During the Super Bowl on Sunday, 50 of my Muslim friends got excited because a Coca-Cola ad declared them to be sufficiently American. The commercial started with a lone cowboy riding his white horse through the mountain ranges and pine forests of the white man’s mythical America. Then it opened up to the reality of an America that’s black and brown and red and yellow. At the moment we recognized what was happening in the Coca-Cola ad—“America the Beautiful” sung in different languages, recognizing multiple cultures as contributors to America’s pluralistic something or other—we waited to see if their vision of American diversity would include Muslims. Then we saw our sisters in hijab, probably the most immediate symbol of public Muslim-ness both for many Muslims and their opponents. They appeared right after the image of Jewish men, who were also wearing recognizable symbols on their heads. In these two moments, Coca-Cola revealed itself as the all-embracing reconciler of forces that we’re supposed to assume have been eternally locked in conflict. One of the muhajabas stared directly into the camera, inviting us into her Coca-Cola America. It’s OK, her eyes assured us. Everyone belongs here. Coca-Cola has opened the gates and united all of us through our purchase of soda pop.

My friends who would normally have more political savvy and critical insight were congratulating Coca-Cola for the ad, which seemed somewhat ridiculous to me until the insane white rage started flying. Then I realized that it actually might have mattered that 60 seconds of air time during America’s most widely shared holiday recognized Muslims as human beings and full citizens. I don’t attribute this to some inner benevolence on the part of Coca-Cola—common sense suggests that not only do they want everyone on the planet to buy their drink, but they also want their customers to believe that they like them and value their happiness. This is a business lesson that World Wrestling Entertainment has forgotten.

CM Punk (who happens to have a big Pepsi tattoo on his left shoulder) has left the WWE for a number of speculated reasons that mostly amount to unhappiness with WWE’s creative vision and his own place in it. His abrupt walk-out took place following the disastrous Royal Rumble, during which the crowd favorite, Daniel Bryan, was excluded from the main event, which was ultimately won by Dave Batista. Punk himself lasted almost the entire match, only to be eliminated by Kane in what appeared to be setting up the fourth or fifth-most important match at this year’s WrestleMania. The Royal Rumble showed fans that their emotional investments in Daniel Bryan and CM Punk meant little to the WWE, which was more interested in the middle-aged bodybuilders/movie-stars whose appeal might reach beyond regular supporters of the product. (Incidentally, it was at the previous year’s Royal Rumble that CM Punk lost his championship to Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.) Throughout the Royal Rumble, fans were chanting for Daniel Bryan and bored with nearly everything else. For WWE to follow this up with the loss of CM Punk makes for a bad week. Last night on Raw, the fans were chanting Punk’s name at multiple points of the show, while WWE’s production team scrambled to reduce the crowd noise for the live broadcast. There are even allegations that fans were ejected from the arena for their pro-Punk chants, although this has been denied by the WWE.

In the weeks to come, WWE will travel through Northeastern markets, known as domains of the most notoriously hardcore wrestling crowds—including Chicago, the hometown of CM Punk. At this point, the most compelling aspect of Raw is watching fans reject the product and hijack the show with chants that undermine WWE’s narratives. The current level of fan disapproval goes way beyond “Damn, the bad guy won.” Randy Orton isn’t booed for being such a dastardly villain, though he has attempted to redirect the Daniel Bryan love into heel heat for himself; the boos are aimed at the creative team backstage. 

This makes for a strange time to be a wrestling fan. Two months away from WrestleMania XXX and less than a month from the launch of the WWE Network, WWE has chosen to wage an obstinate battle of wills against its customers. Some of us maintain hope that the WWE, which seems to grudgingly accept that Daniel Bryan is far and away its most appealing character, can repair the damage. Perhaps the WWE can plot a new trajectory that will make this controversy appear to have been their plan all along. Unfortunately, the handling of Daniel Bryan thus far suggests that WWE has completely misread the accident of Daniel Bryan’s ascent and assumed that they could easily redirect fan attention away from him. There’s also hope that this whole CM Punk mess is just an elaborate storyline in which real-life locker room gossip has been woven into the scripted drama. At times, pro wrestlers have done metafiction better than anyone, and the company’s real-life owners also appear on camera to play fictional versions of themselves. Unfortunately, however, all indications point to CM Punk having legitimately walked out on WWE. The company will have to write around him.

The point that WWE can learn from Coca-Cola is this: You don’t have to actually like or respect your customers, but you have to pretend you do. A little bit of pretending goes a long way. People that I know who would condemn Coca-Cola any other day of the week for its relationship to Israel were nearly crying with joy over the inclusion of Muslims in that Super Bowl ad. WWE, it’s that simple. We’re the marks, remember? We’ll guzzle down your fattening and fizzy syrup-water. Just make it sweet.

Michael Muhammad Knight (@MM_Knight) is the author of nine books, including Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing. His tenth book, Why I am a Salafi, is forthcoming.

[Editor's note: I met Paul a few months ago at a storytelling event, but he's done some stuff for VICE in the past. He's one of those smiley, overly posi Florida punks who's covered in tattoos and is really nice to everybody, so I initially assumed he'd never been in "the shit." Then he told me a story about being held up at gunpoint by Brazilian thugs in a botched bus robbery, and that shut me up pretty quickly. He just sent us this dispatch from a recent book tour for And Every Day Was Overcast, his terrific new photo novel about growing up among fishing tackle and drugs in Loxahatchee, Florida. If you've ever been on a book tour, you'll know it's more about wine and cheese and bad drugs, so kudos to Paul for pushing himself to the limit for this mind-numbingly boring responsibility. Enjoy!]

Rainelle, West Virginia

Kelly tries to Instagram a butterfly caught in the wipers. As she’s about to click, I spray the windshield with fluid. It’ll buy me another hour of silence. I’m driving from New York to Minneapolis for the start of my book tour, but the first stop is in West Virginia, to leave Kelly at her aunt’s.

I like people who know when to lower their standards. Kelly is the type of girl who helps pay for gas with rolled-up $20s flattened against her ass. Back in New York, we had sex one time and never again. She said my hands were too cold, that it was gross that I sleep with my socks on.

Today, we’re mutually parasitic. On occasion, when all our friends are estranged, we relapse on one another. There’s no common circle of friends between us, so whatever we do together has no repercussions.

Road trips are the ultimate test of any friendship. I’m relieved to drop her off.

Tonight, I’m staying at a nicotine-themed hotel room in Rainelle. The smell matches the shag. All night I watch the only working channel, ID: Investigation Discovery. An entire network of true-crime entertainment exclusively made up of lurid reenactments, courtroom footage, 911 calls, pan-and-scan video technology, crime-scene photography, ghoulish hosts, news clips, dubious interviews, home video, and family albums full of mementos. Back in the 90s, the prototype for these shows was America’s Most Wanted. It was my childhood filter for the social topography of Florida—as a series of grainy amateur porn stills and mug shots.

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Driving down the reasonably lavish suburbs of Saint Paul, I can’t help picturing an episode of 20/20 called “Merlot in the Morning”:

Their secret is out: Mothers who get through the day with a little bit of help from a bottle. 

Elizabeth Vargas recognizes the courage it takes for these women to open their homes and allow themselves to be filmed drunk and vulnerable. There’s pause when she mentions they may have shown up to the interviews hammered.

Early morning, the audience sees a series of cross-fade dissolves, a white picket fence, pink azaleas, and suburban homes. As one naughty mommy is pulling out of the driveway, Elizabeth lands a jab about this time of day, its being happy hour. We see another montage of personal snapshots of mommy as a once functional politician and wife. The photos distort and waver as if they’re inside a crystal ball.

Life for a stay-at-home mom goes from pinot in the park to merlot in the morning.

Mommy number one asks: “Why do I fight this urge to drink wine in the morning?” 

Again Elizabeth chimes in. The real question is: Why wine over liquor? The bottles are less shameful.

Elizabeth reminds us that it's not just this one naughty mommy—it's a pride. A conspiracy unfolds.

FADE OUT

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I’m at the Ramada for the first time, in a part of the country I’ve never been to. The outskirts of every American city are the same: neither city nor suburb, a point of departure, an industrial broom closet where things are never found. My window overlooks an industrial road called Industrial Road. Semis filter through a loading station then merge back onto the highway. The only other buildings are a gas station and Burger King. I feel like I’ve been here before.

On the ground floor is a swimming pool and an adjunct office space refurbished as a gym. I peek in through the pane of glass above the doorknob. Sitting on the edge of the bench press is a guy who reminds me of thuggier version of Billy Bob Thornton circa 2003, but post-Angelina. He has an effeminately manicured skin fade, pencil-thin chinstrap, soul patch, and diamond earring. I can’t stop myself from imagining him as a quivering pink muscle wearing an expressionless euro thrash mask. We sustain eye contact as I back away and turn toward the elevator.

Today is the first time I’ve spoken to an audience, and I'm nervous. I chase Xanax with whiskey shots at the Vietnamese bar next-door to the bookstore. I warp the crowd’s apathetic faces by not wearing my glasses. All I see is a bespectacled, Silly Putty–hued blur stretching from the front row to the door. After being introduced, I black out. I know it’s supposed to be a list of musings: fact, fiction, reality, memoir, and childhood insecurities. Instead I mutter non sequiturs about taking acid at Epcot center as a kid. I silently hope that the audience is high enough to ride this shredded wavelength.

San Francisco, California

This hotel room smells sulfuric and mossy. The wall directly outside my window belongs to an AIDS clinic. I love that the fun, seedy parts of San Francisco feel art-directed. I imagine the entire city was created by an angry twink with a megaphone trumpeting stage directions to a cast of crust punks, burnouts, hippy residuals, drifters, homeless types, and party boys who barely survived the fun. “We’re gonna need, like, four more guys smoking crack over there by the Burger King. Where’s the blonde dreadlocks guy?! Yes, Aaron—where the fuck is Aaron?! One my cue, I need everyone to act 50 percent more free-spirited!”

I’m doing a presentation alongside author and photographer Scot Sothern about explicit content in literature and photography, followed by a Q&A—generally a cue for uncomfortable silence. Afterwards, the packed room clears out so quickly I have no idea if it had gone well. Next door, where I’m supposed to sign books, a semi-pretty girl from the audience wants to know if she can ask a “personal question.” Am I circumcised, and, if so, does it make sex more pleasurable? Her brothers were born in Mexico and weren’t. I tell her not to spend so much time thinking about her brothers’ cocks.

It’s hard not to get high in San Francisco. After two weeks, I totally get it when people talk about bad energy and not feeling grounded. Someday, San Francisco will un-anchor itself and break loose from its foundations. Sections will peel off, fluttering away from the coast, ascending to catastrophic altitudes.

Los Angeles, California

I'm at a YMCA in the Palisades trying to run off the effects of a pot brownie someone handed me at a house party in Venice last night. Not having the attention span required to run outdoors, I have to run fastened to a treadmill, in front of a mirror, staring into my own eyes. Do people really enjoy watching themselves run? The only direction to which I can avert my eyes is up toward a row of televisions. They’re all playing another Investigation Discovery show called I Disappeared. The episode is about young black girl named Mitrice Richards who was arrested in Malibu after a manic episode that ended with her trying to skip out on her restaurant bill. That night she was released from an isolated and remote police station, aptly named the Lost Hills Sheriff Department. She vanishes.

Reports of possible sightings trickle in. Some say they spotted her sleeping on a patio in Malibu Canyon, and as many as 70 claim to have seen her in Vegas. There is no definitive proof of her whereabouts until her partially mummified remains are discovered a year later, scattered throughout a ravine eight miles from where she was released. Her case becomes a nationally recognized police debacle and subsequent media feast. There are so many dots to connect that they form arrows pointing in opposite directions. Some blame it on the police; others say it was a mental-health accident waiting to happen. Her case remains unsolved.

When I’m done running, I smoke a joint in my rental car in the parking lot and watch a video of Mitrice on my phone. She’s on stage, speaking to the host of a beauty pageant. The host asks her what technological advancement does she wish had never been invented.

