It’s that time of year again. The 4th of July hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. It has become a tradition in my life ever since I made my way down to Coney Island in 2004 after the Richmond, VA based  band I was managing at the time drove up to NYC to play a show on the 3rd.  I returned the next year, intentionally booking the band a show so I could make the trip.  The year after that the bad actually played the contest and the last three years I have been covering the event as a journalist.  The last two years for the Village Voice.  I have seen some amazing feats.  I was there for Kobayashi breaking his own record with nearly 54 hot dogs in 12 minutes which no one ever thought was possible.  I was there when Joey Chestnut defeated him in a contest which shocked the world and I was there last year when Chestnut ate an impossible 68 hot dogs in just 10 minutes.

This year records were not broken.  It was so hot that eaters across the board had troubles eating.  Chestnut, who ate 72 hot dogs in practice, managed to win the contest eating 54 hot dogs. Five years ago this would have been an incredible feat, but this year people questioned if he wasn’t pushing himself without a serious contender.  You see, this year Kobayashi watched from the stands.

Due to a contract disagreement between Kobayshi and the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) the Japanese legend did not compete. Right before the contest started he appeared in the crowd and people began chanting his name.  He was wearing a “Free Kobi” t-shirt but seemed content to watch from the stands. When it was over and Chestnut had one, Kobayashi made a break for the stage.  His translator said that he wanted to eat for the people for free, others said he just went  up there to congratulate Chestnut, the Larry Bird to his Magic Johnson. Either way he was grabbed by police and carried of stage.  He clung with all his might but eventually was pulled off.  He was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest and spent the evening in jail.

Later at the after party competitors, friends and family were cheering for Joey, themselves and America as the ESPN highlights showed on TV.  They had a big USA, USA! chant going on.  But when they showed Kobayashi being arrested a silence fell over the room until people started booing.  Everyone hated such a thing happen to a man they respected so much. The story should have been about Chestnuts 4th straight victory, but instead, it was a sad day at Coney Island and a sad day for Major League Eating.

Click here to see all the photos from the 4th of July hot dog eating contest at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island. Pictures from the after party will be up tomorrow. God bless America.

Ps. Just wanted to give a special shout out to Crazy Legs Conti who invited me to the after party and introduced me to a lot of the eaters.

Shepard Fairey wheatpasted a huge May Day mural on the Deitch Wall on Bowery and Houston last night.  I was headed out last night and I saw it going up so I took a few pictures.  When I was looking online for info on the wall I found a video that Animal NY posted interviewing Shepard about the wall and a few other things.  I was standing about 2 feet away from them during this interview so anything I would tell you about this project I over heard from this interview, so instead of typing about it, I will just link you to the video, and post a couple of my shots below.

Also, if you haven’t had a chance check out “Exit Through The Gift Shop” the Banksy produced film about Mister Brainwash and the street art movement.  Shepard Fairey has a lot of screen time in it.  It is a pretty fantastic film, I saw it last Saturday.

The Yes Men are at it again, and all this week.  Their movie The Yes Men Fix The World opened at the Film Forum yesterday and they decided to make the screenings slightly longer than 87 minutes.  After each screening they are leading the viewers on actions around the city.  The have almost no advertising budget so hopefully these viral actions will help make change, but also promote their film.  After the screening last night they led the crowd to a random Chase bank to do a mini action to protest JP Morgan Chase’s funding of mountain top removal coal mining.  They handed out coal to everyone and had them let Chase know how they felt. I have no intention of getting into a discussion of the financial and environmental issues behind coal, but you should check out the Yes Men blog if you want to know more about the action.  They are doing this stuff all week, so make sure you check their film out soon! It is really good.

Check out my shots of the Chase protest here. It is clearly not my best work, but I had a lot of fun anyway.  I would never vandalize private property in anyway ever, but if I did, it might look something like this.

PS. Shout out to my friends Scott and Liz who I saw for the first time in ages last night. Their company Evil Twin handles the bookings for the Yes Men and other entertainers who “think and act”.

Well at least for the moment my gallery software seems to be working properly. I have a feeling there are going to be more problems when I try to get up the photos I took on Tuesday. The main thing I need in life is to figure out a new solution for my photo galleries. Jalbum was just not built for a site as big as mine. If nothing else I need a better template so it at least looks slightly like my site. I get tons of traffic to the site galleries, but probably very rarely does that traffic come back to the main site.

