Five years ago my SB-800 flash came in the mail. I had an old manual flash and my camera came with a flash but without the high tech lasers that shoot out of flashes these days it’s really hard to use auto focus in the dark. When I got the flash my photographs got a lot better and when I relaunched Driven By Boredom as the version of the site it is today I only uploaded the galleries that I photographed post SB-800.

A few months ago when Tyga was blowing up the charts with his Top 40 hit Rack City I went back to my archives to pull a photo of him that I knew I had from 2007.  When I opened that folder on my 2007 hard drive I realized that not only was it the first night that I got the flash but it was also just a really great night.  I realized that the 5th anniversary of the night was coming up and I planned to reedit the pictures and repost them today.  So let’s get into it.

Back in the day pretty much every Wednesday I would go to two events, Invite Them Up at Rififi and High Voltage at Sutra. Invite Them Up was a legendary night in downtown “alternative comedy” hosted by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. On April 25th, 2007 they were hosting a comedy auction to raise money for the show because Rififi was falling apart and they needed new lights and things. Looking back on that night it was a pretty amazing crowd with a lot of comics that were big at the time and a lot of comics who have blown up since. I remembered getting in a bidding war with now reasonably famous Nick Kroll over a theme song written by Stella member and director David Wain. I ended up losing, but I did win Jon Benjamin’s fake mustache who now has his on TV show. Jenny Slate was looking adorable that night and she went on to make a name for herself as a Saturday Night Live cast member who accidentally said fuck on the air in her very first episode. Kristen Schaal was there and I had a crush on her at the time and she went on to steal the show regularly during the two seasons of Flight of the Concords and pretty much everything else she’s been in. I had no idea who Hannibal Buress was back then and now he’s one of the funniest comics in NYC. And I still haven’t mentioned Michael Showalter, Todd Barry, Morgan Murphy, Brett Gelman, Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Jon Glaser, Seth Herzog, Joe Mande, etc, etc… It was a pretty amazing party.

After that I headed to High Voltage at Sutra which was one of my favorite parties in NYC ever. I met so many friends at that party and made out with so many girls and got so many people naked in bathrooms there. It was awesome. The party then moved to 200 Orchard where it got a little bit worse and then to Annex where it got a lot worse Dimitry finally pulled the plug on it after a few months there. I showed Dimitry these pictures recently and he told me that he had to sneak Tyga in because he was underage and he rolled to the party with Travis McCoy who was at the time in the Gym Class Heroes. I remember Travie being there but I didn’t know who he was at the time so I didn’t take his photo because he had a camera with him and I pretty much never take photos of photographers unless I know them. Looking back at these pictures there are a ton of people in there now that I didn’t know at the time but I later became good friends with (and perhaps saw naked) later.

After High Voltage I headed over to Manor for the short lived Misshapes spin off Bleach. The party got shut down because they constantly let in underage kids and I was really psyched it got shut down because the week after this they told me they would kick me out if I took any photos because the Misshapes are super serious people. Whatever, the party was a lot of fun and there are so many pictures of people here I didn’t know at all at the time and am friends with. I had just met Sophia Lamar and Raquel Reed and the band VIP was hosting and there is a pretty funny shot of Johnny Makeup wearing a Mouseketeers and holding my business card in his mouth. There are some Ruff Kids and Misshapes in this gallery and a bunch of cute girls who I may or may not have made out with at some point in the next two years. I think I might have gone home with a girl I met that night. Those were the days…

Anyway that was five years ago when I loved doing this shit and I did it for free while I was working as a bus boy at a hotel in midtown. I am old and jaded now and won’t leave my house unless you are paying me five times what I would have been psyched to make back then. But this is life: you get old, you stop enjoying partying with college kids downtown and then you die. See you all in Hell.

Click here to see the photos I took five years ago today on a really fun Wednesday night.

One of my first regular spots in NYC was the Slipper Room. I used to go there to see Seth Herzog’s stand up comedy show Sweet every week. But other than the occasional comedy show Slipper Room has mostly been home to a variety of Burlesque and Cabaret shows over the years.  I have attended a few of those, but never Metal Monday.

Metal Monday would be celebrating their one year anniversary next month, but unfortunately Slipper Room is closing down for a while.  Next month they are tearing down part of the building and adding a few extra floors.  I talked to a bar tender and he told me they could be closed down for 6 to 9 months, or knowing NYC and construction, even longer.  So for the foreseeable future Metal Monday is dead and I am glad I had a chance to check it out.

