So once again, I need an intern.  I have a bunch of random stuff I need help with, but I really need an intern to help me with the web store I plan on opening soon.  I have a few projects that are hopefully all going to happen around the 9th anniversary of Driven By Boredom on March 1st.  I am hopefully going to be out of town a lot in March and April as well so I will need help holding down the fort. I also am planning an event for late May so I might get really busy in May as well.

So I am looking for someone who can commit on average 10 hours a week through the end of May.  I know it is cutting it close, but I am pretty sure we can hook you up with college credit if you can figure that out with your school.  I know when I did my internship I had to have done a certain amount of hours and I can make sure you get that.

This is not a photography internship. Once in a while I might need help on a shoot, but for the most part it has nothing to do with photography. I am looking for people who are interested in marketing, specifically web marketing.  I want someone who spends a lot of time online and is comfortable with social networking and really basic html.  People with experience in web design/coding with experience in Word Press would be a bonus but that’s not required.  The job can mostly be done from home, except that once in a while I might need film picked up or something like that. The one thing I hopefully will need the most help with though is mailing shit.  Starting mid Feb I plan on opening a web store. I have shirts, tote bags, prints and some other random shit that I will be selling and I need someone to be in charge of making sure people get their shwag. I figure a post office run once or twice a week should be enough, but it also involves packaging and labeling and all that fun stuff.

There will be some benefits, particularly if you are over 21 (or at least have a reliable ID) as far as getting guest listed to parties and the occasional drink ticket if you feel like coming out with me. With a few exceptions I won’t need you at clubs, but if you want to come out for fun we can make that happen.

Lastly and most importantly, I have had a lot of problems with interns in the past and I need someone responsible and without substance abuse problems. Two of my 4 previous interns ended up totally screwing me over because of their drug problems and I cannot have that happen again. Seriously, if you have a $100 a day coke habit do not fucking email me. I will find out.

Okay, if you are interested in this internship, and you think you can manage to do this without disappearing or fucking up my business, please send an email to igor@drivenbyboredom.com.  If you have a resume that’s great, if not, just tell me about yourself and send me a Facebook link. If you don’t use Facebook, this is probably not the job for you. There will be some tedious bullshit work but will make this job as fun for you as possible.

And for the 99% of people out there who don’t want to be my intern and are viewing this post as a waste of time, enjoy these cute puppies:

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

I am not going to do any top 10 lists or decade wrap ups or anything like that, but I think I should have a post or so looking back to where my life was 10 years ago.  I was in college at Penn State. I hated it. I was this punk rock kid but all my friends were ravers in the mid-late 90’s DC club scene.  I went to two parties that night a hotel party and a hose party at a spot called the Crack House.  I didn’t drink or do drugs so I was responsible for driving people around.  I also was really into wrestling for some reason.  I have a bunch of footage from that night, but the only thing I have online is this video of me and my friend Dylan wrestling at the hotel party.  I am pretty sure this was at like 10 PM, because I know I spent midnight and most of the night at the Crack House.  I think the most embarrassing thing about that era of my life was bad pants choices. Despite my punk rockness at some point after 1999 I started wearing raver pants. In the vid I am wearing ice camo which was made popular by this local punk band called the Infertil but in the context of the rest of the party they look pretty ravetastic.  Over the next year or two I bought at least one pair of JNCO’s and at least one pair of UFO’s.  Mistakes were made.

Once for Halloween I went as myself in 2000. I wore JNCO’s and the unfortunately tight He-man ringer tee that I am wearing in this video.  I also rocked SOAP shoes and a jacket with flames on it. It is almost too bad Y2K didn’t destroy me then…

Anyway, watch this stupid video of me wrasslin’ to rave beepin’ and then let’s hope that I don’t look back at my life 10 years ago and have the same regrets I do now.  Let’s hope the regrets are much much worse. Go out and kill tonight.  I’ll be the belligerently drunk guy waving glo sticks like it’s 1999.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Iye4sQ8s6A[/youtube]

Not sure how I managed to forget to update for 3 days. Its Christmas and I was busy. Now I am in DC and I might not get a lot done but I will give you some videos real quick and try to do a real update or two by tomorrow.All of these videos are from Greg Rutter’s Definitive List Of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On Ther Internet Unless You’re A Loser Or Old Or Something.  I had seen 95% of these but there were a few new treasures. All of the below videos are old favorites except for the top video which is pretty much my new favorite viral video ever.  The last one is pretty long but worth watching all the way through if you haven’t see it before. Enjoy them all and happy holidays.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQ6LeKwHNI[/youtube]

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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM[/youtube]

For the last two days, for whatever reason, I left my apartment intending on taking pictures of something. I failed both nights in a row.  My motivation for taking party pictures that I am not getting paid to take is probably the lowest it has ever been.  So hire me already so I can have a reason to blog about your parties… I need to be shooting more than twice a week.

