Photos by James and Kara Hayes

I almost made it through my 30s without a single speeding ticket. Then came New Orleans’s traffic cameras. My neighborhood, Bywater, suffered a post-Katrina wave of gentrification that brought with it the government’s all-seeing eye, though none of us asked for it. A camera was set up on Chartres Street, a riverfront lane with houses along only one side of it and, aside from a high school at one end, exactly two kids for a mile’s length. Chartres, one of the few smoothly paved streets in a city known for its potholes, begs you to exceed its 25 MPH limit, but living near the camera made us all very cautious—the only way for me to deal with this speed trap was to drive with the cruise control on at 25 MPH and my foot off the accelerator.

Despite my efforts, my wife and I racked up almost $1,000 in tickets and late fees in that first year before finally we learned to just avoid Chartres. In the meantime we were too poor to pay even a single $110 ticket, so late fees were tacked on. Finally, the city put a boot our car while my two-year-old daughter and I were busy watching the Barkus dog parade during Mardi Gras. I stood on the side of the road trying not to curse with my toddler in my arms, waiting for the cops to come drain our meager savings account and remove the boot.

“They put [traffic cameras] where they think people aren’t gonna fight ‘em,” said Louisiana State Representative Jeff Arnold, who has made it his mission to bring down New Orleans’s camera scam. “They have them outside some of the most prestigious private schools like McGehee and Trinity, but you don’t have them in front of McMain [a public high school] on Claiborne. They place them less for safety and more for returns. The cameras are about the best return on the dollar.”

Though the first traffic cameras were first installed in 2008, during the tenure of now-disgraced mayor Ray Nagin, his successor, Mitch Landrieu, has continued to plant more robot eyes in the ground while insisting they’re about safety, not revenue. A picker of only the lowest-hanging fruit, Landrieu hasn’t solved the city’s serious issues of poverty and violence (in 2013, the murder rate dropped around 10 percent, though the rate of gun violence remained steady, which just means more gunshot victims are surviving), but he has added roughly 10 percent to the city’s annual budget (somewhere between $12 and $18 million), in part by burdening the already poverty-stricken citizenry with more ways to get tickets. The camera program has been such a financial success for the city that at this point, losing the revenue would be disastrous for the budget.

And yet locals continue to see no increase in city services. “We have so much revenue coming in from the cameras, plus [the 2013] Super Bowl, Sugar Bowl, [and] Mardi Gras,” said Arnold, “but then we’re told we have to cut this department and that department. They say they are going to dedicate a portion to police. But then if they do, they then take a million from the police department and give it to the mayor’s office, so in the end that really doesn't do anything.”

Arnold stressed that New Orleans suffers from a lack of officers patrolling the streets, and cameras are no substitute. “If you use a police officer to write tickets, when they pull someone over they might see that illegal gun sticking out of the back seat, [or] you catch people who have a warrant out for their arrest, something that a traffic camera will never catch," he said, adding that cameras "aren't doing real police work.”

Arnold is also perturbed that much of the work the cameras do create isn’t going to locals. “You get a ticket in New Orleans from company in Arizona,” Arnold explained, “then if you pay it, you pay to a company in Ohio. If you don’t pay, then you have a law firm in Texas who calls you and tries to collect. We outsource to three different states, and then we only get about half the money that’s charged. Do we not have people who can do all this in Louisiana?”

The number of tickets—and therefore the revenue—generated by New Orleans’s cameras has decreased as citizens learn which areas to avoid. In response, Landrieu has upped the number of cameras, including 11 more added in 2012. That despite the fact that there's little evidence that cameras make the streets safer—while City Hall wasn’t forthcoming with accident statistics, reports have shown that cameras actually increased fender-benders in Los Angeles, D.C., Portland, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 2005, the North County Times in Oceanside, California, reported an 800 percent increase in rear-end accidents at one intersection caused by brake-slammers attempting to avoid tripping the cameras during the first few months of the cameras’ operation.

Meanwhile, New Orleans continues to ignore research showing that measures like lengthening yellow lights by one or two seconds or adding a brief interval when all of an intersection’s lights remain red for a couple seconds vastly improve safety at no cost.

Garden District attorney Owen Courreges has publicly railed against the cameras via his column in the local news site Uptown Messenger, often drawing attention to instances of petty corruption. In March 2012, after the city announced that it would forgive all traffic camera tickets issued to city employees, claiming it would be unfair to go after city employees when the city had not laid out a clear policy, Courreges wrote, “The official position of the Landrieu administration is that city employees are entitled to the presumption that they are exempt from certain laws.”

Across the country, corruption follows traffic cameras the way cops used to follow speeders, and New Orleans is no exception. In 2011, it came out that New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronald Serpas’s son-in-law, as well as Serpas’s bodyguard and three of his top commanders, were being paid on the side for reviewing traffic tickets when they were off-duty. Serpas’s subordinate, Commander Edwin Hosli, was even more ballsy, starting his own ticket-reviewing company in violation of department rules. The Office of Inspector General, the FBI, and the New Orleans Police Department’s Public Integrity Bureau launched a probe into Hosli’s maneuvers, but, naturally, decided not to press charges.

The way the system is supposed to work, after a traffic camera snaps a photo of your plate a human officer reviews the ticket before mailing it out. And yet many clearly misidentified vehicles are still fined—it’s the car, not the resident, who receives the ticket. Fighting a ticket is nearly impossible: you have to first pay at least a $50 appeal fee, which is non-refundable even if you win your case. (That fee goes into a fund that helps pay for the cost of the city’s appeal against you if you somehow win your initial case.) You then move on to the New Orleans Administrative Hearing Center, which claims to provide a neutral, objective hearing based on evidentiary procedures outlined in the Administrative Procedures Act, but is well known as a kangaroo court.

“It’s essentially impossible to get your money back, even if the ticket is bogus,” Owen Courreges wrote in 2012. “The hearing officer is both judge and prosecutor, but is legally required to be impartial and provide a meaningful administrative review… In my experience, these hearing officers do not have any knowledge regarding the operation of the cameras, and will not admit any evidence regarding their operation or accuracy. They defer entirely to American Traffic Solutions [ATS, the corporation that owns New Orleans’s cameras].”

Some cities have decided to put an end to traffic cameras in recent years. In 2011, the city councils of Los Angeles and Houston voted overwhelmingly to shut the electronic eyes off—in LA, it was in response to audits that showed the program wasn’t making any money, while Houston was responding to a 2010 referendum that saw voters reject the cameras en masse. (Houston had to deal with a lawsuit from ATS, which operated its cameras, and wound up settling with the company for $4.8 million.) In Florida, judges have questioned the constitutionality of traffic cameras because they shift the burden of proof by forcing accused speeders to show that it wasn’t them driving their cars in order to get themselves acquitted.

New Orleans’s neighboring Jefferson Parish began the process of shutting down its cameras after it came out that lobbyist and former New Orleans City Council member Bryan Wagner was receiving commissions from fines brought in by Redflex Traffic System’s cameras. Still, despite all this, the Landrieu administration isn’t going to let voters decide the fate of the city’s camera program.

“Redflex and ATS have powerful lobbying forces, so it’s been hard to break through,” said an exasperated Jeff Arnold. The state representative has reached the end of his term limit and won’t run for another position, but he hopes someone else will continue his fight, possibly by hitting the powers that be in the wallet.

“Attack the cameras from an angle that will make them not profitable,” he suggested. “If they aren’t profitable then [city officials] won’t have them because it’s not about safety, it’s about money.”

Michael Patrick Welch is a New Orleans musician, journalist, and author of books including The Donkey Show and New Orleans: the Underground Guide. His work has appeared at McSweeney's, Oxford American, Newsweek, Salon, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter here.

Ever since the tender age of 12 the two things I’ve loved more than anything in this world, the only two constants in my life for the past 25 years, have been sex and skateboarding. I don’t claim to be very good at either, but after writing about both exclusively for more than 15 years I’ve become somewhat of an authority on the matters and I’ve always said the similarities between skateboarding and the porn world are uncanny. Here’s a short list of some of the most obvious comparisons that barely scratches the surface:

1. No one uses their real name. Try calling 411 and asking for Lizard King's or Belladonna's home number.

2. Bang bus/tour van; same difference. Equally creepy. 

3. If you're ever gonna make it, you better be able to throw down backside tailslides on command.

4. If either a skater or a porn star puts in a real hard day at work today, chances are they're going to see the doctor tomorrow.

5. Neither industry offers their risk-taking spokespeople health insurance.

6. Both worlds eat 'em alive and spit them out young and prefer their stars “barely legal.”

7. You're a veteran/cougar before you turn 30. The movie The Wrestler could have just as easily been about a pro skater or a porn star. 

8. Red Tube/Hellaclips. The consumption level of fans of both worlds is beyond gluttonous. Content must be constantly sacrificed to please the interweb gods.

9. No footage=no fans. No longer can you be an aloof star. There’s another young buck/fuck right behind you waiting to take your place, so you better film some tricks.

10. The amount of money some skaters/porn stars make would make a hard-working, 90-hour-a-week construction worker jump off the bridge he’s building. Yes, there are 20-year-old millionaires who’re are paid simply to skate/fuck.

11. By the same token, the high-paid Tony Hawks/Jenna Jamesons are the one percenters. The majority of porn “star” and skateboarding “athletes” are barley getting by.

12. In skateboarding the most prestigious award is Thrasher’s Skater of the Award, or SOTY. I recently learned that in porn they have a similar acronym, POTY, for Performer of the Year.

13. Lastly, go big or go home. Both activities are getting so death-defying in their extreme feats that I fear someone is going to get killed or maimed in the near future. In skateboarding an 18-year-old named Nyjah Huston is jumping down sets of stairs the size of Mt. Everest, falling on his face, and getting up and going again. Just yesterday I saw one woman on the internet take four penises in her single butthole and another German woman who truly, truly loves eating feces during sex. The bar has been raised to where I don’t know if it can be topped.