Anyway, the Dolphins gallery and the two Yes Men posts now link to the correct gallery pages instead of Flickr. I also will be getting up a bunch of stuff from the last few days in the next few days. I am hopeful to get two more posts up today, but I might take a nap instead. Let’s see what happens.

I wanted to say that the two day break away from Driven By Boredom allowed me to get some stuff done that I had been putting off forever, and I did a pretty sexy photo shoot yesterday. I got a second opinion on my knee and I am going to have to get surgery soon. I also resigned my lease and have a new roommate moving in on Monday. I am not sure you care about any of that, but it is what it is. I will get some photos up tonight, at very minimum the pictures from Trash last friday. While you wait, check out this video of the Yes Men passing out the papers I blogged about on Monday. I show up in the background a few times. I fucked up and slept through their Tuesday prank where Andy evidently got arrested because of an outstanding ticket for riding his bike through a park, but you can read about that here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhq8YRxSVYE&feature=related[/youtube]

Again, my site is still not letting me upload image galleries, but I wanted to get these shots up asap.

Today a large group of environmental and political activists came together to create a fake NY Post that they handed out all over New York. This issue addressed climate change and was timed with a global summit on climate change at the UN. Last year they came out with a fake New York Times that showed a world 6 months in the future where the war had ended and progressive causes had been championed by the world. This issue was less optimistic with a big “WE’RE SCREWED” headline.

I went out with the Yes Men today, one of the groups behind the paper and photographed them handing out the special issue. I am not sure anyone even realized it was fake since “We’re Screwed!” is not that inconceivable for a NY Post headline. I think people are much less shocked by bad news than they are good news.

Watch out. The Yes Men are not done with their climate change shenanigans. Just be on the look out for some really big balls.

Check out the photos from today on my Flickr account until I have my site up and running again.

Update: The above link now goes to my site and not the Flickr.

The Yes Men are at it again. If you don’t know about them, you should. They are left wing pranksters who protest big corporations using some highly entertaining methods. I have a history with them, as you can read here, and heard about their newest prank and asked them if I could come down and shoot some photos. Other than their people, I was the only photographer on the scene for their test launch. Tomorrow they are launching hundreds these balls at the UN to address the climate week meetings*. Today they had a test run down in DUMBO and we gathered in the sun to watch it all go down. Tons of people gathered to watch, but most of them happened to be part of the wedding that was taking place at the exact same time on the exact same mini beach. It was pretty funny. I would love to see their wedding pictures.

Anyway, this is going to be an exciting week for hilarious radical activism so keep your eyes open, read the papers and check back here. I should have some interesting photos if I manage not to sleep through them.

Lastly, my gallery software is giving me fits right now so I uploaded the shots to Flickr. Hopefully they will be up on DBB soon. Click here to see all the pictures.

*hundreds may be a slight exaggeration.

Update: The picture link now goes to my site and not Flickr.

So Monday came and went without me being near a computer. That almost never happens, but I had a doctors appointment in the city and I never came back. I just wanted to do a quick update before I went to sleep and let you know a few things that are probably more Live Journal material than a super professional type blog of DBB’s stature, but unfortunately I don’t have a LJ.

Firstly about the doctors appointment. I got the results of the MRI on my knee. Turns out I have a torn meniscus. The meniscus is the cartilage in your knee that separates your bones so they don’t rub together. I have to get surgery and do rehab, but the good news is its only minor surgery. It only takes 15 minutes and I can walk out. The doctor told me I just have to rest it for a couple days and its pretty much healed in two weeks, with max six weeks of rehab.  Compare that to a year of rehab for an ACL tear and I will consider myself lucky.  The other good news is that in the mean time I can walk on it and I am not going to do any further damage to it. This means that I can go and shoot if I can suck up the pain.  And really the pain is not as bad as the super weird feeling of having your knee feel like it is going to fall apart at any minute. Knowing that my knee cap is not going to slip into my shin has been a big help and being able to put my full weight on it has reduced my significant limp into a pretty sweet pimp walk. Lets just hope I can get it together soon, because I have gained 8lbs since my injury stopped me from walking everywhere.

