Actors Jamyl Dobson and Jessica Afton. Photo by Kristina Williamson

On Tuesday afternoon, in the conference room of Bed-Stuy’s Interfaith Medical Center, a bronze-horned phonograph released the sultry purr of a female vocalist. The powerful voice beckoned the hospital staff, patients, and local residents, who all hustled to grab a seat. The hospital, which is facing imminent closure due to a lack of funds, had a full house by the time the free performance of Edward Albee's The Death of Bessie Smith, staged by New Brooklyn Theater, began.

New Brooklyn's chairman, Jeff Strabone, said the site-specific staging of the absurdist drama, which is set in a segregated hospital, is meant “to provoke a conversation about race, class, and healthcare.”

According to the popular legend upon which Edward Albee's script is based, the Empress of the Blues died needlessly near Memphis, Tennessee, in 1937, after she was denied medical treatment at a whites-only hospital following an automobile accident. The doctor who treated her by the side of Route 61 that day later disputed the tale, saying that Bessie's crushed body was in fact taken to a black hospital. In present day Bed-Stuy—a neighborhood more famous for producing hip-hop stars like Foxy Brown than blues crooners—the Caribbean and African-American community have found an apt metaphor for their fight to save Interfaith in the myth surrounding the Bessie’s demise.

“Bessie Smith represents Bedford-Stuyvesant,” said Walter Mosley, the neighborhood's state assemblyman, after watching a matinee performance last Sunday. He compared the denial of treatment the singer receives in the play to a rebuttal of funds from New York State authorities that has left Interfaith teetering on the brink of closure.

“We experience disproportionately high rates of heart disease, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, asthma, childhood obesity, and HIV infection,” said Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. Earlier on Tuesday, Hakeem supported Walter Mosley at a press conference. Together, they called on the state's Health Department to put more sugar in Interfaith's bowl and release a promised $350 million without which the deficit-burdened hospital will close by the end of January. “What we need in this community is more healthcare not less healthcare,” he said.

While a theatrical drama unfolded within Interfaith's conference room, a real life drama was taking place in the neighboring cafeteria. A coalition of patients and staff met to discuss the hospital’s impending bankruptcy hearing. Sounds of the activists' heated discussions occasionally spilled through the walls where a black hospital orderly, played by Jamyl Dobson, soliloquized, “There are some people who believe in more than just promises. There are some people who believe in action.”

One such person of action is Sharonnie Perry, a life long Bed-Stuy resident who was born at Interfaith 59 years ago. Two days earlier, when word came down that Interfaith's CEO, Patrick Sullivan, had given the order to divert ambulances from the hospital and shutdown the emergency room, Sharonnie led a delegation of 250 people over to CEO's office.

“Sullivan locked himself inside,” she recounted. The cops turned up but the crowd, led by Sharonnie, rebuked calls to disperse, laying siege to the CEO's door in a stand-off that lasted into the evening.

“When he refused to change his mind, we put the pressure on the board of trustees,” said Sharonnie. “We called them up and told them 'You have to get rid of him.' The trustees held a conference call and decided to fire him.” In the end, Patrick, not the demonstrators, was led out of the building by police. As he passed by, Sharonnie said she told the CEO not to take it personal. “It’s business,” she said.

A fierce resistance from the likes of Sharonnie and her cohorts, aided by unions representing nurses and staff who have provided funds and legal representation, has so far kept Interfaith on life support. If Interfaith closes, it will be another blow to Bed-Stuy, which has seen many of its longtime residents pushed out through gentrification, while those who remain complain of the same lack of decent schools and employment facing many urban communities of color in America.

The Death of Bessie Smith has helped put the struggle within a moral and spiritual context, as well as provided activists a chance to talk to members of the community whom they might not have met had the play not peaked local curiosity. However, they're hoping their drama, unlike Albee's play, ends in resurrection rather than death.

As for the thespians, New Brooklyn Chairman, Jeff Strabone, said that over the course of staging the play, the company has formed a strong bond with hospital staff and neighborhood activists. “We will remain in this building until they turn the lights out.”

@JohnReedsTomb

Lord Byron’s use of ottava rima—a form of poetry with an ABABABCC rhyming pattern—in his mock-epic poem Don Juan stems from his belief to deliver seriocomic material. The poem builds up content, alternating rhyming lines then cinches with a facetious end. Byron first used ottava rima in 1817 for Beppo: A Venetian Story—a good match for the extensive and quasi-exotic love story. So, it’s natural that he took up the same seriocomic tone of the ottava rima a year later, when he wanted to satirize Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey forms that he had just been using. Eventually this project turned into his long satiric poem Don Juan, a long and erotic adventure tale told in 17 sections. Regardless of how or why Byron decided on ottava rima for Don Juan, the form undoubtedly influenced the poem's content through tone, pace, and lineation. 

For a poem, Don Juan is a new approach to content, breadth, and action. In his essay, “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel,” Bakhtin claimed that all forms of literature look forward to the novel and that in times when “the novel reigns supreme, almost all the remaining genres are to a greater or lesser extent novelized.” In drama, examples include Henrik Ibsen, Richard Hauptmann, the entirety of Naturalist drama, and epic poetry like Childe Harolde and Lord Byron’s Don Juan.”

Don Juan is told in third person, and unlike lyric poetry that delves into the inner life of the protagonist, there is little concern for that. The poem is also highly visual and plot-driven. In fact, reading Don Juan as opposed to Childe Harolde is more enjoyable, because the visuals are concrete and rich, and are connected with a strong plot through lines.

In the 1986/87 limited series comic book Watchmen there is a comic within the comic that relates the story of a shipwrecked man whose crew has been murdered by pirates. He must now make it back to his home before the pirates get there and do more damage. The journey he takes is similar in many aspects to the boat section in the Second Canto of Don Juan, but the form is different and thus changes the inflection of the content. Let’s compare sections of Watchmen and the ottava rima of the poem Don Juan, to see how these two adjuncts of the novel work on the material in different ways.

Lord Bryon appropriated true accounts of shipwrecks into the cannibalism episode of the boat section of Don Juan. The use of ottava rima transforms the non-fiction account and Byron’s fictional verse. Like, this passage:

He requested to be bled to death, the surgeonbeing with them, and have in his case of instruments in his pocket when he quitted the vessel. – (“Sufferings of the Crew of the Thomas,” Shipwrecks, etc.)

The rhyme scheme ultimately diverts your attention from the savage account of the cannibalism and turns it into a fun, adventure tale. A handful of stanzas after the his tutor, Pedrillo, is gently put down by the surgeon, he is revealed as a cannibal concerned solely with his own welfare: he sucks the blood straight from Pedrillo’s open veins. The reader can swallow this murderous and bestial act, only because Byron uses the verse and his ironic tone:

The surgeon, as there was no other fee,
Had his first choice of morsels for his pains;
But being thirstiest at the moment, he
Preferred a draught from the fast-flowing veins;
Part was divided, part thrown into the sea,
And such things as the entrails and the brains
Regaled two sharks, who followed o’er the billow –
The Sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo.

The surgeon doesn’t suck another man’s blood; he “Preferred a draught from the fast-flowing veins,” as if he is drinking life-giving manna from a long sought spring. The “fast-flowing” description gives a true sense of the graphic extremity of the scene: a man was slicked open in front of a flesh-hungry crowd, but everything else in the description works against this horror. The entrails and the brains are removed, which would seem much more gruesome if the entrails had not “regaled two sharks,” as if the sharks are just part of the feast. He equates the viciousness of the sharks with the viciousness of the shipmates, but it is all glossed through a faux-civilized diction so it becomes comedic and entertaining.

Finally, the destruction and rabid consumption of the tutor is turned into a joke by the sing-songy conclusion of the stanza: “Who followed over the billow - / The Sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo.”  The repeated double “l” and “o” rhyme sounds capricious and innocuous. This whimsical touch afforded by the concluding couplet of the ottava rima makes the consumption of another man—an act that could be made into the most gruesome scene—a delicious conclusion for the reader.

Similarly, a scene from Watchmen presents cannibalism with different infliction drives the same feeling. Like Don Juan, the reader encounters corpses in the first few panels, but there is an actual visual: the dead limbs are drawn for us. But they are drawn in a comic-book style; they are green and not photo realistic, even though there is enough detail to suggest decay. Thus, the text doesn’t carry the burden to describe the gruesomeness of the scene. The text also doesn’t need to provide a comedic undertone to make the images more tasteful, because the comic book sheen allows the reader to engage without getting neauseous. Thus, the text can actually be more earnest:

Occasionally, I would pause in my work, entranced by the startling beauty of a tattoo or the enigma of an old scar.

The man ties corpses in order to float a raft, a scene that would make a human vomit in reality, but in this presentation it is as readable as Don Juan. The mitigating factor here is the comic-book style. You could say that the drawing style is the seriocomic aspect of this piece because it is depicting serious imagery in a cartoonish tone—albeit a mature and graphic one. It could be argued that actually the mature comic-book drawing style here is working in an the opposite direction to Byron’s use of a light style, because the artist Dave Gibbons depicts the scenes with exaggerated gruesomeness (for example the bodies are green). But this exaggeration is actually a way to incorporate the material in an entertaining that’s easy to digest. The subplot has its own style: exaggerated colors, heavy contrast, sparser narrative packed with more hot points of horror than the main narrative of Watchmen. Like CSI and other police-crime shows, the ostensibly gruesome depiction of corpses in this comic book makes the subject matter palatable and entertaining by exaggerating it. If shown in the stark light of reality, say a newspaper, the reader would feel differently. 