Around 2am last night my phone died so I decided to go home.  I can’t really deal mentally without having my phone on me at all times because it seems whenever I don’t have it some how I miss a dead line or some crazy happening. Or maybe it’s just my OCD acting up again. On my way home I stopped in the Skinny for a few minutes to say hi to people at the Atomic X party which used to be at Beauty Bar on Wednesdays.  They played 5 Beatles songs in a row so I ended up staying for slightly longer than I planned to. The gimmick to that party is that they give away free candy and I was sitting at the bar shoving Swedish Fish in my mouth like I was a gummi grizzly bear. That’s when it happened. I picked up a bag of fish with only two fish in it. Two fish!! I call Shenanigans on that! You can imagine my outrage.  Yes, admittedly the fish were free, and admittedly there were plenty more bags of fish in the candy bowl, but this is America and I don’t have to stand for no Shenanigans!

I decided to write a letter to the makers of Swedish Fish, Cadbury Adams. Please enjoy.

And yes, I actually did send it.

As I desperately try to get pictures from DC uploaded I wanted to talk to you guys about some ideas I had and get some feedback if possible. Besides, I wanted to get something up for you before I went out for the night in the likely event that these photos won’t be uploaded in the next half hour or so.

My first thought is that shooting sexy naked photos is boring. I want to do some funny stuff. All the nude photography I like is either really high production and glossy or really funny. And since I have zero interest in shooting anything glossy, I wanna shoot more funny stuff. I posted an idea on my twitter about shooting someone naked wearing a hamburger costume. And while the reality of wearing a costume and being naked seems challenging I got a lot of positive responses to the premise. So if anyone has any ideas and/or feels like getting naked to make those ideas let me know. I would be open to shooting dudes for this. My attempts at making people look sexy are 65% fail.

Speaking of dudes, I really need to do some portrait work for my portfolio that isn’t of naked girls so if you are a DJ or an actor or something I will shoot press photos really cheaply right now. I probably won’t do anything free unless you have access to a really great location, are super weird looking or have an amazing concept that can be set up without me having to do any work, but I will shoot you for less than I will shoot your party. Hit me up.

Lastly I wanted to talk to you about trying to do a photo of the month thing. I have a lot of more fine art geared work that no one sees. I shoot more than a roll of week of 35mm stuff that I haven’t put online. I want to turn that stuff into a show or a book or something. I would like to share some of it and I had an idea. I have sold some of my prints in the $200 range, which is not terribly expensive, but out of most of my friends budgets. I wanted to do something affordable and collectable. I feel like one of my biggest regrets in college was not collecting more of my friends art. I have had tons of friends become very successful in some way or another and getting talented young artists work seems like a good investment. Now, I am neither young or particularly talented, but I do get a ton of traffic and I have taken a lot of photos of a lot of famous people and maybe one day in 30 years I will have a book out with photos of people from the turn of the century and people will be some how interested and copies of my prints will be worth as much as dozens of dollars and you will have one because you read this very post.

In all seriousness, the idea is that every month for 6 months I will print one of my 35mm photos at 11×14 signed and numbered out of 25 and sell it for $50. It is a pretty reasonable price I think. This stuff is not going to be party photos or anything, I think I will mostly focus on my street photography work. Now before I do any printing I want to gauge the interest in these photos. I want to know how many people would likely buy one print and who would likely buy multiple prints. In a perfect world I would be to find 10 people who would commit to buy all 6 images. For this I would offer free shipping and a 7th print numbered out of only 10. If I could get 10 people to pay $300 each up front I could easily do these print runs. So please send me an email at igor@drivenbyboredom.com and let me know what you think. Ultimately I would love to have a new print available every month but I have no idea what the demand is.

Below is the first photo that I want to print for my picture of the month series. It is a photo of kids playing in the fire hydrant on the corner of my street in Brooklyn two summers ago. Let me know if you would pay $50 for a art quality signed print of it. Feedback would mean a lot. Thanks.