And yet porn star Bonnie Rotten feels otherwise.

Two weeks ago, Bonnie was named the 2014 AVN Performer of the Year. I stopped by her house the other day to discuss her super powers, her naughty grandma, teenage gang bangs, and all things squirting—squiring for distance, squirting on bibles, watering your plants with squirt, etc.

Follow Bonnie @thebonnierotten or go to Bonnierotten.com.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko.

"Man, is it cold outside," said the emcee at 10 AM sharp.

"How cold is it!?" said the crowd.

"So cold that Miley Cyrus froze to her wrecking ball."

The town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, is full of artistic eccentrics, hippy college students, good ole boys, and "half-backs." A "half-back" is the mostly affectionate term for the part of Blowing Rock's population that retired to Florida but couldn't put up with the swampy humidity and moved "half back" to wherever they were from, landing them in Blowing Rock.

According to legend, two star-crossed lovers from different Native American tribes, torn between duty and affection, leapt into the giant gorge that is now an attraction called the Blowing Rock. The impressive cliffs at this popular spot provide breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A nearby resort on Chetola Lake has been hosting a Polar Plunge for the last 16 years for those wanting to take a similar leap with less traumatic results. 

This year was one for the books. There were well over 100 jumpers despite the 22-degree weather. My favorite people in the South never pass up an opportunity to get a little crazy, and the deal is sweetened when money is being raised for charity (this year it was the Watauga Humane Society and the Western Youth Network). The first group flew down the stairs wearing scrubs while shivering and pumping their fists in the air for the crowd. They got lined up on the pier, and the emergency crew gave the thumbs up as they bobbed around in inflatable rubber suits in a small open area carved out of the three-inch-thick ice. They leapt with abandon, comforted by the fact that the water was slightly warmer than the air.

The couple that won the Golden Plunger for best costumes was Dick and Joan Hearn, dressed as the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. They have been jumping together for 14 years and are notable for both their excitement and their age. When pressed, Dick said he's "at least 80." With great theatrics, the Wolf handed Red a rose that she accepted and put in her basket. She curtsied, hugged him, and jumped without hesitation. She promptly popped back up and climbed the ladder as ice formed along her hairline. Joan jumped without a peep, while others said words that won't be repeated on this family website. 

Everyone had a great time and warmed up quickly in front of the industrial heaters while everything from Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" to "Splish Splash" blared from the speakers. Besides the last jumper, who wore a wedding dress in hopes of finding a husband at the plunge, no one could verbalize exactly why they desired to jump. However, almost everyone was chatting about next year, when they will be ready ready to take the plunge again. 

Nashville-based photographer Tammy Mercure shoots the loudest events in the South.

@tammymercure

International spy club buddies. Photo via.

Recently released documents from Edward Snowden’s monumental leak trove show that the NSA spied on America’s behalf during the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, apparently with help from Five Eyes henchmen Canada, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand. Something about New Zealand just doesn’t fit in with the rest here—it’s like the nice kid who fell in with the bullies in high school, but was too timid to leave the crew, then got pressured into shoving some fat kid into a locker. Putting aside that idealized picture, the crux of the issue here is that the NSA and its accomplices have undermined the international climate negotiation process considerably.

Leaders in a few Five Eyes governments thought it would be a good idea to throw the spy services another mandate to chew on: the battle against climate change. Some people may think that this sounds like a terrible idea, and these leaders should be swiftly removed from office. But they'd be wrong, since international climate negotiations are apparently all about arguing over who gets to do the least to prevent climate change. New leaks just revealed that the spies have been earning their budgets. 

The Copenhagen Summit was supposed to deliver an ambitious international agreement and lay out targets for the world to get on with fixing climate change. It failed spectacularly, and commentators had since chalked that up to two main disagreements between industrialized countries and less developed countries: first, over who’s responsible for the carbon already in the atmosphere; and second, who gets to add what amount of the remaining “budget” we have before the Yukon becomes a leading year-round exporter of outdoor tomatoes.

Before the conference began, the Danes had produced a “last resort” document that contained some weak pablum that every country could agree on to avoid a complete failure. Having already gained access to this document plus a number of negotiating positions from major players like China and India, US diplomats sat back sipping Big Gulps and tossing paper airplanes as negotiations dragged closer to the deadline. They knew that in the end, the Danish bailout was coming, which it did. Canada, for its part, contributed about the square root of fuck-all, and was naturally awarded a fossil award for backwardness on the very first day of negotiations.   

Environmental advocates are already pretty angry about this story and the other toothless environmental protections being negotiated in our names at the international level. These new revelations aren’t helping. I spoke with John Bennett, Director of the Sierra Club of Canada, who told me what should be obvious to everyone by now. “Climate change is not about national self-interest and calls for cooperation," he said. "There’s no place for spying. The US, Canada, and the rest should be ashamed to have undermined international trust.”

Indeed, they should. Let’s contrast this with the way James Clapper, Director of the NSA, talks about the environment:

“Increasingly the environment is becoming an adversary for us. And I believe that the capabilities and assets of the Intelligence Community are going to be brought to bear increasingly in assessing the environment as an adversary.”

Clapper’s unsettling language is emblematic of the warlike way his agency will frame every problem it’s tasked with solving, including the environment. This kind of thinking delivers its own kind of results. With the spooks’ help at Copenhagen, we surely did defeat the "adversary," if the adversary was meaningful cooperation towards a collective goal! Instead, leaders agreed to keep recklessly blowing our “carbon budget” for a few more years, and maybe see if we can come up with something better at the next summit.

What this Copenhagen leak boils down to is that the US, Canada, and the other Five Eyes countries appear to have been negotiating in very bad faith for quite some time. They’ve already proven they’ll sic their spy agencies on pretty much any target that delivers an economic advantage. Why not go for a meatier target, like a trade deal? Fellow countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations must be asking themselves a few awkward questions right now, and so should their citizens. The TPP has been kept secret from the public to ostensibly “preserve the integrity of the negotiations,” but what if it turned out the Five Eyes had been spying on everyone else all along? Not only would this blow up that flimsy line of reasoning, but it would also fully expose the TPP for what it is: a “corporatist power grab.”

Whether it’s spying at the 2007 Bali climate talks, spying at the 2010 Toronto G20 talks, spying on world leaders’ mobile phones, collecting the data of ordinary citizens en masse at Canadian airports, or lying about spying on Canadian and US citizens, our intelligence agencies can’t help themselves when it comes to collecting any data that may be in the “national interest.” In this latest case, the Five Eyes just lost all kinds of trust, and the casualty of the day was the entire process for negotiating international environmental agreements.

As the war on terrorism is increasingly revealed as an unwinnable war against a concept, it’s worth remembering that bureaucracies are always hungry for more money and more problems. The massive domestic security apparatus built in the Western world after 9/11 has been expanding to meet its expanding needs for over a decade now. Unlike its social services and education counterparts, the security state has been rather adept at dodging this whole austerity thing. Somehow, a generation that grew up under constant threat of nuclear annihilation has been cowed into giving up their liberty and their tax dollars in the name of stopping terror.

This latest story is emblematic of a serious identity crisis for a set of agencies that have told citizens all along that their objectives are simply keeping us safe from the bad guys who hate our freedoms. When our governments seem to be spying on everyone all the time, it's virtually impossible not to feel like we all have a lot less freedoms for the bad guys to hate.  

Above, a full load of chicken wings via.

It was the end of the first half of Harbaugh Bowl, a.k.a. Super Bowl LVXII, and Kaep’s pass had just been picked off by Ravens safety Ed Reed. As a Giants fan, I had no skin in the game, but I was watching it at the house of a San Francisco 49ers fan. The scene at that moment was particularly grim. As Reed ran down the sideline, there was much lamentation, jumping up from sofas and rending of garments, particularly number #7 jerseys.

But it was also then, as the sofa cleared momentarily, that the coffee table—one of those glass top kinds common in the living room of men who haven’t bought new furniture since college—came into my view. And on that table, next to a desultory bowl of Tostitos and dented empty tall boys, was a platter of bright orange Buffalo wings. Glistening in the flickering light of the television screen, they were an orange jumble of limbs akimbo and entangled. It was chicken Fellini, an inflammatory orgy whose smell and steam rose like a side-lined athlete during a winter game. My lips began to twitch and press together. The fabric of my pants grew tighter and I slid a paper plate over my love-middle, both to hide my tumescence and prepare the bed for my wing conquête.

I was Jean Louis-David at the threshold of Le Bain Turc. The wings rested against each other in positions of extreme loucheness, circled around a milky pool of bleu cheese dressing, guarded only by straight, narrow celery stick eunuchs. I drew myself closer to the platter. I disregarded the football game. I took some girl’s seat. I knocked over a beer, sat on a cat, and didn’t file my taxes on time. I didn’t care. All I knew was that those wings and my mouth had to be inside one another. 

Buffalo wings come in two varieties, wingettes and drumettes. Wingettes, also called flats, are like Nordic models, long and skinny with delicate bones. Drumettes, or drummies, are like this girl Lorenna I dated: curvy, darker, and meatier. Some people prefer one over the other, but I’m of the school that thinks that each offer their own pleasures. Wingettes, which take subtlety and effort to consume, are good for making love to. A drumette is the girl you wouldn't let your mother meet, the girl who is crazy in bed, so crazy that for a while you love it, ”like really love it,” but then you sort of feel weird and then, finally, concerned. After a few months it's too much, and rather than tackle the dilemma, is it more disrespectful to continue to engage in such outré sexual fantasies (even though you watch them on the internet) or to suggest professional help for proclivities shared in confidence? You just slowly disengage.