Now that we are in a world where cinema and video can capture moving photographic images we are used to narrative feeling more like life. Watching film we are even less dependent on the imagination to provide images that the text of a poem might prompt or the preceding and following moments that a sculpture might imply; movies can give everything, or at least they can give the impression of everything. 

Bakhtin states,

Those genres that stubbornly preserve their old canonic nature begin to appear stylized. In general any strict adherence to a genre begins to feel like a stylization, a stylization taken to the point of parody ...in an environment where the novel is the dominant genre, the conventional languages of strictly canonical genres begin to sound in new ways, which are quite different from the ways they sounded in those eras when the novel was not included in “high” literature. 

If this comparative effect made Don Juan look stylized in the 19th century, then cinema and video have made it look antique. Movies have made comics and even realistic sculpture look cartoonish. At this stage of cultural development, style—or anything that Bakhtin might categorize as not having the novelistic fluidity of form capable of grasping all aspects of life—can be used to combat realistic depiction. Style is aware of itself because technology has made the capturing of reality accessible to anyone.

Comic books and novels have become even more experimental than Bakhtin could have imagined because of video and hypertext capabilities. Text remains more realistic and moving than film, because our imaginations are more vivid than anything. As films depend more on special effects and take us further into fantasy, the images that literature can evoke in the mind seem more and more “real.” 

Below I have depicted the cannibal episode and the shark episode in a vintage comic-book aesthetic. The ottava rima is gone but the events of the episode remain the same. The adventure tale now plays for an audience that appreciates clever immature drawings, because it recalls something of their own lifestyle—even if the events depicted are from a different era. The pictures depict the gruesomeness of the scenes but the characters are cartoonish so the images won’t incite any psychosomatic reactions as a movie might (I witnessed several people pass out in screenings of 127 Hours when my character simply cut his arm off.  Because it was depicted with heightened realism—close shots, an energetic score, and lots of fake blood—it made an impression as if it were really happening, imagine the reactions to a man’s entire body cut open and devoured if it were shot in a comparable way).

Here the irony is heavy because the form and style are foregrounded.  The figures are comedic because there is an obvious attempt to make draw them imperfectly—and even a little silly. The style gives a different color to the sequence: it’s ironic and jaded  But I suppose that is the same affect Byron was attempting by writing in ottava rima back in the day.  

Photos by Andrew Stanbridge

The Buddhist monk many people hold responsible for Myanmar riots that have killed hundreds of Muslims and displaced thousands more is sitting in front of me, calmly sipping a fruit shake. His name is Ashin Wirathu, and he’s telling VICE News that he is entirely dedicated to peaceful coexistence with the Muslim minority he has so often preached against. “I’m educating people not to launch counterattacks [against the Muslims],” he begins, “and preaching to them to live peacefully with people of different faiths.” He takes another sip of shake.

Wirathu has just finished a sermon at the sprawling Masoeyein monastery—home to more than 2,500 monks—he heads in Mandalay, the country's second-largest city. Hundreds of men clad in orange and maroon robes walk the grounds, their occasional chanting reverberating around the small, wood-paneled room that serves as Wirathu's office. Just outside the door, several monks gather to read a large collection of newspapers. Apparently, Ashin Wirathu understands the power of the press.

In fact, when I meet him in late August, he is already well-versed in dealing with the international media. Though supposedly a tough interview to get, nearly every journalist I know who has tried to speak to Wirathu has succeeded. A local fixer, hesitant to promise he could arrange an interview, was able to secure one for VICE News in a single day. As I leave Wirathu’s office and walk past the mass of monks reading the papers, another journalist makes her way inside.

Though Wirathu often claims that his message is misrepresented in the press, he seems quite pleased both with the attention he has received from the international media, and with the fact that he has become a symbol for Buddhist chauvinism. He even makes frequent jokes about Hannah Beech, the journalist who wrote a June 2013 cover story for Time in which she called Wirathu the “face of Buddhist terror.” He later posted an admonishment that reads kind of like a love letter from a jilted lover.

As we begin the interview, two of Wirathu’s monks point video cameras at us. Many people say this kind of behavior is meant to be a form of intimidation, but it feels to me more like a reality show. Our translator, a local Buddhist who disagrees with Wirathu, nevertheless appears reverent in the monk’s presence, and I’m not sure why. It may simply be because of the respect typically given to a Buddhist monk in this country. Or it may be due to fear.

Sitting in front of a wall covered with photos of himself, Wirathu, who has been dubbed the “Burmese bin Laden,” makes sure that I am served hibiscus tea and a plate of fresh melon before we begin. Though he is soft spoken and quick with a laugh, human rights groups say he has the potential to tear Myanmar, the southeast Asian country many refer to as Burma,  apart and stall the country’s tentative transition to democracy.

969 Problems

Last week, Wirathu organized a conference in Mandalay for thousands of monks from all over Myanmar. His mission: to rally support for his proposed "Law for the Protection of Race, Religion, and Language." The law would require any Buddhist woman who wants to marry a Muslim to receive permission from her parents and local government officials. It would also require any Muslim man who marries a Buddhist to convert to Buddhism. If not adhered to, the groom could face up to 10 years in jail and the loss of his property. Human Rights Watch reports that Lower House representative Thein Nyunt is expected to submit the amendment to parliament.

Wirathu and his followers in the grassroots nationalist Buddhist group he leads, known as the 969 Movement, believe that Myanmar is under threat from what they claim is a dangerous, rapidly growing Muslim population. (The country is about 90 percent Buddhist.) They blame this growth on illegal immigration from Bangladesh and high birthrates. During his virulent anti-Islam sermons, Wirathu often describes Muslims as tireless proselytizers looking to take over Buddhist land with force or money, and displays graphic images of Buddhists killed by Muslims in southern Thailand and other areas of the world.

In Myanmar, where up until recently all forms of media were heavily censored, Wirathu’s sermons have become viral sensations, quickly spreading all over the country and accepted by some as gospel truth.

“Wirathu and the 969 Movement have drastically increased tensions between Muslims and Buddhists,” says Bill Davis of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Davis is the author of numerous reports on the violence in Myanmar, and the former head of PHR’s Burma project. “Violence against Muslims in Burma took place before Wirathu, but his speeches are contributing to the anti-Muslim sentiment resurfacing across the country.”

Last week, harrowing reports of violence against the long-oppressed Muslim Rohingya minority, including massacres and mutilations of women and children, emerged from the restricted district of Maungdaw. Chris Lewa of the Arakan project, a human rights group that documents abuses against the Rohingya, said members of the 969 Movement had toured the area a month before, calling for the expulsion of Rohingya Muslims.

Sporadic outbreaks of anti-Muslim mob violence in Myanmar began in 2012, not long after the new quasi-civilian government took power and eased the military junta’s restrictions on free speech. Violence first broke out in the southwestern state of Rakhine, but it eventually spread throughout the country. The rampages are often triggered by arguments or crimes involving individual Buddhists and Muslims, which then quickly spiral out of control.

While tensions go back generations in areas like Rakhine, the recent spate of violence against Muslims prompted Physicians for Human Rights to declare that, “If these conditions go unaddressed, Burma may very well face countrywide violence on a catastrophic level, including potential crimes against humanity and/or genocide.”

Since the downfall of the junta, Wirathu has become a symbol of Buddhist extremism. Though he has never been shown to have an active role in the violence, riots have repeatedly broken out in towns shortly after he delivered a sermon in them.

A prolific speaker, Wirathu is a fierce promoter of his own work, producing DVDs and pamphlets that flood marketplaces and social media. They all feature anti-Islam propaganda that casts Muslims as interlopers hell-bent on invading and colonizing Myanmar in order to turn it into a Muslim state.

“[Before I began preaching], most people didn’t realize these things,” Wirathu assures me.

Rising Star

Born in 1968 in Kyaukse, a small town near Mandalay, Wirathu says he was inspired to be a monk from a young age; he joined an order in 1985. He says he had a passion for reading and writing, but didn’t have a desire to give sermons until 2001, when he was moved to preach and open a cultural school in a small town. There, he began teaching children.

In one of his lesson plans, Wirathu says he drew a map of Myanmar and told the children the history of the Bengalis, the term Buddhists in the country use to describe the Rohingya. (“Bengali” implies that all of the Rohingya are recent illegal immigrants, though many of them have lived in Myanmar for generations). In his history, Wirathu also focused on militant Rohingya separatist movements that hadn’t been active for decades.

He would tell students how Muslims had traveled to Myanmar in order to trade, and then ended up staying in the country permanently. Muslims in Mandalay and other cities have tended to do relatively well for themselves financially, and Wirathu and 969 have advocated boycotts of all shops that are Muslim-owned. They’ve also urged Buddhists to avoid socializing with Muslims.

His lessons for children turned into sermons for all, and Wirathu grew more and more popular. Within a couple of years he became known throughout Myanmar. At the time, however, the military junta still ruled with an iron fist, imprisoning anyone who appeared capable of causing any kind of disturbance. Wirathu was jailed in 2003 for inciting violence against Muslims and was forced to give up being a monk. “As soon as I was defrocked, I felt so low,” he tells me. He also says he was tortured and humiliated while in jail.

In 2010, as Myanmar’s transition to democracy began to move forward, Wirathu was released under a general amnesty. He was allowed to return to the monastery and continued sermonizing and preaching, taking advantage of the government’s loosened restrictions on free speech. In 2012, the first of several widespread riots against Rohingya Muslims broke out in Rakhine state, and Wirathu’s profile began to grow internationally.