“Cell phones,” Mitrice says, “although when you’re stranded, they help you contact your family. I wish they could be limited to emergencies only.” When she was released at 1 AM in an unfamiliar neighborhood in Western San Fernando Valley, she had neither her wallet nor her cell phone.  

The next scene is of her walking the stage wearing a sparkly white gown that shimmers cubistically on my pixilated screen.

Malibu, California

It’s a matter of physics. The desert air funnels in through the brush-covered canyons, heating the air through compression. Out here, I’m insulated by the Santa Monica Mountains. Cities are a parallel dimension I’m having trouble reentering.

My book tour ended in Los Angeles after my gallery show was canceled. I’m in Malibu for the month, living off some money I made selling my prints to an art collector. Aside from the book advance, it’s the first money I’ve ever made off art. I feel like I got away with something. The guilt is short lived.

The idea of staving off seasonal depression by renting a small one-bedroom in Malibu sounds like a fine idea. I can sublet my apartment in Brooklyn to vacationing Europeans for twice what I pay. Can I actually make money being here, doing nothing?

Acclimating to LA is tougher than expected. I rarely leave my apartment. The winding roads of Malibu give me motion sickness. My mind is never clear. To counterbalance the nausea, I drink too much. Hello, merlot in the morning! On nights I can’t sleep, I take drunken walks down winding Piuma Road through the valley. From inside the canyon, the Pacific sounds like heavy breathing. Nature’s lack of constraint here is paralyzing.

To compose myself, I smoke out beneath the lagoon bridges. They remind me of the overpass in Florida that I used to hang out under. The graffiti looks like it was inspired by Mitrice. The authorities tried to whitewash it, but you can still see the images: identical versions of a black female with an afro—similar to the photo of Mitrice on the night of her arrest. I can’t tell if it’s one artist or several. The images are sexualized, crude like pop-art cave paintings deifying a black goddess.

In some of them, she’s emerging from her own vagina. In another, the female bodies are twisted into the letters: JOIF. Look up JOIF on Urban Dictionary; it means “to be violently hit” or “jump on it fast.”  

In my mind, Disappeared-style reenactments blend with murals and beauty pageant footage. Sections of her pull together, converging into a whole.

I look at her distorted figure, hoping that if I stare long enough, the image will rearrange into a message.

You can pick up Paul's recent photo novel, And Every Day Was Overcast, right here. Follow Paul on Twitter: @xopk

A screencap of our hero, just before going medival on some dicks.

I don't like to admit this, but I check WorldStarHipHop every morning before I sign into any social media platform. It's a habit I've been trying to break for a while, because it's a guilty pleasure, just like drinking a beer in the shower or doing crank at a t-ball game. The other morning however, after watching a Vine compilation—which is basically just girls twerking and people smacking each other—I came across a video called “Crazy RoboCop Remake (NSFW).” For the next three minutes and 41 seconds, I watched an absolutely incredible re-make of a classic RoboCop scene that had been tweaked to feature roughly 30 rapist-dicks being shot off by a new and improved RoboCop who was thirsty for dick blood. I laughed to the point where I almost threw up and passed out.

After some quick Googling, I learned that the dick-explosion scene is actually part of a larger project comprised of over 50 filmmakers, who are each recreating a scene from RoboCop so they can fully remix the film—just in time for Hollywood’s “official” remake that comes out later this week; which presumably does not include any exploding dicks.

Anyway, I spoke with the producers of the remake, David Seger and Tom Kauffman; along with the guys from “Fatal Farm” (the group that produced and directed the penis massacre scene), about the RoboCop remake project, and exactly how they made those dicks explode.

VICE: How did this entire project come about? Was it a giant fuck you to the new Robocop movie that's disappointingly rated PG-13?
Dave: A lot of the same people worked on a similar crowd-sourced project in 2010 called "Our Footloose Remake"—we always thought it'd be funny to break up a movie into several little pieces and try to remake it. I think it was something we joked about early on in these internet filmmaking communities like Filmfights and Channel 101. We actually made it happen with Footloose, because the idea of "beating Hollywood to the punch" was really funny to us, and still is. Truthfully, I don't think we cared that much about the Footloose remake. Remakes and reboots are going to happen. But it was funny to posture like we were outraged and made our own Footloose remake in reaction to that. It's a good excuse to make something.

When we heard about the RoboCop remake (which is one of my absolute favourite movies) there was some earnest outrage. The first reaction to hearing that they are remaking RoboCop is to be very bummed out, so we knew we had to get our shit together and make another crowd-sourced fan remake. We worked with a timeline so that our remake would screen and be released online before their box office release date—that was the deadline we were working agaist.

Tom: It was more about the enjoyment of the process and… honoring the original version more than condemning the remake. For me, I was more confused because RoboCop seems like a perfect film. That being said, there were definite moments of fanboy rage along the way—the PG-13 rating and the Snake Eyes suit to name a few—although the actual remake has Michael Keaton, so I'm keeping hope alive.  

Was it tricky to get this remake together? There are so many people involved I would think some of them would drop out or not hit a deadline. 
Dave: There was a lot of backing out and re-shuffling scenes and missed deadlines and problem solving, but that was to be expected. On my end, that's what I signed up for—coordinating all those elements—so I don't think it was particularly difficult because there weren't a lot of unexpected hurdles. We had two or three really last-minute dropouts, but because of the community of filmmakers we're a part of, and because everyone was so excited about the project, it wasn't too hard to find filmmakers willing to take on another scene at the last minute, or someone to jump at the opportunity of putting a last-minute scene together. We're all used to making things on a deadline with low resources, so it's kind of habit to have that quick turnaround. 

Tom: Dave is too nice to say it, but some people whiffed on their scene for whatever reason, which forced some tough decisions about what the audience will endure. That's always a tough line to walk when it's supposed to be for fun, and Dave is like a top-ten nice guy so it's agonizing for him. Otherwise, a lot of scenes were trimmed, not because of quality, but just to keep the movie down to a manageable running time. I think our remake is only eight minutes longer than the original.   

How was the budget dispersed? Some videos look like they cost $10 and others looked like a 10 grand shoot.
Dave: This project was entirely not-for-profit, and had a working budget of nothing, so there's a lot of borrowing resources and stealing shots going on. I put some of my own money into it, to buy RoboCop costumes and a bunch of various wardrobe pieces that filmmakers shared for the different characters. But the individual filmmakers used their own money and resources for the budgets of their scenes. Some people spent nothing, and some spent more than nothing. The Fatal Farm guys did an amazing job with the resources they had available to them, borrowing and collecting favors to create what is probably the high point of the movie.

My personal favourite scene from this remake has to be the one where RoboCop shoots the dicks off of the rapists. Fatal Farm, how did you guys obtain the original RoboCop costume? 
Fatal Farm: With all the production quality superhero, fantasy, and movie character cosplayers you see wandering around at comic conventions, we figured there had to be someone out there with a screen accurate RoboCop suit. We went onto a RoboCop fansite and started digging around in the forums. It wasn't long before we found this guy from Arizona with a perfect suit who was pictured at a number of area conventions and events. We reached out and discovered that making appearances as RoboCop is a side business for him. He owns the movie's squad car and gun too. He has vanity plates that say ROBOCOP. His suit was autographed by Peter Weller. His email address has "Robo" in it. He’s the definitive package. We brought him out, and he killed it.     

Wow. So how did you make the dicks explode like that? And how did the actors react when you first told them that they would have to get their dicks shot off? 
We work with a special effects makeup artist who asked around town and found some silicone and body molds. Whenever she, or we, would ask anyone for materials/help/etc., all she had to do was say "something something RoboCop" and people would open up their doors. Everyone working in makeup, prosthetics, special effects, pyro... they all fetishize RoboCop, so it was pretty easy to find donations. During lunch breaks and afterhours, she spent a couple weeks just making as many dicks as she could. I think we ended up with 22 or so. They were hollowed out, filled with blood, squibbed, and sewn onto some nude Spanx worn over athletic cups. A pyrotechnician handled all the explosive aspects.

The actors were excited by the exploding dick idea, but when the time came to actually strap a small bomb on top of their genitals, most people became sheepish. Days before the shoot, we blew through a half dozen of our dickstock figuring out a safe charge on a mannequin. And then we tested it on ourselves, so we knew it wasn't dangerous. But there was still a lot of anxiousness on set before the first one blew. Once it went off though, everyone was fighting over who got to be the next dick-victim. We didn't have enough to go around, and I think some of the people that turned out for the scene were bummed when their dicks didn't get shot.

When you’re using firearms on set you normally have to have a police officer on standby… what did your cop think of all this dick exploding?
There was a lot of laughing and incredulous head shaking. Our officer, and everyone else involved, crowded around the monitor to laugh and groan at every explosion. I think we got away with more than we should have because everyone was swept up in the surrealism of it all. We hadn't been permitted for public nudity or anything, but when we had one of our actors strip down, the officer just sort of shrugged and laughed. A lot of times when you're working on set, cast/crew are focused on their job and are otherwise un-invested in the project, but everyone really had a fun time with this. Except maybe Luka, our nude rapist. We shot on the coldest night of the year. He got pretty sick afterwards. He's happy now, but that was a miserable night for him.

Reaction to the dick scene has been overwhelmingly positive. The only negative sentiment we've seen pop up is one alleging double-standards regarding gender and sexual-mutilation-as-comedy. "This wouldn't be funny if it was women! Double standard! Guys have it rough! Etc." That really bothers us, because we genuinely tried to blow up vaginas as well. Our original idea called for female rapists to eventually enter the mix, but it became a blocking, safety, and cost issue. There was no way to see a vagina explode without an actress crawling on all fours, and even if we choreographed this awkwardness, we couldn't safely detonate a squib that close to the body. We'd have needed to cast up entire torsos to make it work. The bogus claim that this scene would be horrifying or we'd be vilified if it had female victims makes us all the more frustrated we couldn't pull it off. It's a missed opportunity to have exhibited some sort of warped progressiveness, but it was the result of economics, not hypocrisy. The penis is a vastly more practical sexual organ to explode on camera. 

Good to know, thanks. So guys, can we look forward to any more remakes in the future?
Dave: We don't have any concrete plans right now. For now it's time to shift gears and try to work on projects I can make money off of again, [laughs]. But I think we all had so much fun doing this, that I know we want to do another one, sooner than the three and half years between Footloose and RoboCop. It'll be a while before we talk about which movie in any real way. But it's fun to say, "We should do Goonies!" or "We should do Karate Kid!" and fantasize about what that would look like. 

Christos Anesti, Greek for "Christ is risen," is a religious celebration-by-dynamite that takes place every year on Orthodox Easter, toward the end of March, on the small island of Kos, which is part of a group of islands southeast of the Greek mainland. Across the Aegean Sea, you can see the outline of the Turkish coast.

I took most of my pictures on Easter Sunday, but preparations for the celebration spread over several months. Participants import gunpowder from Turkey using speedboats and turn it into explosives in their garages. The guys then meet on a cliff overlooking the island to position their explosives in preparation for late-afternoon detonations. That night, they blast the explosives off the overlook, hundreds of feet above the houses below.

The whole thing is utterly mind-blowing and beautiful. The sound is deafening. You can feel the vibrations through your entire body for hours. Sometimes, windows on nearby houses shatter. Other times, the explosives rip whole chunks of rock from the cliff, hurling them at the participants or down onto the streets below. Screaming goes hand-in-hand with commemorating the Resurrection.

On the whole, Orthodox Christians are slightly more uptight than most moderate Catholics—this is because they still haven’t forgiven Judas. That’s him being set on fire in several of the pictures (the job of setting him alight is given to kids). Another thing about Greece is there is no separation between church and state, and there probably never will be.

This ceremony is unique to Kos. It takes a certain alignment of political and geographical factors to give birth to a tradition like this one. The island is rocky and doesn’t lend itself to any kind of growing—the traditional occupation here is sponge diving. After the end of the World War I, local sponge divers started finding undetonated bombs on sunken military aircraft and ships. They brought them to the surface, which is allegedly how the whole thing got started.

