Here is one of those really exciting posts of mine where I update you with some news that you don’t care about and then throw some half assed “content’ at the end. It’s exiting I know, but I like writing weird posts about why I am not updating my site enough. Good times!

So yeah, this week is super crazy for me. On Wednesday I had a really exciting dental appointment where instead of just getting a filling like I thought, the dentist realized it was worse than he thought and I might have to get a root canal! So he just packed my tooth up with some temporary filling and is hopeful that in two or three months he can try again. Whatever the case it hurts like hell now whenever I chew.

Twenty four hours later I got the last of three tattoo appointments to finish up my half sleeve. While it was nice and painful I am super psyched about it. I just had this empty bicep area for years and I could never think what to get that would be meaningful enough to put there. I decided to go the exact opposite route and just get some really bad ass artwork. I hit up my friend Marisa from Needles & Sins and she recommended a few people and I knew immediately that I wanted Grez over at Kings Ave to do it. I booked my appointment in April for late October and three sessions and six weeks later I now have by far my favorite (and most expensive!) tattoo. I asked him to do a woman’s head and to fill space but other than that it was up to him. He killed it. She’s so bad ass. This photo doesn’t do it justice. Thanks Grez!

So yeah, after a very painful two days I am now in the midst of preproduction for the biggest photo gig of my life. A cigarette company in Switzerland wanted to use a NYC party picture style look for their add campaign and pretty much wants to copy a few of my party photos. Theoretically that would be really easy to do, but casting and location scouting are a bit out of my league so I reached out to a friend to produce it and suddenly this shoot is this massive undertaking that involves like 20 people a day for three days. I am still gonna shoot this thing with an on camera flash but it’s become insanely stressful and also pretty damn exciting. I’ve never shot anything that might end up a billboard!

On top of this crazy shoot on Sunday I am working this really fun party for Sailor Jerry and my buddy Oliver Peck. He has a Ramones cover band called the Romonahs and they kinda rule. He is doing a rock and roll karaoke thing as well and as much as I hate karaoke his parties are a really good time. The last one I shot was really fun and I am pretty excited for this one. There is a 90% I will hurt myself performing some punk song as well. So come out for that on Sunday at Arlene’s Grocery.

I have also been kept really busy with Miami Dolphins related stuff recently. After our #MetLifeTakeover our club has blown up a little and have been on calls with the Dolphins and trying to organize more stuff and all sorts of things that have taken up a ton of my time. Which rules but  is quite distracting to my real life. We did raise a TON of money for charity and were able do some good for two of our crew who were injured in the Metro North train crash. We filmed a video of the whole thing which I will probably post next week but in the mean time here is a video of the event care of the Miami Dolphins website.

Anyway, this week is crazy and for some reason I felt like I needed to do a post about it. Aside from the Ramonahs party pix I hope to have two updates ready to go for next week so that once I finish this monster photo gig I can go on a mini staycation. My exgirlfriend is coming to visit and bringing her dog so I am just gonna do cute shit with them for five days and try not to do any real work other than hitting send on those posts. Good times.

And finally, for no particular reason, I leave you with this insane video. Enjoy.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80704110[/vimeo]

I got a bunch of random small things to mention to you guys so I figured we would do it all in one post. It’s not very exiting content wise but I gotta get the word out. Let’s do this.

The big thing I need to mention is that my site works again. This site does massive amounts of bandwidth. This site gets around 100k visitors a month but the average visitor tends to spend a lot of time on the site and looks at a lot of photos so we are talking of MILLIONS of page views every month and every one of those page views has at least one picture on it. I was on a shared server and when I would get a big link or something my site would just stop functioning or move really slowly. On Monday my awesome host Constant moved me over to my own server so the site is super fast now and hopefully we won’t have any crazy errors popping up any more. They really hooked it up on the price but it’s still nearly twice as much as I was paying so if you dig the site and want to support it you can help me out by signing up for my app, buying me some film or you can email me about advertising or buying prints. Any of that would be awesome.

Secondly I should be announcing the release info for my Route 66 book tomorrow. I am just waiting on a flyer. I can give you some of the info now though. The book is called “Get Your Kicks” and the book release will be in LA at the new Mishka art gallery above their LaBrea location. There will be a big solo show to go with it. There will be a smaller NYC release at the Brooklyn Mishka store with free booze and stuff but no art or anything. I am so excited for this I can’t even tell you.  A few books will be available online after the releases and if you donated to the fundraiser they will be in your hands by the end of the month!

Thirdly I threw a big party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub on Monday for this DolfansNYC thing I run. It was Monday Night Football so we went big on it.  I know people hate it when I post Miami Dolphins photos on Driven By Boredom so I am only going to mention it in this post in case anyone is interested. The Dolphins got killed but we raised over $1200 for charity through raffles and ticket sales. It was pretty amazing and my dude DJ Tropic killed it DJing during breaks in the game. You can check out all the pictures here! 

I also wanted to mention the B-Sides section of my site. I launched it a while ago but I haven’t really promoted it. I thought my site would be redone by now and the B-Sides are going to be a major feature of that, but we are way way way behind schedule on this thing and the B-Side blog has taken a back seat. I did update it the other day though with a really weird video from my friend Teddy Blanks that was directed by SXSW Film darling M Blash.  Check it out.