Critics claim that the focus on Wirathu distracts from the bigger problem—that members of the government and security forces at least condone the violence, and may very well encourage it. Punya Wontha, another well-known monk and a hero of the Saffron revolution, agrees. At his decidedly smaller and more dilapidated monastery next to a train yard in Yangon, he tells me that in shadowy elements of the government, hardliners still aligned with the junta have helped manufacture the conflicts in order to push the country away from democratic reforms and back toward military rule.

Punya Wontha is also upset that Wirathu has become Myanmar's face of Buddhism. While Punya Wontha blames Wirathu for some facets of the conflict, he also believes Wirathu is merely a pawn in the government’s strategic game to sabotage the election hopes of Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime democratic activist, political prisoner, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Suu Kyi heads the National League for Democracy (NLD), the main opposition party that seeks to continue Myanmar’s movement toward unfettered democracy. The NLD, which was severely repressed prior to 2011, had an extremely strong showing in the 2012 by-elections.

The interfaith clashes put Suu Kyi in a difficult political spot, according to Punya Wontha. If she speaks up for Muslim rights, she stands to lose a significant number of votes. If she doesn’t, her sterling reputation with the human rights community—and, possibly, with the West in general—is threatened.

In an interview with the BBC in October, Suu Kyi once again failed to unequivocally condemn the anti-Muslim violence that has gripped Myanmar. David Blair, chief foreign correspondent for the Telegraph, called her response, or lack thereof, “deeply disturbing.”

Punya Wontha says holdovers from the military regime were frightened by the NLD’s triumphant election results in 2012, which is why they’re so eager to use Wirathu as a tool. It’s a commonly held belief in Myanmar, where conspiracy theories abound. As one human rights worker who has been in the country for years told me, “These people haven’t had television for 60 years. This is their entertainment.”

Punya Wontha goes even further, however, accusing the government of training Wirathu to incite violence while he was imprisoned. Why, Punya Wontha asks me, was Wirathu released during an amnesty for political prisoners when he was originally sentenced for hate speech and inciting violence? And why, when other monks are banned from traveling if they so much as insult the military once, can Wirathu continue to travel at will?

“They give permission for his sermons to go everywhere,” Punya Wontha says.

This, despite the fact Wirathu criticizes the new government. He says that the people need more freedom. And he complains about the government's around-the-clock surveillance of him, though he admits it's for his own protection. “I’ve been threatened by the Islamic people,” he tells me. “They’re going to try to kill me every chance until I die.”

"Trying To Educate People"

A few weeks before I met with Wirathu, a small car bomb had exploded near a spot where he was delivering a sermon, injuring five people. Wirathu blamed Islamic militants, but some people pointed the finger at Wirathu himself, believing he’d planned the bombing so he could blame it on Muslims.

In our interview, however, Wirathu speaks in almost relentlessly conciliatory tones. He says he is a peaceful man, and that he is focused on spreading love and harmony between all people. “[The fighting] won’t happen anymore,” he says. “I’m going to give lessons to educate the whole people to stop the violence.”

Wirathu blames Muslims for initiating the skirmishes, and says that Buddhists simply retaliate when they can no longer take any more abuse. “I’m trying to educate the people not to [retaliate],” he says, “but these aggressive Muslims must be brought to justice.”

He is adamant that he preaches peaceful coexistence, and that he doesn’t support ethnic cleansing or the calls to remove Muslims from Myanmar entirely. He warns of Rohingya extremists coming from Bangladesh. Curiously, he blames the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, a small militant group that took shape in the 1980s in Bangladesh—and which has done very little of note since. But Wirathu tells me that they want to cause unrest so they can take over the Rakhine state.

Wirathu also blames the international media and the human rights community for accepting a narrative he says is entirely false. “The world believes the made-up stories of the Muslim people. The Muslims make other people offer bribes to make up a story, to fabricate the news,” he says. “Their sole intention is to occupy the Rakhine state forever. They hide behind the masks of human rights.”

Yet Wirathu says he’s trying to create a plan for everyone to live in peace and harmony. I tell him it sounds like he’s softened his views, and he replies that he does not believe in one nationality or faith.

But what of his "Law for the Protection of Race, Religion, and Language"? What’s more representative of peace and harmony than two people from different faiths marrying?

“It is okay until Muslims force them to convert,” he explains. Wirathu says that this is always the case when Muslims and Buddhists intermarry. “I think they are violating the freedom of religion.”

On one of the DVDs he hands me before I leave, Wirathu tells the story of a Buddhist woman who marries a Muslim man and is forced to convert. She continues to pray secretly, and he catches her doing so while she is pregnant. He beats her, causing her to have a miscarriage.

Even a monk like Punya Wontha, who has spoken out about violence against Muslims and organized aid convoys to help those who have been affected by it, says he feels Muslims need to accept their place in a Buddhist society. “The Muslim people have little knowledge and are uneducated. It is very easy for elements in the government to create problems with these people,” he says, adding that the Muslim and Buddhist tensions festering in Myanmar could spread to the rest of the world.

Since my meeting with Wirathu, more violence against Muslims broke out in both Rakhine and central Myanmar. In October, the International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report speculating that anti-Muslim attacks would continue unless the government acted more effectively to contain tensions. The ICG also expressed concerns that inter-communal violence could spread throughout Southeast Asia unless the situation in Myanmar is improved.

As I walk away from Wirathu’s office, he calls out to me. He has one last thing he wants me to know. “When the story comes to an end,” he says, “the world will know who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.”

PHOTOGRAPHER: MAYA FUHR
STYLIST: CHLOE WISE

Models: Scarlette, Chloe, Krystle, Dave, Stefan, Claire, Amy, Dom


 

Stefan, 24
(Hair)

I collect people's disgusting, old hair as well as my own, and I put it into jars. I mainly get it from friends’ home haircuts. It kind of started as a joke. My friends Chrys and Jimmy cut their hair at my house and I put it all into a plastic bag that I kept around for about a year. I accidentally left the bag at my old apartment, which is totally disgusting for whoever moved in. It went on because two of my other friends, Kate and Adrienne, brought me my first actual jar of hair as a present. From then on I kind of kept acquiring hair from people who just offered it to me. I always like when people add to my collection, and it's funny to be like, "Who's hair is in this one again?"

American Apparel jacket, H&M pants

Scarlette, 20
(Pokemon cards)

My collection consists of Pokémon cards and games. I keep them because I am a sentimental, stupid person.I started watching and playing Pokémon when I was about seven years old. My parents tried to get me to read Harry Potter every night before going to sleep, but I had no interest in it at all. I would always end up sneaking my Pikachu Yellow and Gameboy back in bed instead. I can't tell you what my very first card was, but Eevee was my favorite Pokémon along with Mew. She was so fluffy and sweet, and I daydreamed about us being best friends and falling asleep on her big, fluffy tail.

Kenzo top and skirt, model’s own shirt
 

Dominic, 26
(Dildos)

I started my collection at least six or seven years ago, I think. I got my first toy when I was 15 or 16. I had just moved to Montreal from a small town in New Brunswick and I was exploring my sexuality as someone who was finally somewhere it could be explored. It's grown into a big part of who I am, but given the nature of my collection it’s something I spare most of the people in my life from. Some of my friends know about it. Some of them have names, but none given by myself. They're mostly named after the actors who created the cast. Some of them aren't from actors, so those are given random silly names like "BAM", "The Intruder", "The Asscavator", or a personal favorite, "Black Thunder."

Adidas shoes, American Apparel shirt, Levis pants

Claire, 24
(Stuffed animals)

I have a collection of stuffed animals. I wouldn't say I'm crazy about it or anything. It's just nice to have them around. I like to choose favorites and those get to sleep in my bed with me or sometimes come on errands in the outside world. I've just always had them. It's hard to say if there's something deeper than that, maybe it's something about never wanting to grow up. I think I'm overly nostalgic for my childhood. My siblings and I started the “Teddy Bears Club” when we were really little. It took place in a very small room in our attic, with all of our “stuffies”. There was an itinerary, with activities like teatime and drawing teddies. My first piece was a genderless, nameless, pink bear. I still have it. It's so cute and soiled.

Mink Pink overalls, American Apparel shirt

Krystie, 28
(Pigs)

I have a silly collection of mini pig figurines and other small piggy related items.

I’ve had it since 2005 when I bought a Monokuro Boo piggy pillow to travel with because it was small and adorable. Then, I bought a change purse, a phone charm and a keychain with the same branding because they were just way too adorable. They sit on the windowsill right beside my front door, so they’re the first things you see when you enter my home. I don’t flaunt my collection, but you’ll see it. The thing is, I never actively sought out collecting piggies and I despise the color pink, but as soon as people began to notice I had a few of them, they started giving me them as gifts or travel souvenirs. The collection has mostly been enlarged through gifts.

Philip Lim top, vintage skirt, vintage scarf

Amy, 29
(Cans)

I have a collection of discarded, crushed aluminum cans. I think I’ve had it for about three years. It has evolved over time though. Each was run over by a vehicle and found in the street. There is an element of reflection on people’s behavior in this collection, but perhaps only from my own perspective. I wish I had mapped out all the locations where I’ve found cans, at least within a certain radius, but I suppose that would be a lot more work. It started when I began noticing crushed cans as indexes of social behavior. The variety is also interesting as different cans can be found in different neighborhoods, which reflects the type of people who live there. All cans are found naturally in the street- I don’t crush any on my own, although I did do a few experiments, like leaving cans under car wheels or throwing cans back in the street for finishing touches. The last time I counted I was in the six hundreds.