Participants in this celebration don’t claim any specific political agenda, yet it’s hard not to see Christos Anesti through a political lens. I mean, it’s not exactly innocuous for a bunch of guys to come together and say, "Hey, what if we turned this gunpowder into explosives, climbed to the island’s highest point, and blew the shit up on the day of the Resurrection, right under the nose of our Muslim neighbors, with whom we have some outstanding territorial tensions?"

The political climate and the positions of various Greek parties have evolved so rapidly over the course of the last few years that it is impossible to comment on the leanings of those who celebrate Christos Anesti. When I spoke with the locals, I noticed a real rejection of politics. Several times, I heard people say, "We were born here; we’ll die here. Our bombs are way too important to waste on parliament." There was a palpable sense of pride that had a tendency to slip into a territorial mindset, but nothing close to the aforementioned brand of Greek nationalism. If anything, the graffiti I spotted tended to be anarchist or far-left.

To this day, there is tension between Turkey and Greece over the islands of the Dodecanese, including Koh. Take the story of the guy who, 30 years ago, planted a Greek flag on one of the micro-islands. Turkish nationals shot him down. Since then, a growing sense of identity and regionalism has developed along the border. And today, more than ever, Christos Anesti rings out like a warning message to the Turkish population: Come on over. We’re ready for you.

I spent two weeks on the island, with the celebration toward the end of my stay. The participants kept pretty much in the shadows. I tried to organize meetings with them, but I kept being stood up. Finally, on the eve of Christos Anesti, I decided to climb up to the cliff myself and figure out where these guys were detonating their explosives.

I was one of the first to arrive at the top of the cliff on D-Day. No sooner had I arrived than three dudes started yelling at me in Greek. Farther away, I recognized some of the guys who had stood me up the previous week. It took me an hour to convince them that I’d keep a safe distance. Little by little, I was allowed to come closer, though the rule for my taking pictures remained the same throughout: "No faces."

The guys were wary of the event becoming too popular, for fear their tradition would be compromised. This day is massively important to them—it’s how they let off steam. Some sported balaclavas, while others masked their faces with scarves. These guys wouldn’t let me come anywhere near them—in particular, the five or six guys who held up the Greek flag. Once again, I don’t want to be the one to put words in their mouths. They may be toying with symbols, but they claim no political agenda.

Christos Anesti is pretty much a dude fest. There was not a single woman on site during the explosions. The differences between men and women are cast in stone in these parts. Men and women have their place. Some women did eventually show up in the afternoon to deliver instant coffee and fireworks for the grand finale.

At some point in the 1980s, there was an accident during one of the ceremonies. Back in the day, the explosives were blasted off a cliff on the other side of town. One of the guys thought the fuse on his explosive hadn’t ignited, so he threw it back onto the pile. But it had ignited, and a hundred explosives detonated at the same time, killing several people, seriously wounding others, and tearing huge rocks off the cliff face.

A chapel was later built on the site and the dynamite-throwers decided to migrate away from the cursed hill, to a cliff on the other side of town. No problems were recorded the year of my visit, but accidents are common. I met one guy who had lost two fingers. Despite many casualties over the last 20 years, the movement is still going strong.

Christos Anesti from Lucas Grisinelli on Vimeo.

All photos by Abdalla F. Hassan

Speaking in an incensing lisp that ordinarily would have sidelined him from a job in television, the host of a nighttime talk show Black Box, Abdul-Rahim Ali,tells an elaborate story of how the January 25 revolution was a plot to bring Egypt to ruin.On the private Egyptian satellite channel, he plays recorded phone conversations of revolutionary activists no doubt obtained from the security agencies, reading into them sinister motives to tar and sully their reputation. He posits that the January 25 revolution is an aberration seized upon by the Muslim Brotherhood and foreign-backed agents provocateurs, especially the April 6 Youth Movement, who were all the while orchestrating the fall of the nation. They colluded to torch police stations, he goes on, and break open prisons, leaving criminals to roam the streets and terrorize citizens into submission. 

The true revolution, Ali asserts, began on June 30 and culminated with the defense minister’s removal of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3, recalibrating the military’s dominance over the state. It is a narrative that has gained considerable traction.  

“We have the strong belief that our calls are being recorded. Our activities on social media are monitored,” says activist Zizo Abdo. “We are not concerned or afraid because we are not saying anything wrong. We are calling for change and the realization of the revolution’s goals.”

Slanderous accusations have cost the revolutionaries the people’s trust, he admits. During the Islamist president’s rule they enjoyed a wide margin of freedom and critics freely attacked his policies, Zizo concedes. “Control of the media was not in the hands of Mohamed Morsi or the office of the presidency but in the hands of the security agencies, and with instructions from them there was an attack on the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Three years after a popular uprising to oust Egypt’s authoritarian regime and the revolutionary youth who started it all find themselves back at square one. Their ranks have thinned. Even well-known activists who organized for revolt languish in prison—among them April 6 Youth Movement founder Ahmed Maher and blogger, activist, and computer programmer Alaa Abd El Fattah. Smuggled letters are their sole means of communication with the outside world. Anti-government rallies, bombings, mass arrests, and the death of protesters have become unflinchingly routine occurrences.

Six days away from the Egyptian revolution’s third anniversary, about a hundred protesters gathered on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate, demanding the release of political detainees, over 20,000, according to a tally by rights groups. They raised pickets and chanted slogans against both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood before Zizo decided the protest should end earlier than planned. Security vehicles and police informers were hovering close by, and a rally to release detainees shouldn’t end in more arrests.

“We wanted to end quickly and get the youth out in groups so no one is arrested,” explains Zizo. Fear was not the driving factor; it was a strategic move to protect their numbers. “We’re taking precautions, working with the same mindset as before the revolution.”

Following the rally I walk with Zizo to a downtown café, informally called April 8. It was here that April 6 members regrouped in 2008, two days after a national strike organized on Facebook that launched the youth movement. Ever since, it’s been a hangout and meeting point for the revolutionary crowd, plastic tables and chairs spilling onto the pavement, leaving just enough room for traffic to pass. The aroma of fruity tobacco competes with the smells of urban grime. Here, nearly everyone knows Zizo.

“We see the Muslim Brotherhood as a wing opposed to the revolution, like the military is now,” he tells me. He accuses the Brotherhood of selling out the revolution in their bid for power, and with their political failures and reluctance to compromise ushering the military back onto the political stage.

“The revolutionary wave of June 30 was taken over by the military council once again,” he says. “We see that it is going in the path of an overthrow of the principles and goals of the January 25 revolution; it was a coup on the Muslim Brotherhood.”

With a military-backed government in charge the reviled practices of the security apparatus have returned with unrestrained tenacity. The state and its media cheerleaders have marshaled the masses in a war on terror, stirring patriotic fervor against all enemies of the state, internal or external, real or imagined. Dissidents, students, and journalists have been jailed, beaten, or harassed in a broad mandate by the security apparatus to quell political unrest.

“We see that we are going toward the consecration of a despotic state,” warns Zizo. “Unfortunately the consecration comes with a blessing from the people and a blessing from the civil forces that allied with the military.”

The same structures of power and repression are fixed in place. He describes the most useful tentacles of the Mubarak-era “deep state” as being the public prosecutor, the judiciary, and the interior ministry. “We do not have an independent judiciary or independent prosecutors, and neither is the interior ministry skilled in security.”

Earlier in the day I met Zizo at the Revolution Path Front’s high ceilinged, second floor office in downtown’s stock exchange district. Formed after June 30, the Front is an umbrella group for youth movements and revolutionary activists. It combines the April 6 Youth Movement, the Revolutionary Socialists, and youth who have an Islamist point of reference, like the Egyptian Current Party, formed by breakaway members from the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011.

“We are not against those who have an Islamist perspective,” Zizo explains, chain-smoking the local brand of Cleopatra cigarettes, “but we are against the faction of the Muslim Brotherhood who we protested against and contributed to its downfall on June 30. We are against the one faction that wants to dominate.”

Revolutionary loyalties unite them. They share a democratic vision for Egypt that is not in the grip of Mubarak regime loyalists, backers of the military state, or the self-serving Muslim Brotherhood. As they see it, hyper-nationalism is the tonic and tranquilizer of the current rulers as God and religion were for the Brotherhood under Morsi. In a divided nation, little room is left for a critical and balanced middle course. 

Citing articles allowing for the military trial of civilians and the autonomy granted to the military institution, the Front ultimately decided to boycott the vote for a constitution passed overwhelmingly in January, culling 98 percent of the vote. Thirty-nine percent of the electorate participated in a referendum that witnessed a low turnout of young voters. Arrests insured that no one was campaigning for a no vote. While a dozen people lost their lives in clashes during the two days of voting, state and private media honed in on the celebrations surrounding the new charter featuring middle-aged women dancing in the street.

Squeezed between the dominant camps of backers of the military or the Brotherhood, the Front’s revolutionaries realize they have never been weaker. They have lost the regard of a public that stereotypes them as renegades in beguiling Guy Fawkes disguises hurling Molotov cocktails in battles with police.

On the Thursday before January 25 a group of young men and women held a dialogue and strategy session at the office of the Revolution Path Front. They went over scenarios of what they expected on the third anniversary of the start of popular uprising and discussed options for grass-roots mobilization. Their simple objective was to prove the young revolutionaries still have a presence on the street.

“I want to be the thorn in the side of the regime because I cannot provide an alternative,” comments Mamdouh Gamal, who moderated the discussion. He recalls a conversation on the metro with a man lambasting the “armed and dangerous” Muslim Brotherhood.

“Where did they get their weapons?” Mamdouh asked him quizzically.

“They were smuggled across the border,” he answered.

“Who protects the borders?”

“The army,” the man replied.

Mamdouh left him with that thought.

“Our biggest problem,” Mamdouh extrapolated from the encounter, “is that we think for people instead of letting them think for themselves.” 

On the eve of the third anniversary of the January 25 revolution, four explosions rocked Greater Cairo, killing six. Fifteen more anti-government protesters lost their lives in clashes with security forces. In addition to a string of bombings over the coming days, a military helicopter was shot down in Sinai with a surface-to-air missile, a natural gas pipeline was blown up, and a top-ranking security official was surgically gunned down on his way to work, a bullet piercing his Octavia’s black tinted windows.    

A jihadist group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Supporters of Jerusalem, claimed responsibility for these and other attacks, with the frequency and sophistication of their operations on the rise. Another militant group, Ajnad Masr, or Soldiers of Egypt, emerged last month, targeting police installations. Devoting little attention to the shadowy al Qaeda-inspired jihadists, the local media heaped blame on the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been officially branded a terrorist organization by the government.

Claiming to have no political affiliation, a vigilante anti-government group is making waves in their vendetta against the deep state. They call themselves Burn and their first act of sabotage was the February 7 firebombing of a police checkpoint in Giza. For a broad public, the terror bombings have turned the police into victims or valiant defenders. For a good many, they are perpetrators.

“I don’t like the Brotherhood, I don’t hate the Brotherhood,” says Sami Farouk Ahmed, a 38-year-old tour guide and Sinai native whose brother Saber was martyred in Tahrir Square on January 28, 2011, a pivotal day of revolution. It was a Thursday night and we were standing by a vendor selling t-shirts for $2 in Tahrir as an armored police van, sirens blaring, circled the square menacingly.  

“The police killed my brother,” Sami says, so there is no love lost between him and the police. It was plain who he despises. “I hate anyone who fucks with my business.” After the massacre of Morsi supporters at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in August, he mentions, whatever tourism there was in Egypt dried up.

Zizo does not consider the Muslim Brotherhood a terror organization, but a failure for reaching power and not accomplishing a thing. He believes the authorities make the Brotherhood out to be terrorists to conceal their crimes. “We reject all violence, and we see the face of the interior ministry as the true terrorism.”

But he was well aware that a commitment to nonviolence was no protection. If the authorities wanted to go after him, he knew they could easily set him up and convince a gullible public he, too, was conspiring against the state. Enough Egyptians were already convinced revolutionaries like him were traitors.