Next personal note is that I cut off all my hair. I had a dream that my mom cut off my mustache in my sleep and it freaked me out. I just woke up and decided to get a shave and a haircut. My friend Ibi did it and before she really went to work she cut it into a bob which is pretty fucking funny.  I will post a picture below. Let me know what you think of the new me.

Nextly I spent most of Sunday under my covers weeping loudly after my Miami Dolphins embarrassed themselves in a loss to the Atlanta Falcons.  They turned the ball over 4 fucking times and their offensive line played the worst game since they drafted the monster left tackle Jake Long. More successful that the Dolphins was the DolfansNYC the New York City Miami Dolphins Fan Club that I started with my friend Michelle. I have no friends who like football, so it has been really great for me to have a day a week where I can hang out with a bunch of Dolphins fans. I lost my voice from screaming so much.  You would think I was insane if you saw me wearing all aqua and screaming at a television for 3 hours. Even more insane that normal. We had almost 100 people show up and the NY Daily News mentioned our bar Third and Long as a place to go to watch Phins games. We had a raffle and raised over $100 for charity. It was a pretty successful party. Evidently I am a better promotor of sports bars than I am dance clubs. I just wish the Dolphins had won.

On a less personal note two more celebrities have passed on. Jim Carroll is now one of those people who died. and while nobody puts Baby in the corner, the cancer in Patrick Swazye put him 6 feet under.  I am a pretty big fan of Jim Carroll and I fucking loved Point Break dammit. Speaking of celebrities, Kanye West is making me hate that I really dug his first two albums and Jessica Simpson is pretty much the only person who could make a puppy dying funny to me.

Continuing on, this Joe Wilson shit has got to stop. Going after a republican for losing his shit during Obama’s health care speech is just divisive and republican tactics. Democrats should have just let it go. They guy looks like an asshole already, if you make this huge deal out of it, they are just going to make a huge deal out of the fact that one of your appointees is a 911 conspiracy theorist. Another story that has gotten out of hand his the Serena Williams melting down during the US Open. If you some how missed it, Serena told a line judge that she was going to shove a tennis ball up her ass after the judge had called a ticky tack fault a that put her one point away from losing her match. She then got penalized a point for flipping her wig and lost the match. People are talking about suspending her for it. Things like this happen all the time in football, baseball and basket ball and no one cares.  When McEnroe did it he got endorsements. I think a lot of the outrage is about her being a black woman in an almost entirely white sport. I saw message board posts calling her an animal and all manor of borderline racist shit. Fuck that. She owns part of the Dolphins now, so I got her back.

Anyway, I have no blind items for you today, but hopefully I will have pics up from the NY Couture Spring show up later. Until then enjoy these sexy photos of me during and after my hair cut.

You haven’t heard from me in a few days and there is a reason for it.  Really there are two reasons for it.  The first is that I got so unreasonably sunburned at the hot dog contest that my arms actually blistered.  I spent the entire day Sunday in bed just laying next to the air conditioning suffering.  I got absolutely no work done what so ever.  It was a struggle to move.  I was slightly better today, however, when I sat down to work I took a new medicine that is supposed to help me focus on work. Unfortunately I grabbed the wrong bottle and I didn’t notice that I had taken too sleeping pills accidentally.  This is actually the SECOND time this has happened.  The pills look almost exactly the same. I ended up getting high as hell, but because I had just woken up, sleep was not an option, but neither was working on my site so I went into the city and bought a bunch of Soul and R&B records.  Supremes, Commodores, Teddy Pendergrass etc… I also picked up some Hall & Oates, Willy Nelson and some Kurtis Blow.  It was a pretty good haul and the guy gave me a pretty big discount.  I also had a picnic while I was really really messed up on these sleeping pills.  It was sort of an intense feeling just floating around.  I talked to a former heroin addict turned Jesus freak bicycle salesmen and lent a friend $150.  Then I came home so I could listen to records and talk to you about hot dogs… So let’s talk about hot dogs.