Mink Pink jacket, American Apparel t-shirt, Urban Outfitters pants

Dave, 38
(T-shirts)

I have a big collection of rock and concert tees with a few vintage movie and sports pieces thrown in. To me, the 70s and early 80s were the height of clothing screen-printing. The first concert shirt I bought was at Rush's Presto tour. I remember feeling it get serious when I was in LA on a road trip and paid something like 45 bucks for a Yes shirt. That was the first time it felt like I was spending real money on my collection. Now, 45 bucks doesn't seem like much to spend on a good tee. I probably have 400 plus at this point, maybe more. Each one is a little wearable piece of art. Plus, tee shirts are the most universal piece of clothing, I feel. Who doesn't love an amazing worn-in shirt? Nobody, that's who.

Dr. Martens sweater and shoes, model’s own pants

@mayafuhr

All photos by Chris Kennedy

Writer's Block is a frequent column that takes a low-brow approach to profiling various street bombers and modern-day vandals with a mixture of stories, off-the-cuff interviews, and never-before-seen pictures.

It was early afternoon on a Saturday last October when I found myself in the parking lot of Pumps, a seedy strip club in Brooklyn that I used to frequent before they changed the age requirement to 25. I wasn't there to see some titties; I was waiting to meet SABE—the veteran graffiti writer and New York thoroughbred who gained notoriety in the early 90s for pushing a new style that embraced images over words.

Just as I started to become nostalgic with the fond memories of college girls and C-section scars, SABE approached me. He was with KAZE, a long time affiliate and fellow KST crew member. Once we were all acquainted, we started to make our way to a spot they've been keen on redecorating—a highway underpass with massive sheet metal fences.

To most people this trek might seem like a hassle, but for someone like SABE, it's business as usual. Within the last couple of years, he's painted in Beirut, explored the volatile nature of spray cans through conceptual vandalism, graced the cover of Dune magazine, and is close to compiling an anime blackbook wherein heavy hitters like KAWS and REAS will have their long exposure tags come to life on an authentic anime storyboard.

As we headed deeper and deeper into an industrial area rife with Chinese takeout factories and box trucks, blue collar workers turned a blind eye to the vandals who were catching some of their signature one-flow tags. SABE told me about the time he jumped off a three-story building in DC, when he and KAZE bombed the Bowery Mural during the 2012 blackout, and the time he got shot with an assault rifle over a writing beef.  

VICE: When did you start writing graffiti?
SABE: I started writing in 1992. I left home at a really early age—I was 14. School wasn't an option, and that's how I was able to write so much. I had no real authority or supervision. I was free to do whatever I wanted, and writing on walls was one of those things.

Why is that?
At first, I did it to defy authority. Laws against graffiti were so lenient at the time, so I also did it because I could. After trains died out in the 80s, street bombing really started to pick up. 

Can you describe the transition that took place?
I think the sociological and technological advancement of the 90s had a hand in the way we started to paint, we had Street Fighter and pirated cellphones—it was a whole different world than it was in the 80s. Other writers started to embrace graffiti outside the yard.

Which ones in particular were really pushing the new street bombing movement?
In my opinion, JOZ and EASY laid the foundation and formula for what we call street bombing today. They were just bringing it non-stop to every hood and other writers were following suit. 

When you first started getting up, you were recognized because of the character you drew. What was the thought process behind that?
I thought that painting a character could be more effective in the long run since people tend to resonate with pictures more than words. I use to draw that face in blackbooks and eventually I hit the streets with it. The more I painted it, the more it took on a life of its own.

Aside from commodification, how has the game changed since?
A lot of the writers I grew up with gave it up for different reasons. Either they can't get up in the middle of the night to go bombing, or they have a boss and a wife, or can't afford to get locked up. I think it's a privilege that I'm able to keep writing, so I exercise that liberty whenever I can. Probably the most notable change is the drastic drop in violence. Looking back, I was involved in some pretty serious beefs back then.

How serious?
A friend of mine cut this other kid's ear off with hatchet over some graffiti nonsense. I was 17 at the time and we lived together in a two-story house in the Bronx. He was one of those kids who didn't really think about the consequences of his actions and didn't make a big deal about it. But, I knew for a fact that this kid would come around eventually, so I went out and came back with an M16 assault rifle.

How'd you manage that?
A mutual friend put me in touch with a guy who I guess you can call a good Samaritan. He let me borrow the rifle which he apparently stole from a military base. The guy literally had an empty apartment full of guns and grenades. This was in 1995.

Follow SABE on Instagram and check out his website.

Previously - 'Pixote: American Pixação'

Wow, look at this bread. Photo via

Welcome back to our food column, Hot Links, where VICE employee Dan Meyer explores the neglected culinary stars of YouTube. Each week, Dan presents a selection of videos highlighting specific food themes, from amateur cooking to local restaurant commercials, elderly drinking buddies, kitchen disasters, all culled from the infinite supply of odd YouTube wonders. We encourage you to fall into this culinary video K-hole, and include your own comments and contributions below.

Considering that bread has been around for almost 30,000 years, I wanted to wrangle up the internet’s weirdest bread options, prepared by the strangest people that the Western world has ever seen. One can’t overlook the newer YouTube settings feature, which allows you to change the speed of each video to make you wonder if you’ve been drinking sizzurp. I highly recommend taking advantage of this new tool while watching the videos below. And for all of those gluten-free people out there, my apologies in advance. 

The Best Fry Bread

We have a very comfortable lo-fi aesthetic, and our host's delivery and cadence sounds a bit chopped and screwed. She’s like Julia Child on lean. It is evident that this is a college film-school project because the subject is using brand new cooking tools and ingredients. I'm not sure if the background music is happening right outside of the window, or if it got laid in during the editing process. Stay tuned for the credits, where you will see what I consider to be one of the best names of all time: Alfonso Clement Roman, III.

Hudson Bay Bread

This is the kind of cooking video that falls into the "headless" category. Our host, Woody, is a man dedicated to the art of Bushcraft—a wilderness club that teaches people how to build fires, primitive weapons, and lean-tos in order to prepare them for an apocalypse. He’s decided to teach us how to make Hudson Bay bread, a survival food that is high in calories and has a very long shelf life. Woody veers away from the original recipe by using real vanilla extract instead of maple flavoring because he "does not play in this house." And yes, he is a citizen of middle American who is wearing a kilt while simultaneously filming himself from the neck down. He mentions in the video comments section that he “wears a kilt outside of the house about 90 percent of the time.” 

French Bread – White Trash Cooking

Our host, Dennis, looks like a Smith College philosophy professor who is a bread hobbyist on the weekends. According to his introduction, he explains that he is a white trash chef who lives in a mobile home in a trailer park. His working area looks very inspired by Julia Child’s TV set kitchen. One of the important steps to making bread, according to Dennis, is “to get my yeast all hot and bothered so that it will reproduce.” By the 26 minute mark, you can watch Dennis taste test his freshly baked bread with the sound of sirens going off in the background. The cops are coming, but he doesn’t care, because this homemade bread is fantastic.

Coffee Can Great Part One

YouTube user "heartlandcontrystor" made a two-part video series on bread that is baked in one-pound coffee cans. I personally don't think that it's wise to bake raw dough in a tall, low-grade metal cylinder due to the risk of toxicity leaching into the dough in a hot oven, but James Beard has done it, so I’m probably wrong. You will have to make it three and a half minutes in before you're looking at anything other than three empty tin cans on a countertop, but eventually, our anonymous host gets around to using the yard work glove that has been sitting on the counter to sand down her own personal set of cans. Then it gets really good. 

The Most Insane Bread Commercial You'll Ever See

This video tamely begins with a woman in a heavy coat selling "whole-grain brown bread." Then things take a turn as we're treated to the vision of a close-up of an 80s hardbody in a crop top. It looks like a sexy lady until the camera pans up and—bam, another turn! It's a dude who looks like Patrick Swayze’s characters in Point Break and Dirty Dancing were merged into a baker/male escort combon who can turn up the heat in more ways than one. (One: he can turn up the oven heat. Two: He can turn up the sexual heat with his hot body.) I’m certain that putting a cup of milk on his head and suggestively cutting a loaf of bread are both serious health code violations, but I commend his enthusiasm. When the commercial cuts back to the lady host, we must wipe the sweat off of our brows and go about finding some brown bread.

How to Make No-Knead Sourdough Rye Bread, Part One

Kathy begins this video by apologizing for the numerous errors she has encountered while cooking this no-knead sourdough rye bread. She goes on to apologize for how bad she and her husband are at making videos. Once the insecure diatribe ends, she begins making this truly unremarkable bread. I'm including this video as an investigation into someone who is struggling with her self esteem but feels the need to host her own cooking videos. Kathy, if you are reading this, we are not making fun of you. We love you. 

Seitenbacher Farmer Bread Mix

If Stepford Wives was made into a German cooking show, you’d be witnessing the first installment right here. This bread does not look particularly desirable because it uh… comes from a series of packets. The lady doesn't know how much water she used, so she recommends that you consult the machine's instructions. You can't say the word Seitenbacher without saying the word Satan. COINCIDENCE?!?!?!! Teach the controversy, everyone.

Today is Burns day, Scotland’s national holiday celebrating the life of the poet Robert Burns. This holiday isn’t just an excuse to get blasted. It's also a culinary tribute where revelers toast to the Scottish wordsmith over clinked glasses of Scotch whiskey while feasting on haggis—a savory pudding stuffed with oats, spices, and sheep’s rumen, lungs, heart, and liver. Robert Burns was a huge fan of haggis, so much so that he even wrote a poem about it that mentions something about stabbing the innards with a knife as they get pulled out like the steaming entrails of a beast. Mmm.

We had no idea how to make haggis from scratch, so we called up our friends at the Nordic Food Lab, a non-profit culinary research institute based in Copenhagen, Denmark, to get the full monty. Ben Reade, a native Scotsman and the head of culinary research and development at the Nordic Food Lab, walked us through the labor of lamb love in the Nordic Food Lab’s houseboat kitchen.