But man, those first couple of times! I chose a drumette. Coated in an unnaturally orange sauce like a poultry tan mom, my drummy was already wet. That's a good sign, I thought, for nothing is as unattractive and rattling as an under-sauced wing. Nah, Lorenna had a fetching sheen of buttery, garlicky sauce, made of Franks RedHot and butter with garlic and habaneros, but it could have been sheer orange chiffon. Underneath, her skin was dark brown and crispy. Her silhouette was pleasingly like a light bulb. Search term: BBW. 

I brought Lorenna to my mouth, gripping her gently at her base and at her head. Time had slowed for me and all noise had receded. The world beyond Lorenna was out of focus. All I saw was her bulbous flesh closing in on me as I took one bite of the wing, in the meatiest part of the thigh. My mouth began to tingle, my tongue to ripple. At every point on my face where Lorenna slimed, I burned. It was like some instantaneous and delightful sexually transmitted disease. 

Dear reader, I ate her. I ate Lorenna in a matter of seconds. A second, maybe. She hung out in that unreal zone between rotund butteriness and sharp spiciness, between crispy skin and moist meat. Soon Lorenna was nothing but bones and gristle. I plucked up a second, then a third. I picked up a wingette and, using a speed-eater technique called “the butterfly,” I pushed so hard on her head, her skin and meat came off in one fell swoop, leaving but two tender bare bones. I ate her meat, gristle and all. 

The burning continued and I didn’t want it stop. Ever. Even as my fingers were covered, the orange bleeding to my palms and wrists and forearms, from my lips, to my mouth and up to my nose. I didn’t want it to stop. Even as my stomach grew distended and full and the pile on the plate grew lonelier and fewer. Even as I knew I was transgressing some ancient party etiquette by eating an entire plate of wings, I could not stop. I felt the burn. Feel the burn. I felt the burn. I yearned for burn, blew my wad, waded with an orange warrior grimace, into the burn. I got up to pee, but when I returned, the burning had migrated below. It hurt, but Christ, what a pleasure to hurt like that. 

The football game wore on, but I was balls deep in Buffalo wings and couldn’t care less. Beyoncé did some shit. Ray Lewis was outrageous. The Ravens won. 

Soon after the game ended, the party disbanded. Already drunk and now sad, the guests sloughed away like dandruff on a windy shoulder to their homes. But I remained, in a drunken post-game, post-coital culinary stupor. It was just me and a plate of bones. I gazed down at the Buffalo wing graveyard. Using a finger, I drew a heart in the hot sauce there pooled and said, “Adios, Lorenna, see you next year.” 

Previously: An Erotic Encounter with an Egg Sandwich

"If you don't like it here, you're free to leave," is a constant refrain for those who don't like to hear criticism of their city. I love Los Angeles, and I actively want to see it improve, but what people usually do when they get fed up with LA is exactly what people tell them to do. They move as far away from the central city as they can while still being able to enjoy the ample benefits of the city. Because of this unchecked suburban growth, when people reference “Los Angeles,” it doesn’t just mean the city limits of LA.

The Los Angeles metro area includes independent municipalities like Beverly Hills, Culver City, Pasadena, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica. It’s often the case that these cities were formed—or thrived—as an alternative to the civic dysfunction of LA. In the 1960s and 1970s, Santa Monica became known as a haven for left-leaning, progressive politics and counter-cultural movements, far from the reactionary, prying eyes of LA’s city council and police department.

Those unrepentant hippies didn't leave after the rest of America stopped seeing not bathing as a virtue. They planted their freak flag firmly, and the "People's Republic of Santa Monica" was born. One of the many symbols of that progressive history is Chain Reaction, a sculpture donated to the city by Paul Conrad, a noted political cartoonist. Santa Monica City Councilman Robert Holbrook recently likened the piece to a “golf tee,” but the actual image it intends to evoke is something far more sinister.

It’s a bunch of metal chains welded together to look like a nuclear mushroom cloud. Conrad, like many old school Santa Monicans, was vehemently anti-war and terrified of the potential of nuclear conflict between the great powers of the world. In the early 90s, Conrad gave his sculpture to the city, which gladly accepted it and placed it adjacent to the Santa Monica Civic Center.

Photo via Flickr User euthman

This naturally leads to plenty of strange bedfellows for all involved. It’s a bit of a middle finger to the “establishment” and a symbol of ironic disobedience for the remaining liberal residents of the city, which is why, some say, the Santa Monica City Council is so eager to see it removed. 

Under the guise of public safety concerns, the City Council stated they had to spend $400,000 to renovate the sculpture to keep children from climbing on it and falling to a grisly demise. In the over 20 years since the city took possession of the sculpture, there have been no injuries, but this fact hasn’t kept opponents of Chain Reaction like Councilman Holbrook and Mayor Pat O’Connor from publically claiming that the statue is a danger to citizens.

The movement to tear down Chain Reaction is indicative of a greater cultural shift at play in the western half of Los Angeles County. Santa Monica has slowly morphed into something that its long-time, long-haired residents don’t recognize. Large-scale residential developments and upscale malls are replacing the intimate, small-town feel that used to define the community.

A new light rail line to the beach is about to connect Santa Monica to the rest of Los Angeles in a way that most thought was impossible a couple decades ago. In this climate of rapid cultural and economic evolution, the Santa Monica City Council is taking steps to make their municipality even friendlier to redevelopment. The Civic Center area is a prime target for building, and a giant metal mushroom cloud is not considered a great amenity.

A group calling itself "Save Chain Reaction" has been trying to raise the funds the city claims it needs to refurbish the statue. I joined them for one of their meetings at Bergamot Station, a collection of art galleries near an old trolly terminal. Sarah Mason, a member of the group whose image was the basis for the cover of Time magazine's Person of the Year issue honoring the Occupy Wall Street protests, is well aware of the importance of having a sense of place. 

“I think that what the thing that was so important about Occupy, and this became really apparent after all the camps were broken up, is how important physical space was in developing a center for political discussion, planning, coordinating, debate. We don't’ have spaces like that available to us. Is [a shopping mall] a cultural center? Is that where people go to congregate?” Sarah said. “People that are making the decisions about development, and what is and isn’t art, they have big buildings all over the world. They have nothing but space to congregate and meet. And they do. They meet for weeks at a time. In Dubai and in Switzerland. And they’ve really got a vision and plans and all the space to think about them and carry them out."

Robert Berman, a gallery owner at Bergamot who played host to the meeting I attended, symbolized the fuzzy rebel spirit that made Santa Monica's reputation as a socialist paradise. There's a conspiracy theorist's mania to Robert. To him and many other Santa Monica progressives, there was always another layer I was missing, a shadowy player who was really puling the strings in this story. “[Councilman Holbrook] hates it, and he doesn’t want it there—he wants it gone, but he says, Eli Broad, when he was going to make a museum there, said, 'if that thing stays, I’m not going to build my museum.' Implying that it’s a piece of junk in Eli’s eyes,” Robert said. 

There would be no Disney Hall without wealthy philanthropists to make it happen. Photo via Flickr User smilygrl

Eli Broad basically owns or directly influences most of the cultural institutions of Los Angeles. He made his fortune building suburban tract homes in far-flung desert areas like Palmdale, Valencia, and Lancaster. He inadvertently helped move thousands of people out of LA and into the hinterlands, further devestating the city's tax base in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Now, he's known as the savior of urban LA. He's a major patron of the Museum of Contemporary Art and LA County Museum of Art, he was instrumental in helping to get Walt Disney Concert Hall built. To many in this city, he's the one every government official in the County has to genuflect to when he decides to build something. 

In a three-way competition for a museum/monument to Broad's contemporary art collection, Santa Monica seemed to be the runaway winner compared to Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. At the last minute, Broad chose Los Angeles, and his Broad Museum is currently being erected in Downtown LA, much to the chagrin of people like Councilman Holbrook and Mayor O'Connor. Whether or not Eli Broad or any other powerful developer had a say in the Chain Reaction controversy is an open question. Councilman Holbrook and Mayor O'Connor ignored multiple requests for comment on this story. The tide is turning on Chain Reaction, with $100,000 raised to donate to the city for their requested repairs. The City Council will vote on February 25 to decide if they will accept the donation and front the rest of the costs of fixing the statue.

These issues are not intrinsic to Los Angeles or its neighboring municipalities. Every major city in America struggles with the loss of civic identity in the face of rapid gentrification. The New York City mayoral race that just ended was essentially a referendum on the modern American city. That city is unaffordable, hip, low on crime, but high on cultural resentment and tension. Still, without the truly wealthy, there would be no public art, no great architecture, and, well, no cities. This is Michael Bloomberg's grand point: without wealthy people paying taxes and donating to causes, New York would be a giant prison and LA would be Blade Runner.

The consequence of that is American cities are beginning to resemble the playgrounds of the hyper-wealthy like Dubai and Switzerland that Sarah talked to me about. LA's challenge, and the challenge of all American metropolitan areas is finding a balance between the safety of gentrification and the very real need to allow people of all classes room to mingle. In order to create the city we all want to see here in LA, the average Angelino has to do more to let their voice be heard. They should start with actually voting, and go from there. Los Angeles Is Miserable was never just about slamming the city. It was about trying to make this place better by pinpointing what's wrong. 

Just like it always has, the city will keep moving regardless of what we do. People in LA get restless. It's in our nature. This story will continue to be told over and over again, just in different places. As Sarah Mason put it, “Echo Park could just as easily face the sort of situation that Santa Monica and Venice are facing now, because at the root of it is people that are interested in the value of property."

@dave_schilling

It's time, once again, to despair at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

 Cry-Baby #1: Salt Lake City School District

Salt Lake Tribune via Gawker

The incident: A school realized that about 40 students were about to eat a lunch that hadn't been paid for. 