Amre Moussa is a career diplomat, chairman of the constituent assembly, and a  strong endorser of defense minister Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi’s bid for the presidency. In 2011 Moussa himself ran for the top job. As the foreign minister for a decade and the secretary-general of the Arab League for another decade, he was a favorite to win and polls had him in the lead. On election day,he finished fifth.

Moussa is easily annoyed when anyone refers to Morsi’s ouster as a coup. “We could not afford to have the rule of Dr. Morsi continue for one more day,” he says emphatically in his posh and spacious offices at the Shura Council, the upper chamber of parliament that was eliminated in the new constitution. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party dominated the elections for the Shura Council, winning more than half the seats. The chamber was dissolved along with Morsi’s ouster. Outside, guarding the edifice, are armored personnel carriers and soldiers stationed with automatic weapons pressed to their chests.

“General al-Sisi is coming after a revolution that rejected oppression by any regime. It is a revolution that has toppled two presidents, one after the other,” argues Moussa.

He brushes aside concern over the return of military rule. “The constitution has called for a civil state, a civil government,” he emphasizes. “When we support General al-Sisi we support him as the former commander in chief, ex-general. Now he is going to run, of course, as independent and also civilian. This is not the only general who has put forth his candidature. So many countries elected generals after their retirement.”

He places full faith in the guarantees outlined in the constitution. “We want to promote democracy as the system we want to follow,” says Moussa. “We cannot leave the country in the hands of any group—without specifying a group—that would use violence and terrorize people. This is absolutely unacceptable.”

When asked what role the Muslim Brotherhood could play, he replies, “It is up to them. The constitution does not exclude them or any Egyptian citizen.” Yet the authorities have imprisoned the leadership of the Brotherhood, their television station and newspaper were shut down, and the courts have ordered the confiscation of their funds and properties.

“This is a political statement, that they are accused of terrorism or at least violence in the streets and many cities. This is an unacceptable policy, not only for the government but for any citizen because it disturbs the life in our society. But the door is open for them to make use, to benefit from the liberties, freedoms, basic rights that the constitution gave everybody.”

Having a ruling coalition and an opposition, he adds, “are the two wings of a democratic system.”

Moussa predicts that elections for president, parliament, and municipal councils would end the turmoil and set Egypt on the right track. He excuses the heavy-handed measures used by the authorities. “This is a transitional period, full of tension and violence which make it necessary for the government to take certain action,” he explains. “All this should come to an end and will come to an end by bringing Egypt back to a normal situation.”

On January 27 interim president Adli Mansour anointed al-Sisi the highest military rank of field marshal and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces gave their top commander the green light to run for president.

“Can al-Sisi unite Egyptians?” I ask, seeing how Moussa already assumes him to be the country’s next president, even before he announced his intention to seek elected office. “This is his main responsibility of course, being a president of all Egyptians. He will not repeat the mistake of Mr. Morsi, a president who belonged to and catered to and did not see except his group. The attitude of General al-Sisi when he becomes President al-Sisi is to represent all Egyptians, cater to the needs of everybody.”

“There is nothing called Arab Spring,” Moussa concludes, “but the movement for change will continue.”

Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque was a flashpoint of the revolution on the fourth day of revolution, January 28, 2011, the Friday of Rage. Perusing a zero-tolerance policy, security forces broke up opposition protests three years later on January 25, 2014, firing off volleys of tear gas canisters and shotguns to disperse crowds just as the Revolution Path Front’s 1 PM protest was getting underway.

Another group of revolutionary youth massed on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate, shouting anti-military and anti-Brotherhood slogans. As soon as they started to march, security forces opened fire. One after the other, police crushed all their rallies before they could gain momentum.

For the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of the former president, rallies were organized to galvanize opposition to the coup, resist the security state, and to keep alive the memory of the Rabaa massacre, which claimed at least 726 lives, according to the state medical examiner. The actual number may be a thousand or more, since some bodies did not make a detour at the morgue before burial.  

By nightfall on January 25, 62 Egyptians were killed in clashes with security forces in greater Cairo alone. Over a thousand were arrested.The third anniversary of the revolution was a reminder of just how the hard-won right to protest has been taken away.

The square was stolen from the revolutionaries.                                                                        

Tahrir Square, which had been owned by protesters opposing the system, was turned into a venue that supports the state, the military, and an army general’s candidacy for president. Security checkpoints, bag searches, and metal detectors blocked the entrances to Tahrir on January 25, a national holiday. Singing and cheering filled the square as military helicopters dropped Egyptian flags. Blocks away and across cities and provinces,clashes erupted between protesters and police.

This was intended to be a day crowning al-Sisi the people’s choice for president. Street vendors briskly sold posters of the defense minister, pictured in military attire, in a suit, with the head of a lion in the background, and flanked by venerated past presidents and military commanders Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Flags waved, nationalist hymns blared from the speakers set up on the stage. Banners, facemasks, and memorabilia exalted the cult of a military man.

The bombings a day earlier stirred rising anger against the Muslim Brotherhood, with crowds chanting, “The people want the execution of the Brotherhood.” One of the posters sold had the organization’s leaders tied up and awaiting slaughter like sheep by a knife-wielding al-Sisi.

Soon-to-be-president or not, al-Sisi is seen as the man in charge, inspiring fervent admiration or vitriolic hatred. Inside the symbolic heart of revolution, rarely is the cry of the revolution heard: bread, freedom, social justice, human dignity. Since the massacre at Rabaa the metro even has skipped the Tahrir Square stop for fear that it would be taken over by opposition protesters.                                                                                                 

The youth of the Revolution Path Front know that they need to begin anew carving out spaces for dissent and activism, even if it starts with small protests at the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate. They also know their activities are being closely watched by the police. But if Germany was able to emerge from the horrors of the Third Reich to become an democratic state and an economic powerhouse, Zizo tells me, then Egypt’s process of transitional justice and healing a polarized society ought to be much less trying.

Mossless in America is a new column featuring interviews with documentary photographers. The series is produced in partnership with Mossless magazine, an experimental photography publication run by Romke Hoogwaerts and Grace Leigh. Romke started Mossless in 2009 as a blog for which he interviewed a different photographer every two days; since 2012, Mossless magazine has produced two print issues, each dealing with a different type of photography. Mossless was featured prominently in the landmark 2012 exhibition Millennium Magazines at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and is supported by Printed Matter, Inc. Their forthcoming third issue, a major photographic volume on American documentary photography from the last ten years titled The United States (2003-2013), will be published this spring.

Brooklyn-based photographer Sean Stewart hails from the industrial city of Pittsburgh, PA. Stewart’s work is quiet and contemplative, and his subject matter is centered around contemporary American issues. His scenes depict everyday normalities: collapsed industry, identical prefabricated houses encroaching on sprawling plains, buses hastily pulling in and out of mall parking lots, and so on. But Stewart’s photographs are particularly arresting because they seem to be detached from the anxious mood these scenes elicit. They’re factual, clean, and seemingly objective, as if he is just hovering above them. We spoke with Sean about objectivity in photography, the decisive moment, and the importance of being part of a photographic community.

Mossless: If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be doing?

Sean Stewart: Ideally, I'd be a organic farmer. But it's more likely I'd probably be working in some massive, nondescript warehouse sorting your next Amazon order. If I hadn't found photography (or art in any other form), I wouldn't have met my wife or found friendship in the most unlikely of places. I'd probably live in a home located in the same zip code I grew up in. Every decision made has a ripple effect on what comes next.

 

Do you always have a camera with you?

No, I work with a large-format camera, which is impractical to carry everywhere. I don't own a car either, so usually I'm riding my bicycle to get around. This is probably when most of my visual, nonverbal thinking get done. It's a small thing, but there's a ton of mental and physical energy that goes into this activity. There's nothing that parallels the act of moving through the landscape without the aid of fossil fuels, and just being a witness to how the details change as you pass.

 

I live in Brooklyn, NY, yet most of my actual picture-making is done in Western Pennsylvania or on I-80 along the way. These shoots usually a take place a few weekends a month, during certain times of the year, or on week-long trips to more exotic places if I can manage the time. The camera usually stays in the trunk of the rental car until something wakes me up.

 

What do you look for in a landscape before you raise your camera?

I think light is the key in initiating a photograph. After light, I'm usually looking for a familiar detail. These details may have some cognitive relation to my childhood, or they can be about how patterns and visual relationships are organized in the frame. I always try to start out in a familiar place, trying to tap into memory, thoughts, and feelings about home. No matter the motivation, I try to not think about the scope of a project when I'm shooting. This can lead to too much self-editing and anxiety about the futility of a photography project. Let's shoot first and be artists and good photo editors down the line.

 

 

Do you think pure objectivity is achievable in photography?

Absolutely not. Photography is primarily concerned with manipulation over documentation, and lives somewhere in the middle.

 

I get most of my visual ideas from watching films. These ideas take the form of a perspective or ways of seeing. I find it harder and harder to look at film and not think about the production crews, lighting equipment, and a table of doughnuts waiting in the sun. There are motives behind and in front of the camera, and entire economies built around them as well. The best films (Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, for instance), come close to reaching objectivity. It's a raw illustration of human nature. But even then, since you are viewing the subject through an artistic medium, it will never be a fact. Terrence Malick comes close too. His films operate on so many emotions and fragmented memories of traumatic experiences. I'm glad I never went to film school, because all of the magic would have been destroyed for me.

 

I've always gravitated toward photography because it's an individual pursuit. The only objective experience is going out into the world and experiencing it first without a camera, and then somehow responding to these fragments in a real way. The photographs made are only imitations of that subjective experience and that light. They are not a fact or the experience itself. I'm attracted to images that have a blurry distinction between the illustration of a specific place and the idea of a fictional one.

 

If you could change anything about the way photography is taught, what would it be?

I would stop cheating young artists out of a future. I think there are a few overlooked paths to forging a professional life out of photography. The raising cost of higher education and the fact that so few jobs are available just doesn't add up for most people. If you really want to do something great, invest in your equipment, travel, and make work you really care about. There are technical concerns and philosophical hurdles to overcome that can't be done alone in a room, so surrounding yourself with artists and sharing work is extremely important. The internet is probably the most important tool to learn.     

 

Sean Stewart is a Brooklyn-based photographer.

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Fashion Week has hit New York City again, and big, fancy designers are showing their latest collections for fall/winter 2014. So we went to a few shows to figure out what all the Tumblr goofballs, twinks, and trust-funders will be wearing in autumn. Keep checking back frequently throughout the week for our reviews of the shows at Milk Studios, Lincoln Center, and more.

ROBERT GELLER

The influences behind Robert Geller's collections are always super fascinating. The press releases for his shows are like rabbit holes that have you crawling through obscure Wikipedia pages and loading up your Amazon shopping cart with very rare goodies. This time around, however, the genesis for Robert's fall 2014 looks lie with a rock star we're all pretty familiar with: David Bowie. It's not super surprising that Robert would find a muse in the Thin White Duke. David has long been a bastion of style (just check out the feature we did this month on Kansai Yamamoto, the designer behind many of David's iconic looks). Not to mention, David's a master at walking the thin line between being tough and elegant, just like Robert's eponymous brand. Surprisingly, Robert opted to mine one of David's lesser-known personae. Instead of aping low-hanging fruit like Ziggy Stardust, Robert looked to the big and boxy suits David wore in The Man Who Fell to Earth as a springboard for his collection. Robert's models took to the runway in everything from neoprene overcoats and tall military caps to Chelsea boots and elongated tops. In the context of his previous work, it wasn't revelatory. Everything from the warm hues of purple to the layered silhouettes was well within his wheelhouse and felt very familiar to me. Even so, it was refined to the point that his looks are becoming so pure and distinctive they're bordering on the iconic. 