After oats, spices, four-day-smoked blueberries soaked in alcohol, a couple of hearts, and sheep's rumen, liver, lungs, diaphragms, kidneys, tongues, fat, and blood were mixed together and cooked, the warm pudding was ready for some culinary poetry. Ben brought it over to the Mad Symposium—an annual gathering where international chefs and culinary minds meet to eat, drink, and discuss topics in food—and shared it with the symposium's participants.

No haggis can be consumed without the help of a sharp knife and a healthy carbon dioxide-blowing bagpiper to appease the ghost of Burns himself. Or in the words of Ben Reade, “Who wants to eat French balls? This is how we want it in Scotland.”

Cheers to you, Robert Burns.

Image via.

For over 20 years, The Real World has supplied America with hot tub hook-ups, booze-soaked mansions, and dramatic fights. Typically, after the show ends, the cast goes on to mediocre media careers comprised of club-hosting gigs and repeated stints on The Challenge. But one The Real World: DC cast member, Mike Manning, has broken this pattern and become a relatively successful political spokesperson, philanthropist, and Hollywood producer, while trying to escape the television show that made him famous.

Mike is up to a great deal this month. Last week, he starred in Cloud 9, a Disney Channel original movie about a female snowboarder who must overcome obstacles after she’s kicked off her team, and this week, Kidnapped for Christ, a documentary Mike produced, won the Slamdance Film Festival's Audience Award for Documentary. Based on the story of Mike’s college friend, the documentary explores the deleterious effects of an evangelical Christian reform school. Mike is doing all this work in Hollywood while also speaking out about a number of political issues important to the Democratic party.

Considering everything going on in Mike’s professional life, it's logical for him to be reluctant to discuss his reality television past, but he also wouldn’t have this success without his MTV beginning. Mike was never your average The Real World star. On the show, he volunteered for the Human Rights Campaign and lobbied Congressmen as a representative of the HRC—this wasn’t atypical for The Real World: DC. The season was filmed in 2009 after the inauguration of President Barack Obama and aired during a new burst of enthusiasm over the possibilities of electoral politics, which led to short-lived reality shows like The Real Housewives of DC. Washington seemed young and hip, and the mood of the nation was still West Wing-rerun optimism rather than the curdled nihilism of Scandal.

On The Real World: DC, Mike was the traditional token bisexual character who was unfortunate enough to have a backstory involving a conservative Christian upbringing. Since the show ended, Mike has built a whole new persona, alternating between working to make it as an actor—appearing in various indie films and on Hawaii Five-0—and working hard to make the sort of connections with political figures that most reality stars wouldn’t even dream about.

I met Mike through one such political connection—Allen Roskoff, a veteran New York political operative and gay rights activist who raises money through the Jim Owles Democratic Club. Allen had initially tapped Mike to emcee an event for the club, which works to elect Democrats in New York City. “He was flawless,” Allen told me. “He captivates people—he has people eating out of a spoon.”

Besides adoring Mike for his charm and ability to schmooze political players, Allen also admires the way Mike handles his sexuality. Allen prides himself on not having supported lesbian politician Christine Quinn in the recent New York mayoral election, and Mike tries to exist post-identity politics.

“I don't think the prime focus of Mike is on his sexuality. He is not a one-dimensional person based on his sexuality,” Allen said. “He is somebody who is proud of all facets of his life. He plans on doing his craft, to entertain and to help change the world.”

When we spoke, Mike was hesitant to discuss his sexuality or time on The Real World at length, which makes sense given the fact that he was trying to promote his political causes and Disney Channel movie. Although Mike’s first on-camera time was in front of MTV’s confessional cameras, he knows how to stay on script. “It’s going to send a positive message to young people who watch Disney,” he said. “That’s something I’m very proud of.”

I asked him if he was worried that the few months he spent on TV as the most visibly out bisexual millennial made him a risky choice as an actor for a Disney Channel movie. “In the younger generation, it doesn’t really matter,” Mike responded. “But for me, I kind of hate talking about aspects of my personal life when talking about projects, nonprofit groups, or politics. The first question that someone who’s straight gets asked isn’t ‘Are you straight?’”

“I’m happy that there’s more to talk about than people being bent out of shape about who you choose to hold hands with in the hallway. I really hope that anyone reading this would push to judge me for my actions and how I choose to live my life, not just who I end up marrying and settling down with.”

He then asked if we could discuss some of his upcoming projects.

Mike at a charity event. Photo courtesy of Mike Manning. 

It’s very likely Allen taught Mike how to deflect journalists’ questions. “Because I know so many people, I do guide him a bit,” Allen said. “I share my knowledge with him. I would like nothing more than to see a Mike Manning replace the old-timers like us.”

At times, Mike strays away from controversy so much, his message becomes unclear. What does he stand up for? Right now, he seems like a zealous college freshmen who is over commited to survey classes and represents a bit of everything.

Mike disagrees with this vision of himself. When he invited me to join him on a trip to Tijuana to see an orphanage, he said, “Now my life is becoming more focused.” He listed his charitable deeds: “Over the past years, I've been really involved with youth organizations,” he said. “Getting involved with young storytellers, helping them write stories, and acting, and bringing those stories to life. Raising money for homeless youth programs. No young person should be stuck on the streets. I think my focus since moving to LA has been laser-focused on youth.”

When I asked Mike for information on his relationship with his Christian family in light of Kidnapped for Christ’s subject, he replied that it was good. “That's been the subject of every interview I've done since I shot The Real World back in 2009, so I'd really rather not focus on that at all.”

Mike could be touchy about certain subjects. In an email, he told me, “You may have noticed, for better or worse, I'm more hands-on than some actors. Blame the OCD, blame whatever, but I promise unless you solicit me, this is my last email. Whatever, Leo DiCaprio was also obsessive in the beginning.”

To be fair, Mike hasn’t whitewashed his history as a publically bisexual man—he co-produced Kidnapped for Christ with openly gay former *NSYNC member Lance Bass—but his goals extend far beyond merely appealing to one demographic.

“I have realistic hopes that this film will be the next Bully for the troubled teen industry,” Mike told me via email. He’s working on a call-to-action PSA so that audience members can lobby Congress to prevent mistreatment of young people at reform camps and is hopeful that the movie will get distribution after sold-out screenings in Park City. It’s a reasonable goal—if anyone could start a movement, it’s an ambitious, well-connected 20-something who visits orphanages and knows people at the Disney Channel.

Although he dislikes the long shadow of reality TV that continues to haunt him, his past has helped both his career in Washington and Hollywood. “I knew who he was, as I had watched his season of The Real World and was impressed with him and how well he carried himself on that show, which is known for its fighting and drama,” said Tom DeSanto, a co-producer of Kidnapped for Christ. “Usually reality TV stars end up trying to recapture their 15 minutes of fame rather than having substantial life goals.”

“He was a very positive role model for the gay community and represented Colorado and my district well,” said Jared Polis, the openly gay US Congressman whom Mike met while filming The Real World: DC. Although Mike was lobbying for the HRC on the show and is now working on a broader, less gay-centric portfolio of causes, Jared thinks it all helps Mike’s career. “I think it's important to have a lot of irons in the fire. That would be a very limited portfolio if you were exclusively focused on traditional equality issues. It's important to look at the bigger picture.” 

@DPD_

For this week's Mahal, I met with the super fly trio the Eramatics. TahJmall, Ziiion, and Lexington bonded in middle school over their mutual love for music and being knuckleheads. In between skipping class and staying out late, they discovered their own sound of music and formed their band, the Eramatics. Mixing classic hip-hop style with contemporary poetry, the band has created a unique sound that is sure to blow listeners' minds when they hear the band's forthcoming debut project. This week, I sat down with the boys to discuss the public school system, music videos, and the tunes they will release later this year. 

VICE: What is public school like in New York City?
Lexington: It's filled with drama, fake thugs, and trifling chicks—also everybody follows one another. Everyone's unoriginal.

What factors influence the clothes you wear in your music videos?
Lexington: The theme and mood of the song as well as the scenery and weather at the location and time of the shoot—plus what's eye catching and different from what you see every day. 

What else influences your outfits?
Ziiion: Groups like Kriss Kross, Dipset, Wu-Tang, and Junior M.A.F.I.A. are some some of the influences for our outfits in music videos, as well as our daily fashion. The world will definitely see more of those influences portrayed in upcoming happenings.

When do you typically write your rhymes?
TahJmall: We usually write rhymes whenever poetic thoughts come to our minds that need to be expressed.

What is an average day like for the Eramatics?
Lexington: An average day for us would be a lot of goofing around and non-stop jokes. We'll probably be heading to a couple chill spots in Brooklyn or do some shopping in SoHo; we'll most likely be freestyling on the train and in the streets as we're traveling. You could also probably catch us spittin' game to a couple of chicks and then always ending off the day with some great food at certain spots we like.

What have you guys been up to in the studio?
Ziiion: We've been working on new music with various producers, as well as learning and creating sonically unique music. Stay tuned for greatness.

@RedAlurk

The author with (from left) Tashera Simmons, Cheryl Caruso, and Myla Sinanaj.