The appropriate response: Sorting it out after. 

The actual response: They took the lunches off the kids and threw them away.

On Monday, Salt Lake City School District's child-nutrition department discovered that the families of about 40 students at Uintah Elementary had outstanding balances on their lunch accounts.

As a result of this, a representative from the child nutrition department went to the school to tell them to withhold lunches from the children with unpaid balances. However, the representative arrived at the school on Tuesday morning shortly after the lunch had been served.

So, deciding it was better to to have nobody eat the food than let the poor children eat it, cafeteria workers took the lunches off the kids and threw them away.

Erica Lukes, whose 11-year old daughter was one of the children to have their lunch seized, told the Salt Lake Tribune, "It was pretty traumatic and humiliating." 

She said that she was unaware that her child's balance hadn't been paid off. "I think it's despicable," she told the paper. "These are young children that shouldn't be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up."

A spokesman for the school district said that they'd tried to contact the parents to let them know that their accounts needed to be paid off, but hadn't been able to reach them all by phone. "Something’s not working, and that’s what the school and child-nutrition department are going to work on together," he told the Salt Lake Tribune.

The children who had their lunches taken away were given milk and fruit instead. 

Once the story hit the local paper and a backlash started, the school district posted an apology to their Facebook account. The post read, in part, "This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize."

Cry-Baby #2: Two unidentified men in Western Germany

Ruhr Nachrichten via The Local

The incident: Two men tried to buy some beer, but the store didn't have the brand they wanted.

The appropriate response: Choosing a different kind.

The actual response: They set the store on fire.

Last Sunday, two men went into a liquor store in Dortmund, Western Germany and tried to buy a case of Beck's Gold.

The guy working there told them that they did not stock Beck's Gold.

All seemed to be going fine, until 20 minutes later when the two men returned holding a gas can.

According to police, they briefly spoke with the shopkeeper before pouring fuel over the entrance to the store. They then set it on fire and ran away.

The fire, which was put out by the shopkeeper, caused a small amount of damage to the front of the store. 

Police are still looking for the men, who they described as being around 30 years old and speaking in Polish. 

Which one of these fools is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A woman who thought her randomly generated password was racist Vs. A school that called the cops because a kid threw up a three point sign

Winner: It's a draw!!!

@JLCT

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

-xoJane is the kind of website that typically hews closely to the "generic urban female" demographic. It's sex and fashion tips, with article titles such as, "YOUR Outfits Of The Week: This Week Is A ME PARTY." Well, shit got really real when xoJane posted an article titled, "It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People in My Yoga Class and I'm Suddenly Uncomfortable With It," written by Jen Polachek.

To say the liberal internet found the article "problematic" would be a significant understatement. There is actually an essay in the world where someone seriously says, "I realized with horror that despite the all-inclusivity preached by the studio, despite the purported blindness to socioeconomic status, despite the sizeable population of regular Asian students, black students were few and far between."

What Caron doesn't address is that it's very possible that black people just aren't into yoga. That might bring her carefully constructed worldview crashing down upon her, but she brought it on herself. Black people had to fight for their freedom from bondage, their right to own property, their right to vote, and their right to go to the same schools and play golf at the same country clubs as white people. If black folks want something en masse, history says they will let you know. Thus far, they seem pretty ambivalent about yoga, and I don't think it's really necessary that they all of the sudden change their minds about that. It's like writing an essay about why more black people don't bowl. Who gives a fuck?

Oh my God, lady. Seriously. What the fuck is this:

"Would a simple 'Are you okay?' whisper have helped, or would it embarrass her? Should I tell her after class how awful I was at yoga for the first few months of my practicing and encourage her to stick with it, or would that come off as massively condescending?"

Is this about her race or the fact that you are embarrassed to see a fat person trying to do yoga? Somehow, it gets better/worse when Caron has a nervous breakdown over the black lady doing yoga who probably went home wondering why some lady was staring at her for an hour straight:

"I got home from that class and promptly broke down crying. Yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped me through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect. Knowing fully well that one hour of perhaps self-importantly believing myself to be the deserving target of a racially charged anger is nothing, is largely my own psychological projection, is a drop in the bucket, is the tip of the iceberg in American race relations, I was shaken by it all the same."

As I said last week, people will always see race, even self-hating white yuppies. There's such a high concentration of forced, unnecessary privilege checking in this article that it is now sentient and walks the earth. One can only hope that this lifeform made of pure liberal guilt will do us all a favor and retire to New Mexico, become a hoarder, and leave the rest of the world alone. 5

-Richard F. Cebull, a former federal judge who already got into hot water for sending a racist email about President Obama, has been further disgraced by countless other emails connected to him that contain offensive messages. The New York Times reported that the messages included jokes about  "blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, women, certain religious faiths and liberal political leaders, and some emails contained jokes about sexual orientation." Cebull sent these emails to professional connections and personal friends alike. The Judicial Council of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found in their investigation that despite Cebull's less than savory behavior, they found no evidence of bias in his rulings. Let it be known, he's one of the "good racists." Congrats, Dick! RACIST

Photo via Flickr User Gage Skidmore

-Glenn Beck, former relevant pop culture figure and hater of race baiting, recently took MSNBC's race bait and labeled the cable news channel racist for tweeting that right-wing Americans would "hate" their upcoming commercial featuring a biracial family. “I’m sorry, MSNBC, but you are racist, and we know who you are now," Beck said. I think it's definitely unfair to claim that every conservative in America hate interracial couples. That's a pretty broad stroke, and not at all factual, but I'm not sure Glenn Beck knows what the word "racist" means. A simple Google search for "racist" brings up the following definition: "a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another." Not sure which race MSNBC is saying is superior. Racially insensitive? Yes. Racist? No. If MSNBC's tweet had said that biracial people are better than white people, then that statement would be more accurate. But whatever, let's all take a second to marvel at that belt Glen Beck is wearing in that picture. What the hell is that? 2

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

HEY @marshallfaulk im not a racist, but you are a piece of shit filthy NIGGER that deserves to be tortured by the KKK. #FuckYou

— The Anchor (@_Hulser) January 31, 2014

I might as well be Asian bc my eyes are always chink

— Maegan Crowder (@maeemaeeez) January 31, 2014

Sitting in subway and this sand nigger walks in wearing sandals with no socks....

— Mike McCarthy (@mike_6mikem) January 29, 2014

It's a shame that a wetback that breaks into America with his hand out gets better treatment than a veteran. Merica!

— the Cult of Mike (@elvisknievil) December 18, 2013

I'll call a spade a spade, or a nigger or a wog or a coon , depends what mood I'm in .

— Suicide Blonde (@san22sbs) January 31, 2014

@dave_schilling

Really old dining table setup via.

Welcome back to our food column, Hot Links, where Dan Meyer explores the neglected culinary stars of YouTube. 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.

I have often been amused when stumbling across dusty old etiquette books from the 40s, and am incredibly amazed to find that this school of thought is still alive and well. Table manners are a grey area of expertise, depending on the country and culture where you were raised. This week’s selection of etiquette videos is an investigation into what I consider to be a potentially clinical mental disorder that is common amongst a certain group of well-mannered Americans. That or most Americans are complete slobs. Luckily, there exists a small cadre of internet dining etiquette coaches on YouTube to help us all out. 

When I came across this genre, I assumed that there would be an endless supply of etiquette personalities. I was amazed to find out that there are actually just a handful of these people—all women—and all quite prolific. The greatest thing about these self-appointed etiquette experts is that while they tend to speak at length about the proper way to behave at a dining room table, you can't help but hope that you will never have to actually share a meal with any of them.  

Business Dining Etiquette

Our business etiquette host is a woman named Lisa. She’s the kind of woman who has a lot of no-no's surrounding business meals. Lisa believes that it’s unacceptable to find a hair or an insect on your dish, but doesn’t deal with the topic of what to do if the chef has spit on the food. It’s also insanely rude to sneeze at the table and suck on your knife, according to our teacher. She hates booze hounds—so don’t even think about getting lit off of more than two drinks if you’re in the presence of a money-related dining companion. After watching her video, you will have all of the information on how to “eat properly,” but the strange dude in the tail end of this segment who shows us all how to “give a good handshake” makes me wonder if this is some sort of subliminal gang message being promoted by a woman who has coined the phrase known as “ew-yuck.”

Dining Etiquette with Sybil Davis 

I think that Sybil D, our etiquette coach, suffers from a slight case of germophobia, but that is completely unrelated. One thing is clear: all of the bacteria that’s located on the bottom of one’s purse is completely unappetizing. This video lesson suggests that if you tend to carry one of those things around, you’re supposed to place it on your chair. And then I guess that you are supposed to sit on your purse? I bet she sits on her purse all the time, and that's why there is so much bacteria on it. When teaching video etiquette guides, Sybil prefers to sit in a huge room at a tiny table, with heaps upon heaps of empty plates in front of her. I have to wonder, Does anyone anywhere in the world still use this much fucking dinnerware? Raise a giant glass of whiskey (like the crystal goblet of booze featured on her tablescape) and toast to dear Sybil. Just remember not to “rub and scrub your mouth with a napkin, just BLOT, BLOT, as needed,” when you do. 

Dining Etiquette with Kristine Stewart

Our host, Kristine Stewart, is not the one that involves herself with onscreen teen vampire romances and tabloid scandals (that's Kristen), but is the one that immerses herself within the global etiquette landscape—more specifically, Hong Kong’s cutthroat dining scene. According to Kristine, an American, English dining is the most acceptable form of dining etiquette anywhere in the world. Her napkin routine seems extremely tedious, one that requires you to unfold it and refold it before placing it on your lap. If someone did this at the dinner table, I would probably wonder what the fuck is wrong with them. She also refuses to look at the camera, which I assume is proper etiquette.  