—By Wilbert L. Cooper

MARA HOFFMAN

The jungle-drum music and the "exotic" prints on the clothes made it apparent that Mara Hoffman was channeling the Dark Continent with her latest collection, which is weird because she's never even been there before. Though I'm usually very suspicious of cultural reappropriation by old white people, I was at least pleased to see that Mara had the Rainbow Coalition do her casting. Models of all different races and complexions were clad in flowy dresses that were decorated in vibrantly colored sequins and patterns. There were definitely some great looks, and the styling of dark-skinned models in white was especially striking. But at the end of the day, this stuff is what a WASPy mom would wear to an Invisible Children fundraising event. 

—By Wilbert L. Cooper

OSTWALD HELGASON

The kind of audience a brand attracts is a perfect indicator of what its show will be like. Because Ostwald Helgason's show ran a solid half hour late, I was able to take my time and really reflect on the dweebs who were attending the London-based brand's show. One Soho goober in particular stood out to me. He was 30-going-on-40, wearing dress shoes and a Thrasher snapback hooked around his belt loop. Not to mention, he had a worn-out skateboard in his hands. It was clear that in honor of fashion week, he opted to sport his "skater look." 

Ostwald Helgason's designs this season had the same laborious poser vibe as that guy, but instead of overpriced skating gear, it was high(er)-end concert attire. These clothes were meant to be worn on dinner dates by tepid, boring women. Halfway through the show, they changed the music from quirky and coy to the glitchy stuff that frat dudes OD to at EDM festivals. All of a sudden, even the models looked lost, wearing failed outfits varying from cherry-blossom polo dresses to peel-away banana graphic creations. It was an incongruent collection that felt aggressively mediocre. Middle-of-the-road designs like this don't warrant a runway show.

—By Jesse Miller-Gordon

CALLA

Placed alongside three other presentations on the eighth floor of Milk Studios, Calla brought a fun, casual energy. While some other rooms had sweaty, uncomfortable models, Calla's girls were situated in a PE roll-call formation with college-coffee-shop favorites like Dolly Parton and Blood Orange playing in the background. The looks were playful, ranging from a comfy sweat suit worn with a furry coat that boasted the plaid of a Chinatown tote bag to an embroidered she-suit the color of a 50s champagne Cadillac. Elsewhere, there were the kinds of bold patterns and pleated skirts that make me fall in love with girls and expect unreasonable things. No new ground was broken, but that wasn't really the point, was it? 

—By Jesse Miller-Gordon

DEGEN

It should be a rule next fashion week that all designers be prohibited from boring the hell out of us with their awkward early-morning presentations—unless that designer is Lindsay Degen. Lindsay has held a special place in our hearts ever since she knit a pair of boobs on a sweater and some pubic hair on a pair of underwear in one of her previous collections. She’s a genuine weirdo who thinks outside the box and could care less about what everyone else thinks is cool, because whatever she thinks is cool is COOL and everyone else can go die.

She even has a sneaky way of making you like things you thought were the worst. Take Crocs, for example: There aren’t enough explicitly horrible words to describe how they make me feel. The mere glimpse of a nasty foot in Crocs causes my eyeballs to vibrate inside their sockets, and I suddenly get the urge to projectile-vomit onto every surface around me. Nevertheless, when I saw the stomach-churning footwear as rainbow-colored LED platform shoes in her new collection, I had to take a step back and close my eyes. I stood in the middle of the room like a freak for a good minute, clenching my fists in my pocket until the feeling finally passed. The neon lights, the cropped sweaters, the colorful shorts and hoodies, and the strange tribal drumming in the room resonated inside my chest. I stood there not sure if I was about to have a panic attack. I'd never been at a rave that early in the morning, but I think I could get used to it. MATCH POINT: DEGEN!

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos 

PETER SOM

If you’re the type of fashionable "it" girl who buys 60s French-pop vinyl (à la France Gall) or you have some unhealthy obsession with Edie Sedgwick (i.e., you have unresolved daddy issues), then Peter Som is for you. This season, Peter did what a lot of designers do at some point in their careers, which is rip off styles from the 60s and 70s and try to sell them to a new audience. I consider this to be a total cop-out because, most of the time, they're basically carbon copies of $5 bin finds that I can score secondhand (and that's mainly because the idiots who price them think Paco Rabanne is a Latino celebrity who designed a collection sold at Kmart). There isn’t anything too exciting or new about Peter’s autumn line, which consists of A-line skirts, leopard-print jackets, and dresses in various bright warm tones. But if you buy any of these pieces, at least you wont have to worry about contracting some fucked-up, skin-eating thrift-store disease. That's something, right?

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos 

DION LEE

When I was a little preteen, one of life's rarefied moments was getting inside of a girl's bedroom—not to do anything physical in particular; just making it out of the family room and up the damn stairs was prize enough. This kind of thing only happened during a secret rendezvous under the cover of night or when a girl's parents were out of town and she had caught a wild streak. Because getting into a girl's bedroom was such a rare occurrence, the bedroom of a woman took on a kind of mythical quality in my mind. When I was crushing on a girl, I'd daydream endlessly about what her room would look like. There is still something awe-inspiring to me about femininity expressed in such a personal space, where everything is super-ornate and vibrantly colored and all the little pieces have their own place. Dion Lee's latest collection looked like something straight out of the walk-in closet in one of the imagined bedrooms of a long-lost boyhood crush of mine. There were soft pinks and creams and bold blues. Everything felt effortlessly flowy and sexy in a reserved sort of way. Sure, I caught a few glimpses of some nice model nips and butt cracks, but it wasn't a smack-you-in-the-face-withsex kind of affair. Instead, it felt elegant and got my imagination running away again, high off the power and mystery of beautiful women and their fancy things.

—By Wilbert L. Cooper

ØDD

ØDD was the first show I attended at NYFW, so I was hoping for some freaky shit to pop off to get my fashion week started on the right foot. The invitation talked a lot about juxtapositions and sound technology, so I was ready to have my mind blown. After entering the room and being bummed out that it was just another catwalk and not some trippy experiential environment, I noticed a man shadily standing in the corner of the room. Or was he a lady? When he took a seat in front of me, I realized it was Elliott Sailors, the woman who now models as a man. I saw that her right hand was glowing blue thanks to a large ring she was wearing. When she stood up and marched down the runway, she moved her hand in front of her body like a sorcerer, which I guess was controlling the music and the projections and maybe my mind. I was entranced. But not every model was lucky enough to have a piece of mind-melting jewelry, so I was able to leave my trance long enough to see the actual clothing of the collection, which was very dark and futuristic and awesome. 

—By Erica Euse

GENERAL IDEA

Being John Malkovich is an old Spike Jonze movie in which John Cusack has the power to enter actor John Malkovich's mind for 15 minutes at a time. Whenever I see a collection by designer Bumsuk Choi, I wonder whether he's doing that to me—entering my brain through a portal on the seventh-and-a-half floor of a Korean office building and taking all the fashion shit that I like and desperately want and incorporating it into his awesome line. I could be totally content wearing only General Idea's latest collection for the rest of 2014, with its black-heavy color scheme, tight tough-guy leather pants, tops with zippers in lots of strange places, and man skirts. Bumsuk, if you are inside my head right now, hook a brother up with some runway samples for free-.99, my guy.

—By Wilbert L. Cooper

TIMO WEILAND

Timo Weiland is one of the few young designers who can successfully create a full and solid assortment of looks for both men and women. Instead of referencing past decades for his menswear line, this season he decided to create a collection inspired by the now—the outfits he sees on the streets of New York every single day. So for fall, he basically re-created all the classic staples you have in your closet but made every piece a million times better, to the point that you now hate everything you own. In fact, you're so annoyed that haphazardly tossing a still-lit cigarette butt into a trash bin that "accidentally" starts a fire and destroys all of your shitty, outdated wardrobe—so you have to go out and buy all of Timo's new gear with the insurance check—doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos

CHROMAT

I praise individualism, and this show was jam-packed with eclectic weirdos. (My favorite was the guy sitting across from me in an all-gold, metallic striped suit with rainbow-colored balls glued to his hat.) Once the typical electronic tunes started echoing in the Standard's presentation hall, the first few girls stepped out wearing the usual Chromat looks—cutout dresses, lingerie, and pentagram designs—which is always appealing. But it wasn't until a model sporting a full-metal bustier walked out that I knew this collection was different. I even found myself drooling over the shiny metal baby-doll dress that came after (even though it probably weighed more than the girl who was wearing it). And when the lights dimmed to reveal an ethereal leather mask and harness complete with blue LEDs, I knew I was in heaven.

—By Miyako Bellizzi

KATIE GALLAGHER

Katie Gallagher is my kind of gal. Season after season, her dark, edgy designs never fail to get my adrenaline pumping. I don't know her personally. But I'd like to think she's the sort of girl I held séances with when I went through my shitty rebellious "I hate everything!" phase. You know, the teenage years when you only wore black, watched The Craft once a week, bought dog collars from Hot Topic, and found your parents leaving "How to Talk to Your Teen" pamphlets throughout the house because they didn't know how to deal with your crazy-ass mood swings. While it would be unfair to simply label Katie's newest collection as an homage to some 90s cult chick flick, we have to say that if this was the inspiration behind her latest designs, she did a really good job at breathing new life into a concept that several designers have failed to capture.

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos

VFILES

ASSK (far left)

After teetering on the edge of obscurity with last season’s clumsy showcase, VFiles was in a tough spot—how do you appeal to blasé internet kids without ostracizing the people who take fashion kind of seriously? And vice versa? It’s the burning question, and after a 45-minute delay, things weren’t looking good. Luckily, the two Aussie expats behind Paris-based ASSK quelled the non-believers. The looks—urban knitwear, quilted bombers, lush coats that doubled up as sleeping bags, Realtree print garments sprinkled with SIM cards and Rx bottles—were so on point that they’d be filed right in the G-spot of a form-meets-function Venn diagram.

—By Bobby Viteri

MELITTA BAUMEISTER (middle)

The minute Melitta Baumeister’s first look strolled down the runway, I immediately knew she was German. No other country's inhabitants can ever cut the hell out of a sweater and send it frayed down a runway quite like the Germans can. The Parson's graduate showcased a series of designs inspired by our cultural obsession with digital technology. It was a clean collection, minus all the pieces that were purposely made to look unfinished. In many ways it was reminiscent of old Martin Margiela and Raf Simons designs, with weird bananas attached to some of the model's chests. I'm not sure how those pieces really supported her whole "digital" concept, because all they did was make me think of Donkey Kong—if he were forced to live on an interstellar space station inhabited by some jacked up dystopian society. Scratch that. Living out the rest of my days in eternal sadness while wearing whatever this "stuff" is supposed to be seems pretty cool to me right now.

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos

HYEIN SEO (far right)

One of the biggest pet peeves is the use of typeface on clothing. Any word that's supposed to evoke some sort of emotion from you—especially the word fear—is just stupid. So Hyein Seo's decision to display it prominently on every garment just annoyed me. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good punk look when it's executed properly, but this was a far cry from punk. It was as far from punk as punk could be. You might as well have used the word "punk" instead. It's really sad because the structural design of each individual piece was great. Had she just second-guessed the deal-breaker, the collection would have been a hit. Sorry, Hyein; tripping at the finish line is the worst look of all.

—By Miyako Bellizzi

WILDFOX

At the risk of sounding like a total asshole, I've got to say that the Wildfox show was very "LA." We like Wildfox and Kimberley Gordon's girly designs, but there was something about the show that we couldn't shake. The scent of self-tanner and Clinique Happy clung to the air in such a way that I couldn't help having acid flashbacks to my awkward days in high school. I was reminded of the way the school common room smelled when the popular crew rolled through the hallways post–Central Park smoke break. As the models began strolling down the runway in a collection that was inspired by Pride and Prejudice, I began to feel nostalgic. The rosy-cheeked, beanie-wearing, slouchy boho-chic models reminded me of the kind of young girl I secretly admired, even though she tortured the hell out of me—the carefree, "I woke up like this" perfect 10 who had a cool boyfriend, could wear all of his clothing, not brush her hair, and still warrant boners from all of the guys after PE. A warmth came over me, one I'd never experienced before; it was if I had finally gotten some kind of closure I'd always needed. 