I gotta leave you guys with SOME content so rewatch this video about how awesome  and important I am. It’s the right thing to do.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/30523163[/vimeo]

In about two weeks I am going to go on an adventure. Ideally I am going to travel to Chicago, and then drive most of the old Route 66 and then drive to Vegas and then to LA and then go up the west coast to San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Along the way I will be taking photos of naked girls and road side attractions and hopefully both at the same time. I am gonna hit some parties along the way and just take a million photos. I make enough money of this site to eat, but I certainly don’t have enough money to spend a month on the road driving to towns in the middle of nowhere.

Fortunately I am going to be shooting a video series for WoodRocket.TV  so I have some money coming in right off the bat. On top of that I am talking to a couple of sponsors that will help the trip along. I also have some money saved but I am pretty sure that will be gone VERY quickly.

So in order to fund the rest of this massive undertaking I am going to be making a black and white photo copied signed and numbered zine from the trip. I think it’s going to be pretty awesome and I have some cool ideas for it assuming I still have some money left over when I get back. So I set up an Indiegogo crowd funded thing for it. You can preorder the zine for $20 or you can donate more money to get a bunch of other stuff like prints and exciting things like that!

If you donate $5 or more you can get access to a secret Tumblr I am going to set up with daily photos and video from the road. If you donate $10 I will send you a post card from some campy road side attraction. From $25 upwards you can get prints and other stuff and I will send you a bunch of DBB swag like stickers and buttons with those orders. If you ever wanted me to come to a photo shoot with me you could donate some stupid amount of money and do that. People hit me up all the time about it which I find mildly creepy but for $1000, you are instantly less creepy.

Anyway, please help me fund this project!! I give you guys tons of free content and I ask very little from you. Plus I will totally be your best friend or something.

Click here to donate to my “The Great American Road Trip Zine”!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBZ8p5kZWI[/youtube]

I left NYC for a few days to go watch a Washington Capitals playoff hockey game in DC which is odd because they are playing the New York Rangers and I could just see them in NYC on Monday but whatever. The game was awesome, the Caps won and I will be back in NYC soon, but I realized I haven’t updated my site in far too long. I have some boobs that could go up but I will save them for Monday or Tuesday. So I came up with an idea for a post.

Even if you don’t like sports, you have to love Alexander Ovechkin. Not only is he one of the best hockey players in the world, but he is also hilarious. He is an insane Russian man who when given the key to the city of Washington DC, declared that there would no longer be speed limits. He is engaged to a hot Russian tennis star and he has a missing tooth which makes him look amazing. I tell people who don’t like hockey about him all the time and I pull up a bunch of videos on YouTube to explain his greatness, very little of it having to do with hockey. I am gonna start with just some highlights to show you how awesome he is at putting a little piece of rubber into a net, and then after the fold we will get into the good stuff. Trust me, this man is fucking amazing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGkuDR3VymE[/youtube]

(Read the article)

My friend Ibra Ake interviewed me for his website Models and Rappers. I realize I am neither a model or a rapper, but I guess since I take photos of models and rappers that I am somehow relevant to his blog. I met Ibra at a hotel party thrown by comedian/rapper Donald Glover. Ibra is Donald’s friend/photographer/designer and Donald had showed Ibra my work. Ibra was psyched on my photography, which normally makes me uncomfortable but Ibra is a fantastic photographer himself so it was great to meet him. Anyway, Ibra started this site a few months ago and has been interviewing a ton of people so clearly you should check his site out, but more importantly you should check out his interview with me, because I am awesome.

Ibra came over and he asked me about my favorite clients, best advice I had received and we talked about the positives and negatives of shooting naked girls. I showed Ibra my infamous nude Polaroid collection and pulled out some prints for him to look through. Ibra turned the whole thing into a pretty awesome interview with me. I sent him a bunch of random photos that I had high res shots of laying around so they aren’t exactly the most relevant images to the interview, but there is some new shots that no one has ever seen before in there as well.

So check out the NSFW video below and read Ibra’s actual post because it has a nice write up to go along with it. I particularly like this part:

“Igor makes it a point to take pictures everywhere, whether he’s getting paid to or not. After looking through the massive collection of outrageous images he keeps at his apartment, I realized he’s on to something: The more you shoot, the more likely you are to get interesting shots. It’s kind of obvious, but it’s a good reminder for all aspiring photographers.”

I only really have three points of advice for anyone who wants to be a photographer. Shoot photos all the time, develop a personal style and don’t work for free. I will be billing you for that. Thank you and goodnight.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2YAyVhJos8[/youtube]

On Sunday my Miami Dolphins lost a game and I was upset. I am really upset when the Dolphins lose, but somehow this was worse. I felt seriously depressed. I realized that despite minimal personal loss from Hurricane Sandy, I am suffering from the aftermath. Manhattan is getting back to normal and at least one of the trains in my neighborhood is running, but every moment of every day seems consumed with Sandy. Hearing from friends and reading stories and seeing pictures from Sandy’s devastation is constant. Nothing in life seems as important or as funny anymore. There is just a cloud over everything.