Etiquette Tips

Here we have Jill, surrounded by disgustingly gaudy china and silverware. I get the impression that her obsession with etiquette seems to stem from her obsession with dining equipment. This video is very high-definition, which is great, because I love staring at Jill's blue turtleneck and striped, padded suit jacket. “Slouching, slurping coffee, answering the phone…”  I love when these ladies go on rants about bad manners.

If Someone Has Food Stuck in Their Teeth: Dining Etiquette

Gloria Starr's short and sweet video about letting someone know that they have spinach stuck in their teeth is a piece of performance art good enough to screen at the MoMA. I didn't know that you were supposed to excuse yourself from the table if you have food stuck in your teeth, so thank you for letting me know, Gloria. Stay tuned for her rant about “a top executive” and his olive pit scandal. 

Top Dinner Etiquette, Table Manners Course, Proper Table Setting

If you’re not a Christian, don’t even think about watching this video. These manners are not for you to learn. This “Christian-based character etiquette program” is hosted by Jeanne, a woman who is standing in front of another collection of QVC-network-style china, in an echoey room without a microphone. This video doesn't actually share any etiquette tips—it’s a video pitch hustle for Jeanne’s six-week program on teaching your kids “important life skills,” because she believes that kids need a “firm foundation for the world that they are about to face.” Damn, Jeanne, it’s not that bad out here. 

Previously: Odd Bread

Le1f (photo by Geordie Wood)

I have been impressed by the high quality of the photography in The Fader for a long time, but never so much as in the last couple of years. This is roughly the amount of time Geordie Wood, a 28-year-old photographer from the suburbs of Boston, has been the magazine’s photo editor. Along with his job at The Fader, Geordie maintains an editorial photography practice, frequently shooting for Vogue, Nylon, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He also has a bunch of pictures in every issue of The Fader. A couple of days after I was hired as VICE's photo editor, I asked Geordie to stop by our office in Brooklyn, so I could try and steal whatever magic he's using to get all this done.

VICE: What do you do at The Fader?
Geordie Wood: I am the photo editor of the magazine. I’m like a one-person photography department.

Yeah, me too.
We have a lot in common. I commission and help art direct everything from cover to cover, every picture of the magazine. We generally don’t use stock images, so that means I do everything from concepting to picking the final photo.

How do you do this work, while also taking editorial commissions?
I do that part-time, and the rest of the time I pursue my other work. Generally, I’m in the office one day a week, and then I’m on my computer all the time writing emails the rest of the week.

Wait. You only go into the office one day a week? How did you get that job?
I feel very lucky to have this position. My first editorial shoot ever was for The Fader. I was offered the shoot while I was still a senior in college up in Syracuse, New York.

You went to the SI Newhouse School, right?
I studied photojournalism there, and I edited the school’s newspaper. After two years of studying photojournalism in college, I totally fell out of love with it. My professors taught photography as a craft, not as a creative form. It was very prescriptive, and everyone’s portfolio basically looked the same when you looked around the classroom.

I threw out all of my work and started over from scratch. I decided that I was going to shoot medium-format film and only use a couple of lenses. This way of working felt more real to me. Eventually, I got some of my photos in front of this guy Phil Bicker, who was creative director of The Fader. Before that, he was the art director of The Face in London. He gave Kate Moss her first shoot.

Altanta, GA (photo by Geordie Wood)

I know Phil.
He gave me my big break. One morning, I was getting out of the shower in college. The phone rang, and he said, “This is Phil Bicker, The Fader. How are you?” And I was like, “Holy shit.” All I really wanted to do was work for them. About a year and a half ago, when the previous photo editor was leaving, I got the job. I had been out of college for five years when that happened. When I first started, I was trying to continue doing what the publication had always done—it added a lot of stress to my life. In the beginning, I was afraid of stumbling in front of everyone, but then I decided to start taking more risks. It’s not a good idea to sit around and do what you’ve always done, and I’m not like the people who came before me. So, I decided to swing for the fences and see what happened. 

From Chicago Fire (photo by Daniel Shea)

What's one of your favorite projects you have done for The Fader?
I would say one of my favorite achievements so far has been a project we did about gun violence in Chicago in the last photo issue. In previous years, the photo issue had been existing series of photographers’ personal work that we then published. For this issue, we decided to actually commission a photo essay for the first time ever. I listen to a lot of rap music; we cover a lot of rap music as well. Much of the contemporary rap music you hear centers around cultures of violence. Gang-related violence is particularly present in Chief Keef’s lyrics. (He’s a rapper from the South Side of Chicago.) As we have all seen, Chicago has more deaths than Iraq and Afghanistan. I was thinking about how we could participate in the conversation in a deeper way. So when we began to plan last year’s photo issue, I went to our editor-in-chief, Matt Schnipper, with just one idea: to address the other side of the music we cover. 

Daniel Shea shot that, right?
Daniel is a close friend of mine. I called him up and said, “Listen, we have about a month to put this together. Do you want to try and do it?” We did it, and it was a success. Titled Chicago Fire, it was about twenty pages of photos in the magazine. We ended up on MSNBC and Huffington Post Live. I think that was one of the biggest things I’ve been able to do there—as you know, there are ups and downs to photo editing, victories and failures. It’s exciting when you can hit one out of the park.

What’s an example of swinging for the fences? What was a risky shoot you commissioned?
The current issue has a feature on Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, one of the biggest pop stars in Japan. The way Fader might traditionally approach this would be to send a photographer to Kyary’s house and shoot her getting up, having dinner with her family—things like that. But I wanted to do the photos in a more modern way, so I sent Charlie Engman to shoot her. It happens that he lived in Japan as a kid, so he speaks fluent Japanese. We decided to try and do some digital manipulation, to take it further and make it more different. Others can be the judge of whether the shoot was successful or not, but it was taking a leap from the historical norm of the magazine. 

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (photo by Charlie Engman)

Under what circumstances do you take pictures for the magazine?
I shoot something for every issue. I really like to keep some skin in the game; it’s cool to mix it up with the people I’m hiring and stay involved as a working photographer. I pick stuff to shoot that is interesting to me or that makes sense logistically for me to shoot. I shoot a feature for the magazine once a year. The last one I did was like a dream come true. I’m a jazz head, and one of my favorite musicians is Christian Scott—he is the leader of a new jazz generation—so I hung out with him in Harlem for four or five days and photographed him.

Christian Scott (photo by Geordie Wood)

What's another one of your sucessful editorials? 
One of my most successful editorials I have shot in the past few years was a portrait of A$AP Rocky. I was the first person ever to shoot him for a magazine. Those pictures are very different than all the images that have come out since he has become more famous.

I went up to Harlem one day and met up with him and all these people we now know, like A$AP Ferg and Venus X.  Smoke DZA even showed up. It was a huge deal that A$AP Rocky was being photographed, because at the time he was just on YouTube. I shot him over the course of an afternoon, and a crowd gathered. People brought bottles of Cristal, and they were smoking blunts on the streets. 

A$AP Rocky (photo by Geordie Wood)

Didn’t you give a talk about that photo for Photo District News?
I did. This past year I was named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers to watch, so I’ve given a couple of talks for them.

What advice do you give at these talks?
I think there is too much focus in our digital, self-publishing, internet world on branding, getting your work out there, promos, and newsletters. But none of that matters if you don’t have something interesting going on, if you’re not being proactive in creating, or if you’re not invested in the work. In The Fader, I’m very happy to give people who have never shot anything for a publication an assignment if they have good work. I want to hire people who are young and hungry. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, the most important photographers will always be those with a unique vision.

@geordiewood

@matte_mag

Image via. 

The administration of Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has faced protests since October 2013. The protesters claim the administration has bought votes, and these activists have vowed to disrupt polling stations. In a precursor to today's elections, a gun battle broke out in front a Lak Si District officer where anti-government protesters set up an encampment in front of a building holding election ballots. Six people were injured by the gunfire and explosions, and this may foreshadow further clashes today. Tonight, VICE's Tim Pool is live streaming the protests and elections from Thailand. 

@TimCast

This morning, we had Eagles Center Jason Kelce wear Google Glass as he competed in Sportsradio 94WIP's 22nd annual Wing Bowl, the Super Bowl of eating contests. In the first round, Jason ate 65 wings in 14 minutes, but he failed to make the competition's top ten and spent the majority of the morning watching Molly Schuyler, a 120 pound mother from Nebraska, eat 363 chicken wings in 30 minutes, breaking the Wing Bowl's record. 

Image via.

The Book Report is a series that promises to deliver exactly what it promises: reports on books by the people who’ve read them. Catch evenings of live, in-person Book Reports that will remind you of the third grade in the best possible way with hosts Leigh Stein and Sasha Fletcher every month at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street in New York. The next one is February 11, 2014.

In 1912, Ellye Howell Glover, commonly known as Dame Curtsey, was an entertaining guru. She had several books in circulation, including Dame Curtsey’s Book of Novel Entertainments for Every Day of the Year—just in case you couldn’t figure out what to do with yourself on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, 1912 was the year the Titanic sank, the Republic of China was founded, and Woodrow Wilson was elected, but Dame Curtsey didn't care about world events. This is not a book about history. This is a book about partying.

As we approach Super Bowl Sunday, when households across our great country will receive guests bearing gifts of seven-layer dip, I give you Dame Curtsey’s Party Pastimes for the Up-to-Date Hostess.

Now, some of you are perfectly content with microbrews and box wine, nachos and pickled pork, but Dame Curtsey is here to guide our party passions.

She says in her forward, “The schemes herein presented are all practical, many of them arranged for moderate purses, with directions clearly stated, for the benefit of the thousands of people who have no time to do their own thinking.” OK, party Nazi.