But in an instant my newfound inner peace was shattered into a million pieces as the soft baby-like words I frequently hear in my nightmares began to play: "My heart will never feel / Will never see / Will never know...." It was Grimes, the same annoying track that has been plaguing fashion weeks all around the world for the last two years. Ugh. Coincidentally, a sweatshirt displaying the phrase "I Need a Drink" came down the catwalk as the haunting song faded into obscurity. At least at that very moment I could finally relate to my surroundings, and I was no longer afraid.

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos

ORLEY

Orley's fall/winter 2014 collection is basically what I imagine Holden Caulfield's boarding-school cohorts would have worn in The Catcher in the Rye on their weekends at home in New York City. It's the perfect collection for any Godard-obsessed intro-to-film twit—you know, the same guy who subscribes to the Paris Review and walks around carrying a pretentious book under his arm, along with a rolled-up newspaper with the New York Times label facing out so everyone can see just how well-read he is. This guy also doesn't own a single pair of white socks, still wears Dior's Eau Sauvage, and carries a monogrammed cigarette case full of pencil-thin perfectly hand-rolled cigs in his shirt breast pocket. This guy is the absolute worst. And not because of his deep connection to a period in time 20 years prior to his birth, but because of his unfailing commitment. Also, your girlfriend is probably going to leave you for him, and for very good reason.

—By Annette Lamothe-Ramos

KYE

After feeling pretty terrible all day, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a sweltering room with DJs blasting Outkast remixes for 30 minutes, while jerks obnoxiously snapped runway photos with their massive iPads. But once the models came out wearing a face full of baby oil, I felt a lot better, because at least there were others who knew how I felt—sweaty and ready to die.

Like most shows this season, androgynous looks were a central theme. KYE has a unique ability to create versatile pieces that both sexes can wear. By using expensive leathers, mesh, and this weird Astro-fur material, they really upped the loungewear game. All the looks seemed like they came straight out of a 90s Missy Elliot music video. I was especially feeling the XL chain-cable motif that was embroidered on most of the garments. It's like KYE designed my ideal collection: comfy, non-descript fits that come in black, white, and red. Ideal for eating, sleeping, sweating, fucking, and dying.

—By Miyako Bellizzi

Thumbnail image via Flickr User TpolyG

In April 2013, a group of men carried out an attack on a San Jose Pacific Gas & Electric transmission substation, attempting to cut local power. Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, who has been warning of the potential to disrupt the electric grid via EMP, spoke at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club where he described video of the attack. It showed three or four men lowering themselves underground to cut fiber optics cables (protected only by a heavy manhole), and firing at least 100 rounds from a high-powered rifle at equipment, destroying 17 of 20 transformers and causing $16 million in damages. The former official described it as "a systematic attempt to take down the electric grid," and that the men’s behavior was “disciplined” and “military."

"We do not believe it is related to domestic or international terrorists," said Peter Lee of the FBI, despite nearly every single aspect of the operation being in line with the most basic definition of “domestic terrorism." When the top security agency is unwilling to admit that our power grid is susceptible to terrorist attacks, that probably says that they have absolutely no idea how to pretend to prevent them, like the TSA or “duck and cover." 

The former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Jon Wellinghoff, also disagreed with the FBI, telling the Associated Press, "I don't know what the definition of terrorism is other than when an extremely well-trained group attacks a major piece of infrastructure in an expertly planned attack." He went on to say that "This is the most sophisticated and extensive attack that's ever occurred on the grid to my knowledge." 

A handbook distributed to the US Army highlights in great detail the insurmountable challenges of protecting our infrastructure, from food and water to cybersecurity to our nation’s potentially catastrophic and surprisingly unprotected power grid. In 1996, a tree in Oregon brushed up against a high voltage transmission line, knocking out all major transmission lines between California and Oregon, and keeping power from 5.6 million people in ten states for over 16 hours.

Seven years later, the Northeast blackout of 2003—caused by a software bug in Ohio—blacked out several large regions of the United States and Canada, affecting 55 million people for up to two days. Backup generators failed, water pressure in several cities was lost, and major water networks were contaminated, prompting officials to put out a boil-water order. Phone systems became nonoperational, partially from the outage, partially from being overloaded with panicked calls. Some TV and radio continued to operate with generators, although many were off the air for most of the blackout. Even Amtrak’s electric trains stopped running.

A film produced by National Geographic, entitled American Blackout, depicts life following a cyber-attack that blows out the entire nation’s power. Over ten days, the documentary-style production outlines the increasingly chaotic results of living without electricity. At first, electronic communication would falter and phone batteries would die, with no way of being recharged. ATMs, public transportation, and much of the Internet would be inaccessible. Your car would still work, but none of the traffic signals would, leading to massive gridlock, especially after cars begin to run out of gas. People living above the 6th floor would find their water no longer running. Hospitals would be understaffed and overburdened due to unclean drinking water and any number of medical disasters caused by a lack of electricity. Crime rates would rise and police would be incapacitated without the ability to communicate with each other. The film predicts that the thin veneer of civilization would evaporate within two weeks, costing nearly $2 trillion and half a million lives.

Last November, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NAERC) orchestrated a two-day training exercise called GridEx II, involving over 2,000 participants from utility companies, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, schools, businesses, and a number of other industries. The massive drill went “very well," according to Gerry W. Cauley, CEO of the NAERC. “A bit scary, but really well.” This included 150 “casualties” as well as “active shooters," preventing the ability to restore power.

The drill was held in areas of increased significance due to their potential weakness, as well as their ability to seriously disrupt the power grid. Their locations were not announced ahead of time. All in the all, while the training exercise went better than the first, smaller scale GridEx, the general results suggested that as a country we are still not ready to deal with a terrorist attack on our electrical infrastructure. Although even if we were, we’ve still got water to contaminate, bridges to blow up, and crops to infect.

@jules_su

A fake drone carried by protesters during Obama's second inauguration. Photo via Flickr user Debra Sweet

According to investigative journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill—writing today in their shiny new online publication, the Intercept—the NSA locates targets for drone strikes by using metadata and tracking the coordinates of cards and cellphones. The article goes on to note that using these sources instead of intelligence gathered from humans on the ground makes it more likely that these strikes will kill innocent people.

Scahill and Greenwald based their report on documents released by Edward Snowden, as well as former Air Force drone operator Brandon Bryant, who’s now a critic of drone strikes, and another former drone operator employed by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, who says he worked with the NSA. According to the Intercept piece, some targets are aware they are being tracked and will switch cell phones or SIM cards to confuse their targeters. Others, less savvy, have cluelessly given their phones to family members, which leads to a Hellfire missile hitting someone, though not necessarily a terrorist.

This kind of imprecise targeting may help explain why, say, the American 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA strike two weeks after his father was assassinated. It also helps to undermine the narrative that metadata is somehow not important enough for folks to guard jealously.

That glimpse into how many pies the NSA has a finger in is in odd contrast with new leaks that downplay the size of the NSA’s domestic phone dragnet. A recent report in the Washington Post said that, according to anonymous US officials, less than a third of the metadata from mobile phone calls in the US is currently catalogued under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act; those anonymous officials say it’s mostly landlines being monitored. Ironically, this might undermine the Obama administration’s defense of the program, which has been that it’s necessary to gather the whole haystack in order to find the dangerous needle of terrorism.

Many commentators, like the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, don’t buy the narrative put forth by these leaks and go so far as to suggest the officials' info may be deliberately misleading. (Mary Wheeler, the national security blogger who now works with Scahill and Greenwald, wondered whether records are being gathered under a justification different from the controversial 215.)

If the officials who claimed that so little of our cell-phone data is collected are lying, Friedersdorf writes, this means numerous legislators were being kept even more in the dark about the NSA’s activities than we realized. Even now, even after all these revelations delivered to us by Snowden and the journalists who have worked with him, the public barely has any idea how extensive the NSA’s surveillance-gathering activities are—which, of course, just underscores the need for a whistleblower like Snowden in the first place.

On to this week’s bad cops:

–Late last year, Henry “Hank” Magee of Burleson County, Texas, shot and killed Sergeant Adam Sowders, a sheriff’s deputy who broke down his door looking for marijuana. Magee and his attorney claim that he had no idea that the people smashing their way into his house on December 19 were cops, and there are many reasons—including similar tragedies in the past—to believe that’s the case. Magee was brought up on capital murder charges for the death of Sowders, which was no surprise considering his status as a cop killer. The shocking part of the case came on Wednesday, when a grand jury declined to bring charges against Magee for the death of Sowders, deciding that he believed he was acting in self-defense when he fired. Old Hank isn’t out of trouble yet, however—he still faces charges for his two marijuana plants, which, in conjunction with his owning (legal) firearms, could bring up to a decade in prison.

–Some people are concerned that Google Glass will bring yet more opportunities for individuals, corporations, and governments to monitor our every move, so the idea of cops outfitted with Google Glass may be kind of disturbing. But as long as wiretapping protections for civilians remain intact, maybe the Google glasses would encourage accountability as the police record their interactions with the public. So far, only a few are trying it out.

–On October 16, a Pinecrest, Florida, cop pulled over at the scene of an accident and—according to witnesses, an off-duty cop who was present, and dashcam footage—failed to do anything to help the two car crash victims who later died. When officer Ana Carrasco arrived on the scene, Miami police sergeant Javier Ortiz, who had been passing by the accident and sprung into action, was covered in blood and trying to aid one victim. He told Carrasco to give the other one CPR, but she just stood there and looked at him, ignoring his repeated pleas to help. Carrasco later said she was afraid of moving the man because he might have had an injured neck or spine, which hardly explains her odd behavior. In any case, she was only suspended from duty for a week. Both the boyfriend of one of the victims and Ortiz are horrified at what they see as lax punishment for a police officer who was strangely unresponsive when people needed her.

–Back in February 2013, the Los Angeles Police Department was in a panic over its former employee Christopher Dorner, who had gone from cop to cop killer. That panic involved some twitchy trigger fingers and some hurt bystanders, including Margie Carranza and her mother, Emma Hernandez, who were injured when LAPD officers fired 100 rounds at their car—which didn’t resembled the vehicle Dorner was driving—while they delivered newspapers. Hernandez was shot twice in the back and Carranza acquired superficial injuries from broken glass. Hernandez and Carranza received $4.2 million for their trouble, plus an additional $40,000 to fix the truck. For the last few months, LAPD officials have debated whether the eight officers who shot at the women were justified in doing so, and chief Charlie Beck and a civilian review board said the officers violated department policy. But that doesn’t mean the officers will be disciplined much. After a little training tune-up, all eight will be back on the streets. Beck may or may not punish them himself, but the incident reminds us there’s a troubling lack of accountability when it comes to the LAPD. If you fire at people who look nothing like your suspect, you should lose your job as a police officer.

–For our Good Cop of the Week, we're going with King County, Washington, sheriff John Urquhart, who on February 3 completed the process of firing Deputy Patrick Saulet. On July 30, Saulet attempted to prevent the Stranger reporter Dominic Holden from photographing an arrest, claiming that the area was not public property and, when Holden backed away, that he couldn’t photograph from the sidewalk either. Saulet later lied about his interactions with Holden and was show to have a long history of discipline issues. After a six-month investigation based on Holden’s complaint, Saulet was given the boot. Sheriff Urquhart noted in the wake of the firing that “you have a constitutional right to photograph the police.” Every officer who makes that damned clear is making a good start.

Lucy Steigerwald is a freelance writer and photographer. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter: @lucystag.

Environmental activist Bill McKibben is like Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln if Honest Abe shaved. A tall man with a soft voice, Bill knows how to incite passion in a crowd. In the last three and a half years, Bill has used these crowd-rousing skills to engage President Barack Obama in a game of chicken over the Keystone XL pipeline.

