 30 straight hours after sleeping about three hours a night for 4 days. It has been a weird journey.

Now before we get into this, let’s set the record straight. More than 12 years ago I lost my virginity to a Juggalette. Juggalos, as you probably know, are probably the most mocked and hated subculture on the planet, but when I was 17/18 I just thought the Insane Clown Posse were funny. I had a bunch of friends who liked them and my first girl friend was also a Juggalette and by the time I started dating her I was a full blown Juggalo. I was a punk rock kid first and foremost, but I got painted up with clown make up to see a couple shows and I had all the albums and even had the action figures. When I went to college I pretty much left the clown make up behind and as I got older I looked at my love of ICP as the biggest musical regret of my life. I have listened to worse music, but not with such passion. Since ICP has become a viral sensation in the last couple years thanks to their Gathering infomercials and their Miracles video I have found myself defending my earlier love of ICP and made a decision. I had to go to the Gathering.

Eleven years ago ICP held their first Gathering of the Juggalos and I wanted to go. I tried to get all my friends to go with me, but we all pussied out. It was too far or too much money or something. I don’t really remember. For all I know maybe my parents wouldn’t let me go. It would have been a wise decision on their part. More than a decade later I decided I had to make the pilgrimage to the ICP mecca. I had to see the Gathering for myself. Luckily my editor at the Village Voice (Camille Dodero) wanted to go as well and she pitched the idea to her bosses and we got a budget and headed out for what would be the weirdest four days of either of our lives. We were going as outsiders, and while we were going there with an open mind I think both of us were going mostly to point at the freaks and laugh, but we quickly changed our minds almost before we got there.

I made Camille listen to nothing but ICP the entire drive to Cave In Rock. To my surprise she was pretty excited about this and took notes as I told her about the ICP mythology. As we listened to more and more music I found myself singing a long and remember why I loved this band in the first place. They were funny, the music was catchy as hell and if nothing else these guys have a real DIY spirit that the punk rocker in me loves. These guys really have done their own thing and said “Fuck the World” to the rest of the planet.

As we spent time with these kids we really started to like them. Everyone is so nice. They were on all sorts of drugs and doing all manor of fucked up things but I only saw one fight the whole time and it was broken up immediately. Except for the obviously horrible Tila Tequila incident and someone hitting Method Man in the face with a bottle any time anyone would try to mess with someone else’s good time other Juggalos would step in. They chant “Fam-i-ly” over and over again to let the troublemakers know that these are their people and they need to have mad “clown love” for each other. “Don’t throw shit” was another popular chant. I have to say that when they attacked Tila Tequila I sort of had to wonder about these kids, that was one of the most fucked up things I have ever seen, but most people I talked to after agreed that people went too far. Everyone was in support of throwing shit at her… just not shit that could hurt her. Bottles of Faygo are the acceptable choice of decent.

Every single person I talked to accepted me into their family even though I told them I hadn’t been “down with the clown” since the ’90’s and from now on they have a defender. So if you want to talk shit about my family, be prepared for an argument. These kids may be fucked up, psychopathic lowlifes, but they are my fucked up, psychopathic lowlifes. Much clown love.

Okay, maybe that is going a little too far… A lot of these kids are fucking idiots. And besides some of these shots are fucking hilarious so go a head and mock away…

I am posting 100 of my favorite shots from the Gathering. I have 1700 photos to upload and I will be getting them up a bunch at a time all week long so keep checking back. These photos are very Not Safe For Work.

Click here to see the best of the 2010 Gathering of the Juggalos. Woop Woop!

For complete 2010 Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

I don’t really have time to update this because it’s very early morning and I am in Nashville, TN getting ready to sleep for a few hours and then rent an RV and drive it to the Gathering of the Juggalos. If you don’t know about this, you need to know. It will be insane.  But for the next four days I might be off the grid. I will be living in an RV and I have my doubts about getting any sort of internet while I am out there. So this could be my last update for a bit. I am going to try my best to update my Tumblr with a few pictures if I can update it with my phone. I will also be updating my Twitter a lot if cell service works.  So follow those things and keep checking back here to see if I am updating. I have some nudes to go up Friday if I have the means to put them up. Just sayin’.

Anyway, Rando was fun, someone got knocked out again and I took a bunch of pictures. That’s all I got to say about that and I will see you guys as soon as possible.

Click here to see the pictures from Rando at Gallery bar on Tuesday.

Ps. If the gallery is fucked up, I am sorry. I’m trying to fix it…

At some point in my life I met a guy named Matt who is one half of a nightlife photo blogging team out of Chicago called Darkroom Demons. Matt eventually introduced me to his partner Tyler who introduced me to his friend Brad when I was in LA. Back in NYC Brad introduced me his friend visiting from Chicago. Her name is Jillian and the night I met her she got naked for me in a bathroom.  I was pretty much in love.

I was no the only person who fell in love with her.  My friend and Burning Angel Jessie Lee also started crushing on her.  So Jessie Lee and I did what we do.  She got naked and I took photos.

We climbed up onto Brads roof and then climbed over a wall to the next building and did a quick photo shoot on the roof. Clearly a tripod would have been nice and maybe we should have just shot it during the day, but let’s get reasonable, who gives a shit, these girls are fucking babes.

Seriously how fucking hot is Jillian. Those boobs are changing lives. And you have seen Jessie Lee a million times on this site so you know all about her. You just need to look at the NSFW pictures of them naked.

So yeah. Click here to see Jillian & Jessie Lee naked on a roof!

Update: Sadly Jillian no longer wants to be naked on the internets so these pictures have vanished. Amazingly I have only met two people named Jillian in my life and both of them took naked photos with me and then asked me to take them down later. They both also had really rad boobs. Coincidences… 

Our homegirl Loli Lux shot her first music video at 105 Rivington last night… well at least the B Roll for it. The track is called “Wannabe” and it is off her new EP that I shot the cover for. You should buy it. Mostly it was just scenes of people hanging out at the bar.  I shot some behind the scenes photos but I also took a lot of shots playing myself in the video. I was just sort of in the background shooting photos. You will notice most of these shots don’t look like my normal work because I was just popping shit off instead of shooting people like I normally would.  Really I was just acting like I see most party photographers shoot which is that they just point their camera at stuff and don’t compose or care how anything looks. Still, there are a few nice shots of interesting looking people so obviously that is important somehow.

Anyway, click here to see all the photos from Loli Lux’s “Wannabe” video shoot.