Ruff Club at the Annex
May 2, 2008

Last night I had to go to the hospital at a bad time, everyone was away so I went alone to the emergency room. I’m okay now, just some pain that’s not gonna go away anytime soon. I got home after a while and felt miserable til very late at night, and then our neighbors woke me up at 7:30 this morning bounding up and down the stairs carrying load after load of something heavy and banging it all around. I’m achy and running on a tiny bit of sleep, so I am in a pretty shitty mood right now!

This weekend I did another shoot for 410BC, using some models hired from Basic. Everyone was really great to work with and I tried some new things to give it all a different feel from the stuff I normally do. I have a lot more to work on, but here’s a preliminary look:

I also have some actually amazing shots of some friends that I did this weekend. I will work on some today to try and take my mind off things. I’m actually in a really crazy brain mood today, don’t feel like me. Don’t really know what to do with myself.

I’ve started taking vitamins again, only this time I may have gone overboard. That doesn’t mean I’m going to tone it down, though. I like taking a collection of legal pills every day. I know plenty of people downing handfuls of Xanax and Adderall; what harm can a probiotic and some rose hips do me?

There’s the daily Vitamin C, Calcium with Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Iron, and a multi-vitamin. Lately I’ve been getting sore throats in the morning so rather than wait to get really sick I’ve also been taking Echinacea and Zinc. Top it off with Hoodia an hour before meals and Culturelle (“to stimulate the immune system and support overall health and wellness”) in the afternoons, and the odd Ibuprofen here and there, and I am a walking over-the-counter pharmacy. At least there’s no Vicodin in there. I have noticed that my skin seems to be healthier, my verge-of-sickness is already retreating, and various other things seem to be improving. I’ve also been thinking of adding a daily fish oil pill, which helps you Get Ur Omega-3 On; anybody have any advice on that end?

Yesterday I was wearing my new favorite sweater. It’s white with a big Ben Sherman blue and red target on the front. I would very much love to pair my new favorite sweater with my new favorite shoes – those absolutely killer Alexander McQueen for Puma “Scythe” pointy black mids down below – but alas, I don’t yet have them. My birthday is June 15, people. And I am easily e-mailed for chit-chat, shoe size, and mailing address.

It was kinda warm out in the afternoon so I wasn’t wearing a jacket. Kathy and I were leaving Russo’s on 7th Ave in Park Slope – which is our favorite place to buy homemade pasta and crab cakes and bread because everything there is so good and pretty cheap and maybe I have a crush on one of the Italian guys working there – when some young guy passed us and pointed finger guns at me and my target sweater and went “pshooo.” I didn’t know him. Other strangers like to pretend I am a target as well when I wear that sweater. This was one of those times I tried to think about my life prior to New York.

If some dude I didn’t know pointed finger guns at me and made a shooting noise before I moved here from a smaller city, or before that from smaller towns, would I have thought it was as weird as I did yesterday? How is it possible in New York that we both ignore and notice everything? You can be on the subway with a mariachi band playing, some woman screaming at you for quarters, and a guy feeling himself up under a pair of baggy sweatpants… and have no reaction other than to flip the page of that People Magazine like you were sitting in a salon in Westchester. But, without ever having looked up, you can get off that train and detail every piece of clothing the masturbator was wearing when you tell your friend about it later.

Since apparently today is the day that everybody goes crazy over the return of Gossip Girl, I offer you a pure sugar post of photos I took of Chace Crawford, Penn Badgley, and Jessica Szohr last October when they visited Ruff Club.

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Trip to Las Vegas with Geneva, Ultragrrrl, Ollie Stone (The Oohlas), Mark Stoermer (The Killers), and Christian Siriano. Photos from the Planet Hollywood Hotel, the Venetian Hotel, various malls, and Tao beach and night club.
April 10-13, 2008

Club NME at the Annex
April 3, 2008

I shot Sam at Izquierdo Studio, where he works on costumes and elaborate outfits for all sorts of things. Movies, events, the gigantic wings that the models wear for the Victoria’s Secret runways… basically I seem to know more than my share of people who make things that Heidi Klum puts on her body.

As we walked in he told me not to mind Wes Craven, which I took to be a metaphor for all the dark masks and wings all over the walls. But seconds later we were setting stuff down and getting situated in a room where Wes Craven was sitting in the corner, looking over and approving some things for his next project. Kind of humbling to have my rinky-dink little camera and light bulbs on stilts in the presence of a guy known around the world for his cinematics.

My favorites are the first two below. And he’s wearing Tyra’s wings in the last one. They must have some lingering mojo because he sprouted a heavy mane of stick-straight brown extensions and a monster ‘tude the moment the wings touched his body. And no matter what anybody was talking about, he found a way to bring up some unrelated story about himself.

Geneva’s birthday at the Chelsea Hotel, Room 103
April 5, 2008

On Saturday Geneva had her birthday party at the Chelsea Hotel, just a very small group of friends in a big suite. Kai was supposed to come but decided not to on the feeling that something “tragic” was going to happen. Kai, as some of you know, has a history of freaking us all right the fuck out with her accuracy on these sorts of things and her eerily spot-on tarot readings. Still, we went ahead as planned, though Kathy and I didn’t really tell anyone what Kai said until later in the evening. We all sort of assumed we should just keep an eye on Kylene, who has a tendency to wander (which she did for a while, to another floor and another room hosting another party).