D-list celebrities are different from you or me. The oft-derided “famous for being famous” folk who dominate reality television, make embarrassing pornography, and ponder bizarre schemes to auction off bits of their genitalia get some of the benefits provided by fame, but they also have to be willing to live in public and constantly reveal their flaws and thoughts. Whatever you think of these people—you might idolize them, you might feel vaguely nauseated by their very existence—you likely can't imagine what their day-to-day lives are like. Write a think piece about how awful Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is and what the show says about contempory culture if you must, but first, imagine what it's like to be Honey Boo Boo, to live surrounded by cameras and have people you've never met saying all kinds of awful things about you and get encouraged, basically, to be insane for the world's entertainment. Keep in mind, the phenomenon of post–Paris Hilton reality TV is only a decade old—this is basically a new realm of human experience.

So, when celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Matthew Schulman and Gina Rodriguez, a manager who's worked with everyone from Octomom to Backdoor Teen Mom, contacted me on Twitter to say that they'd like to throw me a D-list celebrity Botox party, I couldn't refuse. It seemed totally reasonable that reality TV stars would all meet up to hang out and let doctors stab them with needles full of toxins, and if going to Matthew's office on New York's Upper East Side was what it took to enter their world, I'd gladly make that trip.

The party's guest list was pulled straight out of US Weekly: DMX’s ex-wife Tashera Simmons, I Married a Mobster star Cheryl Caruso, Kim Kardashian lookalike Myla Sinanaj, camp recording artist Adam Barta, and Angelina Pivarnick—the Jersey Shore cast member who was so unstable she got kicked off the show. OK, maybe not the cover of US Weekly. Still, these were definitely celebrities.

Adam and Myla were already there when I walked in. As I entered Matthew's office, I heard the refrain of Zedd’s “Clarity.” (“If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy / If our love's insanity, why are you my clarity?”) I never imagined EDM would be used as a ritzy plastic surgeon office's background music, but as anyone who has ever watched Dancing with the Stars knows, the line between Staten Island and the Upper East Side isn’t what it used to be.

The office was scattered with books full of “before” and after “pictures” of body parts Matthew had operated on. Amanda, Matthew’s office “buttstatician,” welcomed me and told me that Matthew was “the Butt King of New York.” Matthew laughed and encouraged me to get Botox with the D-listers, even though I'm only 22 years old.

“There’s truth to it being preventative,” he said. “There are some [young] people who have really strong expressions that make them look angry.” I politely declined Matthew’s offer, and he understood—he considers 30 to be "the magic number” for a person’s first Botox injection.

As I waited for the rest of the celebrities to arrive, I chatted with Adam and Myla. Although Adam has been in the spotlight since 2007 and has become well-known for his novelty songs with other D-listers like Tan Mom and Kim G from The Real HousewIves of New Jersey, he isn’t a full-time musician—he lives in the Bronx and does “freelance marketing” work in midtown Manhattan. His next project, he said, is a single with comedian Margaret Cho called “See You Next Tuesday.” Adam joked that since Margaret is A-list, he may soon join the C-minus-list. Hope springs eternal.

Unlike Adam, Myla is a full-time celebrity—as baffling as that sounds—and a relative newbie to the TMZ universe. Since she became famous for dating Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband Kris Humphries after he and Kim separated in late 2011, the 27-year-old New Jersey (naturally) resident has made a steady income from hosting club events and the royalties from her porn film (obviously), The Anti-Kim, which was produced by Vivid Entertainment, the company that distributed the porn tape that made Kim Kardashian a household name. As she sipped Prosecco she told me Kim sent her subpoenas during her divorce in order to make it seem like Myla and Kris had slept together during Kim and Kris's notoriously short marriage. Kim may paint Myla as a wannabe celebrity a couple tiers below the Kardashians, but Myla has acheived at least some amount of fame, whatever that's worth—a copy of In Touch I saw in Matthew's office had Kim on the cover but also a photo spread of Myla inside.

Matthew explained that he did Myla’s breast implants and liposuction last summer, and the procedures brought a ton of tabloid attention. Since then, he said, patients have regularly come to his office requesting Myla’s body. Ten years ago, Upper East Siders would have wanted Nicole Kidman’s cheeks; today they want a Kim Kardashian lookalike’s breasts.

As I talked to her, Myla exhibited a self-awareness about the mechanics of celebrity and was refreshingly upfront about her efforts to remain in the spotlight. You wouldn't see Kim talking about her plastic surgery on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or admitting she did anything solely to get and become famous, but these D-listers have no such hangups.

Cheryl Caruso showed up a few minutes later in a cheetah print top and pulled out a bag of Talero Tequila. Matthew told Cheryl he wanted to record a song with her and Adam about Botox, but she declined. “I don’t sing,” she said. “I drink tequila and make out with Angelina!” (A stunt she did in the music video for Adam’s song “Serendipity.”)

I assumed Cheryl brought tequila because she likes to party, but it turned out that Cheryl is the vice president of Talero and knew a story about a D-list celebrity Botox party would be a great place to promote her product. The moment I put my recorder in front of her, Cheryl ignored my question and said, “I’ll just tell you about the product. Talero Tequila is a 100-percent organic tequila grown in the highest altitudes of Mexico.”

I asked Cheryl to pose with a picture of her drinking the tequila, but she said she never takes pictures with alcohol. “Everyone thinks I’m an alcoholic,” she told me. However, she was more than happy to pose with Matthew and a bottle of Talero:

Cheryl brought along her best friend Tashera, who was her costar on the short-lived TLC reality show Starter Wives Confidential. Unlike the other celebs, Tashera wasn’t there for free Botox—she only washes her face with water, and she said this has prevented her from developing wrinkles. Tashera came to the party purely to support Cheryl, but after browsing through Matthew’s before-and-after books, she became interested in having work done on her butt.

Angelina was, unsurprisingly, running over an hour late, so we decided to start the Botox part of the party without her. Matthew led us down a beautiful long hall, which looked more like a mansion’s hallway than a doctor’s office, to a fairly standard medical-procedures-are-done-in-here room. Matthew didn't use standard Botox on the celebrities—he used Xeomin, a high-end brand of Botox made from a toxin that kicks in faster than Botox because it lacks proteins.

Matthew had a dark sense of humor about his occupation. Myla wanted to go first because “the first gets the best attention,” and Matthew told her, “The first gets the clean needle!” (For the record, Matthew was super professional and used clean needles.) This sense of humor might make many patients uncomfortable, but the D-listers loved it. I got the sense that going to a plastic surgeon for them was like going to the store to pick up some tomatoes. As Matthew showed them how he injects himself with Botox (“I don’t trust any [other doctors] because I’m the best,” he said), they looked at him as if he was a celebrity they had spotted on the street.

Adam knew exactly where he wanted his shots and ordered the doctor to inject Botox into his chin, forehead, and above his lip. Myla was impressed with Adam’s experience in the doctor’s office—although Adam’s only in his early 30s, he's had injections done before—and she asked him what the worst part about Botox was. “The crunch noise [when the needle punctures the skin] is the worst,” Adam said.

Watching Myla and Adam interact reminded me of sports movies like The Mighty Ducks where veteran athletes teach rookies about the game, except in this case, the game was cosmetic toxins and needles. As Mathew injected Adam with his crunchy magic, Myla exchanged numbers with Tashera and Cheryl, new contacts in the strange world she has found herself in since becoming famous.

After the girls finished exchanging numbers, they did the next logical thing for D-listers who had just met—they took selfies.

and more selfies...

and more selfies.

Immediately, the celebrities started to instagram their selfies. Apart from the fact that the D-listers have thousands of followers, in that moment, they reminded me of normal girls I went to college with—at least until they remembered their mutual manager, Gina, had asked them not to publish photos on the internet till my story was published. Hi guys, you can post them now!

Although these people were famous for their “reality” personalities, their entire existence seemed like a performance. Cheryl, who claims to have only had Botox done once before (and never any plastic surgery), smiled all night. After she received her injections, I pointed the camera at her and she immediately posed with the cotton Matthew had given her to hold against the spots where he'd poked her. It was like an instinctual response to the presence of a lens. She was always on.

Out of nowhere, we heard a bang and a scream down the hall—Angelina and her boyfriend, Anthony, had arrived. The Jersey Shore starlet was more than 90 minutes late, but she was more on-brand than any of the other celebrities. She floated into the room and everyone’s eyes naturally went to her. Even in a room full of semi-celebrities, Angelina was the center of attention. She was more like a D-plus-lister.

As Anthony stood in the background, Angelina caught up with her fellow stars. “You look like you got shot up!” she screamed at Myla.

“You doing Botox?” she asked Tashera.

“No. Are you?”

“Yeah. I wanna do it. We need the photos for [Mitchell’s] story.”

I have written about several reality stars before, and typically both the celebrity and I pretend we are having a normal conversation when of course I know they need good press, and the celebrities know I need a good story. Angelina cut straight to the point. This was 100 percent a business transaction.

She started to tell me about a video she and Adam had recorded of her twerking in a trash bag. I asked her to show it to me, and as I brought it up on my phone she complained that nobody had seen the video. “Nobody even cared!” she snapped before asking me to include it in this article. I told her I would love to hyperlink to a video of her twerking in a trash bag, and she smiled. “NOW THEY’RE REALLY GONNA SEE IT!”

In the midst of making sure I wrote about her, Angelina revealed an earnest side of herself. She and Tashera said they go “way back,” meaning that they met three years ago when they both starred in the first season of VH1's Couples Therapy (in reality television years, three years is a decade), and they waxed nostalgic about their time on the show.

“DMX is mad cool,” Angelina said.

“He just don’t give a fuck,” Tashera added.

“Yo, how much fun did we have on Couples Therapy?” Angelina asked Tashera. “Nobody made fun of me Jersey Shore–style.”

Tashera told me that she had had a blast with Angelina while shooting Couples Therapy, and she wasn't the nightmare Snooki and company made her out to be. “We got to know the real girl,” Tashera said.