Metal Monday is a heavy metal themed burlesque show hosted by Mini Marilyn Manson impersonator and bad ass dude Nik Sin. It features a bunch of hot girls (and one dude) taking off their clothes to metal music.  It seems like a pretty good idea if you are into that sort of thing…

A quick rundown of the acts so you can figure out who is who.  Juliet J. dressed as a goth school girl, read some goth poetry, and sang about Black Sabbath. Victoria Privates did a sexy strip tease on a chair. Magician Albert Cadabra escaped from a straight jacket and made his penis magically appear. Velocity Chyaldd did an extremely NSFW routine involving blood, a knife and her vagina that I saw her do at Rated X on Halloween nearly 4 years ago. Anna Evans may have been the highlight of my night when she came out in a bikini made of raw meat. I talked to her immediately afterwards about letting me do a photo shoot of her covered in steaks. Coney Island legend and huge crush object of mine Insectavora did a pretty impressive fire act to end the night with an explosion. And last but not least my friend Arden Leigh jumped around in some crazy white undergarments.  Arden was the one who convinced me to come out because she was celebrating her signing her first book deal. Arden is a professional seductress, and that is not even a joke, and she may or may not be releasing a book about how to pick up chicks. Amazing.

Now while this was the last Metal Monday, Slipper Room isn’t closed yet, so you still have a chance to check it out in all it’s glory before they tear it down. If you want to go down there I have some recommendations. There are three more shows of Seth Herzog’s Sweet. His show is every Tuesday starting at 9pm. It’s only 5 dollars and you can from time to time see some amazing comedians. I will 100% be at at least one of those shows.  And on the last Sunday of the month (May 30th) my friend Kiki Valentine will be hosting one of the very last burlesque shows at the Slipper Room. Her show is called the Sunday Show and I have photographed it twice. It’s always crazy and always very NSFW. You should check it out.

And in the mean time, you should check out all the NSFW photos I shot at the last Metal Monday at the Slipper Room.

Ps. Just wanted to give a little shout out to Veronica Varlow who is a super babe and made me talk to her for like 2 hours after the show. Evidently she likes to make out with 15 year old girls or something; I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy staring at her um… dress made out of rubber.

Okay.  Back in business.  Play time is over.  I was super productive today and tomorrow I will be too.  I have 5 updates starting now to go up and that are basically ready to go up.  I have all these photos tonight, then two sets from New Years tomorrow, followed by photos from Trash to go up Sunday and then some other stuff in betwixt.  Today I got a lot of shit done, but you just don’t know it yet.  New Years was exhausting, I spent New Years Day in bed, but today was productive and tomorrow will be and then Sunday is the playoffs and I will either be too busy celebrating or too busy crying to deal with reality so don’t expect much Sunday.  But between Monday and Thursday I need to get a lot of shit done to prepare for my west coast trip.  And then once I get back from Vegas/LA I have two weeks to do nothing but work on this site before I really need to start looking for a job.  Let’s start cooking.

Okay, on to Tuesdays photos.

Tuesday was a long night.  I went to see Frost/Nixon and then I went to see some stand up comedy.  My friend and favorite comic Pete Holmes was headlining Seth Herzog’s show Sweet and since I don’t have a job anymore I needed to hit that up.   Also at the show was the Mac guy, Justin Long who I had a long conversation with at Sweet about two years ago.  I had just moved to NYC and was working as a bus boy and was not taking photos or doing anything and he and I had a long conversation about life and our brothers and what the hell I was going to do with my life.  Little did I know that he was making Die Hard 4 at the time.  Anyway, I said hi to him, and I am not sure that he actually remembered our conversation but he was unreasonably nice about it and certainly pretended to remember if nothing else.  The guy just sat there for an hour after the show talking to every single person who came up to them like they were his close friend.  It is people like that you are happy to see succeed.  So go see his new film He’s Just Not That Into You.  It doesn’t really look like something that I would really want to see, but it has Eric from Entourage, and the blonde girl from Ghost World, and the chick from Office Space and that dude from Chasing Amy and that little girl from ET.

After comedy I went to Happy Endings.  It was insanely packed and a lot of fun.  My flash was giving me some troubles and at first was underexposing everything, and then it was not working with my auto focus, so for pretty much the first time ever I took it off my camera and held it in my hand.  I hate doing this because I like having two hands free, but it got some pretty cool results.  I was triggering it with the on camera flash and that led to some pretty awful photos and some pretty cool ones.  You are just going to have to check that out for your self.  I will post some of the more interesting ones below.

Around 3 or so this girl I hung out with on Monday came into town for her birthday and I met up with her at some bar in Times Square.  I am not sure why they were afraid to leave Port Authority but I met them at this really empty dive bar on 9th and 42nd.  That was super weird.  She was hanging out with the lead singer of Reel Big Fish.  I sort of was amazed by this, because I had not heard a song from them in 11 years, but I am pretty sure I just sounded like a dick when I was talking to him about it, but I did take a really nice picture of him and his girlfriend so maybe he will forgive me.  Anyway, it was a super weird night and took me like an hour to get home from Times Square at 430 in the morning, but what can you do.

There are a lot of photos below because there are three different places here, and I was experimenting with my flash so I want to show  you some of that stuff.   There is a little bit of nip slip stuff going on here thanks to the 50 photos of Alex Magnetic I took so be careful at work.  And lastly, I interviewed another intern.  You will be hearing more about him soon, his name is Michael and here is a picture of him.