More images to come later this week in a full photo post.

Upon check-in we had a last minute room change; they put us in Room 103. Geneva was a bit pissed because it was smaller than the huge suite she originally booked. But this one was still very big and nice: living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, balcony. So our evening went on. The night was very… something, and we all felt very weird all night. I had a good time even if it felt a bit epic because of where we were and all the history of the building. Spent some time taking pictures here and there, some of Kylene in the bathroom.

More images to come later this week in a full photo post.

Today I find out that Room 103 used to be Room 100, which is where Sid killed Nancy. The bed that Anna drew Kylene naked on was the bed that Nancy was stabbed on. The bathroom where I photographed nobody but Kylene, in just a bra, was the bathroom where Nancy’s body was found, in just a bra. We’ve seen police photos, it’s definitely the exact same rooms. Kylene is the same age as Nancy was when she died and they are both from Philadelphia suburbs, transplants from PA to NY at the same time in their lives. There are more parallels.

So I’m thinking that maybe Kai, who is actually weirdly named after the same person that Kylene is named after, had her feelings for a reason and maybe Kylene was fortunate to have left our suite for an hour or two by herself. Either way, it’s somewhat unsettling that they put us in that room and that there are pictures on the internet of Nancy Spungen dead in the bathroom.

The Factory, a night of collaborations by Spirit Music Group, on Park Avenue
March 28, 2008

Stolen Transmission at Hanger Bar
March 28, 2008

I feel like my days don’t belong to me any more! I am so booked and so busy lately I can barely find time to stare at the floor. It’s all a lot of fun, though, so I don’t want to give anything up.

Yesterday I took Sarah with me to Bowery to photograph Beach House before their show. Alex and I went to college together for four years, and he had no clue who I was when I started shooting them. He was like “good to meet you” and I said “we had astronomy together!” Last week my friend Yara had no clue who Kathy was in Opening Ceremony, and we were all in so many classes together. Oberlin’s the size of a refrigerator box. I wanna be like, hello… you may be playing Bowery but I’m more famous than you right here right now in 2008. Are people throwing your name around in US Weekly and role-playing you on Livejournal? Is Saks Fifth Avenue (the one ON Fifth Avenue) staying open after hours so you can shop there? Didn’t think so. But I didn’t say any of that because that’s only funny on the internet and actually I love Alex and Victoria and Beach House in general. They were clearly taking time to do the shoot where there wasn’t much time so I have nothing but ice cream for them. Also, their sound check was just them fucking around and I was still totally entranced.

Click images to see larger

That middle one is my favorite. Victoria is kind of a legend in the making, I think. After Bowery Sarah and I met up with Christian and Nylon Nicole at some small foodery dinery type of location for some strong drinks that fucked me right up and good appetizers that took a long time to arrive. Then we all went to the Nylon 9th Anniversary party, which was nice enough for a little bit until someone opened a side door and a crowd of literally like 100 people bum-rushed their way in and packed it beyond the point of any sane sort of comfort. So we got out of there as soon as possible (though not before I scored some patent white Doc Martens) and met up with Melissa and Justin and JJ and friends at Hiro for some drinks and a bitchy waitress who may have been the black girl from The Craft. We were too late for the Paper party so we just sat around being dumb for a while with alcohol and french fries (Christian), which was clearly the best part of the evening by far. And Justin gave me a big stash of underwear because either 1) he has a huge crush on me and is going to leave Melissa or 2) we’re all stupid and our joined stupidity culminates in a bulk wholesale order of American Apparel underwear that nobody needed. But hey now I’m fresh.

Christian, Melissa, Geneva, Sarah and I are going to Vegas next week. He’s judging Miss USA and then Tao is throwing him a big party that we’re all going to. All the girls and Christian have incredible outfits lined up, and I have nothing. Suggest something. I need to go shopping. Take me shopping. Send me things. I will wear them on Wireimage. SOMEBODY HELP ME!

This is Denis. On Saturday he and some of my friends came over to drink and watch (honest to God) five straight hours of horror/porn film trailers with the soundtrack replaced by my random iPod playlist. I never said I wasn’t completely retarded. But before the night got too old he did some photos upstairs.

Denis doesn’t wear underwear, which I found out when his pants crept low with no sign of any briefs to censor. And since I’m not in the habit of keeping spares in the house that are previously unworn, he had to wear a pair of womens’ underwear branded with “Fatherfucker” that Peaches gave me many years ago. Being made for women, there was not much room in vital areas.

But I liked the stuff we got, especially that one in the middle, the full picture. I think this is finally the point at which I have photographed enough people in my messy bedroom, and maybe I need to paint the walls a new color or find a new place.

Andrew appeared in Diamonds in the Ruff twice, once for dressing well and once for being born well. As it turns out, he knows plenty of people that I know, so it was pretty easy to get in contact with him and ask him to come do a shoot. He did some really amazing photos in shorts atop my laundry machines but upon realization that his friends would crucify him if they hit the web, we decided to save them for the book.

Click to see any of these images larger.

He thinks he doesn’t come out well in photos. I think he came out pretty damn well, what do you think?