Other than losing a couple jobs and not having any transportation I have been very very lucky. So many of my friends and friends of friends have lost so much. Dolfans NYC, the New York City Miami Dolphins fan club I founded has been hit especially hard. The owners of our bar, Third & Long had their homes in Breezy Point destroyed. The bar was without power for almost a week and many of our members in Jersey, Staten Island and Long Island have lost everything they owned. Seeing our bar half empty on Sunday was another reminder of how bad it has been for everyone.

As a club we constantly are trying to raise money for charity. We had promised to raise $1000 for the Miami Dolphins Foundation but ended up raising $1500. We decided to take the extra $500 and donate that to Sandy relief but we wanted to do more. I got out my camera and decided to shoot some video. I interviewed several of our members and the manager of Third & Long and asked them to speak about how the hurricane has impacted their lives. All of us at the bar were the lucky ones but even those that made it out okay were still suffering. I edited the interviews together and put together an online fundraiser at IndieGoGo. The goal is to raise $1000 to donate to the local New York chapter of the Red Cross. There are a bunch of Dolphins related things you get for donating but since most of you aren’t Dolphins fans it might not be quite as appealing. I encourage you to donate anyway.

If you are in New York and want to help out in other ways we are planning a day of service on November 18th. You can contact dolfansnyc@gmail.com for more details. You can also find out other ways to help by checking out the NYC Service website.

If nothing else enjoy the video I put together. Thanks!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e96iFRSg-Ec[/youtube]

Right now I am on the way to Cave In Rock, IL. Wait, let me take that back. Right now I am in a cheap motel by the airport in St. Louis but by the time this post is published I will be on my way to Cave In Rock. This little town of 400 people is in the middle of nowhere. It’s three and a half hours from St. Louis and three hours from Nashville. To get there you have to go down dirt roads and take a ferry over the Ohio River. But once you get there and past the state troopers doing random searches of everyone you get to the magical Dark Carnival that is the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Insane Clown Posse is throwing their annual music festival and it has become by far my favorite thing to photograph every year. It’s the craziest fucking thing I have ever been to with five straight days of absolutely no rules, naked fat girls and huge bands opening up for bands most people have never heard of. How often do you get to see George Clinton or Ice Cube open up for Dark Lotus? Exactly. Wild shit.

After two years of shooting the Gathering for the Village Voice as an outsider this year I have actually been hired by the festival to shoot so I should be bringing you guys some unprecedented access to the weirdest music festival on earth. The problem with Cave In Rock is that there is no cell phone service and my only link to the outside world might be the wifi set up back stage at the festival. Other than that I might be cut off completely.

It’s not certain but I would assume that I will not be able to update my site again until next Tuesday but when I come back it’s going to be so much madness over and over again until you never want to see a 400 lb woman in clown make up naked ever again. Crazy right? In the mean time I will be doing my best to Instagram, Tumbl and Tweet my experiences every chance I get even the slightest bit of Wifi or cel service. So follow all that shit and until then check out my past adventures at the Gathering of the Juggalos by clicking here.

Until then, I have only two words for you: Whoop Whoop.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9y_2NbSu_E[/youtube]

Back in May my punk band Fucking Bullshit played at Public Assembly after the Brooklyn version of the New York Zombie Crawl. It was probably our best show and I can’t tell you how much fun I had singing to a room full of zombies. A few months before the show a guy named Daniel Huskey hit me up about doing some video editing for me and I knew this would be a really fun show to get on video. My friend and juggalo photographer Dan Cronin was in town and I asked him to video tape some of it. My friend Chris Carr just happened to be there and taped some of it as well. On top of that Backseat Conceptions who put on the zombie crawl video taped some of it. So in all we had four cameras running for at least parts of the set. We ended up with six pretty awesome videos from the concert featuring seven songs from our set. We do all covers so if you dig punk at all you will probably know at least a couple of them. I posted our cover of Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown over on the B-Side Blog and you can see all of them on the Fucking Bullshit Vimeo page. Below I am going to post a few of my favorites.

“Alcohol” is a Gang Green cover and our set opener. I jump into a hoard of zombies and possibly ruin a few lives. Next we have a delightful medley of 7 Seconds “Young Til I Die” and Cro-Mags “Hard Times”. Young Til I Die is a bit too straight edge for Fucking Bullshit so we changed it to “Drunk Til I Die”. In this video I choke myself with a mic cable and nearly knock myself out jumping off stage. I am just dazed enough to fuck up the lyrics. Lastly we have a cover of the Misfits upbeat ditty “Last Caress”. I was losing my voice at the point in the set, luckily Zombie Glen Danzig was there and helped me sing it. Good times.

Before we get to the videos I need to mention that we are going to be playing at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn this Friday August 3rd at Midnight. The show is only $5 and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Last time we played Don Pedro’s they gave me a 50 foot mic cable and let me climb on to the skee-ball machines there. You have been warned.

http://vimeo.com/video/46653726

http://vimeo.com/video/46653923

http://vimeo.com/video/46657097