So normally I wouldn’t just copy and paste a press release, but I am on vacation and this is important. I know most of the readers of this site aren’t from Philly, but one of my favorite establishments is facing some problems and they are staging a series of events to reopen. If you are a fan of film or music or culture you could think about donating, even if you might never get a chance to visit. If you live in Philly you should do everything in your power to make it out to one of these events. The show tonight seems completely insane. Click below to read the press release.

(Read the article)

As you may know, I am back in NYC at last. And what you may also know, if you keep up with my Twitter, is that whilst I was in South Florida I attempted a gastronomic feat that only four men had ever succeeded in. I tried to take down “The Beast”.  The Beast is a giant cheeseburger that is served at a sports bar near Ft. Lauderdale called Bokampers.  I went there with some of my fellow Miami Dolphins fans to watch the Sunday night football game and celebrate the Dolphins victory earlier in the day. As soon as I saw the Beast on the menu I know I had to take it down.  The Beast consists of 3lbs of hamburger, 4 eggs, 8 strips of bacon, 4 slices of American cheese and an entire loaf of bread for the bun.  It cost’s $30 but if you eat it all in under an hour you get it for free.  You also get your picture on the wall.  Out of around 80 attempts, only four people made the wall.

I ate the eggs first and then ate the meat by itself with a fork and knife. I had my doubts when I saw how big it was, but I was crusin. After 25 minutes all the meat and eggs were gone.  The giant loaf of bread was all that stood between me and immortality.  I was pretty full by this time and didn’t think I had much of a chance, but I was balling up the bread and dipping it in water and it was going down pretty well.  I got up to take a piss and when I came back I knew I had this thing beat.  10 minutes later I wasn’t so sure. I still had nearly 20 minutes left, but I just couldn’t eat it fast enough. Food would just not go down.  The area just below my chest had puffed out in a quite inhuman manor. Everything tasted different. The texture of the soggy bread was suddenly unbearable. I was in trouble.  When there was only 5 minutes left everyone was gathered around me chanting. The manager came over.  I knew if I got close enough I could just shove the rest of the bread in my mouth.  I only had a little bit left.  I tried to just swallow what I had in my mouth. I took another bite.  With 2 minutes left and what amounted a slice of bread left I got dizzy. I collapsed on the table and pushed the plate away knocking over my water glasses in the process. I spit the bit I had into a napkin and fell to the floor trying not to puke. At this I failed. As they say in the competitive eating world, I had a reversal of fortune.
We were on a deck outside so I pulled myself up, got to the edge of the deck and puked over it. Because I had been eating nothing but bread and water for the last thirty minutes, my vomit was nothing but a thick tube of soggy bread.  It was like puking several rolls of raw cookie dough. It almost felt like I took a shit out of my mouth and it was nearly as gratifying. I immediately sat down and finished my bread. Everyone around me was horrified. Most of them had scattered. My friend Michelle was hiding in the next room. I had been defeated.

The next 30 hours I felt as horrible I could possibly feel. I thought I was going to pop. I could barely sleep and  the plane ride home was horrible. I still don’t feel great and I have been popping Tums like they were candy. Still, next year when I go back to Florida, I am going to try again.  As my friend told me right afterwards, The Beast is my Apolo Creed, and Rocky will have his day.  See you, next year, beast.

I am back. Did you miss me? I was in DC for a few days getting new sleeping pills, returning my parents car and having awkward adventures with strippers. Since I last rapped at ya I have also solved some mysteries, broke my phone and spent an afternoon interviewing homeless people about what they are doing to save the environment.

So where to begin?

Let’s start with the strippers.  I didn’t have any plans for my trip to DC, but I had to be there on Wednesday for a doctors appointment so I could get more sleeping pills.  My brother also has my parents car so I was driving that back.  I left NYC Tuesday night and was getting close to DC around 11. I sent a few texts out but hadn’t heard from anyone.  My friend Nikita (You can tell she is a stripper already…) finally texted me back. She used to be a Burning Angel but since I saw her last she got giant fake boobs and a neon orange spay on tan.  She told me her and her sister (also a stripper) were hanging out at some club in DC with some dudes who were buying them bottles. This didn’t seem like my scene, but I had nothing else to do, and this seemed completely weird. When I got to the club the bouncer seemed confused to why a white dude in skinny jeans would be at his club, but I texted Nikita and the manager came out and walked me in. He said, when you get up the stairs their table is on the left, you can’t miss them.