As I prayed, predicted and hoped for, Joey Chestnut took his third straight Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog title at Coney Island.  I heard him talking about trying to eat 68 hot dogs but I wasn’t sure he could really do it.  Two years ago he set the record for most hot dogs and buns eaten in 12 minutes with 66 dogs.  The problem is, last year they cut two minutes off the official eating time, and it is now down to just 10 minutes.  Last year he ‘only’ ate 59.  This year, he ate 68 dogs in 10 minutes and you got the idea if he had an extra 2 minutes he might have eaten 80.  It was amazing.  Takeru Kobayashi never stood a chance.  Also broken was the women’s record of 39 dogs.  That record was also set in 12 minutes, so it was go to see my future wife Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas beat her own record by 2 dogs in 2 less minutes.  Deep Dish and Eater X also broke the 50 dog mark which is unreasonably impressive.  You can eat 53 hot dogs in 10 minutes and not even get a third place trophy.  Amazing.

Anyway, there are a TON of photos in this gallery and I am going to post a bunch here.  I will do it in reverse order with the hot dog eating at first and then post some shots of the weirdness that goes on before the event to build the proper dog an pony show state fair atmosphere.  I mean you have 50k people in Brooklyn being filmed by ESPN you need some carnival style hokeyness to really appreciate what you are about to see.  The low budget, yet highly entertaining theatrics included dancers, trampoline artists, jugglers, an actual dog show, clergy, acrobats, dwarves, rapping eaters, dancing hot dogs, T shirt cannons, trivia contests and of course a strong man bending steel girders with his neck.  It is just not really a party until someone bends metal beams with the most defenseless and vulnerable part of their body…. and it was a party.

Also, thanks go the Shea’s.  They run Major League Eating and and the IFOCE. They are great guys.  Rich I met a few years ago and always gets me press passes and his brother George is the host of the event and he is absolutely one hell of a host.  Not many people can just grab a mic and keep people entertained for 4 hours in the hot sun.  He does it every year.  (Even if his MJ tribute was slightly lacking… The Smooth Criminal shoes were a nice touch at least…)

Click here to see all the 4th of July hot dog eating madness!

Since I just paid $7.95 to use internet on my Virgin America flight to LA, I figured I might as well update my site on the way. This morning while I was packing I saw that the HuffPo had linked another part of Brian Williams interview of Obama where he just follows him around all day. It is basically an extended episode of Cribs only Brian Williams does everything he can to make questions about mundane aspects of Obama’s life seem like he is asking him why he just bombed New Hampshire. Williams often sounds like the host of terrible reality show where someone is about to get voted off the island. That being said, it is certainly and interesting, if not completely staged, look at the daily life of a burger eating, basket ball playing father of two who just happens to be the President of the United States.

In the most recent clip I saw Obama bought everyone on his staff (and Brian Williams) hamburgers… but not just ANY burgers… He bought them Five Guys burgers. You might remember me blogging about my love for the Five Guys in the past. Many of you New Yorkers have enjoyed the pleasures of their tasty burgers, but unless you have had one outside Manhattan I am not sure you can completely understand the glory of a Five Guys burger. When I grew up in Alexandria, VA there were only 3 Five Guys and two of them were 5 minutes away from my house in opposite directions. I grew up on these burgers. The are some of the best burgers on Earth. They are a fast food place with HUGE burgers that taste like a $15 burger in a nice restaurant only much greasier. The normal burger has two patties and you can put all sorts of stuff on them. When you order fries they just fill your bag with them. Normally 2 people can’t finish a large fry together. And the best part about the Zaggat rated burger chain is that is they are cheap as hell… And that is why they don’t count in Manhattan… Due to the rent in the city they have to raise the price of everything and a burger suddenly costs 7 dollars and you are dropping nearly $15 on the whole meal. All of a sudden you start thinking that if you are going to spend this much you might as well go to a restaurant and sit down and eat. It is mildly tragic…. Still supremely delicious.

Anyway, back to the president: He showed up at a DC area Five Guys and people completely lost their shit. Women were dancing in front of the burger joint as he left. It was pretty great. He came back and delivered huge sacks of burgers to his staff. And remember when the Right gave Obama all that shit for wanting some Dijon mustard on his burger? Well he is from Chicago. Ketchup is frowned on in the Windy City. Obama got his burger hooked up at five guys and made sure he didn’t get any damn ketchup on it. And he got a shit load of fries… and you know how much Obama loves fries. Brian Williams on the other hand ordered a burger with only ketchup. No lettuce, no tomato, nothing. What a coward. Personally I go with the Bacon Cheeseburger with A1 Sauce, lettuce, tomato and some pickles…

Anyway now that I have ruined the whole video for you… you should watch it below.