So I recently posted about how I took the official Agyness Deyn Wikipedia photo… well I am back and this time I took the photo of my personal hero, Takeru Kobayashi.  I have personally witnessed him break the hot dog eating record in 2004, break it again in 2006, and I finally saw him lose to the great Joey Chestnut.  It was a sad day for Kobayashi, but a great day for America.  Anyway, last year at the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest I had back stage passes and I took a shot of Kobayashi massaging his jaw that he supposedly injured (likely story).  We all knew he was just afraid of  Chestnut and making excuses… but I snapped this shot while he was rubbing his face… I put it on my Flickr account and a Wikipedia editor contacted me and now you can see my photo on the official Takeru Kobayashi Wikipedia page.  I guess Flickr has been good for something.  Hip hip hurray!

During my recent trip to Richmond, VA I got a chance to hang out with Noah Scalin the creator of SkullADay.com, one of my new favorite websites. Noah is creating a new skull every day for an entire year. He makes them out of everything he can find from thread to pop corn to digital illustration. He told me he spends between 4 and 8 hours every day working on his skulls. I first met Noah after he created a video for The Gaskets using only stock footage. He invited the Gaskets and I over to his apartment to show us the video. I remember being very impressed by all the weird amazing things he had in his apartment. After I found out about his site I sent him an email and found out that he had not yet received a copy of the Gaskets DVD I produced which featured his video. So when I was in Richmond this weekend I stopped off quickly to give him a copy of the DVD on my way out of town. Two hours later we had talked about everything from How She Move to turn of the century web design. We talked about fashion merchandising, Planet Of The Apes as social commentary, and how I could get him a real human skull (I know a guy…). At the end of our exhaustive talk I asked Noah if I could photograph him and his skulls. He graciously accepted. I took photos of the skulls he created for the project, the skulls he has collected over the years, and the countless skulls people just keep giving him since he has started this mission.

So check out all the photos of Noah Scalin and his amazing collection of skulls.

With Fleshbot linking me all the time, I might as well return the favor… Okay, maybe it is not quite a favor since they send about 10x the traffic, but still… some disgusting news from Fleshbot.  Evidently there is a Gene Simmons sex tape out.  It features some Australian chick named Elsa with very giant fake boobs.  In the background they are fucking to Foreigner which is probably the best thing about the tape.  Honestly, the only reason I would ever, ever, want to see Gene Simmons in any sort of sex act would be to see what the motherfucker could do with his 10 inch tongue.  She goes down on him, but he doesn’t even have the decency to return the favor.

The videos are originally from a site called Genessecret.com but I can’t the site to load due to bandwidth issues.   You can try that site for your self or you can just watch the Gene Simons sex videos for free on Fleshbot.   Don’t click either of these links if you just ate or are pregnant.  NSFW. Duh.

 This post just evolved from a 5 minute post linking a site, to a long winded tangent about competition in photo blogging and then into three full paragraphs of ass kissing.  Sorry.

I was just talking to someone about how all the top blogs on the internet all link to each other and the community drives the traffic.  When I ran this site back in 2001 I was part of a community of bloggers that were posting weird videos and pictures and stuff.  We were sort of united by the fact that we were doing the whole blog thing before most people.  I got and sent a lot of traffic from a community.  Most of those people quit blogging or turned their sites in to porn sites.  So these days my site most easily falls into the category of a party photo blog although only about 1/3rd of my posts are party pictures.

The problem is there is no photo blogging community.  Everyone seems so competitive.  I get along with all the photographers in NYC, and I think we all get a long, but none of us is doing anything to support the other sites.  And I think people seem to get the idea that we must hate each other because I have people come up to me every day talking shit about other local photographers.  I hate hearing about it, and I rarely comment on this, but it just makes me think about all the shit that is talked about me and my site.  I think it is bullshit.

In the party blog game there are two big sites and everyone else is playing catch up.  And those guys aren’t linking anyone.  I think of all the party sites on the internet the only one who links me is Clayton Hauck and he is based out of Chicago.  (Jess links me, but he is more of a promoter/dj than he is a party photographer.)  Anyway, these sites are just not designed to be part of a web community.  And that is fine, I am not writing this because I want links, I am just pointing out the issues and my desire for some place to belong.  My only community is the adult networks that I have because of some of the Not Safe For Work nature of my site.  And while I appreciate that traffic, that is not quality traffic.  Those people are coming to jerk off, not to dig on my photos or read my shit.  So, I need to find some bloggers to take me under their wing.

Sorry, this has completely gone off topic.  The whole point of this was that I wanted to plug fellow  party blogger Nikola Tamindzic formerly of ambrel.net.  He is getting out of the party game, which in the spirit of aforementioned competition I guess is good for the rest of us since he pretty much murders everyone in the party blog game.  Nikola is a constant inspiration to me and he has started a new site whos RSS feed is now up at the top of my RSS Reader.   Welcome to the new Home Of The Vain.