Angelina agreed with Tashera and complained to me about her reputation: “A lot of people think I should take the bitch [role] and run with it, but I want to recreate myself.” I had watched Snooki and the other castmates mock Angelina, threaten her life, and call her “trash bags,” but it had never dawned on me how this had hurt her. Reality TV is so often assumed to be scripted, we forget that occasionally these things bleed over into real life.

But Angelina couldn't stay earnest for too long—she had work to do. She plopped in the doctor's chair, dangling her short legs above the ground, and screamed at me, “You want trashy? You want D-list? I’ll give you it!”

Although Angelina is only in her 20s and has normal skin, she has had Botox before. I worried out loud that Botox would make her look abnormal. “I know it’s supposed to be normal,” she said, “but we don’t want to be normal.” There wasn't much danger of that.

“I want to be frozen,” she told the doctor, as he injected her with Botox. I laughed. “Mitchell’s gonna write a great story about me! He needs a crazy story about how we’re all nutjobs,” she said.

After Angelina completed her round of Botox, she ordered her boyfriend to get some injections. She told him he had to do it so I could get a photo of a masculine “guido” receiving injections. “Tell them I’m a peer pressurer,” she told me.

As I watched the doctor puncture Angelina's boyfriend, I thought about another white-trash superstar, figure skater Tonya Harding. This month marks the 20th anniversary of Tonya being accused of hiring hit men to attack Nancy Kerrigan. In The Price of Gold, a new ESPN documentary about the scandal, both Tonya and CBS newscaster Connie Chung argue that Tonya wasn’t a national outcast because she may have recruited goons to attack another skater—she was exiled because she was a poor girl proud of her working-class roots who had overtaken figure skating.

“Tonya could jump higher. She could spin faster, and she was determined, but here she was, the ugly duckling with frizzy blonde hair from the wrong side of the tracks. It was hardly that little image that you have of a beautiful ice skater,” Connie said in the documentary.

Like Tonya, these celebrities hail from the wrong side of the metaphorical tracks—upstate New York, New Jersey, Staten Island, and Long Island—and have no shame about their class or roots. If Tonya's scandal took place today, her life wouldn't have been ruined. She would have landed a reality show, a Vivid Celebrity porno, and endorsement deals.

That's not such a bad thing. Although critics hate reality television, these shows have more women, gay men, and lower-class Americans than most scripted dramas or comedies. Whereas not many Academy Award winners pass the Bechdel test, nearly every episode of The Real Housewives does.

Today, lower-class would-be celebrity strivers don't have to attack yuppy competitors like Nancy Kerrigan to remain famous. They can just be famous for being themselves—albeit sometimes exaggerated verisons of themselves. But unlike Tonya, these celebrities didn't seem like they'd ever hurt anyone. Yeah, Angelina and Anthony were getting Botox at an early age, but Justin Bieber's drag racing is much more dangerous than a 20-something receiving Botox.

After the party, they assembled in the lobby to take more selfies, eat delicious appetizers supplied by Brooklyn Fork and Spoon, and gossip about the D-list celebrity world.

I came to the D-list celebrity Botox party to find out what this world was like, but even the celebrities weren't sure what they were a part of. Is it an industry? A lifestyle? A religion? Nobody's sure yet, but I did come back with a better picture of the celebrities' relationship to the world at large.

When I told people I was working on this story, they said it sounded pathetic, but there was something to admire about the D-listers. Unlike people who work in Manhattan skyscrapers, the celebrities don't have to hide their class backgrounds or pretend they're not careerists. Their job is to be hungry for attention and exhibit their craziness, and unlike, say, many Wall Street traders, they're not hurting anyone in the process. The only thing offensive about Angelina is the way we look at working-class girls who party at the Shore.

Of course, I could never say this better than Angelina could. As she stuffed her face with food, she complained that she was breaking her diet.

“I’m gonna eat all of this!” she screamed.

“You don’t need to be on a diet,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“Me.”

@mitchsunderland

More of Mitchell's adventures:

I Was a Pornhub Intern for a Day

To Paris, with Love

The Barbie Dream House Experience Is the Scariest Place on Earth

To see more of Valentine's artwork, visit her website. 

Image via.

I love hanging out with my mom. She is pretty much the only non-blazing person I can spend long amounts of time with and still enjoy our conversations. Although my mom never smokes weed, she can relate to my obsession with pot because she experiences a similar fascination with alcohol. Unlike many moms, she discovered alcohol later in life. When I was a kid, I accepted that none of my family members drank alcohol. It never felt like prohibition; it was simply our way of life. Since my family lacked any means to become intoxicated, my mom, aunt, and uncles drank copious amounts of tea and occasionally smoked cigarettes when they wanted to get really wild. With the exception of these restrictions, we lived normal American lives. Predictably, it was only a matter of time before the moms began taking after their kids and asked, “Why are we not getting fucked up?”

Partially, our moms stayed sober because of our dads, who remained dedicated to abstinence from alcohol and drugs despite their obsession with football and Pink Floyd. But as they should be in any household, the men were powerless from stopping the women from partying—eventually, bottles of wine were on the table for every family gathering. My brother brought his homebrewed beer for the moms to sample, and on birthdays, my aunt broke out a bottle of high-end tequila. The dads sat on the sidelines, incredulous as their wives, sisters, and children got wasted and slurred their native language.

It was in this age of adventure that I ruined weed for my aunt. One night, while my cousin and I smoked a joint, she joined us. Smoking weed like it was 1975 took its toll on her, and after a nightmarish Thanksgiving Eve, she swore she would never smoke again. I knew she was lying, and a couple of weeks ago, my suspicion proved right—this time she loved weed, but that didn’t spare us from another awkward situation.

I was crashing at my mom’s house while my aunt and her friend (let’s call her Lulu) were visiting her. When I realized we had drank half our wine supply, I broke out my travel jar of weed and started rolling a joint. My aunt was eyeing the operation, and I could tell she was debating whether or not she would give weed another whirl. My mom, who had bailed my aunt out of her last stoned ordeal, saw her inclination and immediately said, “Nope.” This made my aunt want to smoke more. “I just had too much last time. This time he’ll make sure I don’t go overboard, right, Kid?” I looked up knowing that I would lose this debate no matter what I said. After I finally agreed to let my aunt join me, my mom said, “I’m coming too.” Lulu had been drinking heavily, so she decided to sit the sesh out.

In the garage, surrounded by crates of my old records, I smoked out my mom and my aunt. I limited them to two hits apiece and sternly admonished them as they watched me puff away the lion’s share of the joint. When we stepped back inside, my aunt was already giggling. My mom was grumbling that it wasn’t working for her, although she was rushing to the kitchen to attack a box of individually wrapped chocolates. My aunt sat down and started jovially chatting with Lulu, but it soon became clear that the wine, coupled with momentary solitude, had taken Lulu to a dark place—she suddenly turned the conversation to her brother’s murder.

Freshly stoned myself, I listened with intrigue as she told the tragic story. Her brother was an artist in his early 20s who was robbed and killed by a gang of thugs after an unsavory night at a bar. Partway through the tale, Lulu began to shed tears—this was a clear cue for my aunt to begin consoling her friend, but when I looked over at my aunt, it was clear that her mind was somewhere else. Suddenly, my aunt burst out laughing and then quickly quieted herself. She looked over at Lulu and made eye contact. There was a momentary silence before my aunt burst out laughing once again, incoherently trying to tell us what had her so tickled. With her mouth full of chocolate, my mom said, “Lulu, that’s so terrible. I’m just glad they brought those bastards to justice.”

Lulu’s expression became even more somber. She said, “That’s the thing. They never caught him, but I know who did it, and years later he came back and murdered my father.” My jaw dropped, my mom stopped chewing her chocolate, and my aunt failed to stifle a high-pitched laugh that sprayed out of her like a geyser. To my amazement, neither my mom nor my aunt attempted any damage control. Turning to an old standby, my mom said, “Who wants tea?” and began boiling water. My aunt lay on her back and started bending her right leg up and down, as she said, “Wow! My knee was hurting, and now it totally doesn’t anymore. Kid, do you think it’s because of medical marijuana? Go figure, it really works!” I tried to think of something I could say to transition us a little more smoothly from unsolved homicides to the merits of cannabis for joint pain, but I came up with nothing. Amazingly, Lulu looked unfazed by my aunt’s laughing fits and turned her focus on a freshly filled glass of wine. 

Thus far, every blazing experience with my aunt has yielded a weird situation, but the weirdness factor seems to be diminishing. We’ve figured out her appropriate dosage, and next time, I’ll make sure I have a movie or something to distract my aunt from making any faux pas. Watching my aunt rediscover weed, I can’t help but feel some envy for how absolutely fucked up she gets from a couple hits. For me, blazing is a part of daily life, and being high no longer puts me in a state of complete detachment from reality. Soon enough, my aunt will gain a tolerance for weed, and her innocence will be gone, but in the meantime, I’ll enjoy her novice antics at every given opportunity. 

@ImYourKid

Last November, senior government officials held a ceremony in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, unveiling a monument to the revolution’s martyrs. The monument was simple, though its significance was not. It consisted of a stone pedestal on a circular base in the center of Tahrir Square. A military band played. At a brief unveiling ceremony that morning, Egypt’s interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said it was meant to honor “the martyrs of the January 25 and June 30 revolutions.”

Yesterday marked the three year anniversary of thousands of Egyptians joining protests that snowballed into a revolution. After 18 days, the revolt forced President Hosni Mubarak and his cronies from power. More than 800 people were killed, the vast majority of them in four days of street fighting that temporarily paralyzed the police state. Since then, the various players in Egypt—the Muslim Brotherhood, elite liberals, the military, and revolutionaries—have fought not only for power, but also to define the meaning of the revolution, and in doing so, to define the direction of their country’s future. In 2014, the question persists: Is the revolution in Egypt over, or is it ongoing?