This is 296 pages of pure entertainment. Martha Stewart is an amateur compared to the Dame. No pictures, no craftastic sidebars highlighting the finer points of glue guns and glitter. It’s just a thousand reasons to invite people over, serve things on doilies, and make us wonder how we as a human race have not solved the world’s problems with paper lanterns and salted nuts.

Dame Curtsey guides us through the festive forest with a monthly breakdown.

Though there are ten to 20 suggestions on how to party each month, I will only highlight a few. Dame Curtsey starts with January and the annual standard of a Good Resolution party. Guests write down five or six aspirations and hand them to their hostess unsigned. She then reads them over a 10 AM meal as the guests attempt to pick who owns the holiday hopes.

She lists a few of the top resolutions in case we are stumped for ideas of our own:

“I will be as honest as the times will permit.” (Feels modern, right?)

“I will spend less time before my mirror—be the self-denial what it may.” (Clearly I was not at this party and did not write this resolution since my mother says I have never met a mirror I didn't like.)

“I will break no more hearts.” (This person must be sober, because really, by midnight who hasn’t broken up with at least three people in the hallway.)

Then there's this: “I will tell no more lies—except social ones, which are necessary or I should be ousted from society.” (Someone’s been reading my journal.)

In February, aside from the usual Valentine's Day and whatnot, Dame Curtsey puts her finger on the political pulse by celebrating with Lincoln's lunch as well as a nod to Washington's wafers. I am still not sure what those are, but I plan to find something crisp and inflexible to celebrate the season.

As we move on to March, it seems there has been so much partying after Saint Paddy's Day that it is necessary to embrace a “scheme” that involves laying down as a small quartet plays lullabies in the next room. After a half hour, guests reveal their peaceful thoughts. This is called the Rest Cure party. Somehow, I find it hard to believe pharmaceuticals are not mentioned.

During April and May, it’s a bevy of spring flowers, Shakespeare's birthday if you're bored, and several ruminations on what to do with eggs.

June is, of course, for graduates and brides, but like all bridesmaids, there is a twinge of bitterness couched in the festivities. Dame Curtsey lists a series of bridal omens, which include the warning that if a funeral procession should cross in front of the bride, she'll die soon after. I suspect some traffic patterns were altered one way or another depending on who you were in the wedding party.

Now it's July, the month the Dame reminds us is more than a time to celebrate our nation's birth. The Fourth of July often marks the gathering of the clan for the first time since the winter holidays. While clan is spelled with a c, this chapter makes me sense all might not be right with the Dame's world vision.

Now, I am a big fan of sparklers, ice cream, fireworks, and flag flying, but here on page 100, there’s a new kind of party. This one involves racism and a fruit plate.

It's called the Porch Watermelon party.

According to Dame Curtsey, invitations were “melon-shaped bits of green cardboard ornamented with a row of little darkies eating triangular pieces of watermelon” with the words Den O Dat Watermelon (spelled exactly as seen here) done in gilt letters across the top. I don’t think they sell those on Etsy, but maybe they do.

Seven courses of watermelon were served (iced, frappé, salad-style, cubed in a cup, right on the rind, and others) and then “after this unique repast, a quartet of darkies sang coon songs for an hour.” Super awkward. It's like a juice fast with the Tea Party.

Then Dame Curtsey casually mentions that the black folks, who I suspect are not volunteering their time, are “concealed by the shrubbery on the lawn.” What?

“The music was greatly enjoyed by the guests on the porch, the moon came up, and it was all lovely and unusual.”

Now, lovely and unusual are words I use to describe a friend’s new girlfriend or my mother's rhubarb pudding, not a watermelon party where blacks are serenading white folks from under the bushes.

Then it's August where we scale back the partying with honey teas and cucumber sandwiches. Whew. There's been a lot of entertaining, and you do get the sense that if the Dame had a successful bowel movement, invitations were dispatched immediately.

But just in case, as fall is approaching, you feel like gourds on ice are not enough, and Dame Curtsey offers up another one her personal pastimes, the Wigwam. In this game, half the players hide and have ten minutes to make their trail of corn or confetti. No mention of the Trail of Tears, of course, because we're sensitive.

Each Indian goes a different way. Then when time is up, the other players, who are “white men,” go on the trail. Now, why the quotes? They are not allegedly white men. They are white men. But the game is to see who can return to the wigwam first with his Indian, and Dame Curtsey reminds us while these are supposed to be boys' games, girls enjoy them too.

I bet they do.

What girl doesn’t love being dragged home by a white man? Sign me up.

Dame Curtsey also says it was the delight of her childhood days to “play Indian” and “I still thrill with genuine terror when I think of my fear of being scalped.” I will just state for the record, if I ever receive an invitation that includes cocktails and scalpings, I'm in. I don't care if I am under anesthesia, hiking the Himalayas, or some strange combination of both—I will travel.

We're only halfway through the book, so I will just give you a few of the holiday highlights. For October, she suggests a Ghosts We All Know party, which I guess means the dearly departed on ice. November is football spreads and turkey treats, and December includes dressing up peppermint sticks to look like members of your family. My conservative, ex-military, black father will love his face on a stick of candy. 

The Dame also suggests distributing gifts from a “horn of plenty.” 

I didn't even know I wanted a horn of plenty, but I do.

Finally, the year ends. If you're like me, you might be asking, “Where is God in all of this?” Dame Curtsey, the party oracle, knows all. God is at a church bazaar and needs to make some extra money.

One of her final chapters concerns around-the-world teas and umbrella booths, but no event is more riveting than the theme entitled “The Seven Ages of Woman.” 

Imagine a church basement filled with seven booths of wonder.

The first table is First Age and is “cleverly” represented by all things baby, including two attendants dressed like infants. The second table, Childhood, has dolls and toys galore with the ladies dressed as children from age five to ten. The Sweethearts booth comes next, filled with dainty articles of engagement, candies of love, and other heart-shaped mementos. (I personally would label this the “sucker table,” but I have never been allowed to run any church activities). The fourth table is the Bride's Table and also could be labeled Table of Suckers depending on your inclination toward weddings. This table is draped in white linen with the ladies dressed as… brides. Shocker!

The Mother's Table follows, because once you've got the ring, there’s nothing left to do, I guess, but have a baby. I love that the items for sale at this table include pies and broom bags. Why does one need a bag for a broom once you've given birth?

The next table is, of course, the Spinster's booth because it's just really wife or knife at this point. Dame Curtsey has grandly pointed out that this table is conducted “by a merry bunch of unappropriated blessings.” If anyone ever referred to me as an unappropriated blessing, I would stab them with my broom, which is not in a bag since I am not a mother.

The spinsters are selling tea and kittens that go like “hot cakes.” 

The final lap at this bizarre bazaar is the Grandmother's Table, which is hosted by the oldest ladies of the parish. Now, how did they recruit for this event? Baby costumes or everlasting life? Tea cozies? You can chit-chat with God.

Dame Curtsey has covered it all, from Easter bonnets to warm nuts. When I finished the book, I figured this doorstop has got to be out of print, so I googled the book to see if it was in print, which I am sure Dame Curtsey would appreciate because it means more opportunities to recruit others for singing in the shrubs or random scalpings.

Shockingly, I found that Dame Curtsey is alive and well, at least in paperback, on Amazon. The only thing that has changed is the font.

If I haven't sold you on Dame Curtsey's Party Pastimes for the Up-to-Date Hostess, allow me to quote the one review from July 2013. Under the subject line “an essential (for the right crowd),” Alex Embrey writes, “This is perfect for a person (or a friend of a person) who enjoys living briefly in an authentically recreated past. A group more interested in Monopoly than Scattergories may find the games too social or not competitive enough, but if the crowd is willing (and willing to forgive and presumably skip over some occasionally racially-insensitive games), there is fun to be had from appropriating the past for years to come.”

Based on that, I look forward to attending your lovely and unusual events. As Dame Curtsey didn’t say but probably felt, party on!

@tonyacanada

For this week's Mahal, the Lower East Side's Clayton Patterson introduced me to Jim Power, the legendary Mosaic Man. Over the last 25 years, the Mosaic Man has been creating the Mosaic Trail, a series of tile-encrusted lamp posts highlighting the people and places that the world and the Lower East Side have to offer. 

According to Clayton, the project is one of the most photographed public sculptures in New York. “He’s one of the last few remaining characters on the Lower East Side,” Clayton said. “Gentrification made him homeless; eventually, gentrification cleaned out all the little nooks and crannies where creative individuals could live for very little money. When he was younger, he was in a band and played at the World’s Fair. Apparently, he was very good, but Vietnam changed his whole character.”

Sadly, it will take the Mosaic Man 12 more years to finish the Mosaic Trail on his own. That's why he's asking people to donate at indiegogo and hit him up on Paypal at NYCJIMPOWER@AOL.COM. Watch my interview with the Mosaic Man above, and then help him raise the funds to hire the help he needs to finish his iconic project celebrating the Lower East Side. 

Previously - The Eramatics Are Teenage Rappers with Classic Hip-Hip Souls

@Redalurk

Want to see more comics by Daniel? Check out his website. 

Previously - Sleep Hole

Most people celebrate their birthdays with close friends and cake, but French Canadian porn star and college student Heidi Van Horny isn’t like most people—instead of having a party for her 23rd birthday on February 20, she will live stream herself having sex with 23 men.

Porn company AD4 Distribution will host the live stream, but Heidi will handpick her 23 sex partners at casting calls. Unlike most porn videos and cam-girl sessions, the live stream will be free and will only feature porn industry rookies screwing Heidi. (Money will be made after the live stream ends, when AD4 Distribution uses the live stream footage to create a commercial porn film.)

This week, I spoke with Heidi to talk about the live stream's unconventional business strategy, her decision to celebrate her birthday with 23 dicks instead of 23 candles, and why she considers the live stream a “big princess party.” 