Proposed by TransCanada Corporation and requiring the president's approval, the Keystone XL would carry high-pollutant tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries along the US Gulf Coast. It would add an estimated 168 million tons of CO2e to the atmosphere while the world experiences the effects of global warming, such as last year’s Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

Bill's 1989 book The End of Nature was one of the first books to sound the alarms over climate change. Over the years he has moved from his writing desk in Vermont to streets across the country, protesting the burning of fossil fuels.

In the summer of 2011, when more than a thousand people were arrested for chaining themselves to the White House during a sit-in protest against the Keystone XL, Bill was led away in handcuffs. His arrest has launched a movement that has only snowballed since then.

Last February, Bill returned to the White House gates, with approximately 50,000 demonstrators. Barack Obama was reportedly golfing with oil executives when the activists arrived, but their displays have still proved a hefty political counter-weight to the lobbying power of the pipeline's corporate and union supporters, who have put pressure on the president to hasten approval of the Keystone XL. 

It’s unclear if Obama would rather approve the pipeline, possibly losing the majority of his base, or deny the permit and piss off the oil industry. Right now, the scales are starting to tilt against the activists. The Keystone XL has to go through some intricate bureaucratic steps before TransCanada's permit application arrives on the president's desk, but on January 31, the State Department released a long awaited environmental impact statement on the pipeline that observers say pushed the pipeline closer to approval.

This week, I spoke with Bill after he finished addressing a candle-lit crowd in Manhattan's Union Square, at a vigil against the Keystone XL, and asked him about the report’s findings.

VICE: Is it true the State Department's most recent report differs from the draft released this spring?
Bill McKibben: The main difference is that there's so much attention on them now that they can't get away with lying quite so easily. Unlike the one before it, this latest report doesn't claim that there's no environmental impact. In fact, if you read it, it admits that in a world where you are trying to do something about climate change, the Keystone XL pipeline would be a big problem.

But the report says the oil will be extracted anyway.
It's actually not going to be extracted anyway—it's expensive oil. It's hard to get out of the ground. It'll only be extracted if there are cheap ways to get it to market. Some of it will come out. But the head of Total, a big French oil company, and the head of TransCanada have said within the last two weeks that if they don't get this pipeline built, further expansion of the tar sands is probably not going to happen.

Do you think continued pressure from this movement will have an impact on whether the Keystone XL is built?
We'll find out. We're getting closer to the point of decision all the time. But now it's in the hands of Barack Obama and [Secretary of State] John Kerry. We'll find out what they're made of.

I've detected an increasing frustration towards Obama in some of your recent articles.
Yes, I think that's fair. He said when he was running for president that in his administration the rise of the oceans would begin to slow, and he said he would stand up to the oil industry and end the tyranny of oil.

In fact, it looks like, during his term in office, the amount of oil produced in the United States will about double. He's been fracking the hell out of the Appalachians. America is setting records for coal exports. His record on climate change is mixed at best. With the Keystone XL, we'll find out if he is actually ever willing to stand up to the oil industry.

Some people think you're exaggerating about climate change.
All one can do is refer them to the scientists. We've gotten some warning. The world's scientific community has come together on a complicated problem of physics and chemistry and given us real answers. Now we've got to pay attention to those.

Is there one example that will illustrate to climate change deniers the impact climate change will have on their lives?
A good place to look right now is the state of California—reservoirs with no water in them, and forest fires on an epic scale. It's getting hard to grow the food that we all depend on. Climatologists are very clear that this is exactly what happens when you raise the temperature.

What are environmentalists going to do if Obama approves this pipeline?
We're in the snows of New York right now. We may have to be in the snows of Nebraska, trying to keep them from actually building the thing.

As someone who has had climate change on his radar for more than two decades now, what has it been like seeing this issue catch on?
I'm glad more people are beginning to pay attention, but the truth is we shouldn't have to be protesting. In any rational world we would have quickly gotten to work. But since our leaders didn't get quickly to work, we have to do stuff like this. We have to go to jail. We have to protest and rally. We'll do it, but personally I'd rather be home writing.

@JohnReedsTomb

Some white people. Screenshot via Florists' Transworld Delivery.

Valentine’s Day is widely regarded as the worst holiday in the history of holidays. You don’t get a day off, you’re very likely to get into an epic fight with your significant other, and its history is rooted in the fictional martyrdom of an Italian saint named Valentinus—it is, to be perfectly blunt, 100-percent bullshit.

But that doesn’t stop corporations from trying to capitalize on it by making “hearts” out of their products, and it doesn’t stop the nonstop jeweler ads ("Every kiss begins with Kay"). It’s a wonder more people don’t put a gun to their blood pumper on February 14.

Besides jewelers, the other big early February advertisers are of course flower-delivery companies. The biggest—Florists’ Transworld Delivery—just released four new commercials, all featuring generic, white, hetero, annoying-as-humanly-possible actor-couples.

Know that these four couples were carefully culled from somewhere in the neighborhood of 50–60 auditions and picked to represent a $600 million company for their most important two weeks of the year.

The men in the spots are from planet Idiot, the women, from planet Bitch—a.k.a. the advertising industry’s characterizations of the genders for the last 20 years or so.

Be forewarned, single folk: After watching these ads, celibacy will never look more appealing.

You’ll note that the names of the eight “lovers” have been chosen to be whiter than Katy Perry’s tits. FTD is a 100-year-old Midwest company, so there will be no fucking weirdo names (let alone any melanin) in its commercials. The spots are meant to be “tongue-in-cheek funny.”

“Mike & Karen”

Clichéd Scenario #1: Women are cuckoo-bananas and always saying things that make zero sense; men are cheap fucks.

Solution: They should both buy each other flowers and then argue over who bought the better bouquet, with the situation eventually devolving into a roaring shouting-and-throwing-things donnybrook that thankfully ends this awful relationship between the two whitest people in the history of humanity.

“Brian & Cindy”

Clichéd Scenario #2: Men are cheap, gluttonous morons; women have no sense of humor.

Solution: Brian should buy Cindy a dozen red roses and eat every one of them while taking selfies, then send the pics to his old college douchebag buddies. Cindy should disinfect the toilet about ten times and then bluntly ask Brian if he’s allergic to eating pussy, too.

“Allen & Denise”

Clichéd Scenario #3: Men with beards = “hipsters,” who do cRazY things (notice Allen’s sweater is slightly cooler than the previous two young Republicans’); women are stultifyingly boring.

Solution: Allen should have taught the parrot to say, “I wanna fuck you in the pooper, Denise.” Denise should have countered by buying a 10-inch strap-on and handcuffs and pegging Allen until he bled.

“Keith & Audrey”

Clichéd Scenario #4: Men are cheap idiots; women are fucking killjoys.

Solution: Keith should have plagiarized one of Yeats’s more obscure love poems (or the copywriter should have written something funny). Audrey should buy a dildo already and name it “Anonymous Man Who Is Not Keith.”

Be thankful, Hispanics, African Americans, and Gays, who you are not in FTD’s target demo. Because those scripts written by the white hack copywriters from the very white Chicago ad agency Epsilon would have been wincingly awkward, and probably racist.

Note: Epsilon’s tagline is Where Intelligence Ignites Connections.™ Yes, they’ve trademarked it.

@copyranter

Premier Kathleen Wynne's 75 cent minimum wage increase as a "way forward" isn't enough for most of us. Screencap via.

On January 29^th, Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne announced an increase in the province’s minimum wage from $10.25 to $11 per hour. Wynne called the move a “fair adjustment” even though anti-poverty advocates have been agitating for an immediate increase to $14 per hour.

$11 per hour is an increase so small as to be meaningless. After this increase the minimum wage will leave people living 16 percent below the poverty line, according to the Workers’ Action Centre. It’s a bullshit move that looks good on the surface and, no doubt, is intended to stave off continuing calls for real change.

Wynne cited the difficulties of living on the current minimum wage as her reasoning for the increase, saying: “I think the vast majority of people in Ontario understand that it’s very difficult to make ends meet living on minimum wage, and that there needs to be a fair way of allowing minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living.”

All of that is true in the same way a statement like “the sky is usually blue” is true. It’s so basic and obvious that there’s no point in saying it unless you’ve got something else to add. What Wynne conveniently fails to mention, though, is that with an extra $0.75 per hour, none of that will change.

I work in retail, making slightly more than the new minimum wage, so the increase will not affect me. I have no dependents, no serious medical conditions, and no mortgage to pay down; plus I earn some extra money writing. As you may have guessed from the title of this article, I’m barely making ends meet.

I’m earning so little I don’t have to make payments on my student loans. Even so, nearly half of my income goes toward my rent, and after a couple of bills and some groceries, I’m lucky if I can afford to go out for a beer. Even the most minor change can throw my entire budget into chaos.

There are people all over Ontario who need to stretch their paycheques much further than I do: parents, people with dependent family members, people with medical expenses or large loans, the list goes on and on. Even a restricted diet could cause problems for someone living on such a tight amount of dough.

The National Post spoke to one woman about her attempts to live off the current minimum wage: “Amelia White of Toronto, who works full time in a grocery store for minimum wage, said she will still have to look for additional work so she can pay the bills.

‘I have to decide if I want to pay for rent, hydro or buy food. It’s not enough to look after my child and it’s not enough to live on,’ said White. ‘I pay my rent first and then I miss the bills and then I catch up the next month. It’s a cycle that goes on and on and on, so you just have to do what you can.’”

There are a few arguments people marshal against the call to implement a living wage (a minimum wage that would allow its recipients to, uh, live). One is that the only people earning minimum wage are teenagers working for spending money, so who cares whether or not they can feed a family? Another is that forcing employers to pay their workers more will result in fewer hires and may even cause some layoffs, making the increase an overall loss for workers.

Conveniently, The Progressive Economics Forum rebutted both of the above arguments already. The “only teens work for minimum wage”canard is a popular one, but it is patently untrue. Of workers earning minimum wage, 40 percent are over 24; of workers earning more than minimum wage, but less than $14 per hour, 60 percent are over 24. Teens are still a sizeable chunk of these groups, but there are also tens if not hundreds of thousands of adults working for low wages.

People like White and I, and the other nearly 500,000 workers in Ontario earning minimum wage, obviously have a vested interest in demanding higher pay. But those who can’t find work at all might be scared away from the fight for a living wage, by claims that if they have to pay more, businesses will stop hiring people.

This argument ignores the fact that workers are also consumers, and with more money in their pockets they are obviously going to spend more. So while higher wages will help workers, they will also help business revenue, which will offset the cost of paying people more.

Interestingly, Wynne said she finds it shocking “that we have a Conservative party that seems not to care, seems not to think that it’s their responsibility to have an opinion or to care about people making minimum wage.” Meanwhile, in the real world, Wynne’s increase will still leave 500,000 people and their families in a rut where they’ll be scrambling to eat and pay rent. And there are another million workers that are earning just a tad more than minimum wage, who are also getting fucked into poverty.

In fairness to Wynne, she plans to introduce legislation that would index the minimum wage to inflation, which would mean that while workers would still be living in poverty, they wouldn’t be descending deeper and deeper below the poverty line with each passing year. By throwing down just enough money that people will continue to fight amongst themselves for the scraps rather than demand real change, Wynne.


@tyelland

On VICE Japan's pilot episode of VICE Eats, we hung out with reality TV star Chanmomo (who appears on a Real World-esque Japanese show called Terrace House) and discussed her blossoming art career and lifestyle. We visited an under-the-radar restaurant called Uoken, where we sampled some of the freshest seafood in Tokyo and sipped on the sake-version of Beaujolais.

In the penultimate episode of our six-part documentary, Michael C. Ruppert examines the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

Here is an accompanying statement from Michael:

"Two weeks after VICE finished filming in Crestone, after reading and posting many verified reports from official, semi-official and expert sources, I concluded that all official accounts were deceptions, especially the charade that TEPCO was removing fuel rods from the Spent Fuel Pool at Reactor 4 which was most likely destroyed within of the earthquake. There is no way to determine—given Japan's new State Secrets law—the true extent of original damage, or the ongoing, uncontrolled release of radiation into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean which has continued without pause.

"All I am certain of is that the original incident was much worse than has been acknowledged and that, three years later, it remains uncontrollable by any known technology."