There were a few reasons why I couldn’t miss them.  To start with the four of them were the only white people in the whole place.  I am not sure this would have been quite as noticeable if the girls were not dancing on the table drinking champagne out of the bottle. On top of that, the guys they were with were the most stereotypical bros ever. They were both wearing the exact same clothes: jeans, leather shoes and black button ups with some sort of glittery illustration on the back. They pretty much ignored me all night.  My friend Nikita kept whispering in my ear about how big of douche bags these guys were and how they were just using them for free booze. I just sort of sat there and took the whole thing.  The girls would try to dance on me, and the bros would look pissed, so I sort of sat to myself just listening to the music and watching everyone in the club.  It was nice to just get to relax and not take photos for a change and watching these guys flirt with the stripper sisters and think they were going to get laid was priceless.  Everyone was wasted but me so Nikita asked me if I would drive them home so they could avoid these guys and the DUI waiting to happen.

At some point in the night, probably during a Jay Z song since all they played was Jay Z and Lil Wayne, some guy at the club saw Nikita dancing and walked over like he was going to smack her ass.  He was just trying to impress his friends and I thought it was really funny so I grabbed Nikita and got her to let him smack her ass.  All of his friends took photos. I talked to his crew for a second and around last call they came back over to our booth. The girls demanded the guys buy them shots and when they wouldn’t she started making fun of their clothes and started calling them out for being broke.  The bros we were with decided they should step in which caused an altercation that required bouncers to break it up.  There were a lot of threats and we ended up having to stay in the club after it was closed so we wouldn’t get jumped outside. While we were waiting I pulled out my camera and took photos of the girls flashing the bouncers and climbing all over everything in the bar. One of the bar backs pulled off his pants and was chasing the girls around. It was pretty amusing. I was asked not to post any of the pictures, so unfortunately I can’t.

Once the coast was clear and the $400 bill was paid it got really awkward. From the beginning these guys were not happy that I had joined their party. They thought I was cock blocking them.  Little did they know that they had no chance anyway. Nikita thought they were douche bags and her sister is engaged.  These guys were completely wasted and the started calling me Eye Ball because I was wearing my Mishka Keep Watch jacket. When they went to pull around their car (It was completely pouring raining out) the girls told me they were coming with me.  They told the guys to meet us at some IHOP in Virginia about 20 minutes South of the city. These bros were pissed that they were going with me, but they said they would give us a ride to my car.  When I got in their SUV they were blasting some horrible Euro house CD at top volume. There were beer cans at my feet and they had snuck half a bottle of champagne out of the club and it was now in their cup holder. I tried to explain where my car was but they were belligerently wasted at this point. The guy slammed the car in reverse and the car jumped the curb and nearly crashed into the club.  He mashed it into drive and the car just stalled which is pretty hard to do in an automatic.  He slammed on the gas, swerved across the road and nearly passed the turn when I screamed at him to turn right. He did but not before nearly crashing into a pick up truck. He was inches away from it and parked diagonally in the street.  When we got out he sped down the street, ran a red light and busted a U-Turn in the middle of an intersection came back the opposite way towards us up a one way street and disappeared. I  said something about him getting arrested for drunk driving at which point I found out that he was a cop.  Holy shit.

After all that the night ended pretty anti-climatically. We went to IHOP. The dudes never showed up. Nikita’s sister started smoking inside, flashed the waiter and I had an egg nog pancake. I drove them home and ended up stuck in 90 minutes of early morning rush hour traffic headed back towards DC.

Since that story took way longer than I meant it to, I am going to save my homeless interview story for another time. The long-short of it is that I am working on some article for Vice about the people who collect bottles and cans out of the trash to get the recycling deposits. I hope it turns out well.  Anyway, I have a crazy week a head of me so if it is a bit slow around here I apologize. I will do my best to keep you entertained.  I’m going to go now, and just leave you with that story.  Okay fine, I can’t do that… I will give you one picture, but be warned, it’s pretty tame.

Several months ago I stumbled upon this website called SEND ME YOUR HEAD. The site is very simple, this woman Karen Schmidt is painting tons and tons of 3 inch by 3 inch portraits from photos. She puts up a portrait nearly every day and is asking people to send in photos so she can paint your head. Her work is great and I really liked the project so I sent her a picture of my 91 year old grandmother Josephine.  Months later I got an email from Karen letting me know that she had finally painted my grandma. I think the painting is awesome, and so should you.  Check it out below and then go to the site and send in your own photos to get painted.  I don’t see how you have any other choice.