Check out all the photos from all of my adventures Tuesday here.

I have been a Stella fan for a long time, long before they had their TV show. I bought the Stella shorts DVD collection many years ago, but they never sent it to me and I had to buy the second pressing of it kinda recently. Anyway, I had seen all the shorts, and by far my favorite one (actually, Dick Fish was a close second) was their music video for Chicago’s Saturday which is a pretty amazing song. The best part of it was seeing this guy dance in his underwear. It was amazing. Years later I moved to NYC and I have ended up becoming friends with this man. His name is Seth Herzog and I have blogged about him before. He does a comedy show at the Slipper Room on Tuesdays. I keep forgetting to go, so if you feel like going one day, remind me and we can go together. Sorry. Random. Watch the video. It is great.

My friend Seth Herzog sent out an email about his interview with the NY Post yesterday. He, as well as several other of my friends/acquaintances were interviewed about underground comedy in New York and how while standard two drink minimum comedy clubs were on the way out, underground clubs were thriving. The article laments the end of Invite Them Up, but points out shows like Seth’s Sweet and Eugene Mirman’s other Show Veil Of The Maya are kicking ass weekly. Anyway, it is a pretty long article and it features a lot of people I think are amazing, so I figured you guys should read it. So READ THIS ARTICLE! And then watch the first episode of Horrible People that features some of my favorite alt-comedians in New York. Although only one of them, my future wife Kristen Schaal, is mentioned in the article, it is still brilliant.

I have spent many, many Wednesday nights at Riffi watching Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale’s Invite Them Up Comedy show. For just $5 you could watch some of the top names in NY comedy try out new material, up and comers bringing their A game, a consistently brilliant Eugene Mirman, and Bobby farting and rubbing his mic on peoples balls. It was amazing. I am very sad to see it go and I will be documenting every day. I meant to get these up yesterday, but I just ran out of time. Tonight is the last night ever and it is going to be crazy packed. If you have a chance to go, I would show up by 7:30 at the latest. Anyway on day one I got there early and had a front row seat to document the show. Here was the line up:

Michael Showalter
Heather Lawless
Greg Johnson
John Oliver
Craig Baldo
Seth Herzog
John Glaser

Click for photos.

PS. The biggest laughs of the night came not from any of the comics, but from John Oliver’s velour American Apparel”jumper”. (See below)

So I go to a lot of stand up comedy. When I first moved here I was going twice a week every week. Now I go a bit less, but I still see a lot of comedians. Of the many, many sets I have seen, the funniest by far was this guy named Bryan Callen. I saw him at Seth Herzog’s Sweet which is every Tuesday night at the Slipper Room in the LES. Anyway, I was on the floor crying. He does this very physical big dick humor that I sort of feel like you have to witness in person to get the full effect. The way he works the crowd is very impressive. This set at Gotham is pretty good, but not nearly as amazing as when I saw him in person. He did this bit about a pet eagle that I did for people probably 30 times. Anyway, aside from a half assed call back at the end, this set is still pretty fucking perfect. I can’t wait to see him again. Enjoy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODyr5DYYTuE[/youtube]

Nearly ever Wednesday I am at Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale’s comedy night, Invite Them Up. It is amazing. It is only 5 dollars and it starts at 9, but I would get there at 8:30 if you don’t want to be standing the whole time. It is at Rififi on 1st and 11th, where Trash is and I think you should come hang out with me there. Anyway, stand-up comedy is really boring to take photos of, as everyone is.. um… standing up. Also I didn’t want to distract them by using a flash (although Chelsea Peretti was pretty distracted anyway) so I tried to shoot natural light, but I don’t really have the lens to shoot in a room that dark. So the photos are pretty badly shot and sort of boring and I don’t really have a place for them so they are going here instead of in my main gallery. Reggie Watts stole the show as always, but my old pal Seth Herzog pretty much made the crowd his bitch. Also, Jon Daly did the greatest Bill Cosby imitation since Eddy Murphy’s Raw. Click Bobby’s ball of fire for more.

I go to Invite Them Up nearly every Wednesday. I never take photos though. This was their big 5 year party, so I brought my camera. If you are not in the know, Invite Them Up is a comedy show put on by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. Each show features short sets by up and coming comedians doing their best material, touring comics doing a quick set before their main show, and local established comics doing practice material. After the show they had an auction where they auctioned off weird comedy related items. I won Jon Benjamin’s mustache. I almost won a song about me written by David Wain, but Nick Kroll out bid me… the bastard. Anyway, the show was great, the auction after was bizare, but the party was probably the most fun of the night. Half the comedians in NYC were there. Just to name a few in the photos you had: Eugene and Bobby, Todd Barry, Arj Barker, Michael Showalter, David Wain, Jon Benjamin, John Glaser, Craig Baldo, Morgan Murphy, Seth Herzog, Zak Orth, Kurt and Kristen, Leo Allen and a ton of others that I probably could name if I actually looked at these photos again before I posted them. Fun times. Check out the photos.