Most people were first exposed to Michael C. Ruppert through the 2009 documentary, Collapse, directed by Chris Smith. Collapse was one of the scariest documentaries about our world and the fragile the state of our planet. It was also one of VICE's favorite films from the past ten years.

Michael was forced to leave the LAPD after claiming that the CIA was complicit in selling drugs across America, and he quickly became one of the most original and strident voices to talk about climate change, government corruption, and peak oil through his website, “From the Wilderness.”

Following the release of Collapse, Michael’s personal life underwent something of a collapse itself and he paid off all his debts, left behind all his friends, and moved with his dog Rags to Colorado, planning to commit suicide.

VICE caught up with Michael in the middle of the epic beauty of the Rocky Mountains at the end of last year. We found a man undergoing a spiritual rebirth—still passionate about the world and with a whole new set of apocalyptic issues to talk about.

Apocalypse, Man is an intimate portrait of a man convinced of the imminent collapse of the world, but with answers to how the human spirit can survive the impending apocalypse.

Apocalypse, Man is a feature-length documentary to be released over the next few weeks. 

Soundtrack by Sunn O))), Flaming Lips, Interpol, Michael C. Ruppert, and more.

Directed by Andy Capper.

Here's a premiere of Cheatahs' video for "Get Tight," and before our new copy editor gets all pissy at me for misspelling their name... yes, it's spelled Cheatahs, dickwad. The song is about that mega crush you've always had who rocks black jeans and introduced you to Racine and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, but is actually a gnarly drug addict who will steal from your siblings and drag you into an endless daymare of late rent and dirty fingernails. So it's up to you if you want to be a healthy square or trash your life while looking cool—choice is yours, 'tween. The video, directed by Pete Dee, is set in a scene we know too well: You're sitting in your favorite easy chair, slammin' beers and smokin' cigs, when disembodied heads suddenly take over the television set that's been hypnotizing you your whole stupid life. Then they begin singing hook-laden slacker alt anthems at your face until you zone out. You know. That old yarn. 

This is the first video from their new self-titled LP, which was released today through Wichita. (We liked it so much that we bestowed our coveted Best Album of the Month status upon it.) You should buy the album right here. Also, if you are an American, you can catch the band on tour later this month. Full tour schedule below.

Cheatahs' US Tour
Feb 22 – Bunk Bar, Portland, OR
Feb 23 – Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA
Feb 27 – The Echoplex (Red Bull Sound Select show, with FIDLAR), Los Angeles, CA
Mar 4 – Baby's All Right, Brooklyn, NY
Mar 5 – Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia, PA
Mar 6 – U Street Music Hall, Washington, DC

A screencap of troublemaking app's website.

The first time I heard about Lulu, I thought it was one of those hyper-feminine apps meant to help women track their menstrual cycles. A few weeks and a New York Times mention later, I finally became curious (and bored) enough to download this secretive iPhone app.

Lulu is the latest in nightclubbish-sounding apps targeted at Sexually Liberated Twenty-Somethings (see also: Tinder, Pure, Grouper, Swoon). Designed by two Canadians—Alexandra Chong and Alison Schwartz—the app’s function is simple: Lulu allows women to anonymously rate and review their male Facebook friends based on past personal experience. It gets women to divulge the good, the bad, and the ugly (emphasis on the ugly) about current or former relationships, hookups and encounters, to build a veritable catalogue of penis reviews.

Users are prompted to sign in through their Facebook account, which allows the app to filter out any guys who may be trying to sneak onto the network. All reviews are anonymous, but comments have to be selected from a set of pre-determined, discerning hashtags such as #CleanBathroom, #Manscaped,  #LiarLiarPantsOnFire and my personal favourite: #CrayCray. 

The app claims it empowers women by providing them with the information they need to make smarter relationship choices. Lulu’s Director of Public Relations, Deborah Singer, even went so far as to label the app empowering and “feminist.”  And while I was highly skeptical of Lulu’s apparent role in dismantling the patriarchy, I wanted to dig deeper into the culture that has allowed this voyeuristic, sex-focused platform to gain traction and popularity in Canada. 

And so, I bravely decided to commit the ultimate Lulu sacrilege and confront four dudes who were reviewed on this morally questionable “ladies only” network.

Adam, 26 (Montreal)
Lulu rating: 8.4
Number of Reviews: 2

What do you think of Lulu, first off?
I thought the idea of an app like Lulu was pretty ridiculous. It’s meant to help women choose their partners more accurately but doesn’t seem like a trustworthy source. Its target demographic (students) may find it useful, but I think the most you really get from it is a momentary chuckle from seeing a friend rated with a ridiculous hashtag. 

How about the hashtags women have left for you: #DoesDishes, #SleepsInTheWetSpot, #MeanToMyDog?
I’d say “#DoesDishes” and “#SleepsInTheWetSpot” are both pretty accurate [laughs]. I’m proud of those… “#MeanToMyDog”… I don’t like animals.

Do you feel violated being on this app without your consent?
If the app was actually effective and allowed women to give ratings that recalled certain actions or scenarios, I would care more. I could care less because right now because it’s just these jokey hashtags. 

What need do you think this app fulfills for women?
I think it wants to fulfill the same need as speed dating: easier filtering. But what I actually believe is that it fills people’s need to gossip behind one another’s backs.  Let’s be honest, the positive reviews aren’t the point of the app. 

Could it be considered feminist?
Men are still the focus. It’s an immature and infantile way at looking at dating and romance. It’s college-level shit.

Would you consider downloading the new dude’s version of Lulu that allows guys to contribute to their own ratings?
No. I would never feel the need to log in and fight my own corner on an iPhone app I never even consented to be on. I’d literally rather be doing anything else with my time.

Gianni, 23 (Montreal)
Lulu rating: 8.4
Number of reviews: 5

What do you think about Lulu?
I thought the idea behind Lulu was funny and interesting. After I interacted with the app myself, I realized it was less about being judgmental and more about having a good time. The hashtags seem harmless and are pretty non-threatening.

Do you think your ratings (#GrowsHisOwnVegetables, #ObsessedWithHisMom, and #NoEdge) are accurate?
“#GrowsHisOwnVegetables is kind of accurate because I’m an extremely healthy eater. “#ObsessedWithHisMom” is, too, because I’m a self-identified mama’s boy.  My Facebook profile picture is with my mom.

I don’t think “#NoEdge” is particularly fair—just because I have my shit together and am on track and not some bad boy. I’m sorry I’m not some struggling Montreal artist.

Do you feel violated being on this app without your consent?
Not really. My personal information is available online anyways. And I highly doubt girls are making major life decisions based on Lulu.

Zach, 24 (Montreal)
Lulu rating: 7.4
Number of reviews: 4

Have you heard of Lulu before?
I heard about Lulu one day while I was sitting around with the boys. My girlfriend wasn’t too happy that I was getting recent reviews on the app. The first thing that popped into my mind honestly though was “I hope my rating’s not going to be as bad as I think it’s going to be.”

Do you think your ratings on Lulu (#TotalFuckingDickHead, #RudeToWaiters, #Doesn’tKnowIExist, #SelfMadeMan) are fair?
“#RudeToWaiters” makes no sense.  I’m in the restaurant/nightlife business and I think I go out of my way to be kind to wait staff.  That one made my heart drop a bit.

“#Doesn’tKnowIExist” is funny. Sorry.

I like “#SelfMadeMan.” I think that one’s pretty accurate.

“#TotalFuckingDickhead…” What, did I not call you back?

How effective do you think the hashtag rating system is?
People need to calm down. They’re all tongue and cheek and pretty general. Maybe they even force guys to take a hard look at themselves, I don’t know.

Could this app be considered empowering for women or even feminist?
People use the “F’ word far too much—I don’t think many feminists would think this app is empowering.  It’s pigeonholing—it’s ditzy. I don’t think of women who sit around analyzing men as model feminists.

Do you think this app has the potential to harm or hurt anyone?
I had a friend who lost his mind for a month over his ratings. He was so upset and talked to everyone about it because he was worried it would impact his reputation as a very ambitious, together guy. He didn’t like being labeled lazy and unmotivated when he was actually in law school. Any guy who tells you he truly doesn’t care about his ratings is lying.

Any other thoughts about the app?
It's important to know the things you say about people will affect them. 

To women: go out and meet a man.  Go say "hi" to him at a bar, talk to him and accept the drink he sends you.  If I found out a girl was using Lulu to make relationship choices, she can walk.

Andrew, 23 (Toronto)
Lulu rating: 8.0
Number of reviews: 6

Have you heard of this Lulu thing before?
I first heard about the app when a friend of mine came up from NYC a few weeks ago—the first thing she says when she walks in the door: have you heard of that app Lulu? I thought it would be just pictures of my face with ratings from women. It wasn’t.  I was so pissed—to be rated on things like kissing and humour—it’s so weird and immature.

What do you think about your own Lulu ratings (#GlassHalfFull, #SnuggleMachine, #ShouldComeWithAWarning)?
“#GlassHalfFull”—Absolutely accurate, I’m always really positive. Your attitude is your life.

“#ShouldComeWithAWarning”—I don’t really appreciate this one. I’m a totally decent guy—I’m not a freak who requires a warning.  No one is a saint.

#SnuggleMachine – I am totally a snuggle machine. If there’s someone lying on the couch, man or woman, I slither towards them all like: “I WANNA HANGOUT.”  Especially with women.  Especially.

Ok… How do you feel about being catalogued on the app without your consent?
It’s totally concerning, but if they had to change their business model, the app wouldn’t exist… It is pretty atrocious though: “Here’s Andrew’s hookup history that he hasn’t consented to, now use this to go stalk and contact Andrew!” I get sick to my stomach thinking about it.

Could Lulu be empowering for women?
No. If that was their ultimate goal—it could be done better. “Provide us with your your vague, non-specific humour rating please.” Not effective.

It’s just too much of a breach of privacy. In a way, I can understand where ladies are coming from, though. I understand why there’s a demand for something like this. Some guys treat girls like shit and girls need to vent.

@nehaplease

There’s a new Tumblr blog making the rounds called Selfies with Homeless People. Apart from the rare picture in which the homeless person is complicit in the act, the majority of the photos are posed next to a sleeping or comatose human. Cue snap after snap of the worst sort of millennial douchery, as fresh-faced youngsters exploit the impoverished, dispossessed members of society for Instagram likes and hashtag LOLs.

Although their young souls may be dog shit, they aren’t actually physically harming homeless people. But don’t worry, because Florida, the internet’s favorite affront to human decency and legal reason, is picking up the slack. Thanks to a “camping” ordinance passed by the Pensacola City Council last summer, homeless people in the city will be criminalized for, among other things, sleeping outdoors while “adjacent to or inside a tent or sleeping bag, or atop and/or covered by materials such as a bedroll, cardboard, newspapers, or inside some form of temporary shelter."

Photo via Flickr User fotografar

That’s right. For the grievous offense of trying to shelter yourself from freezing conditions while homeless, you are considered to be breaking the law. For a state so obsessed with the right to defend oneself, it’s shocking that Floridians wouldn’t extend this right to those confronted by the elements. But why is it illegal to use a blanket during those tricky periods when you don’t live in a house? Are blankets harbingers of infection and death? Possibly. The city council argues that “camping” has a detrimental effect on Pensacola’s “aesthetics, sanitation, public health, and safety of its citizens."

So there you have it: The homeless of Pensacola are scruffy reincarnations of General Custer, infecting the fine people of the Redneck Riviera with disease-ridden blankets.

Obviously this is total bullshit. A homeless person is less of a threat to public health than an armed neighborhood watchman, or every person listed here. And if a state is worried about aesthetics, then maybe it can set the groundwork for supporting its less fortunate citizens—like implementing income tax. Finally, homeless people aren’t made of HIV and lava, so you probably won’t die if you go near them. At least the idiots taking selfies with them know that.

There is currently a Change.org petition with over 9,000 signatures asking Pensacola to overturn the ban. 

@JackBlocker