VICE: How did you decide to sleep with 23 men on your 23rd birthday?
Heidi Van Horny: It was just something crazy I thought about. It's a typical thing for the girls in American porn to have men as their candles on their birthday. It was a joke based off of that.

It’s still a pretty big deal. Did you really only start working in porn a few months ago?
It was a coincidence that I got started in porn. A porn company was holding porn auditions, so I went—it all clicked for me. I started two months ago on December 5, and my first scene was a lesbian scene with Alyson Queen. It wasn’t my first girl-on-girl experience, but I enjoyed it, since Alyson and I both have a fun sense of humor.

How will the live stream differ from your previous work in porn?
It’s not like a gang bang or a fuck fest—excuse my French—like people are expecting it to be. There is going to be a lot of narration by two stand-up comedians. It will be hosted, and it will be full of surprises and jokes. It’s my big princess party.

Are you going to have a cake at the party?
Yes. We have a cake planned. It might not be a cake the men are expecting. Don’t expect typical candles on this cake.

Is every guy having vaginal sex with you, or are you only blowing some guys?
It will not be all penetration. Time is money, so we need to be able to pay the cameraman, the editor, [and other production members], so due to that, it can’t be a 24-hour thing. Each man will be with me for five minutes.

What happens if they aren’t able to come within five minutes?
The point is not to make the men come; it’s to have a fun princess fantasy of mine come true.

Have you already finished the audition process?
We have to go about choosing them now. We had 1,000 applicants, and it doesn’t matter to me if they have muscles or huge dicks—I just am able to look at someone and know if there is an attraction there, so I’m going to be selecting all the men.

Will the men in the video be tested for STDs?
Yes. People teased me, saying, “23 men? You’re going to get a disease for your birthday.” But I’m having all the participants get tested and wear protection.

How does the STD screening process work in the Canadian porn industry?
In Quebec it is not the same as in the states. In the USA all porn stars are tested because the porn companies require it; in Quebec the companies are not allowed to ask for medical records and don’t regulate how often porn stars are tested. We get around that by asking individually to see our scene partner’s test results—I’m tested every three weeks.

Do you have any favorite male porn stars?
From Quebec I would definitely say Jessie Storm.  I don’t care about male porn stars too much because they’re almost objects. I don’t mean that in a mean way—they’re there to compliment the women. It’s not that I don’t care about them as humans. In porn the goal is to make the woman look sexy, so men are there for my fantasy.

You're all about putting girls first. 
I consider myself a feminist, because all the men are at my feet. They all want to buy me gifts just to be in my movie, and in a way, that is powerful to me. I feel like I run the world because men are clamoring for me, not the other way around. Feminists say porn isn’t a good thing, but I feel like a queen when I’m on camera.

@ShawnBinder

The cover of Toby Sheldon's new single, “Justified (featuring Adam Barta).”

Toby Sheldon spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to look like Justin Bieber, but the smart and articulate 33-year-old is, despite what you may have read, not crazy. He's a songwriter on a mission to destroy the stigmas surrounding plastic surgery. Oh. And did I mention he's also not crazy?

Toby's story is the stuff New York Post editors dreams about—a man who, via cosmetic procedures, transformed his appearance to resemble that of his presumed idol Justin Bieber. The thing is, he doesn't idolize Justin. While he doesn't actively dislike Justin's oeuvre, he describes himself as more of a fan of “really obscure 80s music that people probably haven't heard of.” His status as an unknown, German-born songwriter who loves the spotlight and has an all-press-is-good-press attitude, however, has made him prime fodder for the sensationalistic wasteland that is modern news.

To Google Toby is to inundate oneself with dozens of articles about his “obsession” with Justin and “addiction” to plastic surgery. It doesn’t matter which one you read—they all essentially say, “Get a load of this weirdo.” Independent of this, Toby has little online presence. The only digital traces of him I could find—the only clues about the man behind the $100,000 mask—were a Whitney Houston tribute song he uploaded to YouTube in 2012, a MySpace page with three demos, and a Facebook profile. As someone trying to make it in the entertainment industry, you would think he'd have his own website or, at the very least, a LinkedIn profile. Along with the aforementioned mountains of overwhelmingly judgmental press, this made me assume he was the byproduct of a celebrity-obsessed culture—your industry-standard, insane famewhore. Once I actually spoke to him, however, I quickly learned this was not the case.

Toby’s songwriting career began in Germany. He sent demos around to various labels.  “[Some labels] liked my songs, but I guess found it hard to market me as a newcomer,” he said. “I got contacted by the publishing subsidy of Sony, and it just went from there. It was more about the songs than about them trying to market me as a brand-new artist.” (Sony’s representative was unable to confirm if Toby had a deal with the company.)

According to Toby, the label wasn’t exactly forthcoming about why they chose his songs over him, but it didn’t matter. “At the time, the market over there was pretty saturated,” Toby recalled. “I'm not the best singer in the world either, so maybe that had something to do with it, too. I think I write better than I sing anyway, so it wasn't a huge blow to me.”

After establishing himself as a successful songwriter in his native Germany, Toby moved to Los Angeles, the city of his childhood dreams, in 2001. He and his co-writer made their living ghostwriting songs for European artists—hence Toby’s lack of an online presence. (Toby claimed to have used his ghostwriting job to fund his surgeries.) Although Toby would like to place songs with American artists, he acknowledged the implausibility of this dream: “I'm not really into the whole R&B and rap scenes, which are more popular in the US,” he said, “which is probably why I'm more successful in Europe, because I don't write that kind of stuff.”

Toby’s career as a songwriter kept him out of the spotlight—nevertheless, his looks still troubled him. In his early 20s, he started losing his hair; a series of unsuccessful hair transplants followed. Nearly a decade before Justin was wetting prepubescent panties with his signature hairdo, Toby had a vague vision of himself with bangs. “But I don't think I would have known exactly what I wanted if I hadn't seen him,” Toby said. “[When Justin] hit the scene, it just kinda sparked my interest again in actually looking younger.” Envious of Justin’s youthful good looks, Toby’s hair obsession was reignited. In the interest of finding someone who would give him “those Bieber bangs,” he did a lot of research, ultimately finding a doctor in New York City who, after two transplants, gave him the rich mane he has today. The hair, of course, was the tip of the iceberg.

“I was looking at Justin's picture,” he recalled, “and I noticed differences. I was like, Why don't I look young, too? I have the hair. I went to different dermatologists, and they did Botox, and laser procedures, and injectables, and there was a difference—I looked a little bit younger, but still not to the point where people approached me and said, ‘Hey, you look so great,’ so I tried to find out where celebrities go for their treatments. I found a dermatologist in Brentwood. When she injected me, it was just night and day from all those other dozens of surgeons I had gone to before. She really understood the aesthetics and what makes a face youthful. I told her about my desire to look more like Justin—even younger—and she referred me to my lip surgeon.” That doctor, in turn, referred him to his eye surgeon, and so on.

It took a team of surgeons to create Toby’s new look. After myriad lifts, injections, and eye surgeries, Toby has finally achieved his dream of everlasting youth—pending, of course, touch-ups every ten years. “I get told a lot that I should be a model, that I should be on TV,” Toby said. “Friends of mine who saw me before the surgeries, and know me now, say I look so much hotter.”

Angie Espinosa, a friend of Toby’s, concurs. She initially had her reservations about Toby’s surgeries because, in her opinion, he was “already good looking.” Ultimately, though, she considers them a success. Whenever Toby goes clubbing with her, he gets carded—which is exactly what he wanted.

Of course, at age 33, Toby isn’t old. Why, then, is he so obsessed with looking young? “When you're in your late 20s and early 30s,” he explained, “you notice the changes. You notice that some things don't look right anymore, and my opinion is that if you wait till you're 40 or 50 to get a facelift, your facial framing and everything has already changed.”

Like most tabloid heroes, Toby is a reflection of our culture. We live in a world obsessed with youth and appearance—from makeup to workout videos, we spend billions trying to give good face. Unlike Toby, however, none of us actually want to own up to it; to admit one’s obsession with one’s looks is considered vain and narcissistic. The only thing that makes Toby odd, then—not weird, odd—is his candor and willingness to not only admit but unapologetically embrace his vanity.

Toby is, obviously, a proponent for plastic surgery; perhaps his biggest long-term goal is to become an advocate for people who want to go under the knife. Toby believes the secrecy and stigmas that surround plastic surgery have created a world of misinformation that puts people at risk—as someone who has received six failed hair transplants, he knows what he’s talking about.

“Everyone has to be so hush-hush, and no one can really say anything, even though everyone does it,” Toby said. “But there are so many crooks out there, and they'll take your money, and they'll mess you up. I just hope I can serve as a sort of a public speaker, an advocate for plastic surgery, to make people understand that it's OK to want to look younger, and to make them think, Where should I go, and what should I watch out for? Because it happened to me before, too."

Toby hopes his story will silence plastic surgeries’ opponents, because he finds nothing wrong with what he’s done.  “[They] might spend [their] money on mansions and cars and drugs,” he said, “and that's all basically OK, but if I wanna look younger, suddenly [they’ve] got a problem.” Toby has a point: Is his plastic surgery really worse than the actual Justin squandering millions on weed and Lamborghinis?

Toby’s advocacy goals are already coming true. “I've gotten so many emails,” he marveled, “messages from people who ask me, ‘Who's your doctor? I went to so-and-so and they messed me up; I have such a big scar, or my lips are crooked, or whatever. Can you help me?’ It's really sad.”

While Toby is only fascinated with Justin on a surface level, he doesn’t care if the press presents him as a deranged fan. “It's OK,” he said, “because I did this for myself. I'm surprised, honestly, that it became as big as it did, but I'm fine with it, because hopefully this whole thing can shed a little more light on surgeries.”