Nikola has some times been derisive of the “copy cat” photo bloggers out there, and he certainly does not link other sites, but Nikola has always offered advise and support for what I am doing and I recently read an exceedingly long flickr thread about him in which he explained exactly how he does what he does.  He was giving the “copy cats” exactly what they needed to know to rip him off.  He is more than willing to help people take better photos, probably because even if they could do what he does, he could still do it better.

I think that in the year that I have been doing this night life thing I have gone from taking bullshit party photos, to bordering on something artistic.  In the last few months I have really become proud of the work I am doing, but nearly every shot that Nikola posts makes me jealous.  He makes event photography inspiring, he makes sleazy bathroom photography artistic, and I am glad to finally see some of his photos that weren’t taken south of 14th St.

Longest post ever.

Hey guys! How about an advertisement!! I don’t know anything at all about fashion, I pretty much just wear jeans and a t-shirt every day. I mean, I dig on some street wear brands and my Nike high tops, but other than that I am pretty out of it. Fashion week was fun though right? Anyway, what I do know about is that I get a lot of people coming to this website and clicking on links. And that makes people want me to talk about things… Such as Zac Posten’s fashion week show. Evidently I am going to get some free stuff that until 30 minutes ago I didn’t think I needed if I write the following on my blog:

“If you haven’t heard of Zac Posen…wait till you see his fall 2008 line. Hes a NYC based designer who has a whole new take on the fashion industry, his new designs are creative and innovative with a mostly black and white theme.”

“For the full 2008 Fall Fashion Week Line click here“

Now, I am not sure what that means, but I am positive it is true. The guy who is giving me stuff would not lie to me. I mean who can put a price on things you don’t really want right? I could put a price on ad space on this site though… if any one is interested.

Anyway, I at least think these clothes are pretty fun. I would probably hit on a girl who was wearing this… or at least take her picture…

I was thinking about calling this post The Death Of An Icon, or The Death Of The American Dream.  Because that’s what this is.  Polaroid has stopped making… Polaroids.  Wtf?  Even if they are not making a lot of money on the product, the brand recognition is so important.  I can’t imagine there loss or revenue that would be caused by the loss of the film and the loss of the word Polaroid in modern parlance.   Anyway, the NY Times article about it suggests that they are going to try to sell off the rights to their instant film line so that maybe someone will pick up the ball they dropped and run with it.

Anyway, anything I can say was probably better said by my friend Joanna on her blog entry that first notified me of this travesty.   So just read her post.

I have been working on my Polaroid Project(NSFW) for 8 years now that involves over 150 girls and I am currently working on turning it into a book.  I guess this death of Polaroids is a fitting place to stop the collection and put out the book.   I just shot a full roll or Polaroids yesterday… this can’t be over.

I actually really want to document all of my shoes with Polaroid film… Check out my first attempt below.

Two days ago I got an email from Wikipedia saying they did not have a photo of model Agyness Deyn that they could use for her Wikipedia entry. They saw that some of my Flickr photos have Creative Commons licenses but for Non-Commercial use. The can’t use those Creative Commons licenses so they asked for permission to use the photo or change the license. Since I am pretty much in love with Wikipedia I of course gave them permission and I am pretty excited to say I now have my third reference on the Wiki (reference one and two). Anyway, coincidentally last night she was at Happy Endings DJing with Jackson so I got to talk to her and tell her about her Wiki page. I think she was pretty amused. You can see my new photos of her in the above post, and the Wiki photo below.

I was browsing Boing Boing today and I came across this page that linked a number YouTube videos that featured little kids teaching other little kids how to cheat.  They are pretty friggin’ adorable.  There are some pretty good tricks, but no one talked about this trick that I came up with when I was in the seventh or eighth grade to cheat on Spanish tests.  I did reasonably well in school except in Spanish.  I just could not speak a fucking word of it, and I still can’t.  Now that I live in a Dominican neighborhood I wish I learned a little bit more, but I was pretty much doomed from the start.   What I want to know is did anyone else every do this rubber band trick?  I came up with it, but I am sure someone else much have come up with it to.  It is pretty brilliant.  Check out my instructional video below.

PS. This post is dedicated to Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots… The biggest cheaters in the NFL… Go Giants!

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

The Infertil have a myspace page.  In 1995 I went to a house party and saw this pretty horrible band called the Infertil.  I ran the punk rock club in my high school and I had a punk rock zine, but I didn’t know very many punk bands, so when it came to putting out my first compilation record I asked these guys to be on it.  In the time between when I first saw them, and when the record (Raise The Flag, harDCcore Vol 1.) came out they got fucking awesome. They were from my town of Alexandria, VA and I repped them to the fullest.  AV 4 Life.  Anyway, these dudes were awesome and I used to go to all of their shows.  Some of the first photos I ever took were of these guys.  The below photo for example was a show where someone spit on one of them and a huge brawl broke out.  What you can’t see in this photo is that I am kicking a guy in the head while I am taking this photo.  Download Misfire today!

The Infertil – Misfire