In Tahrir Square on that day last November, the erecting of the memorial posed that very same question, and it embodied the two ways of viewing the legacy of the Arab uprisings today. To the Egyptian government and its supporters, the memorial signaled the revolution’s triumph and the official incorporation of its aims into state ideology. But to critics, it was a cynical attempt to rewrite history—a monument to slain protesters installed by a government backed by the same military and police responsible for those deaths.

That night after the unveiling ceremony, protesters surged into the square, ripping flakes of stone off the monument and spraying it with graffiti. In the revolutionaries’ view, the martyrs’ deaths are still an open wound, and the cause they died for, the end of the authoritarian state, has yet to be achieved.

Around midnight, a few dozen demonstrators stood on the now-defaced monument, chattering with excitement. It was the first time the revolutionary camp, those carrying the torch of the 2011 uprising against the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, had made its presence felt in Tahrir since the July 3, 2013 military coup that removed Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi from power. At one entrance to the square, a new banner declared, “Revolutionaries only. Entry forbidden for Brotherhood, military, and remnants [of the regime].”

A demonstrator named Mohamed Sayed, 32, was standing on the circular base of the monument with a few dozen others. I asked him what they were saying by defacing the shrine. “People want the army and the police to stop killing people,” he said, “and they’re still killing people.”

The defacing of the statue was another skirmish in a long struggle over the legacy of the 2011 uprising. Since Mubarak stepped down in February 2011, and in the wake of every major wave of unrest, the Egyptian state's various institutions sought to cement the appearance that the uprising was over, that the political endgame was underway. Today, the current military-led administration is pursuing this same strategy, rewriting the constitution and planning new elections in the spring, while simultaneously consolidating the power of the military and security establishments and pursuing an intense crackdown on Islamists and the activists associated with the January revolution.

“There’s been a constant battle over history and over the narrative,” filmmaker Omar Robert Hamilton said of the monument. “It’s just more brazen than ever before, and it’s coming through with that tactless, charmless, overbearing sort of style that is so familiar to the Egyptian state.”

Of course, the battle to control the narrative has sometimes simply been a physical battle. On November 19, 2011, Omar told me, he was in his office in downtown Cairo when he got word that the police were attempting to disperse a sit-in in Tahrir by the families of people killed and injured in the January uprising. He grabbed his camera and hurried to the square. When he arrived, protesters were rocking an abandoned police truck back and forth, trying to tip it over. Within hours, the truck was on fire. The police arrived in force, sparking a pitched street battle between stone-throwing protesters and police firing tear gas and bullets. “It was very violent but it was very exciting. It was the biggest show of strength and unity since the 18 days [of the January revolution],” Omar remembered. “Before, you had one street, and you were up and down it, and it was the people versus the state,” Omar said. “The state wore uniforms, and the people had rocks. It was useful because it was very clear what was going on.”

Omar’s media organization, Mosireen, produced searing footage of the battle, including an iconic video of a police officer in riot gear dragging a limp body across the pavement and dumping it on a pile of garbage.

The waters of Egyptian politics have muddied significantly since the days of the Mohamed Mahmoud clash, with Islamists, self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and supporters of the military claiming the mantle of the revolution for themselves. The military government’s crackdown on Islamists left more than 1,000 dead in July and August, but the Islamist and non-Islamist opposition are hopelessly alienated from each other. For many non-Islamist revolutionaries, it is not clear how the “martyrs” of last summer’s violence fit into the narrative of the revolution.

On Tuesday, the day of the anniversary, a crowd of young protesters staged a raucous rally on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, beating drums, jumping, and chanting, “Down with military rule!” On the other side of a barricade, in Tahrir Square itself, supporters of the military staged a birthday celebration for General Abdel-Fattah Sisi, who led the coup against Morsi and is believed to be the most powerful figure in the new government. This second, smaller crowd—made up mainly of middle-aged men and women—was also chanting, “Revolution!” but also, “The people, the police, and the army are one hand.” After two hours, the anti-military crowd rushed into Tahrir, chasing the pro-Sisi protesters to the edge of the square. Police also fired a few rounds of tear gas in what looked like a half-hearted attempt to disperse the crowds. The two groups lobbed stones at one another for hours until the pro-military side finally retreated in the direction of the Nile.

For several more hours, the square began to look like it once did during earlier days of protest, with street vendors circulating and protesters milling about, unsure how to pass the time. In the evening, screens went up, showing the Egypt-Ghana World Cup qualifier match, and the crowds settled in to watch. Egypt won one-nil, but failed to advance in the tournament.

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If you're one of those people who like watching revenge flicks—especially the South Korean movies that spend 90 minutes showing the hero getting tormented before he's unleashed to exotically shaped blades—then Thursday was an amazing day for you. In fact, January 23, 2014 was the best day for arrests in the history of the world! Miami Beach cops arrested drunk wannabe drag racer Justin Bieber, the feds busted revenge porn king Hunter Moore for hacking, and federal authorities indicted conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza for campaign finance fraud. Now the world just needs to lock these three in the same cell, turn on a web cam, and drop blunt weaponry on them.

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It's best to simply state the facts of this story. In November 2013, Marlise Muñoz, a 33-year-old pregnant woman, collapsed on her kitchen floor because of a blood clot in her lung. She quickly became brain dead, and then her family and husband told the doctors to cut life support since that was Marlise's request. The doctors refused to follow the family's orders, because Marlise was about 14 weeks pregnant at the time of her collapse, and the state law prohibited the withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining treatments from a pregnant patient, even if the mother had no chance of recovering and doctors believed the child was unlikely to survive. Because Texas is one of those silly states where abortion nuts control power, the family had to suffer through months of lawsuits and media coverage before finally getting a judge, this week, to basically say, “Yo, this shit's crazy, guys. Let's stop acting like a bunch of assholes. OK?”

L. Brooks Patterson (far left). Image via. 

If a person's name starts with a first initial and is followed by his or her middle and last names, that person is a blowhard. G. Gordon Liddy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. Edgar Hoover—they're all assholes. This brings us to a new entry in the annals of leading initial dickdom: L. Brooks Patterson, County Executive of Oakland County, Michigan. Good ol' L. decided that an interview with a reporter from The New Yorker was a fantastic time to reveal his Escape from New York-esque vision for the future of Detroit:  “What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation,” he said, “where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.” What's that question you have? Does L. have a political affiliation? Why, yes, he does. Can you guess it? Here's a hint: It's the racist one.

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On this fine Sunday, you're probably thinking about kicking back on your couch, hammock, or warm toilet seat and cracking open a cold, refreshing bottle of beer, but you can't because of a little incident in August—with a neighbor, stranger, or horse—that ended with a judge ordering you to stay away from alcohol for a bit. Instead, tonight, you're forgetting your beer-soaked dreams and settling for a cold, refreshing can of... soda pop? Yep, you're drinking soda pop, but you might want to rethink that choice, risk jail time, and pick up a brewski instead, because beer might be safer than cola—that's right. According to Consumer Reports, caramel-colored sodas' artificial colors are probably giving us cancer. 

@RickPaulas

In Part two of Fresh Off the Boat: Shanghai, Eddie travels around the city with popular food writer Jenny Gao, where he starts his day with some poop-infused coffee, throws down in a good, old fashioned cook-off, and discuss how attitudes towards food have changed in China since the Cultural Revolution.

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YOUR BABY IS WORTHLESS IF IT ISN'T A DJ

By Nicole Jones

Photo courtesy of Natalie Elizabeth Weiss

Hey, how’s your baby doin’? What kind of music is it listening to? Kidz Bop? The Wiggles? Fuckin’ Raffi and shit? Well, that might be fine for some people’s kids—if they want them to crawl through life without taste or musical development. If you really loved your baby, you’d be dropping $200 to send it to Baby DJ School.

The school was started up in September by Natalie Elizabeth Weiss, a composer and DJ from Brooklyn who has shared the stage with LCD Soundsystem and the Dirty Projectors and was recently a fellow with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. She’s willing to teach tykes as young as three months old about "the wonderful worlds of electro, hip-hop, and house," according to her press release, which also promises that "little ones will be introduced to playing and handling records, mixing and matching beats, and creating fun and funky samples using modern DJ equipment."

While the idea of babies droppin’ beats underscores just how easy DJs’ "jobs" are, it’s also a great way to introduce kids to creating music—after all, your baby probably can’t play the piano, but it can produce some noise using a MIDI trigger.

If the trial class in mid-September, which was well received by babies and parents alike, is any indication, it looks like Natalie’s project is going to be a roaring success. Soon, your non-DJ children will be ostracized by their terrifying, laptop-wielding peers, and eventually all music will be made for and by toddlers. I, for one, welcome this development and recently asked Natalie for some tips on how babies could hone their DJ skills. Here’s what she said:

• "The most important thing about being a DJ is being a selector. If you don’t match one beat, if you don’t run it through one effect, if you don’t drop one well-placed air horn, but you have cool tracks, that’s all you need." She encouraged parents of baby DJs to "have them be active listeners when they’re selectors," and offers instructional directions like, "Wow, do you hear that bubbly texture? I feel bubbles in my arms. Do you hear the bubbles? Where are the bubbles in the song?"

• "Having equipment that they can use easily" is also key. That means a laptop, a soundcard, and a MIDI trigger.

• "Keep the drinks far away. When adults are having drinks you want to keep the laptop far away, and the same is true with babies. Those sippy cups always spill."