The press release for Toby’s new single, “Justified (featuring Adam Barta),” describes Justin as “his idol,” but the single exists so he can work the system to his advantage. According to Toby, “If they want to portray me as this obsessed stalker of Justin Bieber, it's fine with me, because I guess it gets people to say, ‘Hey, what's going on with that guy?’ And then if they really start listening to me, they'll realize that's really not the case. I mean, I like his looks. That's basically it. I have no problem with being portrayed as crazy or outrageous. I know I'm not, and that's all that matters.”

@BornFeral

More by Megan:

Is It Still OK to Like Alleged Child Molester Woody Allen?

Friday Night at a Dog Track in Florida

Who Still Listens to Limp Bizkit? 

Image via.

This morning, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead at the age of 46 in his Manhattan apartment. All signs are pointing towards a heroin overdose as being the cause of death, but verified news at this point is understandably murky. Hoffman's body was found by screenwriter David Katz around 11:15 AM EST. The exact cause of death remains unknown pending an autopsy, but the Wall Street Journal reported that a hypodermic needle and two envelopes believed to contain heroin were found at the scene.

It's hard to think of an actor who has been in more vital movies, each with pitch-perfect performances, in the last two decades. In fact, trying to list any of them here is an act of futility, as I would surely leave off a number of accomplishments—it's safer to point you towards his IMDB page. I will, however, link to this scene from Punch Drunk Love I've revisited most over the years, because it makes me happy. As someone tweeted today, “[I] can't process that never again will I get to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a trailer and think, 'That movie is now officially worthwhile.'” And that fucking sucks.

Image via.

Remember those quaint times, circa 2004 to last week, when all news stories including the word drone in the headline took place in a a distant country across the sea? The reality of the situation was nothing near a fairytale, but Americans typically believed drones were only used somewhere over there.There were rumors about dragons on this side of narrow sea—if one were to use Game of Thrones terminology—but there was nothing we had to worry about here. That all changed last week, after a farmer from North Dakota became the first US citizen arrested and sentenced because of evidence gathered from an unmanned drone. His crime? Stealing his neighbor's cattle and barricading himself, armed cult-style, in his ranch. That section action was probably the bigger crime, considering the drone was used to keep an eye on his ranch as police moved in. The scariest part of this story is that It happened back in 2011, meaning drones have been patrolling the US skies for awhile now and Judgment Day is much closer than we thought. 

Ever flip through channels late at night and stumble upon a station that had a seemingly endless supply of curvaceous beauties wearing scant clothing and speaking a language you didn't understand? If you happen to be like this theoretical person, you'd have spent quite a bit of time watching Sábado Gigante, the insane variety show, featuring dance competitions, beauty pageants, and karaoke contests, that has aired on Saturday evenings since 1962. Every now and then you'd see a sketch called “Cuatro Para Las Cuatro Con La Cuatro,” a parody of Spanish telenovellas, featuring an actor named Adonis Losada who transformed into an old woman by day and, apparently, spent his evenings unwinding to a whole bunch of child porn. Then you'd think to yourself, Ay dios mio! and shockingly realize you accidentally learned Spanish during those early-teen masturbatorial marathons. 

@RickPaulas

Previously - Authorities Arrested Revenge Porn King Hunter Moore and Justin Bieber on the Same Day

Rowhouses in South Philly. Image via.

I’ve gotten along with nearly every person I’ve ever lived with and not always because we share the same habits. If they smoked weed, odds are they hung out with me a lot more, but in some cases, our differences nurtured a closer relationship. A prime example of this was my housemate Bill, whom I lived with in a house near Dickinson Square in Philly.

When I first visited the place, I went with my girlfriend. We had recently seen a beautiful one-bedroom in a much nicer neighborhood, and she grimaced when we pulled up to the dilapidated South Philly rowhouse. She was mortified when we saw the available apartment. For the modest price of $425, I could rent the second floor of Bill’s house—a bedroom, a bathroom with holes in the ceiling, and a kitchen with incomplete flooring. While I wasn’t too keen on the condition of the building, I knew I wanted to live there after talking to Bill, because I could feel good vibes emanating from him. He was an aged punk with the tattoos and beer belly to prove it, and he lived in the rowhouse with his girlfriend, Felicia, and her identical twin sister, Fawn—they both smiled when I asked if they had any issues with weed. Bill said, “Smoke as much as you want, dude! We don’t really smoke, but whatever. You are my kind of guy. We’d love it if you lived here, and your girlfriend is very sweet, too.”

When we walked back out to the car, my girlfriend could see that I was definitely going to take the place and was less than sweet about it. Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last, but I got to spend my last year in Philly with Bill, one of the best guys I have ever known—and I got to solve a little mystery about Bill along the way.

The night I moved into Bill’s house, a fight erupted between Felicia and him. As I built furniture in my bedroom, I could hear them arguing above me. Felicia was definitely winning, and Bill was incredulous—each of his screams was a question. After the fight ended, Bill ran down the stairs and knocked on my door. His face beet red, he asked me if he could bum a cigarette. I invited him into my room, and we sat down on cardboard boxes and lit up cigarettes without talking. Finally, he broke the silence with an apology: “Dude, I swear it’s never like this,” he said. “This is the first time she’s acted like this. I mean, she’s talking about walking out on me. I was ready to marry her. It’s fucking hilarious actually.” Bill then proceeded to do something I have only seen in movies—he started laughing, and then his laugh turned into sobbing, and he bowed his head. I put my hand on his shoulder and talked him through it. It really seemed like he was the victim in this situation, so I told him, “It’s better you’re finding out she’s a nut now and not after you marry her.” Then I tried to implement my personal solution to stress, offering to blaze out with him, but he refused. After about an hour of pep talk and a whole pack of Marlboros, Bill gravely thanked me and ascended back to his domestic hell.

Over the next few days, Bill and Felicia’s relationship disintegrated, and Bill kept coming to me for solace. He would walk in freshly damaged and exit with new hope for the future. This wasn’t because I was a particularly good therapist, but because Bill was a resilient guy who needed a shoulder to cry on as his love life fell apart. I kept insisting that he smoke with me during our talks, but he remained adamant. “Nope, I can’t get high,” he said. “I might even quit drinking.” Bill made this a reality with admirable diligence; he completely cut out all substances and started running every day as part of his recovery plan from his breakup. In a matter of weeks, he became the thin, lean punk he was in his youth. He was back on the dating scene too. “I only drink ginger ale when I hit the bars, which isn’t really conducive, so I’ve been meeting girls online,” he told me. I started hearing him come home with ladies, chuckling as they walked past my room on the way up to Bill’s bed. I smiled every time, glad to see how far he’d come since his immediate post-Felicia days.

One morning, I was heading to my bathroom when a slim figure beat me to it. From what I caught, it was a tall, thin black girl wearing a head wrap. In a sleepy stupor, I stood at the bathroom door waiting for her to exit, when I noted the distinct sound of someone peeing while standing. Before the sound was completly audible, it stopped, and then I heard a flush. Not wanting to scare her when she walked out, I backed into my room. Unable to make visual confirmation, I was left wondering what I had heard. 

Bill continued to stop by my room to smoke cigarettes and talk about his life progress. He always expressed his success with the ladies. There was always some machismo to the descriptions of his exploits; I tried to subtly convey to him that I didn’t care whom he dated and that he was free to talk about it, but he remained cagey. I would occasionally run into him in the hallway with one of his dates, and he would always employ the same method of hiding his date. He’d rush over to me and start talking really fast while his companion slipped up to his room. Once she was safely upstairs, he would back away, laughing sheepishly before running up the stairs. I couldn’t figure out how to tell Bill that he didn’t have to do this and that I would prefer if he didn’t force his dates to sneak around the house like bandits. The mystery plagued me until the night when Bill finally agreed to smoke weed with me.

That day, my bandmate, Bas, was over at the house thumbing through Bill’s record collection when he came across a cache of nazi punk albums. As a couple of brown guys, we were pretty freaked out. Knowing Bill, I insisted that he merely had them as part of an encyclopedic collection. “You can’t edit history,” I told a skeptical Bas. He wanted a more definitive answer, and I discouraged him from confronting poor, gentle Bill.

That evening, Bill came to my band’s show at the Tritone, a now defunct Philly venue. My car was parked right outside the entrance, and after we got off stage, we all piled into it to smoke a joint. Bill was excited to smoke for the first time in ages. He and Bas were shooting the shit about punk history when Bas unexpectedly threw out the contentious question. “Hey Bill, why the fuck do you have so many nazi punk records?” he asked. “You’re not a nazi punk, right?”

The whole car went silent as Bill puffed on the joint, thinking of an appropriate response. Finally, he sarcastically said, “Yeah man. I’m a fucking Nazi. I’m a raging racist. That’s why I live with a Muslim dude and fuck black ladyboys on the reg.” For Bas this answered a recent query, but for me it revealed the only thing that Bill had hidden from me throughout the roller coaster of his relationship recovery. “I knew it!” I yelled. Bill started laughing. He admitted that he’d been hiding this from me, not because he thought I was conservative, but because he was figuring out his own preference and didn’t want to broadcast the process, not even to his de facto life coach. I could tell he was relieved, and from then on, he was open about his dates. It turned out he was meeting them on Craigslist’s casual encounters, which he described as a treasure trove of willing sexual partners. He was frequently seeing one girl in particular right before I moved out. The day I left, I saw her in the kitchen making lunch. Standing in his doorway smiling, Bill was a new man. I had watched him transform from a heartbroken drunk to a slim, trim king of his own domain. When we said goodbye, he told me that I’d been there for him in the most transformational year of his life and that he’d miss the smell of weed pouring out of my room. 

Previously - Blazed Out Moms

@ImYourKid